📍Sanary-sur-Mer, Var, France
1936 – 1950“I was a sickly child, born in Saint-André-de-Cubzac near Bordeaux, and doctors told me to swim for my health, so I did, and I never stopped. I loved machines and films too, and bought my first movie camera as a teenager. I trained as a naval officer, hoping to fly, but a serious car crash in 1936 ended that dream. While I recovered, my fellow officer Philippe Tailliez lent me a pair of goggles and took me spearfishing in the Mediterranean near Toulon. When I put my face under the water, a new world opened up below me. With Tailliez and our friend Frédéric Dumas, a champion spearfisherman, I spent every free day in the sea along this coast; people called us the mousquemers, the musketeers of the sea. During the war, Sanary-sur-Mer, a small fishing port west of Toulon, became the centre of our diving life. With my wife Simone, who was a keen diver too, we filmed underwater, and in the winter of 1942–43 I worked with the engineer Émile Gagnan to create the Aqua-Lung, a regulator that let a diver breathe compressed air freely underwater. That summer we tested it in these waters, making hundreds of dives, going deeper each time. The Aqua-Lung opened the oceans to everyone. I went on to sail the Calypso, make The Silent World and many documentaries, and lead the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco for more than thirty years, while warning the world about the damage to the seas. Sanary remembers our beginnings: its diving museum, named after Frédéric Dumas, tells the story of the friends who first learned to fly beneath the Mediterranean.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today