Marine scientist Fabien Costeau (grandson of the legendary marine scientist Jacques-Yves Cousteau) plans to build a research laboratory on the seabed off Curaçao in the Caribbean. The laboratory will be called Proteus and with an area of 370 square meters, it will be ten times as large as the only underwater laboratory that exists today.
Proteus gives researchers the opportunity to work underwater for several weeks in a row without having to spend hours on decompression to avoid scuba diving after each dive.
Fabien Costeau hopes that Proteus will inspire others to also build research stations in the sea and draw more attention to marine research . Because even though 71 percent of the earth’s surface is covered by oceans, we have only explored around five percent of the oceans.
If everything goes according to plan, Proteus should be ready within three years.
