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Scientists Are Testing a New Underwater Habitat Where Humans Can Live on the Ocean Floor

DEEP’s Vanguard habitat will let aquanauts live and work underwater for days, helping scientists study marine life directly at depth.

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The ocean covers 71% of the planet, and humans have colonized only a small fraction of it.

That gap has been on DEEP’s mind since the UK-based ocean engineering company launched in 2021. Its answer is Vanguard, a pilot subsea habitat now installed at Tennessee Reef in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, sitting 17 meters (nearly 60 feet) underwater and marking the first open-ocean human habitat built, tested, and deployed in the United States in four decades. Up to four crew members, called aquanauts, will live and work inside it on missions of five or more days.

Subsea living runs on a strange loophole in human biology. Spend 24 hours underwater, and your body’s tissues........

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