HYDROLAB - A Valuable Tool For Marine Research

The use of saturation diving techniques in marine research has been shown to be a safe, valuable and, in some cases, the only viable technique to obtain data. The West Indies Laboratory of Fairleigh Dickinson University has operated the Undersea Laboratory System HYDROLAB under contract to NOAA, for the past 5 years in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. During this period, over 175 scientists from 31 different institutions and 6 different countries have spent in excess of 70,000 safe man-hours living beneath the sea. This paper presents the operational and training techniques developed at HYDROLAB to allow scientists to live and work for extended periods of time underwater, performing a broad spectrum of marine related research.