GoKawiilAs a kid, I loved the 1980s aquatic adventure show Danger Bay. True to the TV show’s name, danger was always lurking at the Vancouver Aquarium, where the show was set. In one memorable episode, young Jonah and a friend get trapped in a sabotaged mini-submarine, and Jonah’s dad, a marine-mammal veterinarian, comes to the rescue in a bubble-shaped underwater vehicle. Good stuff! Only recently—as in when I started working on this column—did I learn that the rescue vehicle was not a stage prop but rather a real-world research submersible named Deep Rover.
What Was Deep Rover and What Did It Do?
Built in 1984 and launched the following year, Deep Rover was a departure from standard underwater vehicles, which typically required divers to lie in a prone position and look through tiny portholes while tethered to a support ship.
Deep Rover was designed to satisfy human curiosity about the underwater world. As the rover moved freely through the water down to depths of 1,000 meters, the operator sat up in relative comfort in the cab, inside a clear 13-centimeter-thick acrylic bubble with panoramic views—an inverted fishbowl, with the human immersed in breathable air while the sea creatures looked in. Used for scientific research and deepwater exploration, it set a number of dive records along the way.
Submarine designer Graham Hawkes [left] and marine biologist Sylvia Earle [right] came up with the idea for Deep Rover. Alain Le Garsmeur/Alamy
The team behind Deep Rover included U.S. marine biologist Sylvia Earle and British marine engineer and submarine designer Graham Hawkes. Earle and Hawkes’s collaboration had begun in May 1980, when Earle complained to Hawkes about the “stupid” arms on Jim, an atmospheric diving suit; she didn’t realize she was complaining to one of Jim’s designers. Hawkes explained the difficulty of designing flexible joints that could withstand dueling pressures of 101 kilopascals on the inside—that is, the normal atmospheric pressure at sea level—and up to about 4,100 kPa on the outside. But he listened carefully to Earle’s wish list for a useful manipulator. Several months later, he came back with a design for a superbly dexterous arm that could hold a pencil and write normal-size letters.
Earle and Hawkes next turned to designing a one-person bubble sub, which they considered so practical that it would be an easy sell. But after failing to attract funding, they decided to build it themselves. In the summer of 1981, they pooled their resources and cofounded Deep Ocean Technology, setting up shop in Earle’s garage in Oakland, Calif.
Phil Nuytten, a Canadian designer of submersibles and dive systems, engineered Deep Rover. Stuart Westmorland/RGB Ventures/Alamy
They still found that customers weren’t interested in their crewed submersible, though, so they turned to unmanned systems. Their first contract was for a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) for use in oil-rig inspection, maintenance, and repair. Other customers followed, and they ended up building 10 of these ROVs. In 1983, they returned to their original idea and contracted with the Canadian inventor and entrepreneur Phil Nuytten to engineer Deep Rover.
Nuytten didn’t have to be convinced of the value of the submersible. He had grown up on the water and shared their dream. As a teenager, he opened Vancouver’s first dive shop. He then worked as a commercial diver. He founded the ocean- and research-tech companies Can-Dive Services (in 1965) and Nuytco Research (in 1982), and he developed advanced submersibles as well as diving systems. These included the Newtsuit, an aluminum atmospheric diving suit for use on drilling rigs and salvage operations.
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