Beautiful, terrifying and unknowably vast, the world's oceans are among the least understood places on our planet. There are, to say the least, things there we know nothing about - and because it is a fundamentally inhospitable place, exploration has been treacherous and slow. But Sean Wolpert, Deep's president, doesn't just want to accelerate our discovery of the oceans - he also wants people to live down there.
"What I'm most excited about is finding something that can improve the quality of people's lives in the long term," says Wolpert, who says there may be keys missing to earthly problems lurking beneath the waves lie.
"It is very likely that we will find the treatment for something like cancer in our oceans.
"For example, if you think about sea sponges, they repel organisms that try to eat them through chemical processes to ensure their continuity and survival. So what can we learn from that process in terms of our own biological makeup?
"It's a very exploratory area for pharmaceuticals," he says.
Deep - an ocean technology and exploration company funded by private investors - was secretly launched in 2021 but now has 100 employees across the UK, US and Canada. They are working on an underwater habitat called 'Sentinel', which the company says will allow people to survive 200 meters below the waves.
A wooden prototype already exists. The fully functional product, which will be partly 3D printed, is expected to be tested in a flooded quarry in Gloucestershire before being launched into the real world in 2027, possibly in the Mediterranean. It is 17.5 meters long and has an internal volume of The substation is 14,000 cubic meters in size and is powered by renewable energy. It will house six people, who can live underwater for 28 days.
"It will really spark a new wave of ocean exploration," says product director Rick Goddard.
"Researchers could study the behavioral cycles of tuna, or investigate coral bleaching. They could research carbon capture, or explore an archaeological wreck off the coast of a Greek island.
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"There will also be incidental science, where scientists can simply sit in one of the hub's huge windows and observe animal behavior. We want climate scientists there. We want huge amounts of data on the acidity and temperature of the oceans, and the core data that tells us what the oceans are like," says Goddard.
It will be designed so that it can be installed anywhere on the ocean's continental shelf, up to 200 meters, the edge of the twilight zone, where natural light penetrates.
This area is too deep for most divers, but too shallow to justify the cost of commercial deepwater equipment, so the water band is very little studied.
"It will inspire children to become marine engineers or biologists because it will be incredibly exciting. And what it will see and do for humanity will be very powerful," says Goddard.
Living underwater poses significant problems, which is why it has not proven very successful so far. It involves a handful of very limited experiments, with one attempt by French ocean explorer Jaques-Yves Cousteau to build an underwater station in the 1960s achieving some success, albeit at just 10 meters depth. The US Navy also built the Sealab habitat in the 1960s, but the funding was ultimately lost and thrown into the space race.
Major problems include low temperatures, high pressure and corrosion. The change in gases - such as an increase in helium - also destroys electrical equipment and makes people feel cold; the Sentinel habitat must be heated to 32 degrees to make it feel like it is 21 degrees. High humidity also creates the potential for a large build-up of bacteria, putting people at risk of skin and ear infections, and the pressure also means people's taste buds stop working - so the Sentinel's will eat foods that are full with spices.
Goddard adds: "What we want to achieve is not an individual placement in an individual location. It's about getting the right people under the ocean and opening it up to non-specialists.
"The ultimate goal is for hundreds of these to be deployed around the world. This is not a case of scratching and itching. This is what the planet needs, and what our ocean needs."
According to Deep, this is not necessary to accommodate a growing world population, but because the ocean is the planet's last frontier.
Research from the National Geographic Society shows that more than 80 percent of it has never been mapped or explored - meaning we know less about it than we do about the surface of the moon. It is believed that approximately 90 percent of ocean species are still undiscovered; So far we know of about 226,000 ocean species, but some scientists estimate there could be several million more.
The area the Sentinel can reach - 200 meters - is the deepest point where sunlight enters the ocean and where 90 percent of marine species occur. But climate change, overfishing and ocean acidification are causing unprecedented changes in the oceans, which Deep says need to be urgently understood.
"The sentry can go up to 200 yards, but the sweet spot will be 50 or 60 yards lower where it will be lighter," says Goddard.
Initially, it will be trained divers staying at the Sentinel, but Deep expects that it will soon be marine scientists, climate scientists and archaeologists with limited diving training. Participants will fall under pressure via a submarine that will dock on top of the Sentinel. The hub will be pressurized to the same level as the surrounding ocean, meaning divers can go out for hours without having to depressurize.
They will do this via a 'moon pool' (a hole that gives access to the ocean) and will be connected to the mother ship via cables the entire time - like space walks in the depths.
They can then bring samples back to the Sentinel and work on them in the onboard laboratory. This represents a revolution in science because it means that materials do not have to be brought to the surface to be studied, where they can decompose.
At the end of their stay, participants spend a varying amount of time in a decompression chamber before returning to the sea-level atmosphere.
As with spaceflight, the experience is also psychologically demanding, due to the degree of confinement and isolation from the outside world.
Mari Östin, Human Factors Engineer at Deep, says: "Much of our research comes from those who have been on the NASA space station.
"We need to look at sleep because it is so important. They had a problem in the room with the sound of people snoring."
There are indeed many parallels with space. Space travel is now routinely undertaken by private companies, such as Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic or Elon Musk's SpaceX.
Wolpert adds: "There is a beautiful world to be discovered, and we are private individuals who have that ambition.
"We don't mind being compared to Musk - you could argue that his Tesla and SpaceX projects are helping the planet."
Deep has spent undisclosed millions on the project so far, but believes the project will be affordable for scientists, companies and researchers - especially when hundreds of these substations are rolled out.
"The costs will be comparable to a timeshare. It will be more cost-effective for universities or companies to rent a substation for weeks," says Wolpert.
And will it be exploitative?
"That's always possible. After all, we are human," he says. "But the biggest risk on people's minds is deep-sea mining, and we are not prepared to do that. This is non-extractive. We are here to leave the ocean in an increasingly better understood place."
Goddard added: "Right now the people going there, mainly oil and gas, are the people who have that in mind.
"So what we do is we put other people there with their eyes down. It's not called Sentinel for nothing. That's its purpose: to be the watchtower."
However, the company is clear that as exciting as the coming years are, the most compelling phases of the project are in the relatively distant future.
Mike Shackleford, COO, says: "Let's be clear: this was science fiction, but we crossed out the fiction. The ocean is being destroyed. There are many countries committing acts of ocean terrorism.
"We need to be down there, surveying the area and aquaticizing people in the process. This is the beginning of a 300-year project."
