Based on Capitaine de la Calypso by Albert Falco and Yves Paccalet, and My Father, The Captain by Jean-Michel Cousteau, the story kicks off in summer 1946. Jacques Cousteau takes his son, Philippe, by the hand and leads him into the warm waters of the Mediterranean. Thanks to a little diving suit tailor-made just for him, the child is able to breathe underwater for the first time in his life. Awe-stricken, he discovers this silent world that his father was the first to explore – this magical, magnificent world brimming with multi-coloured fauna. Ten years later, when Philippe, now a grown up, meets with his dad again on board the Calypso, he finds that his father, whom he had idolised, has truly changed. Having now become a star all around the world thanks to cinema and television, Jacques roams the planet, taking giant strides each time. He embarks upon a string of increasingly megalomaniac projects, and dreams of grafting gills onto men and building cities under the sea. Flinging himself headlong into this mad rush, Jacques is in the process of wrecking everything – primarily his family, but also this underwater world he discovered 20 years ago. A world that is beginning to be ravaged by pollution and progress...