Sep 4, 2023

People could be living at the bottom of the sea within years thanks to Bristol project The DEEP campus will give people the opportunity to live 200 metres below the waves for extended periods of time DEEP Sentinel (Image: DEEP Sentinel) Sign up to our free email alerts for the top Bristol Voices stories sent straight to your e-mail Invalid emailSomething went wrong, please try again later. More Newsletters We use your sign-up to provide content in ways you’ve consented to and improve our understanding of you. This may include adverts from us and third parties based on our knowledge of you. More info Thank you for subscribing! Group 28 Sign up to our free email alerts for the top Bristol Voices stories sent straight to your e-mail Invalid emailSomething went wrong, please try again later. Sign Up × A project that could see people able to live and work 200 metres is getting underway - and it’s based in Bristol. The idea has been announced by a Bristol-based ocean technology and exploration company called DEEP, and they say their purpose is to ‘make humans aquatic’. The plan is to establish a ‘permanent human presence under the oceans’ from 2027. At present, any scientists or deep sea workers going down to such depths can only do so for a maximum of a few hours at a time, but DEEP said it will use innovative technology to enable scientists to operate at depth for extended periods of time - maybe a month. The project was launched on Monday, September 4, and involves something called The DEEP Campus, an underwater habitat which will act a lot like the International Space Station does in space - with scientists travelling down into the depths to live and work there, with it continuously operating. “This will give extended access to most of the world’s continental shelves and importantly, being able to descend to 200 metres allows access to the entirety of the Epipelagic, or "sunlight", zone,” explained a spokesperson for DEEP. Want our best stories with fewer ads and alerts when the biggest news stories drop? Download our app on iPhone or Android (Bristol) “The lower limit of the Epipelagic zone is the deepest point at which sunlight penetrates into the ocean and it's estimated that 90 per cent of marine life is found in this zone. Being able to comprehensively explore the full extent of this part of the ocean rather than just performing incursions from the surface, will represent a step-change in the way scientists can observe, monitor, and understand the oceans,” they added. “Following two years of intensive and pioneering research into innovative manufacturing processes and materials science, DEEP is at the advanced stage of technical design and has commenced production. The DEEP system offers a radically more effective way to live and operate underwater than has existed before. Previously, underwater facilities have been temporary and fixed-location. DEEP’s habitat is modular, scalable, autonomous, recoverable, re-configurable and re-deployable,” he said. The operation is to be based in Bristol, and will take over the old National Dive and Activity Centre, in Gloucestershire, just outside Chepstow. Bristol and the region was chosen as DEEP’s initial base because of the ‘unique cluster of relevant marine engineering, diving, hyperbaric and submersible expertise, and links with the wider UK commercial and technical diving industry’, a spokesperson explained. “Together these provide the foundation for a new industrial and scientific ecosystem,” he added. (Image: DEEP Sentinel) DEEP president Steve Etherton said the work was going to help scientists preserve the oceans. “We need to preserve the oceans. To do that we need to understand them,” he said. “The oceans sit at the centre of many of the generational challenges the world is facing, and they also offer opportunities we have not even begun to comprehend. “They are the source of at least every other breath we take. They influence the weather . They influence the climate. They influence us. Yet, this life-sustaining ecosystem remains surprisingly unknown. Through our innovative technology DEEP will enable scientists to operate at depth for extended periods of time and we hope, in some small way, will contribute to our understanding of this life-giving environment,” he added. And the president of DEEP in the US, Sean Wolpert, said being able to be based under the ocean will be an important method of helping to save the habitats. “Out of sight and out of mind - not having a better understanding of the oceans is no longer an option,” he said. (Image: DEEP Sentinel) “DEEP is coming out of stealth mode now as we need to take others on this journey. We are already talking to potential international partners, and others with a long-term view of the needs of the planet, who recognise that the up-side for humanity in preserving and husbanding the oceans is now too great to ignore. “Looking at the themes around the emerging new ocean/blue economy we hear of opportunity and solutions in pharmaceutical research, in carbon capture, in innovative medicines. This is about how we can cooperate and can begin to work with the oceans for generations to come. DEEP offer to partners a way to do this hitherto impossible,” he added. Story Saved You can find this story in   My Bookmarks. Or by navigating to the user icon in the top right. Follow BristolLive