Richard E. Hyman

FROGMEN is my personal account of SCUBA diving with Jacques Cousteau (1973-1979)

“FROGMEN”

My Journeys With Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau and the Crew of Calypso

by Richard E. Hyman

Richard Hyman first worked for Jacques Cousteau in 1973, when he drove a supply truck from Los Angeles to the Canadian wilderness for a rare land-based expedition. There he worked with Native Americans building a cabin for the Cousteau team to winter in and film Beavers of the North Country. Subsequent journeys included diving with manatee in Florida's warm springs and stonecrabs off the panhandle. Then he and Dr. George Low, Deputy Administrator of NASA, flew to Mexico's Yucatán and boarded Calypso, a relatively small and unsteady wooden ship. Richard camped on the uninhabited Contoy Island to study and film The Incredible Migration of the Spiny Lobsters. From there he sailed south along the 180-mile Belize Barrier Reef, filming the spawning of thousands of grouper, The Fish that Swallowed Jonah, and a visit from singer songwriter John Denver. On his final voyage, en route to Venezuela, he experienced treacherous dives on the wreck of the USS Monitor off North Carolina, skeletons inside wrecks off Martinique, and the death of Jacques Cousteau’s son, Philippe.

Richard has a bachelor’s degree in economics and business administration from Furman University of South Carolina. He also attended Yale, Georgetown and Fairfield Universities, where he studied engineering, writing and business.

In the exciting bicentennial summer of 1976 Richard interned for Rusty Schweickart in the Office of Applications at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. Rusty was Apollo 9’s lunar module pilot and also served as backup commander for the first Skylab mission.

Richard’s career has spanned executive positions in large corporate and early-stage telecommunications and technology businesses. Later on he was Adjunct Professor of Environmental Ethics at Fairfield University. He’s a certified Aquanaut and an inductee of the Marine Biology Hall of Fame.

FROGMEN is an inspiring coming of age story about a young man who pays homage to one of the greatest explorers of all time. Cousteau, the co-inventor of the aqua-lung, made more than 100 films, was a three-time Academy Award winner and received 40 Emmy nominations.

John Denver wrote “Calypso”, a hit that went gold worldwide. U.S. fans bought more than 10 million copies, the most in RCA history.

Stories about life aboard Calypso and Cousteau, once one of the most recognized names in the world, should interest all age groups and both genders, particularly adventurers, Denver fans, divers, environmentalists, photographers, travel buffs, and videographers.