In 1969, the American government launched the Tektite Project, which was designed to investigate the effects on human beings of living and working underwater for an extended period of time.
An underwater world was placed on concrete footings some 20 metres below the surface of Beehive Cove, on the Caribbean island of St John’s.
It consisted of two towers joined together by a passageway. Inside the towers were four circular rooms plus a kitchen, engine room and laboratory. More importantly there was a wet room with a hatch in the floor through which the divers enters and left the habitat.
The four men who lived there were dubbed ‘aquanauts’ and they had plenty of luxuries, even a television! They were monitored for a record 58 days spent underwater and they emerged in reasonable health.
In 1986 one of the people involved in the tektite Project, Ian Koblick, created Jules’ Undersea Lodge, the world’s only undersea hotel in Key Largo, Florida. Here, ordinary people could have a taste of life under the sea too.