A sub-aquatic future beckons with these luxurious underwater worlds

Vanguard, a compact pilot habitat nearing real-world testing this summer, and Sentinel, a luxurious underwater campus advancing towards a 2027 launch, are leading the British aquatic quest to unlock the ocean’s mysteries.

On course to meet the prediction made in Busted’s hit song ‘Year 3000’, and rivalling the scope of Karl Stromberg’s villainous underwater lair from James Bond’s The Spy Who Loved Me, Deep says its motivations are marine science-related only, but could eventually lead to humans living underwater.

Deep’s first sub-aquatic habitat, Vanguard is designed for three aquanauts, with a 12-metre by 7.5-metre structure submerged at 100 metres (330 feet) for up to a week. Transportable by road and deployable from a vessel in under 12 hours, it features a steel hull capable of enduring ten times the atmospheric pressure. It’s currently housed in a Chepstow hangar ahead of a 2025 subsea deployment. 

Sentinel scales up the vision. Housing six (expandable to dozens), it’s engineered for 28-day missions at 200 metres (656 feet). With wet and dry labs, private quarters and a renewable micro-grid, Sentinel offers a semi-permanent base for ocean research, building on Vanguard’s groundwork.

A labyrinth of semi–permanent bedroom suites, configurable workspaces and social areas, it’s designed to rest harmoniously on the ocean floor with a multi-generational mission to make humans aquatic. 

Together, both habitats aim to bolster marine conservation. Vanguard’s week-long missions enable rapid ocean floor research, while Sentinel’s endurance promises deeper marine biology insights, preserving samples at depth for potential medical breakthroughs. Deep believes it will offer unique access to the world's continental shelves and the deepest point at which sunlight penetrates the ocean, where it is believed that 90 per cent of marine life is found. 

“We want to bring humanity back to the ocean,” said Sean Wolpert, President of Deep. “It's raising that awareness and highlighting the importance of the ocean, which is the heart and lungs of our planet, responsible for [the oxygen] in at least every other breath you take.

"Additionally, the ocean's biodiversity is vast, yet our understanding of it remains limited. The exploration and mapping of the ocean are still in their infancy, and the potential applications for healthcare that it holds are significant." 

Dawn Kernagis, Deep’s Director of Scientific Research, underscores the potential. “What excites me most about the work we’re doing at Deep is the range of scientific discoveries that underwater habitats can open up,” she said.

“These opportunities break down into three broad areas: the study of humans, including physiology, psychology, and performance; studying the habitat itself, including life support systems; and marine science, from biology to conservation. 

“Habitats like Deep’s Sentinel will enable more people to spend days or weeks under the sea, living at the same pressure as the surrounding water. These new habitats will provide more opportunities to build on the research that took place on the earliest habitats in the 1960s, using technology that wasn’t available back then. As they become more established, subsea habitats should facilitate larger sample sizes and a more diverse range of subjects for human research studies. 

“Coupled with the technology we have today for studying humans, including advanced monitoring of human physiology and tools for studying changes at the cellular and molecular level, we will advance our understanding of how humans respond and adapt to living at pressure.”

“Our new habitats will also have the capacity to conduct processing and analysis of blood or tissue samples at depth, which eliminates any changes to those samples related to the stress and time of bringing the sample to the surface before it’s analysed.” 

Kernagis believes there is so much still to understand about how humans will adapt to living underwater, and habitats like Deep’s can unlock this knowledge. As well as being able to study what happens in the habitat, researchers will also have much more time at the bottom of the sea to learn about the world outside it.

From biological and geological to chemical and physical measurements, they will have the ability to work on the bottom for extended periods and maximise the potential research of the environment. 

“Having habitats that can be redeployed from one place to another will also facilitate much more conservation work, like coral restoration efforts, all around the world,” says Kernagis. “It also promises to transform our knowledge of marine biology and pharmacology, potentially leading to the discovery of lifesaving drugs.”

Deep is now preparing to deploy Sentinel in a large limestone quarry in the west of England, with a first deep-sea trial to follow. A James Bond plot this is not, but blending Stromberg and Verne’s dreams could have a tangible real-world impact. 

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