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
Jean-Michel Cousteau Jean-Michel Cousteau Jean-Michel Cousteau (born 6 May 1938) is a French oceanographic explorer, environmentalist, educator, and film producer. The first son of ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau, he is the father of Fabien Cousteau and Céline Cousteau. Cousteau is the son of Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Simone Melchior. Cousteau first dived with an aqua-lung in 1945 when he was 7 years old. Although he went to school to study architecture, he joined his father's Cousteau Society, serving for twenty years as executive vice president before striking out on his own in 1993 to produce environmental films. Cousteau and his father disagreed on