Buddy diving just before and after the Second World War. After the invention of the "aqualung" by Cousteau and Gagnan, the first commercially underwater breathing apparatus became available for sale for sporting purposes in the late 1940s. As the new sport of scuba diving rapidly expanded through the 1950s, several sporting organisations—notably the YMCA—began programmes to train swimming enthusiasts in this new aquatic pastime, and began to codify what they believed were proper practises for this expanding sport. The YMCA considered the buddy system a useful corollary to the "never swim alone" rule of their swimming and lifesaving programmes. Cousteau himself independently
Jacques Cousteau National Estuarine Research Reserve Jacques Cousteau National Estuarine Research Reserve The Jacques Cousteau National Estuarine Research Reserve, located in southeastern New Jersey, encompasses over 110,000 acres (450 km²) of terrestrial, wetland and aquatic habitats within the Mullica River-Great Bay Ecosystem. A wide range of habitats includes the pinelands, lowland swamps, freshwater marshes, salt and freshwater tidal marshes, barrier islands (sandy beaches and dune habitats), shallow bays and the coastal ocean. Little more than one percent of this reserve has been subject to human development. The area is one of the least disturbed estuaries in the densely populated urban corridor of the northeastern United States.