The Tektite habitat was an underwater laboratory which was the home to divers during Tektite I and II programs. The Tektite program was the first scientists-in-the-sea program sponsored nationally. The habitat capsule was placed in Great Lameshur Bay, Saint John, U.S. Virgin Islands in 1969 and again in 1970. [1] [2]
The Tektite habitat was designed and built by General Electric Company Space Division at the Valley Forge Space Technology Center in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.[ citation needed ] The Project Engineer who was responsible for the design of the habitat was Brooks Tenney, Jr. Tenney also served as the underwater Habitat Engineer on the International Mission, the last mission on the Tektite II project.[ citation needed ] The Program Manager for the Tektite projects was Dr. Theodore Marton at General Electric.[ citation needed ] The habitat appeared as a pair of silos: two white metal cylinders 12.5 feet (3.8 m) in diameter and 18 feet (5.5 m) high, joined by a flexible tunnel and seated on a rectangular base in 43 feet (13 m) depth of water.[ citation needed ]
On 28 January 1969, a detachment from Amphibious Construction Battalion 2 augmented by an additional 17 Seabee divers from both the Atlantic and Pacific fleets as well as the 21st NCR began the installation of the habitat in Great Lameshur Bay in the U. S. Virgin Islands. [3] They had it completed on February 12. On February 15, 1969, three days later, four U.S. Department of Interior scientists (Ed Clifton, Conrad Mahnken, Richard Waller and John VanDerwalker) descended to the ocean floor to begin the ambitious diving project dubbed "Tektite I". [1] By 18 March 1969, the four aquanauts had established a new world's record for saturated diving by a single team. On April 15, 1969, the aquanaut team returned to the surface with over 58 days of marine scientific studies. More than 19 hours of decompression time were needed to accommodate the scientists' return to the surface. [4] The United States Office of Naval Research coordinated Tektite I.
Much of the research for Tektite I centered on humans in this new environment. Topics investigated would include: biology (blood changes, sleep patterns, oxygen toxicity), [5] [6] [7] decompression and decompression sickness, [4] microbiology [8] [9] and mycology. [10]
The United States Department of the Interior coordinated Tektite II, with part of the funding coming from NASA, which was interested in the psychological study of the scientific teams working in closed and restricted environments, similar to that of spacecraft on long missions. A team of Behavioral Observers from the University of Texas at Austin, led by Dr. Robert Helmreich, were tasked to record round the clock activities of the aquanauts by CCTV.
The missions were carried out in the spring and summer of 1970 in Great Lameshur Bay, St. John Island, U.S. Virgin Islands, at a depth of 43-ft. Tektite II comprised ten missions lasting 10–20 days with four scientists and an engineer on each mission. The fifth mission, designated Mission 6-50, was the first all-female saturation dive team. The elite team of scientist-divers included Renate Schlentz True of Tulane, team leader Sylvia Earle, Ann Hurley Hartline and Alina Szmant, graduate students at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Margaret Ann "Peggy" Lucas Bond, a Villanova electrical engineering graduate who served as Habitat Engineer. The Tektite II missions were the first to undertake in-depth ecological studies from a saturation habitat. [2]
Medical and human research oversight for Tektite II was well documented in a series of reports covering a project overview, [11] saturation diving, [12] lessons learned from Tektite I, [13] application to Tektite II, [14] medical responsibilities and psychological monitoring, [15] medical supervision duties [16] medical and biological objectives [17] project logistics, [18] lessons learned, [19] excursions to deeper depths from storage pressure, [20] decompression tables, [21] general medical observations, [22] psychological observations, [23] blood changes [24] and general program conclusions. [25]
Tektite III (Project Tektite) was a wholly owned and operated California 501 C(3) Non-Profit Corporation.[ dubious – discuss ] Harold C. Ross was Project Manager. When Tektite II ended General Electric placed the habitat in storage in Philadelphia. A group of interested parties purchased the habitat from General Electric for $1.00 with the stipulation it would be removed from the GE storage facility.[ citation needed ] The habitat was trucked across the United States to Fort Mason in San Francisco, where it was placed on display. Attempts were made to refurbish the habitat so it could be used in San Francisco Bay as a teaching tool.
By 1980, the habitat was fully restored and certified to be used underwater, but funds for actually submerging and operating the habitat again were not available. While the habitat was on display at Fort Mason, many school children were taken through the habitat free of charge by volunteers. Unfortunately lack of funds ended the project and the habitat was moved to storage along the Oakland Estuary [ citation needed ] in 1984. After several years, the habitat again deteriorated. In 1991, the habitat was dismantled by welding school students and the metal was recycled. [26]
There were nine studies on the ecology of coral reef fishes carried out during the Tektite series: [2]
A goal of the Tektite program was to prove that saturation diving techniques in an underwater laboratory, breathing a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere could be safely and efficiently accomplished at a minimal cost. [2] [4]
Lambertsen's "Predictive Studies Series" that started with Tektite I in 1969 and ended in 1997, researched many aspects of human physiology in extreme environments. [7]
Saturation diving is diving for periods long enough to bring all tissues into equilibrium with the partial pressures of the inert components of the breathing gas used. It is a diving mode that reduces the number of decompressions divers working at great depths must undergo by only decompressing divers once at the end of the diving operation, which may last days to weeks, having them remain under pressure for the whole period. A diver breathing pressurized gas accumulates dissolved inert gas used in the breathing mixture to dilute the oxygen to a non-toxic level in the tissues, which can cause potentially fatal decompression sickness if permitted to come out of solution within the body tissues; hence, returning to the surface safely requires lengthy decompression so that the inert gases can be eliminated via the lungs. Once the dissolved gases in a diver's tissues reach the saturation point, however, decompression time does not increase with further exposure, as no more inert gas is accumulated.
The Aquarius Reef Base is an underwater habitat located 5.4 mi (8.7 km) off Key Largo in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, Florida, United States. It is the world's only undersea research laboratory and it is operated by Florida International University. It is deployed on the ocean floor 62 ft (19 m) below the surface and next to a deep coral reef named Conch Reef.
SEALAB I, II, and III were experimental underwater habitats developed and deployed by the United States Navy during the 1960s to prove the viability of saturation diving and humans living in isolation for extended periods of time. The knowledge gained from the SEALAB expeditions helped advance the science of deep sea diving and rescue, and contributed to the understanding of the psychological and physiological strains humans can endure.
Underwater habitats are underwater structures in which people can live for extended periods and carry out most of the basic human functions of a 24-hour day, such as working, resting, eating, attending to personal hygiene, and sleeping. In this context, 'habitat' is generally used in a narrow sense to mean the interior and immediate exterior of the structure and its fixtures, but not its surrounding marine environment. Most early underwater habitats lacked regenerative systems for air, water, food, electricity, and other resources. However, some underwater habitats allow for these resources to be delivered using pipes, or generated within the habitat, rather than manually delivered.
A United States Navy diver may be a restricted fleet line officer, Civil Engineer Corps (CEC) officer, Medical Corps officer, an Unrestricted Line Officer who is qualified in Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Warfare (1140) or an enlisted who is qualified in underwater diving and salvage. Navy divers serve with fleet diving detachments and in research and development. Some of the mission areas of the Navy diver include: marine salvage, harbor clearance, underwater ship husbandry and repair, submarine rescue, saturation diving, experimental diving, underwater construction and welding, as well as serving as technical experts to the Navy SEALs, Marine Corps, and Navy EOD diving commands.
An aquanaut is any person who remains underwater, breathing at the ambient pressure for long enough for the concentration of the inert components of the breathing gas dissolved in the body tissues to reach equilibrium, in a state known as saturation. Usually this is done in an underwater habitat on the seafloor for a period equal to or greater than 24 continuous hours without returning to the surface. The term is often restricted to scientists and academics, though there were a group of military aquanauts during the SEALAB program. Commercial divers in similar circumstances are referred to as saturation divers. An aquanaut is distinct from a submariner, in that a submariner is confined to a moving underwater vehicle such as a submarine that holds the water pressure out. Aquanaut derives from the Latin word aqua ("water") plus the Greek nautes ("sailor"), by analogy to the similar construction "astronaut". The first human aquanaut was Robert Sténuit, who spent 24 hours on board a tiny one-man cylinder at 200 feet (61 m) in September 1962 off Villefranche-sur-Mer on the French Riviera.
NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations, or NEEMO, is a NASA analog mission that sends groups of astronauts, engineers and scientists to live in the Aquarius underwater laboratory, the world's only undersea research station, for up to three weeks at a time in preparation for future space exploration.
Christian James Lambertsen was an American environmental medicine and diving medicine specialist who was principally responsible for developing the United States Navy frogmen's rebreathers in the early 1940s for underwater warfare. Lambertsen designed a series of rebreathers in 1940 and in 1944 and first called his invention breathing apparatus. Later, after the war, he called it Laru and finally, in 1952, he changed his invention's name again to SCUBA. Although diving regulator technology was invented by Émile Gagnan and Jacques-Yves Cousteau in 1943 and was unrelated to rebreathers, the current use of the word SCUBA is largely attributed to the Gagnan-Cousteau invention. The US Navy considers Lambertsen to be "the father of the Frogmen".
Capt. Edward Deforest Thalmann, USN (ret.) was an American hyperbaric medicine specialist who was principally responsible for developing the current United States Navy dive tables for mixed-gas diving, which are based on his eponymous Thalmann Algorithm (VVAL18). At the time of his death, Thalmann was serving as assistant medical director of the Divers Alert Network (DAN) and an assistant clinical professor in anesthesiology at Duke University's Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Environmental Physiology.
The Helgoland underwater laboratory (UWL) is an underwater habitat. It was built by Dräger in Lübeck, Germany in 1968 for the Biological Institute Helgoland, and was the first of its kind in the world built for use in colder waters. It is named after the island Helgoland.
Captain George Foote Bond was a United States Navy physician who was known as a leader in the field of undersea and hyperbaric medicine and the "Father of Saturation Diving".
Joachim Wendler was a West German aquanaut who died of an air embolism while returning to the surface of the Gulf of Maine from the Helgoland underwater habitat. He was participating in a checkout mission for the First International Saturation Study of Herring and Hydroacoustics (FISSHH) project.
Dewey Dewayne Smith was an underwater diver, former United States Navy medic and professional aquanaut. He died during a dive from the Aquarius underwater habitat off Key Largo in May 2009. A subsequent investigation determined that multiple factors combined to cause the accident.
Craig B. Cooper is a professional aquanaut from the United States who served from 1991 to 2010 as Operations Manager for the Aquarius Reef Base underwater habitat. Cooper is known to fellow divers by the nickname "Coop".
James Raymond Talacek is an American professional aquanaut with the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW). He serves as Oceanographic Field Operations Manager at Aquarius Reef Base, the world's only undersea research laboratory.
Hyperbaric treatment schedules or hyperbaric treatment tables, are planned sequences of events in chronological order for hyperbaric pressure exposures specifying the pressure profile over time and the breathing gas to be used during specified periods, for medical treatment. Hyperbaric therapy is based on exposure to pressures greater than normal atmospheric pressure, and in many cases the use of breathing gases with oxygen content greater than that of air.
John Morgan Wells was a marine biologist, and physiologist involved in the development of decompression systems for deep diving, and the use of nitrox as a breathing gas for diving. He is known for developing the widely used NOAA Nitrox I and II mixtures and their decompression tables in the late 1970s, the deep diving mixture of oxygen, helium, and nitrogen known as NOAA Trimix I, for research in undersea habitats, where divers live and work under pressure for extended periods, and for training diving physicians and medical technicians in hyperbaric medicine.
Diving support equipment is the equipment used to facilitate a diving operation. It is either not taken into the water during the dive, such as the gas panel and compressor, or is not integral to the actual diving, being there to make the dive easier or safer, such as a surface decompression chamber. Some equipment, like a diving stage, is not easily categorised as diving or support equipment, and may be considered as either.
Robert August Barth was a United States Navy Chief Quartermaster, pioneering aquanaut and professional diver. He was the only diver to participate in all U.S. Navy SEALAB missions led by George F. Bond. Barth is considered to be the father of the Rolex Sea Dweller. In 1967, he developed the idea for the helium release valve which was patented by Rolex on November 6, 1967.
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