As the first grandson of Jacques Cousteau, Fabien spent his early years aboard his grandfather's ships Calypso and Alcyone, and learned how to scuba dive on his fourth birthday.

He continues to pursue these initiatives through the Fabien Cousteau Ocean Learning Center[1][2] his non-profit 501(c)(3) founded in early 2016 dedicated to the restoration of the world's water bodies through active community engagement and education.

[5] At age seven, Cousteau accompanied his grandfather and father on the first of many sea trips aboard the Calypso and Alcyone, the ships that transported the explorers to their dive locations.

[5][7] Fabien attended Norfolk Academy in Virginia[8][9] and graduated from Boston University with a bachelor's degree in environmental economics.

[7] After three years, he returned to the family business, working for his father at Deep Ocean Odyssey, an exploration company founded by his grandfather.

[12] Also in 2002, Cousteau began work on a children's book called The Prince of Atlantis and founded an online conservation organization named Planet Riders.

[12] After a year of development, "Troy", a 14-foot (4.3 m) long, 1,200-pound (540 kg) submarine shaped like a great white shark, was ready for testing.

They stayed about 23 to 29 feet (7.0 to 8.8 m) away from it, the length of an adult shark, and rolled their eyes, puffed their gills, and changed directions in response to it.

[18] The footage was turned into a two-part episode of Jean-Michel Cousteau: Ocean Adventures called "America's Underwater Treasures."

Among other things, the team captured footage of goliath groupers, humpback whales, a rare giant Pacific octopus, and spawning coral.

[citation needed] Originally scheduled for November 2013, Mission 31 was postponed to June 2014 due to a US federal government shutdown.

[6] From 1 June to 2 July, Cousteau spent 31 days underwater filming and collecting scientific data as a tribute to his grandfather.

[3] He got the idea for Mission 31 when visiting the undersea laboratory Aquarius during a fundraiser aiming to keep it operating in the wake of federal budget cuts.

"[4] He estimated his team had collected the equivalent of two-year's worth of data during the mission, enough for ten scientific papers, and said he "would have loved to have continued beyond 31 days".

[4][22] Proteus is the project Fabien Cousteau is planning for a construction of a community of ocean flooring analysis stations, situated off Curaçao at a depth of about 20 m in a marine-protected area.