The ’80s Submersible That Transformed Underwater Exploration
As a kid, I loved the 1980s aquatic adventure show Danger Bay. True to the TV show’s name, danger was always lurking at the Vancouver Aquarium, where the show was set. In one memorable episode, young Jonah and a friend get trapped in a sabotaged mini-submarine, and Jonah’s dad, a marine-mammal veterinarian, comes to the rescue in a bubble-shaped underwater vehicle. Good stuff! Only recently—as in when I started working on this column—did I learn that the rescue vehicle was not a stage prop but rather a real-world research submersible named Deep Rover.
What Was Deep Rover and What Did It Do?
Built in 1984 and launched the following year, Deep Rover was a departure from standard underwater vehicles, which typically required divers to lie in a prone position and look through tiny portholes while tethered to a support ship.
Deep Rover was designed to satisfy human curiosity about the underwater world. As the rover moved freely through the water down to depths of 1,000 meters, the operator sat up in relative comfort in the cab, inside a clear 13-centimeter-thick acrylic bubble with panoramic views—an inverted fishbowl, with the human immersed in breathable air while the sea creatures looked in. Used for scientific research and deepwater exploration, it set a number of dive records along the way.
Submarine designer Graham Hawkes [left] and marine biologist Sylvia Earle [right] came up with the idea for Deep Rover.Alain Le Garsmeur/Alamy
The team behind Deep Rover included U.S. marine biologist Sylvia Earle and British marine engineer and submarine designer Graham Hawkes. Earle and Hawkes’s collaboration had begun in May 1980, when Earle complained to Hawkes about the “stupid” arms on Jim, an atmospheric diving suit; she didn’t realize she was complaining to one of Jim’s designers. Hawkes explained the difficulty of designing flexible joints that could withstand dueling pressures of 101 kilopascals on the inside—that is, the normal atmospheric pressure at sea level—and up to about 4,100 kPa on the outside. But he listened carefully to Earle’s wish list for a useful manipulator. Several months later, he came back with a design for a superbly dexterous arm that could hold a pencil and write normal-size letters.
Earle and Hawkes next turned to designing a one-person bubble sub, which they considered so practical that it would be an easy sell. But after failing to attract funding, they decided to build it themselves. In the summer of 1981, they pooled their resources and cofounded Deep Ocean Technology, setting up shop in Earle’s garage in Oakland, Calif.
Phil Nuytten, a Canadian designer of submersibles and dive systems, engineered Deep Rover.Stuart Westmorland/RGB Ventures/Alamy
They still found that customers weren’t interested in their crewed submersible, though, so they turned to unmanned systems. Their first contract was for a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) for use in oil-rig inspection, maintenance, and repair. Other customers followed, and they ended up building 10 of these ROVs. In 1983, they returned to their original idea and contracted with the Canadian inventor and entrepreneur Phil Nuytten to engineer Deep Rover.
Nuytten didn’t have to be convinced of the value of the submersible. He had grown up on the water and shared their dream. As a teenager, he opened Vancouver’s first dive shop. He then worked as a commercial diver. He founded the ocean- and research-tech companies Can-Dive Services (in 1965) and Nuytco Research (in 1982), and he developed advanced submersibles as well as diving systems. These included the Newtsuit, an aluminum atmospheric diving suit for use on drilling rigs and salvage operations.
Deep Rover’s first assignment was to boost offshore oil exploration and drilling in eastern Canada. Funding came from the provincial government of Newfoundland and Labrador and the oil companies Petro-Canada and Husky Oil. But the collapse of oil prices in the mid-1980s made it uneconomical to operate the submersible. So the rover’s mission broadened to scientific research.
Deep Rover’s Technical Specs
The pilot could operate Deep Rover safely for 4 to 6 hours at a depth of 1,000 meters and speeds of up to 1.5 knots (46 meters per minute). The submersible could be tethered to a support ship or move freely on its own. Two deep-cycle, lead-acid battery pods weighing about 170 kilograms apiece provided power. It had a VHF radio and two frequencies of through-water communications, plus tracking beacons.
From 1987 to 1989, Deep Rover did a series of dives in Oregon’s Crater Lake, the deepest lake in the United States. During one dive, National Park Service biologist Mark Buktenica [top] collected rock samples.NPS
The rover’s four thrusters—two horizontal fixed aft thrusters and two rotating wing thrusters—could be activated in any combination through microswitches built into the armrest. The pilot navigated using a gyro compass, sonar, and depth gauges (both digital and analog).
Much to Earle’s delight, Deep Rover had two excellent manipulators, each with four degrees of freedom, thus solving the problem that had started her down this path of invention. The pilot controlled the manipulators with a joystick at the end of each armrest. Sensory feedback systems helped the pilot “feel” the force, motion, and touch. The two arms had wraparound jaws and could lift about 90 kg.
If something went wrong, Deep Rover carried five days’ worth of life support stores and had a variety of redundant safety features: oxygen and carbon dioxide monitoring equipment; a halon (breathable) fire extinguisher; a full-face BIBS (built-in breathing system) that tapped into the starboard air bank; and a ground fault-detection system.
If needed, the rover could surface quickly by jettisoning equipment, including the battery pods and a 90-kg drop weight in the forward bay. In dire circumstances, the pressure hull (the acrylic bubble, that is) could separate from the frame, taking with it only its oxygen tanks, strobe, through-water communications, and wing thrusters.
Deep Rover’s achievements
From 1984 to 1992, Deep Rover conducted about 280 dives. It inspected two of the tunnels near Niagara Falls that divert water to the Sir Adam Beck II hydroelectric plant. In California’s Monterey Bay, the rover let researchers film previously unknown deep-sea marine life, which helped establish the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. At Crater Lake National Park, in Oregon, Deep Rover proved the existence of geothermal vents and bacteria mats, leading to the protection of the site from extractive drilling.
Deep Rover was featured in a short film shown at Vancouver’s Expo ’86, the first of several TV and movie appearances. There was Danger Bay. Director James Cameron used an early prototype of the submersible in his 1989 film The Abyss. Deep Rover also made an appearance in Cameron’s 2005 documentary Aliens of the Deep.
In 1992, Deep Rover came to the end of its working life. It now resides at Ingenium, Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation, in Ottawa. For a time, Deep Ocean Engineering continued to develop later generations of the submersible. Eventually, though, uncrewed remotely operated and autonomous underwater vehicles became the norm for deep-sea missions, replacing human pilots with sensors and equipment. New ROVs can dive significantly deeper than human-piloted ones, and new cameras are so good that it feels like you’re there…almost. And yet, humans still long to have the personal experience of exploring the depths of the oceans.
Part of a continuing series looking at historical artifacts that embrace the boundless potential of technology.
An abridged version of this article appears in the April 2026 print issue as “All Alone in the Abyss.”
References
My friends at Ingenium, Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation, helpfully provided me with background material on why they decided to acquire Deep Rover. They also published a great blog post about the rover.
Dirk Rosen, executive vice president of engineering at DEEP, published specifications for Deep Rover in his 1986 IEEE paper “Design and Application of the Deep Rover Submersible.”
Sylvia Earle, known affectionately as “Her Deepness,” has written extensively about the ocean depths. I found her book Sea Change: A Message of the Oceans (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995) to be especially enjoyable.
