The Cousteau Odyssey

In the remote uplands of Central Africa,

this monument marks a beginning.

With these drops of water,

the River Nile begins its 4000-mile journey

northward to the Mediterranean,

crossing half a continent

and 7000 years of recorded human history.

On its banks,

civilization built early marvels,

kingdoms rose and fell,

gods appeared and vanished,

their destinies inseparably joined to the river.

None were masters of it.

More than ever dependent on the life stream of the Nile,

man still tries to impose his rule.

To learn the impact of his growing intrusion,

Cousteau team members study the changes

now occurring in the Earth's longest river.

Transported by the expedition's specially fitted PBY Catalina,

the team members will follow the entire course of the Nile.

In their 10-month journey

encounter the endlessly various life

still sustained by the river,

some of it little altered since prehistoric times.

Always, in its passage across a changing landscape

and the shifting patterns of life upon it,

the river went its own way.

Man's early devices had little effect upon it.

Now, increasingly,

man's machines have the power to alter the Nile forever.

Not only are ancient cultures and animal sanctuaries

threatened by extinction,

but men are learning that technological triumphs

sometimes create problems

greater than the ones they seek to solve.

On the Nile,

man has preserved some of his noblest monuments.

Today it is the river itself

that may be most in need of his protection.

Long travelers upon and beneath the seas,

Philippe and Jacques Cousteau

this time take to the air.

Their first destination:

the mountain headwaters of the Nile.

As the Catalina climbs above the waters off Corsica,

the Cousteaus leave behind the Calypso,

in which they have been charting

the Mediterranean's increasing pollution.

Now they will study the greatest of its river systems,

the Nile, which once emptied

as much as 84 billion cubic meters of water

into the inland sea each year.

Flying southward,

the Cousteaus' path will cross the waterless Sahara

to the Ruwenzori Range,

once called the Mountains of the Moon.

Part of Africa's great central rift,

it forms a vast escarpment,

sometimes rising 16,000 feet

into the equatorial sky,

close to the Catalina's operational ceiling.

Here, in midair,

hangs the true source of the Nile,

the moisture-laden clouds

moving eastward from the Atlantic

that make the Ruwenzori Mountains

one of the wettest regions on Earth,

and for the Catalina,

threading its way among the peaks,

one of the most hazardous.

Trapped by the snow-capped summits of the great barrier,

fooled by the upper altitudes,

the clouds release their rain on the mountain slopes,

running off through wild upland streams

into the great catch basins of Lake Albert and Lake Victoria,

major reservoir from which the upper White Nile flows.

Descending through the broken overcast,

the travelers at last glimpse

the swift current of the upper Nile,

here still nearly as unspoiled as it was at its discovery

more than a century ago.

As Captain Cousteau traces their course upstream

through Uganda,

Philippe brings the Catalina low

over the clustered Sese Islands

in the northern end of Lake Victoria,

only a few miles from the airport of Entebbe.

A little reduction.

It is here that the Cousteaus first sight

a strange phenomenon:

Clusters of wraith-like columns

rising from the surface of the lake.

Okay, let's go down lower.

Suspecting that they may be waterspouts

or even dust twisters carried out over the lake,

Philippe approaches cautiously.

Even flying at an altitude of 300 feet,

the swaying columns tower to double that height

above the plane.

[PHILIPPE AND JACQUES CONVERSING IN FRENCH]

It is only when the Catalina is brought

to the edge of one of the whirling clouds

that the Cousteaus at last realize

the character of the mysterious colonnades.

They are lake flies,

veritable storms of insect life rising from the water.

Now a challenge appears.

Like a great aerial armada,

a phalanx of birds sweeps in to attack.

Abruptly, the men aboard the Catalina

are witnesses to an onslaught of predators

by which nature balances accounts

between one species and another.

Eager to follow the course of this one-sided action,

Philippe brings the Catalina in to a landing.

Ahead of them, the dark clouds of insects

are moving westward across the islands.

Swept by the wind away from their natural breeding bed

in the lake itself,

the numbers of flies are so vast

that no attrition halts their survival.

Even the cumulative sound of their tiny wings

is like a storm.

With only six to 12 hours of life

after rising to the surface of the lake,

the flies have but a single purpose:

To mate before they die.

Their entire development

designed for a few climactic hours,

the flies spread their wings in mating flight.

Then, spent,

they fall again to the surface of the lake

where the voracious tilapia and other fish await them.

Today, near Jinja,

a series of watery stairways

mark the point where, in 1862,

a young British colonial officer, John Hanning Speke,

first sighted Ripon Falls

and determined that Lake Victoria

was the major source of the Nile.

Though disputed long after his accidental death,

his discovery remains secure.

But the Ripon Falls are all but drowned by the dam

which now regulates the flow from the lake.

Landing in quieter waters downstream from Lake Victoria,

the airborne travelers make rendezvous

with members of the overland team.

Leaving the Catalina at anchor,

the Cousteaus set out by caravan

across Uganda's primitive back country,

still alive with one of the world's last great assemblies

of wild animals.

Year by year, with growing haste,

Africa strides out of an ancient world

into the present.

Still, as we move through these open savannahs,

I feel myself almost a stranger,

a tourist in another time.

Most of us who have been brought up

in the so-called developed countries

have seen these animals only in zoos.

Here, in their native habitat,

I feel that I am returning to some storybook period

in the history of life,

visiting the images of a childhood

we ourselves no longer remember.

For these animals,

these infinitely varied inventions of nature

still convey to us a sense of the miraculous.

In a world that encourages uniformity,

that judges values by their utility,

perhaps these animals, like so many of their kind,

also are doomed to disappear

in favor of some more commercially useful species.

Yet, I cannot avoid

a bitter sense of loss

that we, born to a world that still held these creatures,

are being robbed

of a priceless inheritance.

A life that welcomes diversity, not sameness,

that treasures astonishment and wonder

instead of boredom.

Deadly huntress,

the lioness does not always make her kill.

In the bush,

even the vehicles falter.

The good-natured local inhabitants

sometimes wind up pushing them.

Led by Philippe, the team moves on.

With Dominique Sumian and the camera crew,

he leaves the Catalina

to search for the island refuge of a creature

whose numbers constitute one-fifth

of all living mammal species,

the bat.

Protected by the river's torrent

from natives who eat them,

a great colony of the flying mammals

here festoons the branches of the trees.

Hanging in untidy clusters, awaiting nightfall,