MIAMI: The grandson of famed oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau will embark on a month-long stay inside an undersea laboratory off the Florida Keys in an attempt to break a half-century-old record set by his late grandfather.
After years of planning, Fabien Cousteau will make an 18-metre dive today in an attempt to spend 31 days in a laboratory known as Aquarius, observing fish behaviour, studying the impact of ocean pollution and warming seas on coral reefs, and measuring the effect of lengthy underwater stays on the human body.
“There are a lot of challenges physically and psychologically,” said Cousteau, 46, who was born in Paris and grew up on his grandfather’s ships, Calypso and Alcyone.
Cousteau will be living and working underwater with a team of researchers and documentary film-makers. If he succeeds in spending the entire time submerged, Cousteau will beat the 30-day underwater record set 50 years ago in the Red Sea by his grandfather.
The cylindrical 13-metre Aquarius is the last undersea laboratory still operating. It sits on a patch of sand near deep coral reefs about 14.5 km south of Key Largo, Florida.
Dozens of other undersea labs around the world have been mothballed due to high costs. In 1963, Jacques-Yves Cousteau along with a half-dozen divers he dubbed oceanauts spent 30 days inside an undersea lab called Conshelf II near the Port of Sudan.
Aquarius is air-conditioned, with wireless Internet access, a shower, a bathroom, six bunks and portholes that give the occupants a 24-hour view of the surrounding marine life.
The living space is at a depth where the atmospheric pressure is roughly two-and-a-half to three times that at the surface. It will be pressurised to prevent decompression sickness, when human tissue absorbs gases like nitrogen in dangerously high volumes.
REUTERS
