Making Like A Great White
Famed underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau's grandson wanted to get up close and personal with great white sharks in their natural habitat, with no divers or cages around.
So, naturally, Fabien Cousteau and his crew built a mini-submarine disguised to look like a great white, and designed to move like one. He climbed inside, took the helm, and went with it to the depths of the Pacific, going nose-to-nose with real great whites.
What happened during construction and when he was underwater is chronicled in a special airing on CBS Wednesday night called "Shark: Mind of a Demon."
The show's producers say the "ambitious and often dramatic adventure keeps with the strong Cousteau tradition of deep sea exploration."
Cousteau discussed his adventure with co-anchor Harry Smith on The Early Show.
At one point, he told Smith, he lost communications with the surface in the dark of night, and the crew members on the surface didn't even know he'd been cut off.
Ever since reading a comic book as a young boy showing an underwater explorer navigating the ocean in a sub disguised as a great white, Cousteau had wanted to make that fantasy a reality.
He says he also feels the creatures have been unjustly maligned and wants to help set the record straight.
But, unlike his grandfather's work, which could likely be found on Natural Geographic, Fabien's "Shark" show is more about the adventure of attempting and completing the project than about the actual scientific findings about the feared animals, making it almost a reality TV-type drama.
Cousteau finds himself directly in the middle of countless problems throughout the course of the show, from the difficulties of building the submarine, to dealing with the pressure of his legendary ancestry, to the very real life-threatening challenges he faces when actually underwater.
To watch Smith's chat with Cousteau,