An Anonymous Investor Is Spending Millions To Make Underwater Homes

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Down an easy-to-miss turnoff on the A48 just outside Chepstow on the Welsh border, the gentle rumble of trucks, cranes and people at work mixes with birdsong in what is an otherwise peaceful rural setting. It is a crisp and sunny winter morning when I visit and, at first glance, the site appears to be little more than prefab containers and a car park. Yet, behind the scenes a group of men and women with expertise in diving, marine biology, technology, finance, construction and manufacturing are building something extraordinary. They have come together with a single mission statement: to make humans aquatic. Their project is called Deep (not The Deep) and the site was chosen after a global search for the perfect location to build and test underwater accommodation, which the project founders say will enable them to establish a 'permanent human presence' under the sea from 2027.

So far, so crazy sounding. Yet Deep is funded by a single anonymous private investor with deep pockets who wants to put hundreds of millions of pounds (if not more) into a project that will 'increase understanding of the ocean and its critical role for humanity,' according to a Deep spokesperson. Its leadership team remains tight-lipped not only about the amount (they will only say it is substantially more than the 100 million pounds being invested into the Deep campus near Chepstow), but also about the investor's identity. Whoever is behind it, the size of the investment means that an ambitious-sounding idea appears to be swiftly becoming a reality.

Mike Shackleford, Deep's chief operating officer, explains the thought process behind the project. 'Back in the 1950s and 60s, there was a space race and an ocean race going on, and space won out. Space is tough to get to, but once you're up there, it's a relatively benign environment.' The ocean is the opposite: it's fairly easy to get to the bottom, but once you're down there, 'basically, everything wants to kill you,' he jokes. 'Yet, just about every oceanographer I've met says, 'You'd be shocked at how little we know about the ocean,'' Shackleford tells me. 'So somebody has got to take those first steps to try to build some of the technology that will allow us to go down and study the ocean in situ.' The idea of Deep's sentinels is that, initially, people will be able to stay inside for up to 28 days at a time -- though the hope is that this could one day be extended to months... and beyond. 'The goal is to live in the ocean, for ever. To have permanent human settlements in all oceans across the world,' says Shackleford.

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