<\/p>\n
A new undersea habitat was installed in the Florida Keys last month. It\u2019s a spot for underwater researchers, also known as aquanauts, to live and work underwater.<\/p>\n
Brendan Hall \/ DEEP<\/p>\n
The Florida Keys just got its second undersea habitat, where researchers can spend days working and living without breaking the water\u2019s surface. But unlike the first, a government and university-funded project first built in the 1980s, this one is privately funded. And it\u2019s brand new.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s called Vanguard, the first product from undersea habitat company DEEP. The company says it\u2019s step one toward its mission of a network of undersea habitats.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been over 40 years since we\u2019ve had an undersea habitat built for humans and launched,\u201d said Dawn Keragis, DEEP\u2019s director of scientific research. \u201cWe\u2019re really building on the shoulders of giants who\u2019ve done this research.\u201d<\/p>\n
The benefit of an underwater home for researchers is that their bodies can reach a state where they are safe to stay underwater for days at a time, breathing in air from the surface, without worrying about developing any of the depth-based illnesses that plague SCUBA divers.<\/p>\n
Vanguard, the first undersea habitat by DEEP, is in place at Tennessee Reef in the Keys. Brendan Hall \/ DEEP <\/p>\n
Instead of hitting the limit of one to two hours of a traditional SCUBA dive, underwater divers can “really go out for hours and hours and hours at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Plus, the overnight experience allows researchers to behave more like Jane Goodall with her chimpanzees, Keragis said, instead of a fly-by expedition.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of getting a snapshot of what that environment looks like for an hour at most, you\u2019re getting a really good picture over 24 hours,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Roger Garcia, Director of Habitat Operations at DEEP, diving down to Vanguard. Brendan Hall \/ DEEP History underwater<\/p>\n
In the heyday of the 1960s and \u201870s, the world\u2019s oceans were sprinkled with hundreds of undersea habitats.<\/p>\n
Famous ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau and his crew played chess, smoked cigarettes and drank wine between missions in the \u201cStarfish House,\u201d as memorialized in his Oscar-winning documentary \u201cWorld Without Sun<\/a>.\u201d They even brought a parrot down in a pressure cooker and introduced it to the reef\u2019s parrotfish through the window.<\/p>\n But the incredible expense of maintaining these habitats \u2014 and a series of horrible accidents resulting in a few deaths \u2014 led to a pullback in federal funding for the undersea habitat industry. Until Vanguard was installed in the Keys last month, the only other underwater research lab in the continental U.S. was the Aquarius Reef Base near Key Largo.<\/p>\n Aquarius was first sunk in the Keys in 1993 by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration and passed into the hands of Florida International University in 2013. But it was originally constructed in 1986, making it a 40-year-old facility. The decades have come with some wear and tear.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Aquarius1-1024x768.png\" "\\"Aquarius1-1024x768.png\\"")
A shot of Aquarius, the first underwater research facility offshore in the Florida Keys. It\u2019s now operated by Florida International University. FIU <\/p>\n
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