Dawn Kernagis loves telling marine biologists about what’s now possible. “Their eyes light up, and then they can’t stop talking about all the things they’ll be able to do,” she says. Kernagis is Director of Scientific Research for DEEP, a design and engineering organisation that has just designed and built a new subsea habitat called Vanguard. Unveiled in October in Miami, Florida, the habitat is the first step towards a new era in marine biology where scientists can live for weeks or months in the environment they are studying.
As well as revolutionising science, Vanguard is set to change the human relationship with the ocean, Kernagis says. “We’re going to have people coming back from their subsea experience who will open our eyes to the underwater world, like astronauts did with space,” Kernagis says.
Researching the marine environment usually brings a number of time constraints, not least of which is getting to and from the dive site by car on shore and then by boat. Then there is the amount of breathable gas you can take down and the pre- and post-dive tasks – such as pausing for decompression stops on the way back up. “You typically lose four or five hours in travelling and only get about an hour’s worth of actual underwater work done per dive,” says Roger Garcia, DEEP’s Director of Habitat Operations.
Vanguard can house up to four aquanauts for missions lasting weeks Getty Images for DEEP
Live at ocean pressure, though, and all that wasted time is gone. “Within 15 minutes, you can put your equipment on, go through your checks and go out and do your research for up to nine hours a day,” says Garcia.
Vanguard, which has living and sleeping spaces, can facilitate stays of weeks or months at depth. Once they are at ocean pressure, divers’ body tissues reach “saturation”, where the concentration of breathing gases is in equilibrium. This changes the calculus of ocean science, opening up a new era in how humans can live
and work undersea.
It’s an opportunity that excites Jim Brittsan, the founder of Miami-based Sustainable Oceans and Reefs (SOAR), an organisation dedicated to advancing marine conservation. “Living under the sea fundamentally changes how research can be conducted,” he says.
Vanguard can be fully equipped as a research lab, with state-of-the-art facilities for human biological science as well as ocean science. Samples from the environment or from the divers themselves can be analysed without the stresses of decompression.
The Vanguard undersea habitat
“I love the idea of being able to process those samples at depth,” Kernagis says. She points out that RNA expression levels in divers’ blood have a distinct signature related to decompression, but this can mask other potential changes that occur during a dive. In analysing samples taken on the surface, we weren’t actually seeing what was happening at depth, she says. Physiologists should get a better understanding with samples taken during long duration underwater stays.
Perhaps most exciting, though, is the coral restoration science that becomes possible over extended periods. “Maximising coral growth is time-consuming work,” Kernagis says. “With Vanguard, you can amplify your time building out the coral nurseries, and you can do the monitoring and the maintenance – going out and on the coral garden – which has been a big gap when it comes to coral restoration. Plus we’re able to do it deeper than with regular scuba.”
Brittsan shares Kernagis’s enthusiasm: it has been hard to do large-scale studies of coral communities at depth, he says. Vanguard could be a game-changer on this
front. “Vanguard creates the opportunity to immerse yourself in that environment: to observe natural processes as they happen.”
That means observing the routines and rhythms of the ocean from within, including the “diel vertical migration”, the largest daily migration of biomass on Earth as creatures ascend from the depths to feed and descend again to avoid predators. Researchers will also see transient events like mass coral spawning and predator-prey interactions.
Vanguard is just the start of this new era: it is a pilot habitat that is preparing the ground for a much more permanent presence under the sea. DEEP is already building larger, more flexible habitats that will allow humans to become aquatic. “That’s our vision,” Kernagis says.
AQUANAUT, KNOW THYSELF
One of the biggest opportunities with Vanguard is the chance to study what happens to the human body during extended stays in pressurised conditions. These “hyperbaric” environments are likely to change body tissues in ways that are not fully understood, Kernagis says – even whether the changes are reversible.
For example, one emerging area is the study of epigenetic effects, where the pressures of the ocean environment alter the way genes are expressed, potentially affecting body function.
Living in the ocean has similarities with living in space, and NASA has used previous undersea habitats to help prepare astronauts for the isolation and demands of living beyond Earth. Kernagis has worked as a saturation diver supporting NASA and is looking forward to the opportunities that Vanguard will make possible. “We really want to have a broader understanding of how humans respond to this kind of environment,” she says. “The astronauts that I’ve worked with say that those undersea analogue missions have been very important for being able to test out the different technologies and the team dynamics.”
Vanguard will enable the study of the psychological effects of long-term isolation in a remote habitat. While NASA has studied the psychology of the space environment, a subsea habitat has its own factors, Kernagis reckons. “You have the psychological pressure of being in a high-risk environment: you have to make decisions that can affect not just your safety, but your team’s safety.” And divers can’t just bail out: head too fast to the surface and they’ll suffer life-threatening decompression sickness, or “the bends”. “It’s not a Mars mission but it’s still going to be really telling about human dynamics,” says Kernagis.
AQUANAUT, KNOW THYSELF
One of the biggest opportunities with Vanguard is the chance to study what happens to the human body during extended stays in pressurised conditions. These “hyperbaric” environments are likely to change body tissues in ways that are not fully understood, Kernagis says – even whether the changes are reversible.
For example, one emerging area is the study of epigenetic effects, where the pressures of the ocean environment alter the way genes are expressed, potentially affecting body function.
Living in the ocean has similarities with living in space, and NASA has used previous undersea habitats to help prepare astronauts for the isolation and demands of living beyond Earth. Kernagis has worked as a saturation diver supporting NASA and is looking forward to the opportunities that Vanguard will make possible. “We really want to have a broader understanding of how humans respond to this kind of environment,” she says. “The astronauts that I’ve worked with say that those undersea analogue missions have been very important for being able to test out the different technologies and the team dynamics.”
Vanguard will enable the study of the psychological effects of long-term isolation in a remote habitat. While NASA has studied the psychology of the space environment, a subsea habitat has its own factors, Kernagis reckons. “You have the psychological pressure of being in a high-risk environment: you have to make decisions that can affect not just your safety, but your team’s safety.” And divers can’t just bail out: head too fast to the surface and they’ll suffer life-threatening decompression sickness, or “the bends”. “It’s not a Mars mission but it’s still going to be really telling about human dynamics,” says Kernagis.
