The life aquatic

Adventurers have long wondered if we could live on the seabed. Now, 80 metres below the surface of a flooded quarry in the UK, we are about to find out

- Lisa Bachelor

DOWN AN EASY-TO-MISS TURNOFF on the A48 just outside Chepstow on the English-Welsh border, the gentle rumble of trucks, cranes and people at work mixes with birdsong in what is an otherwise peaceful and rural setting. It's a crisp and sunny winter morning when I visit and at first glance the site appears to be little more than prefab containers and a car park. But behind the scenes a group of men and women with expertise in diving, marine biology, technology, finance, construction and manufacturing are building something extraordinary. They have come together with a single mission statement: to make humans aquatic.

The project is called Deep and the site was chosen after a global search for the perfect location to build and test underwater accommodation that the project founders say will enable them to establish a "permanent human presence" under the sea from 2027.

So far, so crazy. Yet Deep is funded by a single anonymous private investor with big pockets who wants to put hundreds of millions (if not more) into a project that will "increase understanding of the ocean and its critical role for humanity". Its leadership team remains tightlipped not only about the amount (it will only say it is substantially more than the £100m [$124m] being invested in the Deep campus), but also about the investor's identity. Whoever is behind it, the size of the investment means that an ambitious idea appears to be swiftly becoming a reality.