Philippe Pierre Cousteau (30 December 1940 – 28 June 1979) was a French diver, sailor, pilot, photographer, author, director and cinematographer specializing in environmental issues, with a background in oceanography.

[3] Cousteau spent two years in the French Navy during the Algerian war as a sonar operator and member of the landing party of the Le Normand ship, later earning his degree in science, spent another year at MIT, and then went to Paris to train in cinematography, graduating from I'École technique de photographie et de cinéma (now called École nationale supérieure Louis-Lumière) in Paris.

In 1965, Cousteau was an Oceanaut on the Conshelf III, an undersea habitat for saturated diving down to 325 feet near Ile Levant in the Mediterranean Sea.

[4] In February 1967, Cousteau accompanied his father on the RV Calypso for an expedition to film the sharks of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.

As well as being the lead photographer for the expedition, Cousteau also chronicled his experiences in the 1970 publication The Shark: Splendid Savage of the Sea.

[5] Until his death in 1979, he co-produced numerous documentaries[1] with his father, including Voyage to the Edge of the World (1976) for the cinema and his own PBS television series, Oasis in Space[6] (1977), concerning environmental issues.

[7] Cousteau met Janice Sullivan in the crowded ballroom of St. Regis Hotel in New York City in February 1966.

One theory is that the aircraft simply touched down on the river too fast, causing it to flip on the water;[9] another is that the aircraft nosed over during a high-speed taxi run undertaken to check the hull for leakage and the left wing broke free, sending its engine toward the cockpit and killing Cousteau instantly.