Family values
Cementing the Cousteau-Meistrell relationship was not only their historic, parallel roles in ocean sports, but also their unimpeachable commitment to ocean conservation.
Cousteau traces his conservation awakening to a river otter; the Meistrells’, to a lobster.
Cousteau’s river otter was taken aboard the Cousteau ship Calypso during the 1984 filming of the Cousteau Amazon series for Turner Broadcasting.
The precocious otter became a beloved member of the crew. When it was time for the Calypso to leave, and for the crew to return the otter to its natural habitat “we had only to look at the ruin and wreckage of the region through the eyes of our pet river otter to appreciate the dangers that lay in wait,” Cousteau writes in his recently published memoir My Father, the Captain.
“The moment marked a kind of turning point for me, because I never again looked at my surroundings from a place of innocence. There would still be joy and wonder and adventure, but from this moment on, I was on a kind of campaign.”
The Meistrells’ lobster was one Bob Meistrell, while in his early 20s, brought to the home of a neighbor who had invited him to dinner.
The neighbor was an old fish and game warden and was not pleased with the present.
“He said to me, ‘Bob, do you ever poach?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ When I got out of the army I didn’t have any money and I was probably the biggest poacher of them all.’ There were so many abalone and lobster then that we didn’t think it mattered.
“He said he appreciated my honesty and that he could give me a ticket, but he’d rather give me a talking to. I said, I’d rather pay the ticket, but he gave me a talking to anyway. He said if everyone poached out of season like I did there wouldn’t be any game left for my grandchildren. And boy was he right. We never dreamed the abalone would disappear and now it’s almost extinct in Southern California. I never took illegal game again in my life,” recalled Meistrell, who is now 83 and last month dove 300 feet in the Redondo Canyon in his new, two-man submarine.
The Meistrell twins’ small dive shop developed into the Southland’s largest dive shop, and its Body Glove wetsuits developed into an international licensing giant with products in over 50 countries. A brand name recognition study found that the Body Glove hand is almost as widely recognized as the Nike Swoosh.
Cousteau brings to the partnership not just a cross-over celebrity name, but a long record of marine conservation successes.
Shortly after moving to Santa Barbara in 1991, Cousteau was drawn into an MPA debate, similar to the Santa Monica Bay debate, involving the eight Channel Islands, including Catalina.
“The commercial fishermen would say they had all of their resources invested in their boats. The sports fishermen said we were taking away their freedoms. And I’d say, I’m on your side. I eat fish. But we need to manage the ocean like a business. We are gobbling up our principal and heading toward bankruptcy. In Maine, the banks are repossessing fishing boats.”
In 2003, following debate that divided the Santa Barbara community, State Fish and Game designated 20 percent of the waters surrounding the Channel Islands MPA’s.
Five years later a PISCO study found there were 1.7 times more sheephead, kelp bass, and ling cod inside the reserves than in similar areas outside the reserves. And more significantly, because of the spillover effect into neighboring waters, four Channel Islands commercial fisheries (rock crab, spiny lobster, market squid and sea urchin) increased in value. Some neighboring fisheries did show declines, but the declines were less than elsewhere in California during the same period.
“Now, the fishermen thank me,” Cousteau said. “The other day one called from his boat to ask what he should do because he had hooked a big fish that was dragging him into the protected area. I said, you caught it outside the area, it’s yours.”
