Ask an Aquanaut: How did it begin?
Richard asks: How did the Aquarius Habitat get started as a project and who were the leaders of it? Did they know George F. Bond or Ian Koblick or James W. Miller? Did Jaques Cousteau or any of his familly ever visit Aquarius?
Dear Richard,
The predecessor to Aquarius was a smaller habitat, Hydro-lab. After the Hydro-lab’s success, we worked under Senator Lowell Weicker’s direction to build a new generation habitat with NOAA. This was a bit of a downgrade from the elaborate Ocean Lab that Weicker was pushing at the time, which had little support because of the costs involved. NOAA and its then director of the man under the sea science and technology, Elliot Finkle, chose a proposal from U So Cal. to build the Aquarius and to permantly place it off Santa Catalina Island. We then worked to get the money for construction through appropriations. While the Lab was being constructed things changed (for reasons I won’t go into here) and we decided to move it to the Virgin Islands instead of Catalina Island. The Aquarius then replaced the Hydro-Lab and was given to Fairleigh Dickinson University to operate. In 1989, following Hurricane Hugo, Aquarius was moved to Key Largo and the University of North Carolina Wilmington was chosen as the operator.
Yes we knew all of these people, but Koblick, George Bond, Cousteau had nothing to do with Aquarius. Jim Miller as a NOAA employee had some to do with it. To my knowledge, Cousteau never visited Aquarius.
Bob Wicklund
UNCW Director of Federal Programs
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