Fabien Cousteau Takes Plunge To Beat Grandfather's Underwater Record

An anonymous reader writes Fabien Cousteau, grandson of famed oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, plans to spend 31 days underwater off the coast of Key Largo, Florida. He has already spent 3 weeks in an underwater laboratory called the Aquarius, and hopes to break his grandfather's record of 30 days in an undersea habitat. "There are a lot of challenges physically and psychologically," said Cousteau, 46, who grew up on his grandfather's ships, Calypso and Alcyone. Cousteau added: "We'll be able to do Twitter chats, we'll be able to do Skype sessions, we'll be able to do Facebook posts and Instagram posts and all these things that we take for granted on land, but up until now it was impossible to do from down below."

Comments

I don't understand how this is a "record"

[Blakey Rat]

Ballistic missile submarines regularly spend 80+ days underwater, even during peacetime. How is 30 days a record?

Re:I don't understand how this is a "record"

[gstoddart]

This is the headline:

Fabien Cousteau Takes Plunge To Beat Grandfather's Underwater Record

What is your source of confusion?

It's not a world record, it's longer than Jacques Cousteau did it.

Re:I don't understand how this is a "record"

[timrod]

Underwater Penis sounds like the name of a metal band.

Re:I don't understand how this is a "record"

[gstoddart]

Why ever for? He's advocating for finding ways to do it better. You think he should hobble himself with the best of 1970s technology?

Look, this is a PR stunt, and a press release designed to drive awareness to him. Let's not suddenly start acting like he needs to recreate the exact same conditions to be able to say he stayed down longer than his very famous grandfather.

You have to remember what this is before you start arguing the semantics of it. Because there's not a lot of point or value in doing that once you remember that this is mostly a stunt, with some actual attempts to do some research.

At the end of the day, he's saying "I will do this longer than my grandfather did, but with newer technology -- and if people didn't mention my grandfather, nobody would even cover this". Because he's nowhere near as famous as his grandfather was in his day.

This is as much about awareness (and probably fund raising) as it is the specifics of the 'record'.

Re:I don't understand how this is a "record"

[westlake]

Ballistic missile submarines regularly spend 80+ days underwater, even during peacetime. How is 30 days a record?

The submarine keeps you underwater. The Aquarius lab puts you in the water.

Aquarius consists of three compartments. Access to the water is made via the 'wet porch', a chamber equipped with a moon pool, which keeps the air pressure inside the wet porch the same as the water pressure at that depth ('ambient pressure'), about 2.6 atmospheres, through hydrostatic equilibrium. The main compartment is strong enough, like a submarine, to maintain normal atmospheric pressure, and can also be pressurized to ambient pressure, and is usually held at a pressure in between. The smallest compartment, the Entry Lock, is between the other two and functions as an airlock in which personnel wait while pressure is adjusted to match either the wet porch or the main compartment.

Because Aquarius allows saturation diving, dives from the habitat can last for up to nine hours at a time; by comparison, surface dives usually last between one to two hours. These long dive times allow for observation that would not otherwise be possible. Way stations on the reef outside Aquarius allow aquanauts to refill their scuba tanks during dives.

This design enables personnel to return to the surface without the need for a decompression chamber when they get there. Personnel stay inside the main compartment for 17 hours before ascending as the pressure is slowly reduced, so that they do not suffer decompression sickness after the ascent.

Aquarius (laboratory)

Submariners can have fun too

[cruff]

My cousin served on an attack sub years ago, and he told me about the "diving parties" they had to break in the new junior grade lieutenants on their first patrol. When said lieutenant was standing watch, the diving party call would go out. The party members would all run to the rear of the boat, and the Lt would call for the necessary trim changes. Then the party would run to the front of the boat, repeat as required until the Lt figured out what was going on. Good training for the newbie.