AIAC SUPPORTS WORLD OCEANS WEEK AT THE EXPLORERS CLUB
Forging Ocean Legends — Honoring Sylvia Earle and the Jacques Cousteau Family
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New York, NY – May 20, 2026 – American Industrial Acquisition Corporation (AIAC) and its affiliates, Bradford Space, Arnprior Aerospace, SuperAlloy Manufacturing Solutions, Canadian Kraft Paper Industries, Champlain Cable, and Umbilicals International, are honored to announce their sponsorship of World Oceans Week at The Explorers Club, a landmark celebration marking the 10th anniversary of this global gathering dedicated to ocean exploration and conservation. As Sponsor of World Oceans Week at the Explorers Club, AIAC and its affiliates join with Rolex, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Global, Eric and Wendy Schmidt’s Schmidt Marine Technology Partners, and the Philip Stevenson Foundation.
The week-long program opens on Monday, June 1, 2026 in New York City with Forging Ocean Legends, a spectacular evening honoring legendary oceanographer and conservationist Sylvia Earle and the Jacques Cousteau Family, whose pioneering work has shaped humanity’s understanding of and reverence for the sea.
Monday, June 1 — The Opening Evening: Forging Ocean Legends
The celebration begins at 6:00 PM at the Asia Society, 725 Park Avenue, New York, NY. Hosted by explorer Josh Bernstein, the evening brings together multi-generational ocean legends — the great Sylvia Earle, the family of Jacques Cousteau, and Indigenous ocean advocate Xiye Bastida.
The festivities continue a half block away at 8:00 PM at The Explorers Club’s iconic headquarters at 46 East 70th Street with the Calypso Party, named in honor of Cousteau’s legendary research vessel. The party features footage shot aboard the RV Calypso, live calypso music of Trinidad & Tobago, calypso lemonade cocktails, and a first look at the Oceans Week installation exhibits.
Of particular note is the world debut of A Tribute to Her Deepness – A Broadway Musical Celebration of Sylvia Earle, with lyrics, music, and instrumentation by AIAC Chairman L. M. Levie, videography by Isabel Carro-Toro, and a hilarious introduction by beloved Explorers Club member Sir Richard Branson.
A Decade of World Oceans Week
Now in its tenth year, World Oceans Week at The Explorers Club brings together explorers, scientists, conservationists, and ocean advocates from around the globe for a full program of symposiums, expeditions, screenings, and celebrations. The week champions the protection of the world’s oceans and the advancement of the field research that deepens our understanding of the planet’s most vital and least explored frontier.
From the deepest trenches to the most remote coastlines, the ocean remains Earth’s great frontier of discovery. World Oceans Week offers attendees the opportunity to engage with the pioneers who have descended to its furthest depths, to honor those whose life’s work has advanced marine science and conservation, and to inspire the next generation of ocean explorers.
AIAC and its affiliates are proud Sponsors of World Oceans Week and have underwritten the participation of distinguished guests on the opening evening and throughout the week’s program. The full schedule of World Oceans Week activities is available at https://www.explorers.org/special-events/world-oceans-week-2026/.
The Week at a Glance
Monday, June 1 — Forging Ocean Legends — the opening celebration of ocean legends past, present, and future at the Asia Society, followed by the Grand Calypso Celebration at Club Headquarters (6:00 PM).
Tuesday, June 2 — A spotlight on the ocean’s ambassador species, beginning with krill, and an exploration of the remarkable ecosystems they sustain (5:00 PM).
Wednesday, June 3 — A deep dive into the science and work behind restoring the world’s coral reefs (5:00 PM).
Thursday, June 4 — A look at the technological innovations shaping the ocean and ocean exploration, from artificial intelligence to the latest field technology (5:00 PM).
Friday, June 5 — An illumination of the mysterious squids of the deep ocean through a film screening, capped by the celebrated World Oceans Week closing party (5:00 PM).
Monday, June 8 — A bonus World Oceans Day discussion, On the Cusp of Communicating with Whales, exploring the legal and ethical frontiers of the science (6:00 PM).
Throughout the Week: Art, Exhibits & Education
Across the week, Club Headquarters is transformed into an ocean of possibilities, with installation artwork, engineering exhibits, aquatic tanks, blue lighting, and the Rolex Totem Clock presiding. Displays include the latest ocean robotics from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, shark sculptures by artist Cindy Pease Roe, a great white shark jaw from the Atlantic Shark Institute, the original William Beebe bathysphere courtesy of the Wildlife Conservation Society and the New York Aquarium, and memorabilia contributed by Wendy Benchley, among much more.
World Oceans Week also extends far beyond New York through its education program. In partnership with Exploring by the Seat of Your Pants, the week reaches tens of thousands of students worldwide — more than 28,900 in years past — pairing live classroom visits from explorers with virtual interactions broadcast directly from the field.
New Frontiers & the Blue Generation
This year, The Explorers Club launches its New Frontiers workshop program, establishing Club Headquarters as a home for thought leadership on the world’s most pressing ocean issues. Daily roundtables convene leading experts on ocean plastics, education, coral reefs, and artificial intelligence for working lunches, breakout sessions, and targeted conversations aimed at actionable outcomes.
Now in its fifth year, the Blue Generation program builds the next cohort of ocean leadership. Designed for young professionals within the first decade of an ocean-based career, the program offers mentorship and workshops with top experts across diplomacy, content creation, engineering, and conservation. AIAC’s support of World Oceans Week helps fund this initiative for early-career ocean researchers and conservationists.
In addition to serving as Sponsors of Oceans Week, AIAC companies are Partners of The Explorers Club. AIAC Chairman, L. M. Levie, Trustee and Poet Laureate of The Explorers Club, member of its Legacy Society and Annual Dinner Committee. He also serves as Trustee of the Theodore Roosevelt Association,and founding Trustee of the Seabed Curtain Project, which seeks to mitigate the most consequential threat to the planet – continued sea level rise. AIAC has long championed ocean exploration and conservation through AIAC’s philanthropy and its industrial work in support of oceanographic research.
Celebrating the Legends of the Sea
Sylvia Earle, PhD, is a 1996 Explorer Medalist, Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society, and Time Magazine’s first “Hero of the Planet” for her work to save the oceans. As Founder and Chairman of Mission Blue, she has helped establish more than 200 marine protected areas around the world, earning her enduring affection as “Her Deepness.”
The Jacques Cousteau Family carries forward the legacy of the legendary explorer, filmmaker, and conservationist whose vessel Calypso and pioneering documentaries introduced the wonders of the underwater world to generations and helped launch the modern ocean conservation movement — a legacy honored in the evening’s Grand Calypso Celebration.
AIAC Chairman Levie issued the following statement:
“AIAC and its corporate affiliates are deeply honored to join Rolex, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Global, Eric and Wendy Schmidt’s Marine Technology Partners, and the Philip Stevenson Foundation, as Sponsors to World Oceans Week and to celebrate a decade of this extraordinary gathering. My dear friend, Sylvia Earle, and the Cousteau family have devoted their lives to revealing the beauty of the ocean and awakening the world to its protection. To honor them is to reaffirm our shared commitment to the seas that sustain all life on Earth.
“The ocean is the planet’s final frontier — vast, mysterious, and indispensable. Through AIAC’s work in undersea umbilical and oceanographic technology, and through our support of The Explorers Club, we are privileged to advance both the exploration of the deep and the conservation of the wonders we discover there. It is my great joy to welcome our companions and fellow explorers to this unforgettable week.
As Poet Laureate of the Explorers Club, is has been my great privilege to herald the world’s greatest explorers and philanthropists in verse and melody, including Jane Goodall, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Apollo 13 Commander Jim Lovell, Sir Ernest Shackleton, Hamish Harding, Ken Griffin, Mike Bloomberg, and Warren Buffett. I’m particularly pleased to joyfully celebrate Sylvia in song. Her life journey and impact on the planet are beyond extraordinary. I am deeply grateful, as well, to our cherished friend and fellow member, Sir Richard Branson, for his warm and wonderful introduction to A Tribute to Her Deepness”.
World Oceans Week is made possible through the generosity of sponsors, patrons, and donors, and the continued support of The Explorers Club’s membership around the globe.
World Oceans Week
World Oceans Week at The Explorers Club is one of New York’s most distinctive annual gatherings, bringing together scientists, explorers, advocates, and storytellers in celebration of the planet’s most vital and vulnerable ecosystem. Founded by The Explorers Club, World Oceans Week has grown into a landmark of programming, exhibits, aquatic auctions, educational tours, and other live events that draw ocean champions from across the seven seas.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of World Oceans Week, a milestone that coincides with a moment of particular urgency for ocean conservation. From the deep sea to the shoreline, the challenges facing our oceans have never been greater, and neither has the global community rallying to meet them. World Oceans Week is a reminder that exploration and stewardship are not separate pursuits but the same calling.
The kick-off evening, Forging Ocean Legends, sets the tone for the entire week. It is a celebration of the generations of men and women who have devoted their lives to understanding, protecting, and championing the blue heart of our planet, and a passing of the torch to those who will carry that mission forward.
Dr. Sylvia A. Earle
Dr. Sylvia A. Earle is the most celebrated marine biologist and ocean explorer of our time. A National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and former Chief Scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), she has spent more than seven decades at the forefront of ocean science, logging over 100 solo deep-sea dives and more than 7,000 hours underwater. In 1970 she led the first all-female team of aquanauts, and in 1979 she set a world record for the deepest solo dive on foot, walking untethered at 1,250 feet below the surface off the coast of Oahu.
Known affectionately as “Her Deepness,” Dr. Earle has authored more than 200 scientific publications and over a dozen books, and has led or participated in more than 100 expeditions worldwide. She is the founder of Mission Blue, a global initiative to establish a worldwide network of marine protected areas known as Hope Spots, dedicated to safeguarding the health of the world’s oceans for future generations.
At a moment when the oceans face unprecedented threats from climate change, pollution, and overfishing, Sylvia Earle’s voice carries more urgency than ever. She has spent a lifetime reminding the world that the ocean is not a backdrop to human civilization but its very foundation.
The Explorers Club
The Explorers Club is an American-based, international, multidisciplinary professional society with the mission of promoting and supporting scientific exploration and field study on land, sea, and in outer space. The club was founded in New York City in 1904 and has served as a meeting point for explorers and scientists worldwide. Members of the club have been the first to explore the North Pole, South Pole, Mount Everest, the Mariana Trench, and to walk on the Moon. The club’s notable current members or honorees include Buzz Aldrin, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Prince Albert II of Monaco, Princess Reema Bandar Al-Saud of Saudi Arabia, Grand Duke Guillaume V of Luxembourg, Sir Richard Branson, Ken Griffin, James Cameron, and Wendy Schmidt.
In years past, prominent members have included Sir Ernest Shackleton, President Theodore Roosevelt, Sir Edmund Hillary, Amelia Earhart, Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, Jim Lovell, Thor Heyerdahl, Walter Cronkite, Prince Philip – Duke of Edinburgh, and Jane Goodall. The Explorers Club’s historic clubhouse, at 46 East 70th Street in New York City, is a museum and monument to the “Famous Firsts,” the greatest explorers and expeditions of all time.
For further information, see: http://www.explorers.org
American Industrial Acquisition Corporation
American Industrial Acquisition Corporation (AIAC) is a diversified industrial group with manufacturing, distribution, and administrative sites in 24 countries in North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia-New Zealand. AIAC has acquired and grown non-core subsidiaries and divisions of Boeing, Siemens, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Johnson Controls, Merck, Pfizer, Astellas, Visteon, Carlyle, Ahlstrom, Tolko, Groupe Suez, Groupe Rexel, and many other leading multinational corporations.
AIAC companies serve companies and governmental entities worldwide in all major sectors, including aviation, space, defense, automotive, truck, rail, marine, petrochemical, solar, nuclear, civil engineering, logistics, agriculture, infrastructure, commercial construction, mining, dredging, disaster relief, medical devices, and pharmaceuticals. In addition, AIAC companies are exclusive, authorized distributors of leading branded industrial products and serve as critical suppliers for the construction of major airports, schools, hospitals, performing arts and sports centers, offices and hotels throughout Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. AIAC is a leading manufacturer of materials for green houses globally, building, street, and highway signage in Europe, and a distributor of electrical products throughout France.
Of note, AIAC purchased Boeing Canada in 2005 and has produced over 10,000 unique components for every Boeing jet plane ever since, reliably serving Boeing from manufacturing facilities in North America. A leader in ultra-high precision jet engine component manufacturing, AIAC companies produce 2,200 fan blades for each jet engine produced by GE, Pratt & Whitney, Rolls Royce, and Honeywell.
AIAC companies actively support exploration into outer space, manufacturing critical components for launching and propelling spacecraft and satellites. AIAC customers in this sector include NASA, the European Space Agency, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Boeing. AIAC companies also lead in the design and manufacture of undersea umbilical cables for worldwide oceanographic research.
AIAC companies produce the critical automotive wire and cable for Tesla, GM, Ford, Chrysler-Fiat, Toyota, and Nissan. In connection with its kraft paper manufacturing interests in Canada and the US, AIAC sustainably manages 22 million acres of Manitoba, Canada forestland, an area equivalent in size to the nation of Hungary. AIAC affiliate, Metallwarenfabrik Gemmingen GmbH, located in Germany, designs, manufactures and distributes high performance, emergency portable power generators utilized in global conflict zones and during major natural disasters.
For further information, see: www.aiac.com
AIAC Philanthropy
AIAC and the AIAC Foundation support a wide range of nonprofit, nonsectarian, bipartisan organizations which promote international conflict resolution, disaster relief, economic development, environmental sustainability, exploration, and the performing arts. The exploration-focused nonprofit organizations which they actively support include The Explorers Club, the National Geographic Society, the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, Mission Blue, the Jane Goodall Institute, the American Museum of Natural History and the Hayden Planetarium, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the National Air and Space Museum, the National Space Society, and the United States Space Foundation.
AIAC Chairman L. M. Levie is a Member of the Board of Trustees of The Explorers Club, its Poet Laureate, and a Member of its Annual Dinner Committee. Mr. Levie has composed poetic and musical tributes for members and medalists Jane Goodall, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Captain Jim Lovell, Hamish Harding, Elon Musk, Ernest Shackleton, Captain Alfred McLaren, Prince Albert I of Monaco, Ken Griffin, and noted philanthropists Mike Bloomberg, David Rubinstein, Mike Milken, Lloyd Blankfein, and Warren Buffett.
AIAC and its affiliates, Bradford Space, Canadian Kraft Paper Industries, Super Alloy Manufacturing Solutions, and Champlain Cable are Partners of The Explorers Club and Sponsors of Oceans Week.
AIAC’s other beneficiaries include the Appeal of the Nobel Peace Laureates Foundation Inc., the Asia Society, the Atlantic Council, the Bretton Woods Committee, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Carter Center, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Economic Club of New York, the Foreign Policy Association, the Institut Française des Relations Internationales, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Crisis Group, the International Rescue Committee, the Japan Society, the JFK School of Government of Harvard University, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Richardson Center for Global Engagement, the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), the Sierra Club, the Trilateral Commission, and the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute.
For further information, see: www.aiac.com | https://www.aiac.com/our-values
Media Contact:
Isabel Carro-Toro, Vice President
American Industrial Acquisition Corporation
+34 689 295 827 (Spain)
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icarro-toro@aiac.com