Fabien Cousteau

A distinguished undersea explorer in his own right, Fabien Cousteau's most recent project is "Mind of a Demon," a CBS documentary that aired in fall 2006, through which Cousteau tore away ingrained assumptions about sharks. To do this, Fabien created a minisubmarine disguised as a great white shark! In the same frame of mind as a Diane Fosse or a Jane Goodall, he became one of the animals he observes: to go to them rather than bait them in.

"I did my first dive on my fourth birthday," says Cousteau. "My father found me on the bottom of the pool buddy-breathing - a pretty advanced technique for sharing an oxygen tank - with a family friend." Since then, Cousteau has hardly surfaced for air. Following in the wake of his famous grandfather Jacques and father Jean-Michel, Fabien has made the oceans his second home. "I went along on their expeditions during every school break," he says. "I'd scrub the hulls, paint the rails, do whatever needed to be done - and dive. For me, that was vacation. I loved it."

Today, the Paris-born New York resident applies his wide-ranging curiosity, deep-water experience and passion for technology to design and execute his own experiments, which are among oceanography's most audacious. Take "Troy," Cousteau's nickname for the custom-designed sub he crawls inside to swim with the sharks. Meticulously designed, Troy is enabling Cousteau to gain an unprecedented perspective on the planet's largest predator: the warm-blooded, 21-foot-long, 2700-pound Great White shark.

"When I was seven years old I read a Tintin story called 'Rackham le Rouge,' where he makes a sub in the shape of a shark and goes underwater," recalls Cousteau. "Since then I've always wanted to build a shark sub." The idea has family precedent: in 1989 his father deployed a shark look-alike vehicle that was attacked by a large female Great White and completely destroyed. Fabien is undaunted; Troy, he points out, is an utterly different beast. "Troy uses the latest-generation equipment," says Cousteau, who assembled a team of crack engineers and scientists to advise the project. It's an anatomically correct, 14-foot-long, 1000-pound, one-man "wet" sub (there's water inside) that Cousteau operates in full diving gear. Troy's experimental motors haul as fast as five knots. "The sub is an observational platform that lets me swim along at shark speed," says Cousteau. "The whole point is to fool them into thinking I'm a shark."

Cousteau is tracking preselected sharks and filming their responses as they're introduced to a series of precisely designed and controlled situations. Like his grandfather and father, Cousteau is driven not just to explore but to share what he learns. "Mind of a Demon" was the first time a Cousteau documentary aired on network TV in the US in over 25 years.

Named by People Magazine as one of the sexiest men alive, Cousteau is now available for speaking engagements. He is an expert on many topics involving the oceans and the environment, and incorporates fascinating video and slides into this presentations.