The US Navy once sent aquanauts to live on the ocean floor for weeks, hoping SEALAB would prove humans could colonise the deep. Instead, one diver died, the program collapsed, and the underwater futur

Key Points:

• In 1965, aquanaut Scott Carpenter spent a month living in SEALAB II, a U.S. Navy underwater habitat, marking a significant milestone in saturation diving and underwater habitation research.
• SEALAB I and II demonstrated that divers could live and work on the ocean floor for extended periods, completing tasks that would take conventional divers much longer, with SEALAB II involving 45 days of continuous occupation.
• SEALAB III, deployed in 1969 to a depth of 610 feet, was plagued by technical issues and ended tragically with the death of diver Berry Cannon, leading to the termination of the SEALAB program and Navy saturation diving experiments.
• Despite the end of SEALAB, saturation diving continued commercially, especially offshore, and remotely operated vehicles have taken over the deepest underwater tasks, reaching depths far beyond human limits.
• The only remaining underwater habitat is the Aquarius Reef Base off Key Largo, used for research and NASA spacewalk training, while SEALAB artifacts are preserved in museums, marking the shift away from underwater colonies to robotic exploration.