They grew up along the mediterranean coast, in the south of france. His first swimming, snorkeling, and scuba diving came about at the riviera.

 As time passed, and the mediterranean have become my expert domestic base, he watched this torrentially visited coast be ravaged with the aid of unbridled improvement—and i also noticed, at depths of extra than a hundred and fifty ft or so, worlds that also appeared intact. Until these days, however, i’d gotten best brief glimpses of them.

 Whilst you’re scuba diving, it takes four to 6 hours just to ascend from such depths; you have to decompress slowly to keep away from death from the bends. So time on the lowest is frustratingly short, typically most effective 5 or 10 minutes.

In july 2019 we modified that. For 28 immediately days my 4-man team lived in a cramped, pressurized habitat on a barge inside the mediterranean, breathing a high-stress blend of helium and oxygen, descending to the seafloor each day in a diving bell.

 They worked like saturation divers in the offshore oil industry—however not like such divers, who normally are tethered to a bell through an umbilical, we put on scuba gear, with rebreathers that filtered carbon dioxide from our exhalations. That meant we may want to discover the bottom freely—for hours, now not mins.