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The grandson of famed ocean explorer Jacques-Yves
Cousteau surfaced Wednesday after 31 days under the sea.
Fabien Cousteau spent 31 days inside an undersea laboratory off the
Florida Keys for one month to break a half-century-old record set by his
grandfather.
Cousteau, 46, spent the month observing fish behavior, studying the
impact of ocean pollution and climate change while measuring the effect
of lengthy underwater stays on the human body.
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His team of scientists and filmmakers originally went to the Aquarius
lab on June 1, and spent so much time underwater they began
decompression therapy a day before heading to the surface.
The group's time spent 63 feet below the ocean's surface necessitated 16
hours of decompression inside the school bus-sized laboratory to help
them avoid getting the bends.
'After 31 days underwater, [Fabien Cousteau] and his crew are about to
become land dwellers again,' the Mission 31 team tweeted Wednesday
morning.
The trip had been months in planning and seen several delays, but
Cousteau finally achieved his goal.
In 1963, Jacques-Yves Cousteau and a half-dozen divers he dubbed 'oceanauts'
spent 30 days inside an undersea lab called Conshelf II near the Port of
Sudan.
'There are a lot of challenges physically and psychologically,' said
Cousteau, who was born in Paris and grew up on his grandfather's ships,
Calypso and Alcyone.
'The benefit is that the backyard is infinite.'
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.
Despite relatively smooth sailing, the team did experience a few
difficulties.
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'One night the air conditioning stopped working and it got to 95 degrees
and 95 per cent humidity,' Andrew Shantz, a Ph.D. candidate in marine
eco-science at Florida International University, told Reuters.
Shantz spent 17 days inside Aquarius starting June 1.
'We saw a Goliath grouper attack a big barracuda, which is something I
never imagined happening,' he added.
Aquarius is the last undersea laboratory still operating. It sits on a
patch of sand near deep coral reefs about 9 miles south of Key Largo,
Florida. Dozens of other undersea labs around the world have been
mothballed due to high costs.
It is 'the best-kept secret in the oceans,' Cousteau told Reuters in
2013.
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
pressurized to prevent decompression sickness, when human tissue absorbs
gases like nitrogen in dangerously high volumes.
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Beyond the otherworldly experience, the benefit of living underwater was
intended to help scientists with their day-to-day research and data
collection.
Researchers studying the effects of coral bleaching – when warming
waters prompt the living coral to expel the colorful algae living inside
– departed Aquarius at the crack of dawn each morning to study the
reefs' energy production before the day begins.
'Day in, day out, our science schedule is pretty repetitive. I think the
documentary guys are going to get bored,' Shantz said prior to the
mission.
Following the morning dive, teams returned to the station to speak via
Skype with classrooms around the world and test how the extended stay at
such depths affects their bodies.
They the would re-emerge from Aquarius in scuba gear around noon and
after night falls to collect additional data that would be impossible
without the underwater lab.
'You end up getting these structured, regimented observations that you
don't get on a single dive,' Shantz added. |