Jacques Cousteau's grandson launches age of the aquanaut

It’s not every boy who spends his formative years up to speed a former British Royal Navy minesweeper changed into a marine laboratory, but few was raised as the grandson of an internationally renowned oceanographic researcher.

So it was that a young Fabien Cousteau would sit aboard RV Calypso while his grandfather, the biologist, explorer and conservationist Jacques Yves-Cousteau, explained the awe-inspiring biodiversity within the depths below and its significance to life on the planet.

“It helped me start to see the world from underneath up in a manner that highlights what makes our world unique,” Mr Cousteau, who first learnt to scuba dive on his fourth birthday, told The National.

As NASA was getting ready to launch three members of the Expedition 63 crew some 250 miles to the International Space Station on a Soyuz spaceflight, Mr Cousteau described his ambition to create an equivalent facility for underwater research.

Named following the prophetic sea-god, the program is for Proteus, sort of international sea station, to sit 60ft below the ocean surface near to the Dutch protectorate of Curacao. It is set to be the most significant underwater research habitat ever made, located in an extremely biodiverse, marine-protected portion of the Caribbean.

When built, Proteus will be sustainably powered by hybrid sources, including wind, solar and Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC), and scientists desire to grow fresh vegetation for food in its underwater greenhouse.

Although the look is yet to be finalised, the intention is for the station to be fitted with living quarters, a hydroponics lab, a submarine docking station, a medical bay and a video production studio, as well as state-of-the-art research laboratories. It will provide full-spectrum light to ensure that the study team’s circadian rhythms are similar in the darkness in the bottom of the sea because they will be on land with sunlight.

Mr Cousteau, now a marine biologist and ocean conservationist in his own right, aims to improve $130.4 million for the first iteration of Proteus. The project up to now has financial backers from the Caribbean and the US but he is available to investment from other regions, like the Middle East.

Although the pandemic has slightly slowed progress, with funding set up he anticipates a 36-month turnaround from completed design and production of the station to its installation on the ocean bed. The first mission would then follow.

The 53-year-old’s longer-term plan is to create a network of underwater research hubs in various regions of the world’s oceans, to be able to stream big data in real time, 24/7, to greatly help guide future climate-change policy on land.

“This brings opportunities on so many levels,” Mr Cousteau says. “Even if you are not really a conservationist, I think that a smart business person or a smart government could start to see the value of experiencing an underwater research station within their backyard.”

Proteus is a project of the Fabien Cousteau Ocean Learning Centre, a non-profit organisation founded by the aquanaut in 2016. It has strategic partnerships with major technology, data and submersibles companies, and with governments, though its founder says that politics should not are likely involved when deciding on collaborations.

“This is not a study station for creating weapons of war; this is more a global Space Station when compared to a United Nations of the ocean,” Mr Cousteau says.

There is currently only 1 active underwater research hub - the Aquarius Reef Base off Florida Keys in america - but that was established back 1986.

The aquanaut says the International Space Station and Proteus have many conceptual similarities. NASA and its own Extreme Environment arm (NEEMO) missions use the Aquarius station for training purposes since it offers a comparable experience to being in space.

It is envisaged that Proteus, however, provides 10 times the size of the living quarters of the International Space Station - also equivalent to 10 times the inner internal space of Aquarius. That and Proteus’s cutting-edge technology can make it an optimal training ground for future space missions.

Another similarity between Proteus and the International Space Station is their modular nature - both can add and subtract as much pods or sections as needed.

“And we focus on being as self-sufficient as possible in order that we can follow in the steps of the International Space Station and deploy people for not days but weeks, months and maybe even longer.”

The new station will enable scientists to review migratory habits of animals, and also weather patterns, which Mr Cousteau says may help farmers optimise crop yields and society adapt to climate change. The technology on Proteus may also facilitate research into viral pandemics and a potential cure for cancer using chemical compositions of organisms such as for example deep-water sponges or fish-eating cone snails.

“We've another project in Curacao that we're going to begin that is a coral restoration, involving research looking at 3D printing coral reef structures, inviting coral which has been evolutionarily accelerated in an all natural process, so that it’s more with the capacity of combating climate change,” he says.

Previous underwater research stations - such as for example Aquarius, Conshelf I, Hydrolab, Sealab - have accommodated up to six people. Proteus will hold as many 12, depending on just how much space is deemed to provide each scientist enough comfort in order to work for long periods at a stretch.

“You should be in a position to have the food systems that also cater to that because you burn up to five times as much calories underwater as you do on land,” Mr Cousteau says.

He says that the duration of Proteus’s first mission would be bound by several parameters, including the toxic effect that can turn into a problem when crew members face prolonged high degrees of oxygen.

Seven years back, the scientist spent 31 days underwater inside Aquarius for Mission 31 with five others, the longest time clocked up by a team of six in such a station. “Up to 4,000 internal square feet appears like a whole lot of space,” Mr Cousteau says.

“You're sharing it with 12 other persons with all sorts of equipment, so you’re likely to maintain fairly close confinement, together with the psychological pressure of understanding that you're in isolation.

“I was more than pleased to go another 31 days, but I'm an unusual person,” he says. “That is my backyard. That is home for me; I've done this my entire life.”

Mr Cousteau thinks that his late grandfather will be fascinated with Proteus. Jacques Cousteau’s team assembled several living and research stations in the 1960s, called ConShelf (Continental Shelf Station) I, II and III. He died in June 1997.

“My grandfather had visions to do ConShelf IV,” Cousteau says. “Although architecturally Proteus is nothing like what he envisioned, I think this would be a thing that would be very exciting to him.

"I'd hope that it might be because I'm certainly taking cues from the education I received from my children along with the pioneers on Calypso. So it's very much for the reason that vein and one which I hope will mark the next phase in ocean exploration.”

Humans have explored less than 5 % of the ocean world, and many questions remain unanswered. With Proteus, Mr Cousteau intends to improve all that, while also helping society appreciate the importance of the oceans as the world’s life support system.

As he puts it: “No healthy oceans means no healthy future.”