By Brayden Yin

Fabien Cousteau, an ocean scientist, plans to build a  lab named Proteus off the coast of Curaçao in the Caribbean ocean, 60 feet underwater. Many people say that exploring the ocean is harder than exploring space. This statement is probably true. More people have gone to the moon than the bottom of the ocean. 

Fabien Cousteau is the grandson of Jacques Cousteau, inventor of the Aqua-Lung. Like his grandfather, Fabien Cousteau is dedicated to exploring the sea and protecting the oceans. Even though the ocean is closer to us than space, more than 80% has not been mapped. 

Underwater exploration is limited because the deeper a human goes towards the ocean floor, the more pressure there is. If a diver comes to the surface too suddenly, the change of pressure would kill the diver. All that would be left in the suit would be a few bones and some pieces of skin. It is for those reasons that underwater exploration is limited.

An upside of living in Proteus is that this underwater base grows its own food. The base will have the first ever underwater greenhouse. The goal of Proteus is to grow food, discover new energy sources, and even search for new medicines. The functions of Proteus need vast amounts of electricity, so the base will run on solar energy, even though it will be 60ft underwater. At night, when there is no sunlight, the base will run on the currents in the ocean.

Cousteau hopes to have Proteus done by 2023.

Sources:

https://newsforkids.net/articles/2020/08/11/proteus-a-plan-for-an-undersea-research-station/