Aquarius Habitat

Today, NOAA’s Aquarius undersea laboratory is the only undersea habitat in the world devoted to science. The habitat, owned by NOAA and managed by the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, is located 64 feet below the surface at the base of a coral reef in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Aquarius provides life support systems that allows up to four scientists and two technicians to live and work underwater, in reasonably comfortable living quarters for missions lasting up to 30 days.

The Aquarius habitat increases working bottom time to nearly ten times over what scientists typically obtain using conventional surface-based diving techniques. At the end of each mission, aquanauts go through a 17-hour decompression, where the pressure inside Aquarius is slowly reduced from the pressure at the habitat's storage depth of 50 feet (ambient) to surface pressure, allowing the divers' tissues to regain surface equilibrium. The habitat is then repressurized to ambient depth, and the aquanauts are able to don scuba gear, swim out of the habitat, and ascend to the surface as if they had just performed a short dive to 50 feet. Additional advantages provided by the Aquarius include sophisticated power and communication capabilities. Scientists have email, telephone and video conferencing capability to anywhere in the world. Aquarius successfully supported more than 90 missions between 1993 and 2005.