Rudiger Koch, 59, emerged from his 30-square-meter underwater home in a Florida lagoon in the presence of a Guinness World Records judge who set the record for the longest time spent in a submerged capsule
A German aerospace engineer celebrated yesterday setting a world record for the longest time spent underwater without depressurization: 120 days in a submerged capsule off the coast of Panama . Rudiger Koch, 59, emerged from his 30-square-meter (320-square-foot) underwater home in the presence of Guinness World Records adjudicator Susana Reyes, who confirmed to Koch that he had beaten the record previously held by American Joseph Dituri, who spent 100 days living in an underwater lodge in a Florida lagoon.
"It was a great adventure and now that it's over there's almost a sense of regret actually. I had a lot of fun during my stay here," Koch told AFP after leaving the capsule 11 meters (36 feet) below the sea. "It's wonderful when things calm down and it gets dark and the sea is bright," he said.
Over 4 months in one capsule
“It’s impossible to describe, you have to experience it yourself.” To celebrate, Koch toasted with champagne and smoked a cigar before diving into the Caribbean Sea, where a boat picked him up and took him to the mainland for a party. Koch’s capsule had a bed, a bathroom, a TV, a computer, Internet and even an exercise bike. Located about a 15-minute boat ride off the northern coast of Panama, it was connected to another chamber suspended above the sea by a passage with a narrow spiral staircase, which provided a descent route for food and visitors , including a doctor.
Solar panels on the surface provided electricity, and there was a backup generator, but no shower. Koch said his hope is to change the way we think about human life and where we can settle, even permanently.
"What we're trying to do here is show that the seas are actually a viable environment for human expansion," he said in an interview midway through his time underwater. An admirer of Captain Nemo in Jules Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," Koch kept a copy of the 19th-century science fiction classic on his bedside table beneath the waves.
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