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He blew up coral reefs with dynamite!! By this measure, the Monkey Christ affair "opened the eyes of multiple generations" on the importance of religious painti

• henearkr 6y ago
  I don't know what he wanted to achieve and what were his options at the time. Until I know that, I suspend my judgement. Anyway, he did not make disappear coral as a species, did he? Please do not confuse nature protection with sentimentalism. There are very serious environmentalist jobs whose description is "destroy all the cats on this island". Just to precise, there is none of this kind of cruelty in his films. What he transmitted to generations of children (and still does) is respect and fascination of nature in all its beauty and complexity. I don't know what you saw about sharks, but what I saw as a child was Cousteau's team filming sharks from inside special cages, and even outside the cages in the open, with special canes he designed to keep them at distance without killing them. If he ever had cruelty towards sharks, he had also compassion, and this is the compassion bit that reached me.
• henearkr 6y ago
  Here is an article putting back in context the method they used to count species: https://www.levif.be/actualite/environnement/quand-le-commandant-cousteau-faisait-chier-toute-la-faune-marine/article-normal-404393.html?cookie_check=1598484039 https://www.levif.be/actualite/environnement/quand-le-comman... Nowadays scientists use poison instead of dynamite, is it better? That shows you these methods have strong rationales, even if they seem stupid at first. And at the time the Sea was still a big unknown, Cousteau greatly contributed to open this unread book. So you see, you do not have to feel compelled to destroy him and his work.