In 1963, famed oceanographer Jacques Cousteau built the Conshelf II — an underwater habitat in which six oceanauts lived 10 metres under the Red Sea for 30 days, performing various experiments to determine the practicality of working on the sea floor. Those taking part were all subjected to continual medical examinations. It was however decided that the tasks could be performed more efficiently by undersea robot devices operated from above.
At this time, Cousteau predicted that a new breed of humans, the Homo Aquaticus or Water Man, would live underwater without an air supply within 50 years. He changed his mind about this later, though and went into conservation.
Fabien Cousteau’s Proposed Underwater City
Obviously Cousteau’s prediction never came about, but his grandson, Fabien Cousteau, announced his intention to build a city under the sea at a summit in New York City recently. Cousteau announced that he would be pioneering the next completely self-sustaining underwater cities “to tend a network of information and data gathering.â€
Cousteau recently spent 31 days living in the world’s only undersea laboratory, Aquarius, in the Florida Keys, breaking his grandfather’s record by one day. According to Cousteau, he and the others with him spent the time gathering data related to climate change, pollution, acidification, and the overuse of natural resources. He said that this time allowed him to understand underwater ecosystems as never before, and the data collected would be published in 12 scientific papers.
According to Cousteau, living in Aquarius, which was built in the 1960s, gave him some great ideas on how to make underwater living easier for humans. He envisages building a real-life Atlantis, a colony that is completely self-sustaining; one which generates its own oxygen and also scrubs its own carbon dioxide.
Cousteau envisages harnessing energy from the surrounding ocean so that the city is not dependent on energy from above. After his experience of surviving almost entirely on freeze-dried astronaut food during his Aquarius stint, he also wants to see underwater colonies growing their own food such as algae and other plants underwater.
Fabien Cousteau’s proposed underwater city would allow scientists to study the oceans better and could also pave the way for the construction of fully functional space habitats in the not too distant future.
Sources:
Living-Water water supplier provides companies in the London area with office water dispensers. Get water cooler rental and watercooler for your house or business. Read our water cooler blog for latest industry news and articles.
