Frédéric Dumas

Frédéric Dumas (1913-1991) was with Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Philippe Tailliez a team of three, in which he was nicknamed Didi. They empassioned for diving, developed the diving regulator with the aid of tne engineer Émile Gagnan. Frédéric Dumas then participated with Jacques-Yves Cousteau in the discovery and disclosure to the public of the underwater world.

His life

Frédéric Dumas was born on 14 January 1913 in Albi.

A pioneer of underwater fishing on the French Riviera, he met Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Philippe Tailliez in 1937 and his exploits serve as a subject in first Cousteau film "Par dix-huit mètres de fond" (= "Eighteen meters deep") (1942).

Cousteau again chose him as an "actor" when he made his second film, "Epaves" (= "Wrecks") (1943), the first showing the new Cousteau-Gagnan aqua-lung.

Dumas was a dive-leader aboard the RV Calypso, and co-author or actor in many films and stories of the Cousteau team.

In 1953 he co-authored with Cousteau the book "". It was their first book. In 1956 he was one of the principal architects of the groundbreaking film "The Silent World" (1956), in which his ballet with the grouper Jojo is famous.

From 1945 to 1965, he was also a civilian collaborator in the French Navy's Groupement de Recherches Sous-marines (GRS) (= Underwater Research Group), which was set up by Cousteau and Taillez and became a little later the GERS (Groupe d'Etudes et de Recherches Sous-Marines = Undersea Study and Research Group).

He was one of the major players in the rescue of Professor Jacques Piccard's bathyscaphe, the FNRS II, during the 1949 expedition in Dakar. Thanks to this rescue, the French Navy could use the bathyscaphe's sphere to realize the FNRS III.

After he retired from the GERS, he devoted himself particularly to undersea archaeology and was chairman of the archaeology committee Confédération mondiale des activités subaquatiques (CMAS, = World Underwater Activities Federation) and the Fédération française d'études et de sports sous-marins (FFESSM, French Undersea Studies and Sports Federation).

Frédéric Dumas died on 26 July 1991 in Toulon at the age of 78.

Quotations

*"Frédéric Dumas had a reputation as a great spearfisherman. He surprised the landsmen when he came out of the water with huge fishes on the end of his spear. There was no pollution along the coast then." Philippe Tailliez.
*"It was the period of the Dolce Vita, before 1936. We could hear the war approaching, but our common passion was merely more strengthened. The climate of the Cote d'Azur, like California, allowed Dumas to live in this way-out standard, a kind of hippie before the hour. Following Dumas, I proposed one day to Cousteau to meet Frédéric Dumas. This is how the team was formed."
*"Dumas was the god of water, he did what none of us could do, not by sensibility, but by nature, by philosophy. He played with it.".

Museum

Opened in 1994, the Museum Frédéric Dumas is in a 13th-century Romanesque tower available by the municipality of Sanary-sur-Mer.

*Link: (in French)

External links

* [http://perso.orange.fr/sanarymer/histoire/dumas.html Sanary sur Mer Rétro: Frédéric Dumas] fr
* [http://www.sanarysurmer.com/Musee_Dumas.html Le site du Musée Frédéric Dumas] fr
* [http://perso.wanadoo.fr/cyberdan/musee_dumas.htm Quelques photos du Musée] fr