In the 1960s, the US Navy ran a series of ambitious experiments called Sealab to test whether humans could live and work on the ocean floor for extended periods. The key enabling concept was saturation diving — keeping divers under pressure continuously until their tissues saturate, then decompressing only once at the end. Sealab I (1964) proved the concept at 192 feet, Sealab II (1965) extended it to 30-day stays with a rotating crew, and Sealab III (1969) attempted 600-foot depths but ended in tragedy when diver Berry Cannon died during a repair mission. The program was cancelled, but its technology directly enabled modern commercial saturation diving used to maintain underwater petroleum infrastructure. Today, remotely operated vehicles have largely replaced human divers for most deep-sea tasks, which is why underwater bases never became commonplace.
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