Ocean advocate Fabien Cousteau wants to take his grandfather Jacques-Ives’ idea of an underwater habitat to a whole new level.
The younger Cousteau recently unveiled plans for “Project Proteus,” a venture to build the world’s largest underwater laboratory.
In 2014, Cousteau’s Mission 31 team spent a month living in Aquarius, the world’s only underwater research lab and the longest-duration mission in the lab’s history.
One of the biggest lessons from Mission 31 gave Cousteau and his team a firsthand understanding of saturation diving and the luxury that affords scientists who want to do long-term experiments and studies while being able to spend the most amount of time underwater.
According to the Fabien Cousteau Ocean Learning Center website:
“The success and global reach of Mission 31 set the stage for and became the proof of concept to support the development of the next generation, deep-sea research facility.
“The FCOLC seeks to continue the work advanced by Fabien and the team on Mission 31 by redefining the frontiers of marine research and establishing a technologically advanced underwater research facility aimed at advancing the way we go about saturation diving, while expanding our understanding of ocean processes and how they impact our lives and our climate.”
For more info, check out Project Proteus here.
(Image credit: Proteus/Yves Béhar/Fuseproject)
