DEEP Selects Reef in Florida Keys for Habitat Deployment
DEEP’s pilot subsea human habitat, Vanguard, will be deployed at Tennessee Reef in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.Installation is planned for the end of April 2026. It will be the first subsea human habitat deployed in the United States in 40 years.First unveiled in Miami in October 2025, Vanguard is now in the final stages of commissioning, including final outfitting, subsystem testing, and integrated acceptance trials.Vanguard is designed to enable up to four crew members to live and work underwater for days at a time, enabling extended time on the seafloor for ocean science
The Rise of the Aquanaut
will change soon.Subsea habitats are not a new invention. Jacques Cousteau built the first in 1962, although it was only about the size of an elevator.The only currently operating underwater station for research during saturation diving that Helmuth knows of is the Aquarius Reef Base operated off the Florida Keys by Florida International University. “There are other underwater facilities,” he said, “but they are shallower than saturation depth, for example, Jules Verne Lodge.”In 2014, a team of aquanauts lived in Aqaurius for 31 days under the leadership of Fabien Cousteau. He used
Down Under
, a collaboration between Advanced Navigation and marine consultancy O2 Marine saw three Hydrus AUVs deployed in May to capture high-resolution, geo-referenced imagery and video of the Hall Bank reef site in Western Australia. And in June, Hydrus was deployed across shallow reefs off the coast of the Florida Keys as part of a NOAA program aimed at providing a robust picture of the condition of coral reef ecosystems in the region.“As we look towards more deep-sea missions, we are preparing Hydrus to handle challenging environments more effectively,” says Dr. Alec McGregor is a senior AI engineer
There’s No Place Like Home
a colony of your own. You know, build out the whole suburban lifestyle. We have a five-star guest rating online, so what do you say?Ladd's B&B is part of a research project for Mission: Iconic Reefs, a large-scale NOAA-led and partner-driven coral restoration initiative in NOAA’s Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The dwelling structures, called calcification accretion units (CAUs), mimic the places where larvae settle naturally before growing calcium carbonate structures that become coral reefs. CAUs are left on the seafloor for up to a year, and then retrieved for scientists
Fugro Expands Seafloor Mapping Scope for Florida’s Coastal Resilience Project
previous award of 14,000 square kilometers of airborne lidar data for the FSMI, Fugro is now conducting vessel-based surveys across 42,000 square kilometers offshore Florida.This new data acquisition campaign covers five of the six Florida DEP program regions, including the entire Atlantic Coast, the Florida Keys and portions of the Gulf Coast.Initially launched in the fourth quarter of 2024 with a single survey vessel, the project has rapidly scaled to a multivessel operation.Fugro is conducting 65% of the FSMI’s vessel-based program. Data collection is expected to be completed in late 2025, with
Podcast: Fascinated by Shipwrecks; USS Monitor Digitally Reimagined
programs to address commercial and recreational uses in and around the sanctuaries. Tane’s specialties include 19th-century warships and deep-water archaeology, as well as building collaborative partnerships, public outreach and exhibit design. He has led NOAA archaeological expeditions in the Florida Keys, the Great Lakes, California, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Alaska, and USS Monitor. He’s also participated in projects including a sunken Boeing B-29 Superfortress in Lake Mead, a Civil War blockade runner in Bermuda, USS Arizona, and was most recently part of an expedition to RMS
NOAA Unveils FLA Keys Marine Sanctuary Restoration Blueprint
After more than a decade of collaboration with cooperating agencies, community experts and public input, NOAA today released the final management plan and environmental impact statement for Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.The documents outline NOAA’s regulatory recommendations and mark a critical milestone in the most comprehensive public process to restore the Florida Keys’ delicate ecosystem.The first management plan update since 2007 — crafted with extensive collaboration among NOAA, State of Florida agencies and local communities — outlines revised goals for the
The Heroic Effort to Save Florida’s Coral Reef from Devastating Ocean Heat
heat wave. They carefully scraped away harmful algae and predators impinging on staghorn fragments, under the supervision and training of interns from Islamorada Conservation and Restoration Education, or I.CARE.Normally, I.CARE’s volunteer divers would be transplanting corals to waters off the Florida Keys this time of year, as part of a national effort to restore the Florida Reef. But this year, everything is going in reverse.As water temperatures spiked in the Florida Keys, scientists from universities, coral reef restoration groups and government agencies launched a heroic effort to save the
NCCOS Awards $1.7M to Support Habitat Connectivity Research in National Marine Sanctuaries
NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science awarded $1.7 million of an anticipated $5.9 million over the next four to five years for three research projects to investigate species’ habitat usage and connectivity in and around national marine sanctuaries in the Florida Keys, Flower Garden Banks, and Stellwagen Bank.Marine protected areas (MPAs), such as national marine sanctuaries, are designated to protect significant natural and cultural resources within the marine environment for the benefit of present and future generations. While the use of MPAs has grown, there is still a gap in
February 2026
