Proteus Group is at the planning stage of building a permanent $200m underwater human habitat on the edge of the Curacao shelf. Apart from giving a home for long-term research, it is also a place for storytelling.
The grand-son of legendry Jacques Cousteau, probably one of the world’s most famous divers, has plans to build a permanent underwater habitat for scientists in the Caribbean. The idea was born in 2014. Now nearly a decade later it looks like it is coming to fruition.
Fabien Cousteau is like most of his French/American family members a film maker, underwater explorer and environmental campaigner. He has made the sea his life, and now, wants it to be where he and others can live.
His idea is to raise over $200m for what would be the first of a series of habitable marine research laboratories. Known as the Proteus Fabien has brought in a team of experts to realise his dream of building what he and they are calling an underwater international specie station.
The first station being developed is on the edge of the continental shelf of Curacao, with plans to have the site ranging from an entry level at 20 m but ranging down to 50 m , a depth known as the mesophotic zone in between the brightly lit shallow waters and the deeper darker parts of the ocean.
Having performed sea floor mapping at a potential site off Curacao last year, design of the habitat and the land side infrastructure needed, is underway. The plan is to use renewable energy to power the subsea scientific home. Solar, wind and wave power.
Currently a Proteus team is scouting funding and sponsorship for the project, with promises of huge opportunities for front end research, including potential scientific research into possibilities to search for new medicines in the flora and fauna of the deep, as well as better understanding of the coral environments, to using the station s a launch pad for deep ocean exploration.
But an ambitious project needs planning as well as solid funding.
You can hear much ore about the project, where it will be located, the plans to raise the funds needed and the importance of story telling and media, as well as a solid approach to biofouling in the latest edition of the Aronnax Podcast. Proteus Group partnership director Gary Rosewell and Mark Patterson, Proteus’s lead scientist sat down with Fathom World’s Craig Eason to talk about making a $200m dream a reality.
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