Deep flight

While three quarters of our planet lies under water, less than 5 percent has been explored, mainly because of shortcomings in today’s research equipment.

Scuba limits divers to the topmost slice of the oceans. Conventional submersibles, on he other hand, are designed to drop like bricks into the ocean depths using variable buoyancy to control dive depth with bulky air tanks, compressors, pumps and piping. As a result, they have limited manoeuvrability and need a dedicated mother ship to transport and maintain them. Furthermore, the loud operational noise and bright lights associated with these crafts scare away many sea organisms.

Hawkes Ocean Technologies has come up with a solution to move beyond these constraints: a new class of small, highly manoeuvrable craft that can be piloted through the water to a desired depth using controls, wings and thrusters for undersea flight similar to that of a jet aircraft.

In this way, the company’s winged-submersible concept combines the vision and low-intrusiveness of scuba diving with the depth capability of a conventional submersible.