Underwater Photography Archives
F2. Maritime Culture, Heritage, Archaeology, Art and MuseumsDefinition
Cousteau and National Geographic collections.
Collections of subsea images documenting marine life, wrecks, and diving operations. Early milestones include Louis Boutan’s first underwater photographs off Banyuls-sur-Mer in 1893 and the color work of National Geographic. Jacques-Yves Cousteau, co-inventor of the Aqua-Lung in 1943, built a film and photographic record aboard Calypso. Such archives serve marine archaeology and science; the Nanhai One and Vasa projects relied on underwater survey photography to record sites before raising.
Source: Underwater photography; Louis Boutan's first subsea photographs (1893) and Cousteau Aqua-Lung (1943), Calypso archive.