2000 FEET UNDER THE SEA PICCARD

 

 

Breaking records and making discoveries is a trasition for the remarkable Piccard family. Photographer Alain Guillou observed two generations in action.

 

Neither the extremes of sea or sky seem to have limited the activities of the Swiss family Piccard.

 

They never appeat to have been satisfied with what is happening on the Earth, but have always been ascending to the stratosphere or descending to the depths of the ocean.

 

Their exploits in breaking records and making discoveries at great heights and depths began with the identical twin brothers, Jean and Auguste, who were born in 1884.

 

Jean researched cosmic rays from stratospherix balloons ascents and is also remembred for his work in the bathyscaphe which reached the greatest-ever ocean depths after the Secons World War.

 

The family tradition is being carried on now by Aguste's son, Dr Jacques Piccard, who designs specialised submarines. Last year, with the Forel, he explored the archaeological secrets of Lake Bracciano in Italy.

 

Previously he built a mesoscaphe (meium depth boat), a first tourist submarine, names Auguste Piccard after his father, which took 40 people at a time for an underwater look at Lake Geneva.

 

Then Jacques Piccard drifted for 1,500 miles underwater with the Gulf Stream in a 130 tons research submarine, from which he and five other scientists were able, for the first time, to observe marine life for a prolonged period from and undesea vantage point.

 

Now 60, Jacques Piccard seems young for his years. Everyday he communtes from the family home by Lake Geneva to his scientific foundation ar Cully, farther along the shore.

 

Often as he leaves the house, a microlite (motorised hand glider) will skim the surface of the lake his eldest son Bertrand's way of seeing him off.

 

Bertrand, 25 gets his thrills from cruising beween the moutains, while his younger brother, Thierry, prefers the surface of the lake to its depths; he is a keen windsurfer.

 

Jacques Piccard established the Foundation for the Study and Protection of the Seas and Lakes at Cully in 1972. Its aim is to educate the public in the importance of ecology, and to cooperate with industry in controlling pollution.

 

Scientists of the Foundation are monitoring the bacterial effect of pollution in deep water from a microbiological station on the botton of the lake. 

 

Their next project, using a special research submarine, which is now being built, will be to study the possible effects of mining the mineral-packed, potato-sized nodules which lie at the bottom of the oceans some 2,000ft down.

 

All the industrial nations will soon be competing for this underwater wealth, but removal of the nodules will change the ecolugy of the sea-which is why Dr Piccard regards this research as essential and urgent.

 

Crédit photos  : © 1981 Alain Guillou
(some remote controlled pictures are triggered by Bertrand during his flight : © 1981 B.Piccard/Alain Guillou

Photos faites au Leica.