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With their high-tech scuba gear and futuristic motorbikes, this team of five divers look like something from an outer space mission. In fact, they’re part of an ambitious project to live underwater for 31 days.
The expedition — dubbed “Mission 31″ — will be led by Fabien Cousteau (pictured), the grandson of legendary diver Jacques Cousteau.
The team will live in this laboratory — called “Aquarius” — situated 20 meters below the water, off the coast of Florida Keys. They’ll be researching the physical and psychological effects of underwater living, searching for new species of animals, and examining the impact of climate change.
The expedition marks 50 years since Jacques Cousteau (pictured) spent 30 days living in an underwater habitat at the bottom of the Red Sea. The mission was turned into an Oscar winning documentary, “World Without Sun.”
Fabien’s adventure will be a touching tribute to the grandfather (pictured) who sparked his lifelong passion for ocean exploration. “My grandfather said people protect what they love. But how can you protect what you don’t understand?” he said.
“The ocean is magical because it’s so mysterious,” said Fabien Cousteau. “The reality is more phenomenal than science fiction itself.”
“It’s almost as if we’re in a fish bowl,” said Cousteau. “We’ll be having dinner and outside the porthole will be a grouper fish looking in. It’s pretty trippy.”
The team will undergo 15 days of intensive training before taking the plunge. In an emergency, they’ll be unable to swim to the surface straight away, due to compression sickness. Instead, the pressure in the habitat will be slowly raised to that of Earth’s, over 24 hours.
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MainSail is CNN’s monthly sailing show, exploring the sport of sailing, luxury travel and the latest in design and technology.
(CNN) — Speaking to Fabien Cousteau is like plunging into dreamlike darkness. The sunlight falls away as you dive deeper and deeper underwater with him, and you can’t help but hold your breath a little as he describes the alien creatures hovering at the edge of vision.
I needn’t fear. Fabien is a master aquanaut — and the grandson of legendary diver Jacques Cousteau.
His American accent, with soft French undertones, guides me 20 meters below the surface of the water until we rest our imaginary flippers at a very special spot on the ocean floor — 14 kilometers off the coast of Florida Keys.
It’s cold down here, around 35 degrees Fahrenheit. The enormous water pressure — three times the atmosphere on land — bears down on us, filling our veins with nitrogen and creating the feeling of being ever so slightly drunk.
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As our eyes adjust to the gloom, twinkling yellow lights reveal a steel capsule the size of a school bus, with small portholes providing a glimpse of the scientists working inside.
Welcome to “Aquarius“, the only underwater laboratory in the world, and Fabien’s home for a record-breaking 31 days.
Read: Titanic director’s mission to the ocean floor
Cousteau’s legacy
Fifty years after his famous grandfather, Jacques Cousteau, spent 30 days living in an underwater village at the bottom of the Red Sea, Fabien will follow in his footsteps with a similar project twice as deep and one day longer.
In 1963, Cousteau elder turned science fiction into reality when he and a team of five divers lived in an underwater habitat — named “Conshelf II” — researching the effects of deep sea living.
The pioneering experiment found cuts and grazes healed quicker and hair grew slower. New species of animals were discovered and Cousteau’s haunting video diary was turned into an Oscar winning documentary, “World Without Sun.”
“I hope we recapture the magic, mystery and beauty of the ocean which my grandfather was able to offer the world for so many decades,” said Fabien, who takes the plunge on September 30.
Mission 31
This will be a new era of ocean exploration as the team of six aquanauts — dubbed “Mission 31″ — examine not just the physical and psychological effects of underwater living, but the impact of climate change.
They will use space-age motorcycles to cruise the ocean floor nine hours a day, examining marine life, coral reefs, and ocean acidity — which is linked to carbon emissions in the air.
Read: Ghostly sailors and sweethearts come to life
“It’s very much in the same spirit of adventure and exploration as in my grandfather’s day,” said 45-year-old Cousteau. “But by default we’re living in a time where human impact is directly related to the ocean’s health.”
It might look like a spaceship, but this remarkable design is in fact a luxury underwater hotel.
The brainchild of Polish designers Deep Ocean Technology (DOT), the futuristic building features saucer-like lounges connected to 21 underwater bedrooms.
The sleek design, which can cost up to $50 million, is now set to be built on the remote tropical island of Kuredhivaru in the Maldives.
“The biggest challenge is to sink the hotel,” said designer Pawel Podwojewski. “In this case, we’ll take care of the construction, which means the underwater hotel will be completed in Poland and shipped to Maldives.”
The unique structure may plunge 30-meters below the water, but its luxury facilities are sky-high, including a helicopter landing pad, opulent restaurant and rooftop swimming pool.
Guests can enjoy views of vibrant coral reefs and sea creatures, all from the comfort of their bedroom.
More adventurous guests can dive straight into the water from a special airlock compartment, including its own decompression chamber.
The lounges are connected by a glass tunnel. In an emergency, the doughnut-shaped underwater room can slide to the surface of the ocean.
The unique hotel may soon be built in the United Arab Emirates, with Dubai construction company Drydocks now in negotiations with designers.
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Futuristic underwater hotel
“What happens in the vast, deep ocean, out of sight and beyond the reach of sunlight and satellites?” asks chief scientist Chris German. He is on a mission, with his team at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, to find out. They developed Sentry, a robotic underwater vehicle used for exploring the deep ocean.
The development of new technology is crucial to our understanding of this vastly unexplored realm. Researchers use Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) to examine hydrothermal vents up to 5km below the surface.
At the scene of German’s latest explorations, newly-discovered vents on the Mid-Cayman Rise, the dominant fauna is a new species of blind shrimp that feed on microbes fuelled by the chemical energy released from Earth’s interior. The shrimp, in turn, are devoured by shrimp-eating anemones.
Fueled by chemical energy released from the earth’s interior, lush ecosystems thrive at hydrothermal vents. Here, the suction-tube sampler of the Institution’s ROV collects a sample of tiny snails.
In 1977, the development of new technology allowed the human-occupied vehicle, “Alvin” to explore a volcanic ridge 2500 meters below sea-level. “This discovery changed our understanding of how life can function here on Earth and opened entirely new fields of research,” says German.
We still have more than 75% of the 55,000 kilometer-long volcanic ridge system to explore. These vents could shed light on how life first originated and are home to minerals that could be essential resources for us in the future.
This deep-sea angler fish was collected by a submersible. Just three inches long but fierce-looking, it has a long spine tipped with bioluminescent tissue that it can dangle in front of its mouth.
Alvin pilot Bruce Strickrott encountered a docile deep-sea octopus 2,300 meters down in the Gulf of Mexico. Instead of swimming away, it grabbed the submersible’s robotic arm, normally used for picking up samples of seafloor rocks and organisms.
The deepest known point of Earth’s seafloor is Challenger Deep. Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh were the first humans to venture to these parts in 1960 in their underwater vehicle the Trieste. This was only achieved again last year by director James Cameron in Deepsea Challenger.
For scientists to truly examine ocean trenches such as Challenger Deep we need to develop increasingly autonomous deep-sea vehicles that return with useful samples of life below. According to German, the resultant knowledge could help us cope with global challenges such as climate change, resource depletion and pollution.
Woods Hole Oceanograhic Institution’s Nereus is a one-of-a-kind vehicle that operates as a free-swimming robot to conduct surveys and close-up investigations of seafloor organisms. It reached Challenger Deep in 2009 and in 2014 will be used to conduct the first systematic study of life in ocean trenches.
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Deep sea robots
“The ocean contains 99% of the planet’s total living space. That said, we know so little about it — just 5% has been explored.”
Underwater “Truman Show”
While audiences in the 1960s had to wait for Jacques Cousteau’s groundbreaking documentary to hit cinemas, this time round we’ll be able to follow Fabien every step of the way, thanks to rolling coverage on the Weather Channel, Skype video calls to classrooms around the world, Twitter and Facebook updates, and ultimately an IMAX film.
This isn’t just a new age of environmental frontiers, but media management, as “Aquarius” also welcomes celebrities on board, including Virgin business magnate Richard Branson and pop singer will.i.am.
“We’ll have millions of eyeballs looking at us — a bit like an underwater Truman Show,” said Cousteau.
“Inside, it looks much like a submarine, with bunk beds, a kitchenette and a laboratory. It actually gets very warm in the habitat — almost as humid as the Amazon River.”
Risky business
This will be the longest stint researchers have spent on Aquarius — the previous record was 18 days — and the ambitious mission will not be without risk. Diver Dewey Smith died after his equipment malfunctioned outside the lab in 2009.
The team will spend 15 days in extreme training, including diving 20 meters underwater, taking off their masks, being spun around to lose their bearings and then swimming back to the habitat.
Read: stranded at sea? Seven survival tips
“The point of training is to make sure we’re prepared for every situation,” said Cousteau, who has been diving since he was four.
“Once your veins are fully saturated in nitrogen you won’t be able to go back to the surface because of the decompression sickness — we’ll have to slowly come back up over 24 hours.”
Magic realm
For Cousteau, who grew up playing on the salt-stained deck of his grandfather’s boat, the ocean is a bewitching realm — and one he wants to share with a world which has seen more people travel into deep space than deep sea.
“Being in the water is a dream, it’s part fantasy,” he says. “It still holds so much magic and mystery and I can only imagine what kind of sea creatures will be coming up to us during those experiments in the dark.”
“My grandfather said people protect what they love. But how can you protect what you don’t understand?”
Cousteau: 31 days underwater
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