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
Céline Cousteau ocean explorer and shark advocate, and granddaughter of Jacques Yves Cousteau. She grew up between their family homes in France and the United States, and as the granddaughter of legendary explorer and oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, Celine spent much of her youth aboard his famous research vessel "Calypso", plying the seas in search of answers to the oceans' greatest mysteries. One of her first major expeditions was at age nine when she journeyed to the Amazon with her family. There they spent 18 months navigating its waters in areas that were still largely unknown to the outside world. It was on