Cousteau educates on conservation

Blue Legacy Founder Alexandra Cousteau educated students and faculty on her 100-day adventure across five continents Tuesday in the Shepherd Union Wildcat Theater.
The event was part of WSU’s Convocation Lecture Series and was free and open to the public. Cousteau was invited to speak by the Arts and Lecture program after they heard from her organization and did more research on her Web site.
“One of the main things we focused on was how we could help our community become more aware of a global situation,” said Arts and Lectures Director Seth Durfee. “We decided it would be something worthwhile for Weber State University as a campus.”
Cousteau began her story by giving background information on her grandfather Jacques Cousteau’s invention of the regulator, which revolutionized scuba diving. She went on to explain how she first became interested in water conservation when she was seven years old, after her grandfather took her scuba diving in the same spot in the Mediterranean he took her father 40 years earlier.
Cousteau described how the 400-lb groupers her father saw were no longer there, and how she was able to see red tuna, which are now endangered. This event inspired her to become involved in fresh-water conservation work.
“As we think about the ocean, we think about the rivers, we think about glaciers and polar icecaps,” Cousteau said. “We need to understand we live on a planet where the water cycle drives the life cycle. Without water, none of us would survive.”
Cousteau’s conservation efforts recently allowed her to travel across the planet to document just how important water is to every society.
“The first project that I just recently came back from is called ‘Expedition: Blue Planet,’ and it’s a 100-day expedition that we started in February,” Cousteau said. “We traveled for five months looking at different water stories and different ways that water influences people’s lives. We started in India and we went to the Ganges River. There we were looking at the role of water in Hindu spirituality. The Ganges River is a sacred river, and so to be able to go to this river was incredibly important. We went to Varanasi, which is 5,000 years old, and it’s not only one of the oldest cities in India, it’s also the most holy place in India, and the Ganges runs right through it.”
The Ganges River is a pertinent part of life to the people of Varanasi and plays a large part in their culture and spirituality.
“The whole city is constructed in such a way that people can worship on the river, which is fed by the Himalaya Mountains,” Cousteau said. “The Himalayas store more fresh water than any other place in the world other than the polar icecaps. They’re also the glaciers that are melting faster than any other glaciers in the world.”
Cousteau went on to show video excerpts of “Expedition: Blue Planet.” The attendees got to see clips of the Ganges River and later of the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico. The Dead Zone is an area where no oxygen exists in the water and fish and shrimp cannot survive.
“The quality of the water on the planet is declining and we need to be very mindful of it,” Cousteau said. “I think we’ve forgotten the idea of being downstream from each other, that we are all affected by the practices of those who live upstream from us.
Cousteau concluded with sharing her thoughts on  how important she found conserving water to be .
“One of the things that tied our journey together was that there was one phrase everyone said and that is that ‘water is life,’” Cousteau said. “Conserving water at home means using your appliances only when they’re needed and washing your car at car washes instead of at home. So everything that we do directly impacts our water cycle.”