Fabien Cousteau

Meet the ocean explorer who plans to build a futuristic base under the sea.

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Fabien Cousteau has spent his life exploring the ocean. The conservationist (someone who works to protect the environment and wildlife) has spent 31 consecutive days under water, driven a shark-shaped submarine and is on a mission to build an undersea research station.

Starting young

Cousteau has been in love with the ocean as long as he can remember (his grandfather was the famous ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau - see box). Growing up, Fabien was scuba diving by the time he was four, started joining research missions aged seven and spent his school summer holidays scraping barnacles off his grandad’s research ship, Calypso. He didn’t realise at the time how special it was to be able to learn from the scientists, engineers and explorers working on the ships. “Looking back, it was some of the best education I could have,” Cousteau told The Week Junior Science+Nature.

At school, he'd find himself looking out of the window and daydreaming. “I was a terrible student in class because I was always dreaming of the next adventure,” he says. It was his passion for the ocean and curiosity about the outside world that led him to follow his grandad and become an ocean explorer too.

A Trojan shark