Studying the ocean is expensive business.  For a start, a huge proportion of the ocean is difficult for us to reach.  Even if you just want to head out away from the coast and take some samples from the surface waters, you need a boat, sampling and measuring devices, people who can operate the boat, people who can operate the devices, provisions…. You get the picture.  Then you need to take repeat measurements - which mean repeat trips.  Sampling from on or near seafloor – especially in deep water – can be even more costly.  But what if you didn’t have to keep going back and forth?  What if you could have all you need in situ, on the ocean floor?

The concept of the undersea observatory is not new.  Back in 1962, underwater researcher, filmmaker, and co-developer of the Aqua-lung Jacques-Yves Cousteau along with US naval doctor George Bond launched the first of three Continental Shelf Stations, Conshelf I off the coast of Marseilles.  Submerged in 10 meters of water, two aquanauts (Claude Wesly and Albert Falco) were able to spend up to 5 hours per day living and working under the ocean.  A year later and Conshelf II was launched, this time submerged in 10 meters of water in the Red Sea off the Sudanese coast.  Unlike Conshelf I, Conshelf II allowed 5 aquanauts to live and work underwater continually for 30 days, but was reliant on surface support.  A second unit lying much deeper at 27 meters was added to Conshelf II shortly after.  In 1965 Conshelf III saw 6 divers living much more self-sufficiently some 102 meters below the Mediterranean Sea for 21 days.

Conshelf was the first, but it wasn’t long before more ‘underwater habitats’ appeared.  The US Navy submerged SEALAB 1 in 1964 down to a depth of 58 meters off the Bermudan coast, with the hope of keeping 4 naval divers submerged for 3 weeks (a tropical storm ended the stay after just 11 days).  In 1965, SEALAB 2 was placed some 62 meters off the coast of California, which was then followed by the much less successful (and ill-fated) SEALAB 3, which was submerged down to 185 meters off San Clemente Island, California. 

Much more successful was NOAAs 1966 Hydrolab, first used in the Bahamas and then in the US Virgin Islands.  Germany’s 1968 Helgoland was the world’s first cold water habitat, whilst in 1969 NASA’s Tektite I became the first underwater habitat to be manned by scientists, and not professional divers.  Its predecessor Tektite 2’s inaugural mission was the first to use an entirely female crew, paving the way for the greater inclusion of women both in aquatic and space missions.  Before designing SeaOrbiter – a semi-submersible vessel planned to be constructed in the next two years, architect Jacques Rougerie also constructed three underwater habitats that were suspended in the water column rather than placed directly on the seafloor – Galathée in 1977, Aquabulle in 1978, and Hippocample in 1981. 

Arguably the most extensively used of the underwater habitats is the Marine Resources Development Foundation’s MarineLab.  Starting out life in 1973 as MEDUSA (Midshipman Engineered & Designed Undersea Systems Apparatus), MarineLab was placed in Key Largo in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary in 1985.  Since then it has been joined by the Jules Undersea Lodge, which in a previous life operated at the La Chalupa Research Laboratory, and finally the Aquarius Reef Base, built in 1986 is now touted as the last fully operational undersea research centre in the world.

These are not the only ‘underwater habitats’ to have been constructed.  More so, undersea observatories are no longer limited to being manned.  Joining an array of in-situ and remote monitoring devices, Ocean Network Canada/University of Victoria has gone one step further- cabled undersea observatories.  Each of their 3 sea floor observatories - VENUS (Victoria Experimental Network Under the Sea), NEPTUNE (North-East Pacific Time-series Undersea Networked Experiments), and the much smaller Arctic observatory employ more than 850 kilometres of seafloor fibre optic cables to allow researchers to remotely operate some 180 instruments, and gather data from 3,400 measurement sensors on the Canadian west and Arctic coasts, all from the comfort of their own terrestrially based labs, and all in near real-time.  An average of 290 gigabytes of data is collected daily to provide insights into a number of research areas including plate tectonics, deep sea ecosystems, and climate change, as well as insights into natural phenomena such as underwater landslides and storm surges.  Not only is the data publicly available, but the observatories are also used for science communication and education.

Underwater observatories – whether manned or cabled – are impressive pieces on infrastructure, but they come with significant costs.  In 2012 ONC ‘s cabled observatories received C$41.7 million in new funding from the Canadian Federal and British Columbia Governments for operational costs.  Just last month, Canadian Federal Government announced that C$20 million would be provided for the development of the next phase of the observatories, named Smart Oceans™.  In 2012 NOAA cut its funding to Aquarius, threatening its closure until Florida International University were awarded a grant to maintain the base in 2013.  Costs for such endeavours run deeper maintaining the structure itself.  In the spring of 2014 ocean explorer and grandson of Jacques-Yves Cousteau’ Fabien Cousteau’s ‘Mission 31’ required approximately U$1.8 million to have 6 aquanauts in Aquarius for 31 days.  With all these costs, the question centres around if they really have made a scientific contribution.

The earliest ‘habitats’ were primarily focused on and assessing if and how people could realistically live and work underwater.  In this they certainly succeeded.  Numerous physiological and behavioural studies were conducted, so much so that Hydro-Lab even had its own journal whilst it was in operation.  It wasn’t just ocean exploration that was furthered by these ventures but also space exploration, which shares many of the physiological and technical challenges that face the aquanauts.  The marine environment itself was largely a secondary research concern until the Tektite missions, which produced some 9 peer-reviewed scientific papers on coral-reef fish ecology, including the influence of herbivores on marine plants, the “behaviour of reef fishes in relation to fish pots”, and “Space resource sharing in a coral-reef fish community”. 

Since 1993, Aquarius’s 115+ missions have racked up more than 300 peer-reviewed scientific papers including work on the chemistry of colour vision in marine organisms, the pharmaceutical potential of coral-reefs, and the impact of sewage pollution on marine organisms.  ONC’s observatories have provided data for over 58 peer-reviewed scientific papers.  Those that support undersea observatories note that volume of data being collected simply could not be done as cheaply nor as quickly as can be using underwater habitats or cabled observatories.  Others argue that the sheer cost of these enterprises outweigh the contribution they make to science.  This money it is argued could be directed to other vital (and arguably less glamorous) research programs.  With funding for ocean science ever dwindling, undersea observatories will have to fight to retain the high level of funding required for their persistence.  They will not only have to win the hearts of the scientific community, but of the wider public, and ultimately the political agenda.

The article was written for The Marine Professional – a publication of the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science & Technology (IMarEST).