KEY LARGO, Fla. (AP) — A college professor broke a file for the longest time dwelling underwater with out depressurization this weekend at a Florida Keys hotel for scuba divers.
Joseph Dituri’s 74th day dwelling in Jules’ Undersea Hotel, positioned on the backside of a 30-foot-deep lagoon in Key Largo, wasn’t a lot other than his earlier days there since he submerged March 1.
Dituri, who additionally is going by way of the moniker “Dr. Deep Sea,” ate a protein-heavy meal of eggs and salmon ready the use of a microwave, exercised with resistance bands, did his day-to-day pushups and took an hour-long nap. Not like a submarine, the hotel does no longer use era to regulate for the greater underwater power.
The former file of 73 days, two hours and 34 mins was once set by way of two Tennessee professors ― Bruce Cantrell and Jessica Fain ― on the similar location in 2014.
However Dituri isn’t simply settling for the file and resurfacing: He plans to stick on the hotel till June 9, when he reaches 100 days and completes an underwater challenge dubbed Challenge Neptune 100.
His analysis contains day-to-day experiments in body structure to watch how the human frame responds to long-term publicity to excessive power.
“The theory here’s to populate the arena’s oceans, to deal with them by way of dwelling in them and in reality treating them neatly,” Dituri mentioned.
The outreach portion of Dituri’s challenge contains carrying out on-line categories and broadcast interviews from his virtual studio underneath the ocean. Right through the previous 74 days, he has reached over 2,500 scholars thru on-line categories in marine science and extra together with his common biomedical engineering classes on the College of South Florida.
Whilst he says he loves dwelling below the sea, there’s something he in reality misses.
“The item that I omit probably the most about being at the floor is actually the solar,” Dituri mentioned. “The solar has been a significant component in my existence – I normally move to the fitness center at 5 after which I come again out and watch the daybreak.”
The challenge combines scientific and ocean analysis together with tutorial outreach and was once arranged by way of the Marine Sources Building Basis, proprietor of the habitat.
“The file is a small bump and I in reality admire it,” mentioned Dituri, a College of South Florida educator who holds a doctorate in biomedical engineering and is a retired U.S. Naval officer. “I’m venerated to have it, however we nonetheless have extra science to do.”