Some Kind of Magic: Alexandra Cousteau on how a deep sense of wonder drives her activism:

In this episode, I speak with journalist, filmmaker,  and ocean activist Alexandra Cousteau. Alexandra has a long legacy of working to protect our world's oceans and is the founder of Oceans 2050.

She is also on the board of the incredible environmental organization Oceana, which works to protect and restore the oceans on a global scale, and it was Oceana who originally connected me with Alexandra.

If Alexandra's last name sounds familiar, it's because she continues the work of her grandfather was Jacques-Yves Cousteau, and her father Philippe Cousteau. Continuing that legacy, Alexandra has also stood at the forefront of the world ocean advocacy ocean community, and we talked at length about her personal and family connection to the oceans, what the legacy of being a Cousteau meant for her as she established her own path in ocean advocacy, and how she was changed forever by a day snorkeling with her daughter in the Phillipines.

Scuba Diving, Free Diving, Ocean Environmentalism, Surfing, and Marine Science.

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Transcript

Jason Elias: (00:09)
Hi, and welcome to the Big Deep Podcast. Big Deep is a podcast about people who have a connection to the ocean. People for whom that connection is so strong, it defines some aspect of their life. Over the course of these series, we'll talk to all sorts of people, and in each episode, we'll explore the deeper meaning of that connection. 

Jason Elias: (00:33)
Today, I speak with a woman at the forefront of marine advocacy, who also carries one of the most famous names in the history of global ocean awareness. Hello, this is your host, Jason Elias. Welcome to the Big Deep Podcast.

Jason Elias: (00:53)
In today's episode, I speak with journalist, filmmaker, and environmental activist, Alexandra Cousteau. Alexandra has a long history of actively working to preserve and protect our world's marine environments and is the founder of Oceans 2050, an organization dedicated to restoring abundance to the ocean by the year 2050. She is also on the board of the incredible environmental organization, Oceana, which works to protect and restore the oceans on a global scale. It was Oceana who initially connected me with Alexandra.

Jason Elias: (01:23)
If Alexandra's last name sounds familiar, it is because she continues the work of her grandfather, Jacques Cousteau, and father, Philippe Cousteau. Her grandfather, Jacque Cousteau was a French naval, explorer, co-developed the Aqua-Lung, pioneered marine conservation, and was an underwater filmmaker who in a way taught the entire world about the sea and all forms of life in water through his films. Those films had a seminal impact even on me growing up in Arizona, where I first learned and dreamed about getting in the ocean. 

Jason Elias: (01:52)
Continuing that legacy, Alexandra has also stood at the forefront of the world ocean advocacy community. We talked at length about her personal and family connection to the oceans. What the legacy of being a Cousteau meant for her as she established her own path in ocean advocacy, and how she was changed forever by day snorkeling with her daughter in the Philippines.

Jason Elias: (02:13)
Alexandra, this might seem like an odd question for someone coming from your family, but where does your connection to the ocean come from? Is there a moment where you remember first feeling that connection?

Alexandra Cousteau: (02:24)
Well, Jason, I was a child that learned to swim before she could walk. I took my first swim lessons when I was four months old. I had been on expeditions since I was six months old and so, that sense of purpose and that mission and that story, I've just been marinating my whole life. The water has always been part of me and I can't remember my first time to the ocean. It's like you can't remember the first time you met your mom, but I remember the first time it all clicked. When my grandfather taught me to scuba dive for the first time so the morning that we left the port in Nice in the South of France. 

Alexandra Cousteau: (03:21)
We were on a small boat, I think it was just a little dive boat. It was a beautiful sunny day, clear blue sky, it was warm and I was seven years old, so quite young by today's standards and the equipment wasn't at all what you have today. This was in the mid-80s. We didn't have a BCD, a buoyancy compensating device. I was a tall, skinny girl, so my grandfather had brought me a mask that was a little bit too big for my face. A regulator that was quite a bit too large for my mouth and a weight belt with weights that dug in at my hips and fins that were a little too tight, but we put it all on. I shuffled up to the side of the boat and I looked down and it just seemed so deep and so dark.

Alexandra Cousteau: (04:28)
I took this deep breath and was trying to figure out how I was going to back out of this whole thing without disappointing my grandfather. My grandfather came up next to me and gave me a smile and a wink and said, "You're ready?" Then, gave me a little shove and in I went. I was at the surface and I remember putting my face halfway in, just to see if this regulator thingamajig really was going to work and it did.

Alexandra Cousteau: (05:10)
Then, I decided to go all-in and I put my head under the water and took a deep breath and it was like magic. And so, with all of this enthusiasm of childhood, I started swimming down to see what was there. At one point I looked up and I guess I was about 15 feet deep, and I saw this school of little, silverfish swimming towards me. I was mesmerized because the sun was coming down through the surface and glittering off of their little bodies. They were moving in unison by some magic. They would just swim one way and they would all decide then to swim the other, and I was just fascinated by this extraordinary dance that they were doing.

Alexandra Cousteau: (06:26)
Then, they swam towards me and they swam all around me. When I would reach my hand out, they would move away from me and then I'd pull my hand in and they'd come closer. It was just a moment, but that moment is with me every day. It shaped this relentless belief that those fish, the ocean that they live in, and everything that exists there with them is worth protecting and that feeling has never left me.

Jason Elias: (07:34)
Wow. That's a beautiful story. I think one of the things that speaks to is how some of the most profound moments we can have in the ocean sometimes are some of the most simple, and maybe we don't even recognize that until later. It also sounds like one of the gifts that your family legacy gave to you was a profound sense of wonder about the ocean. Would you say that's fair?

Alexandra Cousteau: (08:00)
Well, I think if that moment hadn't been so profound, it wouldn't have shaped me in the way that it did. Profound moments in the ocean though, are quite common and if you're fortunate enough to go diving on a reef that is still intact, it's just extraordinary what you can see. You can sit in front of the same square meter of coral reef and never stop seeing things. If you're there long enough, the little fish will start interacting with you and trying to chase you away from their patch of seaweed. The little cleaner shrimp we'll come over and try to clean your finger, and those are my childhood friends.

Alexandra Cousteau: (08:45)
For me, at least, the ocean has been in me my whole life and that is my purpose. That is my mission. It is what brings me joy. It's also what I grieve for and it's a beautiful thing to fight for. I think that one of the greatest gifts that my family gave me was this sense of purpose that drives me forward every day.

Jason Elias: (09:12)
I wondered in advance of this interview if the family name that you carried had both benefits and burdens as you tried to forge your own path. When you told the story of your grandfather nudging you off the boat when you were going to go scuba diving for the first time, it seemed to me to encapsulate in some way all of the complexities of that relationship. 

Jason Elias: (09:33)
Like every child with their parent, there were certain expectations that maybe you weren't even aware of, or that you took on around doing something with that family name. But it also might have given you a sense of deep wonder about the oceans on a level that very few of us would've ever been able to experience growing up as children. Is there truth to any of this?

Alexandra Cousteau: (09:53)
Yeah, you're right about all those things. My family never put expectations on me or never forced me. From the time I was a child, they included me in what they did and they included me in the conversations. They just opened the door for me to walk through and that shaped me. That inspired me and I adopted that sense of purpose as my own. 

Alexandra Cousteau: (10:26)
It doesn't mean that I've always known exactly what to do because many times I've thrown myself into big projects with big ideas and they haven't panned out and others have. And so, I've felt my way along this path, but there has been a cost to this as well. 

Alexandra Cousteau: (11:02)
Being a woman in a male-dominated legacy is difficult. Even just 30 years ago, there weren't a lot of women explorers. Even for my grandfather's crews, they were all men. I think representation is important and I love today seeing so many women out there of all colors, doing all kinds of things. 

Alexandra Cousteau: (11:42)
I'm a National Geographic explorer. There are so many women in National Geographic. The Explorers Club has also started including many more women than they used to and that representation is important. I didn't have it as a child and certainly, everybody expected the Cousteau to be a man because my grandfather was a man, my father was a man. So, if you were a Cousteau doing this work, you must be a man too. 

Alexandra Cousteau: (12:13)
When I was younger and I would be invited to dinners or cocktail parties, oftentimes the host would present me around the room as the granddaughter of Jacque Cousteau, never as Alexandra Cousteau. It had always been my goal to accomplish enough on my own that, who I was and what I had done would be more important than who my grandfather was and what he had done. I feel like I've gotten to that point now.

Jason Elias: (12:56)
Well, it's evident over the years that you have crafted your own way and made your own mark. I'm curious, being at the forefront of the ocean environmental movement, working with partner organizations like Oceana, what's your take? Do you ever feel disheartened around the state of the ocean and is it still possible to save it?

Alexandra Cousteau: (13:24)
People often ask me, "Don't you feel hopeless? What can we do?" But when I have those moments and I do, my husband always says something to me, which has been really helpful. He says, "The end has not been written and there is no telling what we'll do between now and then." Human ingenuity has the extraordinary capacity to turn things around and I feel like we may be getting to the point where there is enough momentum and enough people who want to protect this beautiful, precious plan that we live on for our children. Who wants the oceans to be full of life, the way my grandfather first experienced them and filmed them and shared them with everybody else. 

Alexandra Cousteau: (14:23)
I think one of the great life-changing moments I've had recently was when I called a friend of mine who's a scientist. He's one of the great marine biologists of this moment and I asked him, "Is it inevitable that my daughter will be the generation of my family who will write the obituary for our ocean?" He said, "No, actually. Science tells us that, if we act in the next decade, we can restore the lost abundance over the ocean back to the same abundance that your grandfather once experienced it." 

Alexandra Cousteau: (15:11)
Who knows what we can do in the next 10 years to turn it around and there will be ideas and people and solutions and inventions because more people are feeling urgency to act. The opportunity still exists to create great change and that is what gives me hope. I think creates this obligation for us to seize this last moment, this last window of opportunity to save our oceans and save ourselves in the process.

Jason Elias: (15:54)
I think in some ways to work on problems this large, you have to be somewhat an optimist. You have to believe that things are still possible. Those of us who are deeply connected to the ocean are very fortunate because we've actually discovered a way to connect with the world in a very direct way. I think sometimes that can sustain us and keep us optimistic about the world because we are experiencing the wonder of the ocean. 

Jason Elias: (16:18)
I would imagine with the path that you've chosen for your life, you've had all kinds of credible experiences in the ocean. But is there one moment you could point to where you felt especially connected to being in the water?

Alexandra Cousteau: (16:30)
About four years ago, I went to the Philippines with Oceana and their Philippine office had just opened and so, I was there to support them. To help open doors to heads of state and the media, tell their story. We met the small fishing communities and university students and all kinds of different communities. I brought my family with me. I wanted them to see what I was doing and where I was and meet the people that I was meeting.

Alexandra Cousteau: (17:16)
My daughter was five and so she could already swim, but she'd never been snorkeling in a place like Palawan, which was one of the places that we went. Frankly, Palawan is breathtaking. It's these steep, rounded mountains covered in rainforest fall into the ocean. It's turquoise and it's just spectacular. I had a chance to take my daughter snorkeling for the first time in this place. It was amazing. 

Alexandra Cousteau: (18:07)
I got her all suited up with gear that I hoped was more comfortable for her than what I had had on my first time. She held my hand and we went snorkeling and there was just life everywhere. There were these big schools of jacks and these little sardines and she didn't flinch. She was snorkeling and pointing at everything, the colorful reef fish and then we snorkeled out deeper and she couldn't see the bottom, but that's where the bigger fish were. She kept pointing and pointing and pointing, and she was so excited about seeing this ocean world. 

Alexandra Cousteau: (19:08)
I could tell you so many stories about the time that I was in the water with humpback whales or the time that I was in the water with sharks or the time juvenile manta ray came and swam belly to belly with me. But I think of all the stories that I have, that one, it was of the same power as my first dive, taking my daughter snorkeling. It had that same life-changing flavor to it because that was where the two purposes that I have in my life came together. 

Alexandra Cousteau: (20:08)
My daughter still at 10 years old talks about that day and she still remembers it. She remembers the feelings that she had and the awe and the wonder and it was an inflection point in my life. Everything made sense in a different way after that.

Jason Elias: (20:43)
Finally, we end every interview and every episode with a single open-ended question we ask everyone we talk to. What does the ocean mean to you?

Alexandra Cousteau: (20:54)
Connection, legacy, identity, hope, future, love, joy. They all crowd in at the same. It's not like there's just one that comes to mind, but maybe that's because I've spent my whole life there. It is a multifaceted relationship that I have with the ocean.

Jason Elias: (21:24)
Thanks for listening to the Big Deep Podcast. Next time on Big Deep.

Speaker 3: (21:31)
We drove into the jungle, had to cut through some brush, and here's this wine stone structure. It was a temple. They call the temples [inaudible 00:21:41].

Jason Elias: (21:42)
We really appreciate you being on this journey into the Big Deep, as we explore an ocean of stories. If you like what we're doing, please make sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Also, please like and comment because those subscribes, likes, and comments really make a difference.

Jason Elias: (21:59)
For more interviews, deeper discussions with our guests, photos, and updates on anything you've heard, there's a lot more content at our website, bigdeep.com. Plus, if you know someone who you think we should talk to, let us know at our Big Deep website, as we are always looking to hear more stories from interesting people who are deeply connected to our world's oceans. Thanks again for joining us.