Vanguard is a subsea human habitat installed at Tennessee Reef in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. (Brendan Hall/DEEP)
Do you really, really, really like the ocean? Do you like it so much that you would spend multiple days living on the seafloor in a structure that is part laboratory, part dormitory, and part diving vessel?Soon, a crew of 'aquanauts' will do exactly that, inhabiting the first iteration of Vanguard, a short-term stay subsea habitat designed by ocean engineering company DEEP.In many ways, life inside Vanguard is like being in a spaceship. (Brendan Hall/DEEP)This is not the first time humans have experimented with ocean-floor living, but it's the first time DEEP – a private company founded in 2021 – has enabled it.Vanguard is a pilot for their much more ambitious project, Sentinel, which the company claims will enable "both short-term and semi-permanent deployments anywhere on the continental shelf" by 2027.Vanguard, which has been installed on a fixed platform at Tennessee Reef in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, 17 meters (56 feet) underwater, can house up to four crew members at a time.ScienceAlert spoke to DEEP's director of scientific research, Dawn Kernagis, who will be one of Vanguard's first crew members.As a NASA-trained 'aquanaut', Dawn Kernagis (bottom right, with SCUBA tank visible) is no stranger to undersea living. (NASA)Kernagis's research focus is human physiology in extreme environments, especially as it relates to the brain and nervous system.She was previously a crew member on NASA's NEEMO 21 undersea habitat mission, so she is no stranger to undersea living.For scientists, spending continuous time at depth for research does offer some perks.
