Flowing 4,000 miles from Central Africa to the Mediterranean, the Nile River has long exerted a mystical influence on man's imagination - and the dreams of explorers such as Jacques and Philippe Cousteau. In this breathtaking journey, the Cousteaus embark on a daring 10-month expedition along the entire course of the world's largest river, capturing on film the Nile's astonishing natural beauties, menacing dangers, primitive cultures and animal sanctuaries.
A breathtaking trip down Earth's longest river reveals its fabled past and complex, challenging present. Wild hippopotami, the mysteries of the deadly tsetse fly, the ancient Dinka and Shilluk African tribes and the Sudd- a swamp as large as England - are among the natural wonders encountered along the trek from Uganda to Khartoum to Egypt, before concluding at the manmade wonders of the Nile, the Jonglei Canal and the Aswan High Dam.
Legend has it that thousands of years ago, the island of Atlantis once housed an advanced civilization - which. then vanished completely in a violent cataclysm. Merely a myth? Or did Atlantis really exist? In an engrossing journey back to the ancient world, Jacques Cousteau and crew travel to the islands near Greece to see whether there was a connection between the violent earthquakes that racked the region and the fall of the gracious Minoan civilization that flourished on Crete during the Bronze Age. Could the Minoan civilization indeed have been the basis for the Altantis legend? Cousteau also examines the roots of Plato's account of Atlantis. Was it a folk memory passed through generations or Plato's own views on war and corruption?
Off Italy's southern coast, two ships collide - and the sunken one at sea bottom has a cargo of 900 drums of toxin. Before the metal barrels disintegrate and release their poisons, a team of experts forms to execute an exhaustive recovery plan to stave off catastrophe. Using the pioneering work of Jacques Cousteau's Comshelf experiments which demonstrated that divers could live and work efficiently for a significant period of submersion - hundreds risk their lives in a race against a deadly toxic time bomb.
Decades ago, Jacques Cousteau found the waters of Veyron near Marseilles teeming with marine life. Returning years later, he discovered the same sea floor to be a desert, virtually devoid of fish. Appalled at the ravages of pollution, Cousteau and crew seek scientific weapons to combat the horrors of urban wastes pouring into the Mediterranean. The explorer's find that not only is pollution to blame: man's industrial might encroaches upon the sea's most vulnerable point: shallow coastal areas that serve as natural habitats.
For 70 years, the sudden sinking of the mighty British ship Britannic - larger than the sister ship Titanic - has been shrouded in mystery. Jacques Cousteau reveals the full story of November 21, 1916 when, on her sixth journey as a hospital ship, Britannic exploded and sank into the Aegean Sea. With recollections of a survivor, then a young nurse. Cousteau and crew uncover whether the vessel was mined or torpedoed, if it secretly carried British troops and how a single mine or torpedo could sink a supposedly impregnable ship.
More than a century before the birth of Christ, a storm sank a Roman galley laden with plundered Greek treasures. Join Captain Cousteau and the Calypso crew in retrieving art objects from 200 feet beneath the surface - including two rare bronze statues. But this is more than an art recovery mission: an archaeologist seeks evidence supporting a theory that the Greeks may have held the key to the industrial Revolution and modern computer technology.
Since the Polynesian island's discovery in 1722, the lost, ancient civilization of Easter Island has left a baffling legacy of riddles. Jacques Cousteau and the Calypso crew undertake land and underwater explorations and interview leading experts. Among the questions they tackle: who created the ancient once-revered stone figures? Why do volcanic rock drawings show trees and flowers when virtually none exist today? Why is there evidence of cannibalism in a once peaceful and flourishing society?
Today, the only inhabitants of this environmentally inhospitable Pacific island are birds and crabs. Yet over 80 years ago, Clipperton hosted other visitors: a demented rapist and a terrified group of women and children. Cousteau returns to the island to recreate the deadly series of events - from the death of the brave French captain to the courage of the widow who killed her torturer - through the eyes of one of the survivors, then a child.
Jacques Cousteau and the Calypso crew journey across two seas - mediterrean and Caribbean - to recover the remains of great ships. Off northern Crete they find skulls, scattered bones and round pellets of grape-shot fired in a 300-year-old battle and at another site, 1st-century Roman jars. Their biggest wreck is uncovered at Martinique. In 1902, 30,000 people died when Mount Pele erupted and a harbor of ships disappeared into the depths. But at 150 feet, Cousteau's divers sight the Roraima - broken in two but intact.
Marine mammals - dolphins, whales, seals - share a common, ancient heritage with man. Cousteau travels from the South Pacific to the Florida Keys, South Carolina and Argentina to understand their evolution and unique behavior. Among some remarkable footage: in South Carolina's salt marshes, we observe dolphins herding fish into shallow water and onto dry land - the dolphins actually leave the water - before scooping up the fish and eating them.