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Into The Abyss

Building a deepwater live-work lab

Marine scientist Richard Cooper hates his commute. Just reaching Veatch Canyon - a deep-sea rift 80 miles off Nantucket - means arranging a crew and a vessel, hauling a submersible craft, and packing enough food and support equipment to last at least seven days. So in 1996, Cooper, a University of Connecticut professor, decided he would design an undersea lab where he and other scientists could hang out indefinitely. "To really understand what goes on down there," he says, "I had to live and work at depth."

Today, his dream of a permanent lab next to Veatch has evolved into a $75 million project called the Ocean Atmosphere Seafloor Integration Study. Cooper founded a nonprofit in Groton, Connecticut, to direct Oasis and oversee several new research endeavors, including the construction of Ocean Base One - the first deep-sea research facility, which will sit on the continental shelf, a full 550 feet beneath the ocean's surface. (The next-deepest undersea lab is Aquarius, a mere 70 feet below, off Key Largo, Florida.) Cooper likens the concept to the International Space Station. His goal: to build a lab that can support life for weeks in a brutally unforgiving and isolated environment.

Ocean Base One will be immense: 40,000 square feet of research and living quarters. A pressurized elevator housed in a watertight shaft will shuttle occupants to and from the lab (imagine an upside-down oil-drilling platform almost as deep as Seattle's Space Needle is high). Workers will inhabit two distinct sectors: one emulates the atmosphere at sea level; another raises air pressure to 19 times that on the surface, matching water pressure outside. After 12 hours in the chamber - breathing an oxygen, nitrogen, and helium mixture - scientists can enter the surrounding ocean wearing nothing more than sophisticated diving gear.

Firsthand observation promises huge improvements in undersea research. "We have robots that can go deep," Cooper says, "but using them is like stumbling through a forest with your eyes shut, then opening them every six hours for 15 minutes." Ocean Base One inhabitants will get the chance to spy on deep-sea organisms - lobsters, tile fish, ocean pout, rock crab - as they parade along the seafloor. The base will also afford an ideal vista for observing the impact of oil and gas drilling, toxic dumping, and overfishing.

By 2007, Cooper expects to have enough funding from foundations, oil companies, and other sources to break water. Add two more years for construction, and he'll finally get to work from home.