Owen Lee

When I told to my high school English teacher in Brentwood, Missouri that I wanted to be a writer, she found my prospects for success so unlikely that she broke into gales of laughter. Nevertheless, I have been writing ever since. Not because of the money, but because I love it. I feel the best way to learn to write well is to first learn to live well. And, Truth is the essential element - - the more the better! I was born in Miami, Florida in 1928. My father was a conductor on the “overseas highway” that carried Cuba-bound tourists to the ferryboats that set sail from Key West. When a tropical hurricane demolished the overseas railroad in 1934, we moved to my mother’s home in Saint Louis, Missouri where I attended Brentwood High School and Missouri University. In 1950, I went to Paris for a summer course at La Sorbonne, and rented a room from a classified ad in a newspaper. By sheer luck, the landlady’s son happened to work for Captain Yves Cousteau. He invited me to a preview screening of the captain’s revolutionary underwater movie: "The Silent World." The film blew my mind, and I got to meet Captain Cousteau, himself. This meeting inspired me to become a professional diver. After three years as a treasure diver in Vigo, Spain, I joined the staff of Captain Cousteau aboard his famous ship, the Calypso. I worked as an underwater cameraman and lecture spokesman. Meanwhile, I wrote the first three books on diving in the English language for Doubleday and Company. I also presented Cousteau’s Adventure programs to lecture audiences in over 300 cities throughout America. Ever since retiring from the Cousteau Team in 1968, I have lived in Zihuatanejo, Mexico. In 1974, I created a Nature Study Center there to promote Cousteau’s ideas about the reintegrating mankind into the global ecosystem. Meanwhile, I wrote three of the first books ever written about scuba diving. I also and produced an hour-long documentary film titled The Endless Sea, narrated by actor James Mason and astronaut Scott Carpenter. I also published two books about my experiences, A Prisoner in Paradise and Mother Nature, My Nature.