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69-515: The Aquarius Reef Base is an underwater habitat located 5.4 mi (8.7 km) off Key Largo in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary , Florida, United States. It is the world's only undersea research laboratory and it is operated by Florida International University . It is deployed on the ocean floor 62 ft (19 m) below the surface and next to a deep coral reef named Conch Reef . Aquarius

138-403: A starfish -shaped house for 30 days. The undersea living experiment also had two other structures, one a submarine hangar that housed a small, two-man submarine named SP-350 Denise , often referred to as the "diving saucer" for its resemblance to a science fiction flying saucer, and a smaller "deep cabin" where two oceanauts lived at a depth of 30 metres (100 ft) for a week. They were among

207-458: A July 2012 mission that included pioneering female diver Sylvia Earle in its aquanaut crew. The University of North Carolina Wilmington was also unable to provide funding to continue operations. The Aquarius Foundation was set up in an attempt to keep Aquarius functioning. In a two-week series, the daily cartoon strip Sherman's Lagoon featured the potential closing of the Aquarius facility in

276-443: A certain generosity can not hurt. In an underwater habitat, observations can be carried out at any hour to study the behavior of both diurnal and nocturnal organisms. Habitats in shallow water can be used to accommodate divers from greater depths for a major portion of the decompression required. This principle was used in the project Conshelf II. Saturation dives provide the opportunity to dive with shorter intervals than possible from

345-522: A depth of 100 metres (330 ft). In Germany, the Helgoland UWL was the first habitat to be used in cold water, the Tektite stations were more spacious and technically more advanced. The most ambitious project was Sealab III, a rebuild of Sealab II, which was to be operated at 186 metres (610 ft). When one of the divers died in the preparatory phase due to human error, all similar projects of

414-646: A diving chamber, culminating in the first aquanaut , Robert Sténuit , spending over 24 hours at a depth of 200 feet (61 m). Also inspired by Genesis, Jacques-Yves Cousteau conducted the first Conshelf project in France in 1962 where two divers spent a week at a depth of 10 metres (33 ft), followed in 1963 by Conshelf II at 11 metres (36 ft) for a month and 25 metres (82 ft) for two weeks. In June 1964, Robert Sténuit and Jon Lindberg spent 49 hours at 126m in Link's Man-in-the-Sea II project. The habitat

483-405: A generation of smaller, less ambitious yet longer-term undersea habitats primarily for marine research purposes. Conshelf I (Continental Shelf Station), constructed in 1962, was the first inhabited underwater habitat. Developed by Cousteau to record basic observations of life underwater, Conshelf I was submerged in 10 metres (33 ft) of water near Marseille , and the first experiment involved

552-455: A new world's record for saturated diving by a single team. On 15 April 1969, the aquanaut team returned to the surface after performing 58 days of marine scientific studies. More than 19 hours of decompression were needed to safely return the team to the surface. Inspired in part by NASA's budding Skylab program and an interest in better understanding the effectiveness of scientists working under extremely isolated living conditions, Tektite

621-429: A period equal to or greater than 24 continuous hours without returning to the surface). A technique known as saturation diving allows the aquanauts to live and work underwater for days or weeks at a time. After twenty-four hours underwater at any depth, the human body becomes saturated with dissolved gas. With saturation diving, divers can accurately predict exactly how much time they need to decompress before returning to

690-674: A platform for a television game show. It was deployed for the first time in September 2005 for ten days, and six aquanauts lived in the complex for 14 days in 2007. The MarineLab underwater laboratory was the longest serving seafloor habitat in history, having operated continuously from 1984 to 2018 under the direction of aquanaut Chris Olstad at Key Largo , Florida. The seafloor laboratory has trained hundreds of individuals in that time, featuring an extensive array of educational and scientific investigations from United States military investigations to pharmaceutical development. Beginning with

759-774: A productive future, however, as Cousteau later repudiated his support for such exploitation of the sea and put his efforts toward conservation. It was also found in later years that industrial tasks underwater could be more efficiently performed by undersea robot devices and men operating from the surface or from smaller lowered structures, made possible by a more advanced understanding of diving physiology. Still, these three undersea living experiments did much to advance man's knowledge of undersea technology and physiology, and were valuable as " proof of concept " constructs. They also did much to publicize oceanographic research and, ironically, usher in an age of ocean conservation through building public awareness. Along with Sealab and others, it spawned

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828-830: A project initiated in 1973, MarineLab, then known as Midshipman Engineered & Designed Undersea Systems Apparatus (MEDUSA), was designed and built as part of an ocean engineering student program at the United States Naval Academy under the direction of Dr. Neil T. Monney. In 1983, MEDUSA was donated to the Marine Resources Development Foundation (MRDF), and in 1984 was deployed on the seafloor in John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, Key Largo, Florida. The 2.4-by-4.9-metre (8 by 16 ft) shore-supported habitat supports three or four persons and

897-478: A rescue line to the surface in 15-foot (4.6 m) seas after one of the habitat's generators caught fire. In 1998, Hurricane Georges nearly destroyed Aquarius, breaking a joint in one of its legs and moving two 8,000-pound (3,600 kg) weights on the wet porch nearly off the structure. Both Hurricane Georges and Hurricane Mitch , later in 1998, also destroyed way stations outside Aquarius used to refill aquanauts' scuba tanks. In 2005, Hurricane Rita broke two of

966-487: A steel cylinder, doing several excursions. In June 1964 Stenuit and Jon Lindbergh spent 49 hours at a depth of 126 metres (413 ft) in the Man-in-the-Sea II program. The habitat consisted of a submerged portable inflatable dwelling (SPID). Conshelf, short for Continental Shelf Station, was a series of undersea living and research stations undertaken by Jacques Cousteau's team in the 1960s. The original design

1035-476: A team of two spending seven days in the habitat. The two oceanauts, Albert Falco and Claude Wesly , were expected to spend at least five hours a day outside the station, and were subject to daily medical exams. Conshelf Two , the first ambitious attempt for men to live and work on the sea floor, was launched in 1963. In it, a half-dozen oceanauts lived 10 metres (33 ft) down in the Red Sea off Sudan in

1104-599: Is also closely connected to the history of saturation diving . The original inspiration for the development of underwater habitats was the work of George F. Bond , who investigated the physiological and medical effects of hyperbaric saturation in the Genesis project between 1957 and 1963. Edwin Albert Link started the Man-in-the-Sea project in 1962, which exposed divers to hyperbaric conditions underwater in

1173-732: Is divided into a laboratory, a wet-room, and a 1.7-metre-diameter (5 ft 7 in) transparent observation sphere. From the beginning, it has been used by students for observation, research, and instruction. In 1985, it was renamed MarineLab and moved to the 9-metre-deep (30 ft) mangrove lagoon at MRDF headquarters in Key Largo at a depth of 8.3 metres (27 ft) with a hatch depth of 6 m (20 ft). The lagoon contains artifacts and wrecks placed there for education and training. From 1993 to 1995, NASA used MarineLab repeatedly to study Controlled Ecological Life Support Systems (CELLS). These education and research programs qualify MarineLab as

1242-517: Is not easy to sharply define the term "underwater laboratory". One may argue whether Link's diving chamber which was used in the "Man-in-Sea I" project, may be called an underwater laboratory. But the Bentos 300, planned by the Soviets, is not so easy to classify as it has a certain ability to maneuver. Therefore, the possibility exists that this diving hull is classified elsewhere as a submersible. Well,

1311-479: Is strong enough, like a submarine, to maintain normal atmospheric pressure ; it can also be pressurized to ambient pressure, and is usually held at a pressure in between. The smallest compartment, the Entry Lock, is between the other two and functions as an airlock in which personnel wait while pressure is adjusted to match either the wet porch or the main compartment. This design enables personnel to return to

1380-705: Is the only undersea research laboratory currently in operation, although the Marine Resources Development Foundation used to operate two additional undersea facilities, also located in Key Largo, Florida. Aquarius was owned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and operated by the University of North Carolina Wilmington until 2013 when Florida International University assumed operational control. Florida International University (FIU) took ownership of Aquarius in October 2014. As part of

1449-452: Is used for a range of applications, including some structures that are not exclusively underwater while operational, but all include a significant underwater component. There may be some overlap between underwater habitats and submersible vessels, and between structures which are completely submerged and those which have some part extending above the surface when in operation. In 1970 G. Haux stated: At this point it must also be said that it

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1518-471: The Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary . It is deployed on the ocean floor 62 feet (19 m) below the surface and next to a deep coral reef named Conch Reef . Aquarius is one of three undersea laboratories in the world dedicated to science and education. Two additional undersea facilities, also located in Key Largo, Florida , are owned and operated by Marine Resources Development Foundation. Aquarius

1587-645: The German Oceanographic Museum where it can be visited at the Nautineum , a branch of the museum in Stralsund . Bentos-300 (Bentos minus 300) was a maneuverable Soviet submersible with a diver lockout facility that could be stationed at the seabed. It was able to spend two weeks underwater at a maximum depth of 300m with about 25 people on board. Although announced in 1966, it had its first deployment in 1977. [1] There were two vessels in

1656-872: The Hydrolab Journal . Dr. William Fife spent 28 days in saturation, performing physiology experiments on researchers such as Dr. Sylvia Earle . The habitat was decommissioned in 1985 and placed on display at the Smithsonian Institution 's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. As of 2017 , the habitat is located at the NOAA Auditorium and Science Center at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. The Engineering Design and Analysis Laboratory Habitat

1725-614: The Mediterranean Sea near the Cap Ferrat lighthouse, between Nice and Monaco, for three weeks. In this effort, Cousteau was determined to make the station more self-sufficient, severing most ties with the surface. A mock oil rig was set up underwater, and divers successfully performed several industrial tasks. SEALAB I, II, and III were experimental underwater habitats developed by the United States Navy in

1794-751: The Office of Naval Research and the United States Department of the Interior . On 15 February 1969, four Department of the Interior scientists (Ed Clifton, Conrad Mahnken, Richard Waller and John VanDerwalker) descended to the ocean floor in Great Lameshur Bay in the United States Virgin Islands to begin an ambitious diving project dubbed "Tektite I". By 18 March 1969, the four aquanauts had established

1863-458: The chemical environment ( drinking water , food , waste products , toxins ) and the biological environment (hazardous sea creatures, microorganisms , marine fungi ). Much of the science covering underwater habitats and their technology designed to meet human requirements is shared with diving , diving bells , submersible vehicles and submarines , and spacecraft . Numerous underwater habitats have been designed, built and used around

1932-572: The 1960s to prove the viability of saturation diving and humans living in isolation for extended periods of time. The knowledge gained from the SEALAB expeditions helped advance the science of deep sea diving and rescue, and contributed to the understanding of the psychological and physiological strains humans can endure. The three SEALABs were part of the United States Navy Genesis Project. Preliminary research work

2001-566: The Baltic Sea lasted 11 days. In June 1969, a one-week flat-water mission took place in Lake Constance. In attempting to anchor the habitat at 47 m, the structure was flooded with the two divers in it and sank to the seabed. It was decided to lift it with the two divers according to the necessary decompression profile and nobody was harmed. BAH I provided valuable experience for the much larger underwater laboratory Helgoland. In 2003 it

2070-659: The FIU Marine Education and Research Initiative, the Medina Aquarius Program is dedicated to the study and preservation of marine ecosystems worldwide and is enhancing the scope and impact of FIU on research, educational outreach, technology development, and professional training. At the heart of the program is the Aquarius Reef Base. Aquarius, designed by Perry Submarine Builders of Florida and constructed by Victoria Machine Works,

2139-646: The United States Navy were terminated. Internationally, except for the La Chalupa Research Laboratory the large-scale projects were carried out, but not extended, so that the subsequent habitats were smaller and designed for shallower depths. The race for greater depths, longer missions and technical advances seemed to have come to an end. For reasons such as lack of mobility, lack of self-sufficiency, shifting focus to space travel and transition to surface-based saturation systems,

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2208-564: The University of New Hampshire and NOAA used nitrox as a breathing gas. In the three FLARE missions, the habitat was positioned off Miami at a depth of 13.7 m. The conversion to this experiment increased the weight of the habitat to 23 tonnes. BAH I (for Biological Institute Helgoland ) had a length of 6 m and a diameter of 2 m. It weighed about 20 tons and was intended for a crew of two people. The first mission in September 1968 with Jürgen Dorschel and Gerhard Lauckner at 10 m depth in

2277-567: The aquanauts to simulate different gravity environments. A diver named Dewey Smith died during a dive from Aquarius in May 2009. A subsequent investigation determined that Smith's death was caused by a combination of factors, including the failure of the electronic functions of his Inspiration closed circuit rebreather due to hydrodynamic forces from a hydraulic impact hammer being used nearby. Due to budget cuts, NOAA ceased funding Aquarius after September 2012, with no further missions scheduled after

2346-409: The composition of the surrounding seawater. Aquarius houses sophisticated lab equipment and computers, enabling scientists to perform research and process samples without leaving their underwater facilities. The habitat accommodates four scientists and two technicians for missions averaging ten days. Scientists on the Aquarius are often called " aquanauts " (as they live underwater at depth pressure for

2415-447: The excursion, and downwards by decompression obligations while returning from the excursion. Open circuit or rebreather scuba have the advantage of mobility, but it is critical to the safety of a saturation diver to be able to get back to the habitat, as surfacing directly from saturation is likely to cause severe and probably fatal decompression sickness. For this reason, in most of the programs, signs and guidelines are installed around

2484-429: The first all-female aquanaut team, led by Dr. Sylvia Earle . Other scientists participating in the all-female mission included Dr. Renate True of Tulane University , as well as Ann Hartline and Alina Szmant, graduate students at Scripps Institute of Oceanography. The fifth member of the crew was Margaret Ann Lucas, a Villanova University engineering graduate, who served as Habitat Engineer. The Tektite II missions were

2553-443: The first to breathe heliox , a mixture of helium and oxygen, avoiding the normal nitrogen /oxygen mixture, which, when breathed under pressure, can cause narcosis . The deep cabin was also an early effort in saturation diving , in which the aquanauts' body tissues were allowed to become totally saturated by the helium in the breathing mixture, a result of breathing the gases under pressure. The necessary decompression from saturation

2622-403: The first to undertake in-depth ecological studies. Tektite II included 24 hour behavioral and mission observations of each of the missions by a team of observers from the University of Texas at Austin . Selected episodic events and discussions were videotaped using cameras in the public areas of the habitat. Data about the status, location and activities of each of the 5 members of each mission

2691-412: The habitat are also limited and depend on the depth of the habitat and the associated saturation of the divers. The open space available for exits thus describes the shape of a vertical axis cylinder centred on the habitat. As an example, in the Tektite I program, the habitat was located at a depth of 13.1 metres (43 ft). Exits were limited vertically to a depth of 6.7 metres (22 ft) (6.4 m above

2760-399: The habitat in order to prevent divers from getting lost. Umbilicals or airline hoses are safer, as the breathing gas supply is unlimited, and the hose is a guideline back to the habitat, but they restrict freedom of movement and can become tangled. The horizontal extent of excursions is limited to the scuba air supply or the length of the umbilical. The distance above and below the level of

2829-726: The habitat's seabed anchors and moved one end of Aquarius by twelve feet (3.7 m). In 2017, Hurricane Irma ripped the habitat's 94,000-pound (43,000 kg) life support buoy from its moorings and blew it 14 miles (23 km) away to the Lignum Vitae Channel, as well as damaging the underwater living quarters and wet porch area. As of 2008, no scientists or staff members had been injured at Aquarius due to storms. Since 2001, NASA has used Aquarius for its NEEMO (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations) analog missions , sending groups of astronauts to simulate human spaceflight space exploration missions. Much like space,

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2898-460: The habitat) and 25.9 metres (85 ft) (12.8 m below the habitat level) and were horizontally limited to a distance of 549 metres (1,801 ft) from the Habitat. The history of underwater habitats follows on from the previous development of diving bells and caissons , and as long exposure to a hyperbaric environment results in saturation of the body tissues with the ambient inert gases, it

2967-486: The interest in underwater habitats decreased, resulting in a noticeable decrease in major projects after 1970. In the mid eighties, the Aquarius habitat was built in the style of Sealab and Helgoland and is still in operation today. The first aquanaut was Robert Stenuit in the Man-in-the-Sea I project run by Edwin A. Link. On 6 September 1962, he spent 24 hours and 15 minutes at a depth of 61 metres (200 ft) in

3036-624: The laboratory, returning to it after every diving session. At the end of their stay they decompressed in the UWL, and could resurface without decompression sickness. The UWL was used in the waters of the North and Baltic Seas and, in 1975, on Jeffreys Ledge , in the Gulf of Maine off the coast of New England in the United States. At the end of the 1970s it was decommissioned and in 1998 donated to

3105-678: The project. After Bentos-300 sank in the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiisk in 1992, several attempts to recover it failed. In November 2011 it was cut up and recovered for scrap in the following six months. The Italian Progetto Abissi habitat, also known as La Casa in Fondo al Mare (Italian for The House at the Bottom of the Sea), was designed by the diving team Explorer Team Pellicano, consisted of three cylindrical chambers and served as

3174-410: The reef outside Aquarius allow aquanauts to refill their scuba tanks during dives. Aquarius consists of three compartments. Access to the water is made via the wet porch, a chamber equipped with a moon pool , which keeps the air pressure inside the wet porch the same as the water pressure at that depth ( ambient pressure ), about 2.6 atmospheres , through hydrostatic equilibrium . The main compartment

3243-445: The surface without the need for a decompression chamber when they get there. Personnel stay inside the main compartment for 17 hours before ascending as the pressure is slowly reduced, so that they do not suffer decompression sickness after the ascent. Several missions on the Aquarius have been canceled due to hurricane activity. During Hurricane Gordon in 1994, a crew of scientists and divers had to evacuate Aquarius and climb up

3312-452: The surface, and risks associated with diving and ship operations at night can be minimized. In the habitat La Chalupa , 35% of all dives took place at night. To perform the same amount of useful work diving from the surface instead of from La Chalupa , an estimated eight hours of decompression time would have been necessary every day. However, maintaining an underwater habitat is much more expensive and logistically difficult than diving from

3381-473: The surface. It also restricts the diving to a much more limited area. Underwater habitats are designed to operate in two fundamental modes. A third or composite type has compartments of both types within the same habitat structure and connected via airlocks, such as Aquarius . An excursion is a visit to the environment outside the habitat. Diving excursions can be done on scuba or umbilical supply, and are limited upwards by decompression obligations while on

3450-529: The surface. This information limits the risk of decompression sickness . By living in the Aquarius habitat and working at the same depth on the ocean floor, Aquarius aquanauts are able to remain underwater for the duration of their mission. In addition, because Aquarius allows saturation diving, dives from the habitat can last for up to nine hours at a time; by comparison, surface dives usually last between one and two hours. These long dive times allow for observation that would not otherwise be possible. Way stations on

3519-445: The team collected the equivalent of two years' worth of surface diving data during the mission, enough for ten scientific papers. Underwater habitat An underwater habitat has to meet the needs of human physiology and provide suitable environmental conditions, and the one which is most critical is breathing air of suitable quality . Others concern the physical environment ( pressure , temperature , light , humidity ),

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3588-414: The undersea world is a hostile, alien place for humans to live. NEEMO crew members experience some of the same challenges there that they would on a distant asteroid, planet or moon. During NEEMO missions in Aquarius, the aquanauts are able to simulate living on a spacecraft and test spacewalk techniques for future space missions. The underwater condition has the additional benefit of allowing NASA to "weight"

3657-486: The week starting September 10, 2012, and continued with a cameo appearance of Earle in the week starting September 17, 2012, to discuss the importance of Aquarius. In January 2013, a proposal to keep Aquarius running under Florida International University administration was accepted. From June 1 to July 2, 2014, Fabien Cousteau and his crew spent 31 days living and working in Aquarius in tribute to Jacques Cousteau 's 30-day underwater expedition in 1963. Cousteau estimated

3726-524: The world since as early as the start of the 1960s, either by private individuals or by government agencies. They have been used almost exclusively for research and exploration , but, in recent years, at least one underwater habitat has been provided for recreation and tourism . Research has been devoted particularly to the physiological processes and limits of breathing gases under pressure, for aquanaut , as well as astronaut training, and for research on marine ecosystems. The term 'underwater habitat'

3795-455: The world's most extensively used habitat. MarineLab was used as an integral part of the "Scott Carpenter, Man in the Sea" Program. In 2018 the habitat was retired and restored to its 1985 condition and is on display to the public at Marine Resources Development Foundation, Inc. Key Largo, Florida. The Aquarius Reef Base is an underwater habitat located 5.4 miles (9 kilometers) off Key Largo in

3864-630: Was Dr. Theodore Marton. Hydrolab was constructed in 1966 at a cost of $ 60,000 ($ 560,000 in today's currency) and used as a research station from 1970. The project was in part funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Hydrolab could house four people. Approximately 180 Hydrolab missions were conducted—100 missions in The Bahamas during the early to mid-1970s, and 80 missions off Saint Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands , from 1977 to 1985. These scientific missions are chronicled in

3933-400: Was a defining effort in the study of diving physiology and technology, and captured wide public appeal due to its dramatic " Jules Verne " look and feel. A Cousteau-produced feature film about the effort ( World Without Sun ) was awarded an Academy Award for Best Documentary the following year. Conshelf III was initiated in 1965. Six divers lived in the habitat at 102.4 metres (336 ft) in

4002-627: Was a horizontal cylinder 2.6 m high, 3.3 m long and weighing 14 tonnes was built by students of the Engineering Design and Analysis Laboratory in the US at a cost of $ 20,000 or $ 187,000 in today's currency. From 26 April 1968, four students spent 48 hours and 6 minutes in this habitat in Alton Bay, New Hampshire. Two further missions followed to 12.2 m. In the 1972 Edalhab II Florida Aquanaut Research Expedition experiments,

4071-406: Was accelerated by using oxygen enriched breathing gases. They suffered no apparent ill effects. The undersea colony was supported with air, water, food, power, all essentials of life, from a large support team above. Men on the bottom performed a number of experiments intended to determine the practicality of working on the sea floor and were subjected to continual medical examinations. Conshelf II

4140-455: Was an inflatable structure called SPID. This was followed by a series of underwater habitats where people stayed for several weeks at great depths. Sealab II had a usable area of 63 square metres (680 sq ft), and was used at a depth of more than 60 metres (200 ft). Several countries built their own habitats at much the same time and mostly began experimenting in shallow waters. In Conshelf III six aquanauts lived for several weeks at

4209-556: Was built in Victoria , Texas , in 1986. Its original name was "the George F. Bond ", after the United States Navy physician who was the father of SEALAB in particular and saturation diving in general. Underwater operations were first planned for Catalina Island, California, but were moved to the U.S. Virgin Islands . Following Hurricane Hugo in 1989, Aquarius was taken to Wilmington, North Carolina, for repairs and refurbishment and

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4278-436: Was collected via key punch data cards every six minutes during each mission. This information was collated and processed by BellComm and was used for the support of papers written about the research concerning the relative predictability of behavior patterns of mission participants in constrained, dangerous conditions for extended periods of time, such as those that might be encountered in crewed spaceflight. The Tektite habitat

4347-699: Was designed and built by General Electric Space Division at the Valley Forge Space Technology Center in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania . The Project Engineer who was responsible for the design of the habitat was Brooks Tenney, Jr. Tenney also served as the underwater Habitat Engineer on the International Mission, the last mission on the Tektite II project. The Program Manager for the Tektite projects at General Electric

4416-475: Was for five of these stations to be submerged to a maximum depth of 300 metres (1,000 ft) over the decade; in reality only three were completed with a maximum depth of 100 metres (330 ft). Much of the work was funded in part by the French petrochemical industry , who, along with Cousteau, hoped that such colonies could serve as base stations for the future exploitation of the sea. Such colonies did not find

4485-413: Was owned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and operated by the University of North Carolina–Wilmington until 2013 when Florida International University assumed operational control. Florida International University (FIU) took ownership of Aquarius in October 2014. As part of the FIU Marine Education and Research Initiative, the Medina Aquarius Program is dedicated to

4554-483: Was redeployed in the Florida Keys in 1993. Aquarius is located under 20 m (66 ft) of water at the base of a coral reef within the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary , an ideal site for studying the health of sensitive coral reefs . The laboratory is most often used by marine biologists for whom Aquarius acts as home base as they study the coral reef, the fish and aquatic plants that live nearby and

4623-754: Was taken over as a technical monument by the Technical University of Clausthal-Zellerfeld and in the same year went on display at the Nautineum Stralsund on Kleiner Dänholm island. The Helgoland underwater laboratory (UWL) is an underwater habitat. It was built in Lübeck , Germany in 1968, and was the first of its kind in the world built for use in colder waters. The 14 meter long, 7 meter diameter UWL allowed divers to spend several weeks under water using saturation diving techniques. The scientists and technicians would live and work in

4692-562: Was the first saturation diving project to employ scientists rather than professional divers. The term tektite generally refers to a class of meteorites formed by extremely rapid cooling. These include objects of celestial origins that strike the sea surface and come to rest on the bottom (note project Tektite's conceptual origins within the U.S space program). The Tektite II missions were carried out in 1970. Tektite II comprised ten missions lasting 10 to 20 days with four scientists and an engineer on each mission. One of these missions included

4761-402: Was undertaken by George F. Bond . Bond began investigations in 1957 to develop theories about saturation diving . Bond's team exposed rats , goats , monkeys , and human beings to various gas mixtures at different pressures. By 1963 they had collected enough data to test the first SEALAB habitat. The Tektite underwater habitat was constructed by General Electric and was funded by NASA ,

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