Book Review

Title: The Human, the Orchid and the Octopus: Exploring and Conserving Our Natural World

Author: Jacques Cousteau and Susan Schiefelbein

Publisher: Bloomsbury Books

Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 978-1-59691-417-9

ISBN-10: 1-59691-417-3
Released: 2008

Reviewed By: Kindah Mardam Bey (Ontario Correspondent – Canada)

“I vote Green Party, and one day you will too.” I’m convinced this could be an ominous campaign for the Green Party; especially when people will probably vote en-masse when it is too late to repair the damages to our world that we have imposed on it.

My first official interaction with Jacques Cousteau has been simply mind-blowing; seeing as The Human, the Orchid and The Octopus was his final decree before passing away in 1997, I will have the pleasure of working backwards to the genesis of his writings sequentially. I suspect the message might be similar in his 1953 classic The Silent World, as it was in his final analysis of the water’s magnificent beauty that captivated him his entire life. I have known who Cousteau was growing up, an environmentalist, an activist, an oceanographer, a teacher of the deep blue, and it’s most beloved student, an underwater filmmaker, an author, ecologist, naval officer and most certifiably French….

What I had never realized previous to reading The Human, The Orchid and The Octopus, was what a mesmerizing and captivating Professor Cousteau was to us all. Over a decade after his death, this book is a timely, and Nostrodamus styled foretelling of what the earth has become up to his passing, and even after his passing. Cousteau was so much an authority of where the earth was headed, that his premonitions of what the future would hold are based solidly in science and uncanny in accuracy.

Co-author Susan Schiefelbein does a resplendent job of writing about Cousteau as she knew him (through writing for his documentaries), her thoughts and opinions of him, then allowing Cousteau to speak for himself throughout the bulk of the book, and then doing an up-to-the-present update of Cousteau’s ideas as a type of epilogue. Schiefelbein was clearly an admirer of Cousteau and it was easy to see why through her interactions with him. In fact, her opening story to the prologue, about travelling into deepest Brazil and being on unsure territory with a native cultural group in the middle of the forest, but diffusing the situation because of her Jacques Cousteau T-Shirt was an exhilarating way to start this journey in print.

When you commence into the words of Cousteau you are struck by his pragmatic and “been there, done that” attitude to topics like saccage, Nuclear Weapons, exploration, pollution, safety, all of these subjects have interesting and thought-provoking stories of Cousteau’s own recollections that propel his wisdom from merely astute to sage. I could quote Cousteau repeatedly in a day now, with such emblematic gems as “The survival of our species, is linked to the survival of our thoughts.” Or “finite and fragile, miniscule but majestic; air and water, the fluids of life. These we pollute.” The ironic question mark left hanging in anticipation of no answer.

Cousteau talks about the term “saccage” which he invented to describe the deliberate aggression and destruction towards the earth. He tells a poignant story of the Jivaro-Achuaras tribe, living close to the Peru-Ecuador frontier, who deliberate over felling a tree for the use of a new canoe. They pray to the gods to forgive them for doing such an action, but the chief, Kukush, didn’t feel it was enough to simply pray, so he planted several hundred more. Cousteau says “they were saplings; they would never grow to serve him or his tribe within his lifetime. These trees were for his grandchildren. They were for Earth.” I live in a community full of trees and in the eight years I have co-existed in this area, over forty trees have been chopped down for the lame excuse that they are “dead.” A complete falsity 96% of the time; I know why it is done, because they love the sound of the chain saws, and need the wood for the winter fireplaces, and think it is a fun thing to watch on a Saturday…and revel in the saccage.

The Human, The Orchid and The Octopus is possibly one of the most underestimated but definitive works of this time in history. If we will all end up voting Green Party in a decimated world by our own making, then Cousteau will have been our prophet of environmentalism. Mind you, I’ve heard that terrible things happen to prophets, they get crucified, and even worse then that, Cousteau’s prophetic words of wisdom could simply be ignored and float into the ocean’s abyss. The Human, The Orchid and The Octopus should be High School mandatory reading. Cousteau’s message is simple, and the younger generations need to hear it. One of the best books I have read all year!