The first new underwater habitat in decades may spark the next race to the bottom

 

The ocean holds many secrets. For the few humans who have lived at its depths, one of those secrets is where all the poop goes.

In years past, crew aboard the Aquarius Reef Base, off Florida, reported leaving the habitat to conduct their business, swimming to an underwater outhouse for privacy. The locals didn’t always get the memo. “Fish, unfortunately, would know why you were out there and they would swarm,” recalled Dawn Kernagis, who lived aboard Aquarius as part of a NASA mission in 2016. Another former resident, Garrett Reisman, described it as “like the dinner bell going off.”

All this, despite the base having a toilet on board.

Aquarius now boasts two toilets and no outhouse restroom, said a spokesperson for Florida International University, which operates the station (who took a lengthy fact check in good humor). But after decades without a contender to the throne, there’s a new underwater base in town.

DEEP, the company behind Vanguard station, is keen to show off its plumbing, though restroom facilities are hardly the main talking point. According to UK-based DEEP, the Florida-based station is the first subsea human habitat deployed in US waters in 40 years. That makes it a big deal, especially among scientists who have relied on Aquarius as the only operational underwater research laboratory and habitat in the world.

Underwater human habitats have existed since the 1960s, when Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s pioneering Conshelf ushered in an era of subsea research. Other stations followed in the US, Europe, Russia and Japan, buoyed by the same ambition propelling the space race up above. Cramped, spartan — costly — most habitats only had short operational lives, and the movement lost momentum. Until June, Aquarius, built in 1986 and deployed to its current location in 1993, was the most recent in US waters.

To put that in context, the International Space Station was announced, assembled and continuously inhabited for over 25 years in the time since.

Sealab I was one of the first underwater habitats. In the summer of 1964, a team of four aquanauts lived aboard for 10 days in the sea off Bermuda.

OAR/National Undersea Research Program

Tektite II, located in the US Virgin Islands, hosted crews of five across 10 missions in 1970.

OAR/National Undersea Research Program

Vanguard was deployed in June on the seafloor of Tennessee Reef, 56 feet below the surface in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The station is designed to house four aquanauts on missions of five or seven days, says DEEP, in a livable space 35 feet long and 8 feet wide. Aquarius, in comparison, is slightly larger and can accommodate a crew of six for more than 30 days.