Sealab, San Clemente Island

With its support ship in the background, the Sealab III Habitat (right) is towed into position near San Clemente Island for attachment of the umbilicals prior to making a 620 foot dive to the ocean floor. For two months, five teams of aquanauts will test man's ability to live and work under water.
Sealab III at San Clemente Island

Sealab III at San Clemente Island

Sealab III artist's impression

Berry Cannon inside Sealab IIIat San Clemente Island.

Sealab III .

Sealab, San Clemente Island was designed in three phases. SEALAB I, II, and III were experimental underwater habitats developed by the United States Navy in the 1960s to prove the viability of saturation diving and humans living in isolation for extended periods of time. The knowledge gained from the SEALAB expeditions helped advance the science of deep sea diving and rescue, and contributed to the understanding of the psychological and physiological strains humans can endure.

SEALAB ~ PBS

Sealab III was set off San Clemente Island on February 15, 1969. Two days later, on February 17, 1969, 33-year-old aquanaut, Berry Louis Cannon (1935-1969), died aboard Sealab III at a depth of 610 feet off the island. An autopsy concluded his death was caused by carbon dioxide asphyxiation. The SEALAB program came to a halt, and although the SEALAB III habitat was retrieved, it was eventually scrapped. Aspects of the research continued, but no new habitats were built.

Wikipedia: Berry L. Cannon

• 1967. [Ocean Science]. Sealab III. Man in the Sea 60-Day, 430 Feet Project Slated for Spring. San Clemente Island. Skin Diver 16(9):55, 60, September 1967

[original in SCIF archives]

In the News~

January 17, 1969 [LBI]: “Sealab hearing ends; inconclusive. A Navy investigation into the death of Sealab III aquanaut Berry Cannon on the ocean floor concluded Wednesday without establishing whether he was the one who wore a defective breathing rig on the fatal dive. The findings of the three-man board of investigation will be forwarded to the Office of Chief of Navy Materials in Washington, D.C., where they are expected to be released in three weeks to a month. The board can recommend disciplinary action including a court martial if it concludes a dereliction of duty led to Cannon's death. Still unsolved at the conclusion of the 17 days of hearings in San Diego was whether Cannon wore the diving rig that was missing the chemicals needed to remove carbon dioxide from the aquanaut's air supply. It was also disclosed Tuesday that the same rig had a hole in its breathing hose. Cannon died February 17 after he and three other aquanauts had dived to the Sealab III habitat, 610 feet below the ocean surface off San Clemente Island. The coroner's office listed the cause of death as carbon dioxide poisoning, although some doubt was cast on this during the board's hearing. After the fatal dive it was discovered one of the rigs worn by the four aquanauts had a canister empty of its air filter chemicals. In a closed door session Wednesday, Lt. William Marsh, a communications officer with Sealab, said an examination of the videotape of the fatal dive could not determine which one of the rigs Cannon wore.During the closed session, Lt. Alan Goldberg, counsel for chief torpedoman Paul A. Wells, who was in charge of the diving rigs, again introduced the theory that an alarm system which sounded notice when Cannon was in trouble could have generated an electric shock in the water that led to the aquanaut's death.”

February 18, 1969 [The Billings Gazette]: “Death Stalls Sealab. San Clemente Island. Calif.—An aquanaut of Project Sealab 3 died Monday of an apparent heart attack while working on the continental shelf 600 feet beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean on the first day of the scheduled 60-day man-in-the-sea experiment. Navy officials halted indefinitely what was to have been the United States' most ambitious attempt at ocean-bottom living. Berry Louis Cannon, 33 years old, a civilian electronics engineer from Panama City, Fla., and a veteran of the 1965 Sealab 2 experiment, became the first aquanaut to die in a Sealab operation since the series of tests began in 1964. Cannon and three other aquanauts had dived to the sea floor slightly ahead of the project's scheduled starting time to try to fix two leaks that were allowing atmospheric gas to escape from the Sealab "habitat," a tank-car-like structure that was to have been the home base for all nine of the project's first-team divers. He was stricken at 5 a.m. while he and Chief Warrant Officer Robert A. Barth, Jr., commander of the diving team, were trying to open the habitat's hatch to go inside. Cannons seizure could be seen clearly on closed-circuit television monitors aboard the Sealab support ship, the Elk River, which was in position above the habitat about 4,000 yards off the eastern shore of San Clemente Island. The island is located about 60 miles south of Long Beach. "We could tell he was in trouble but we couldn't tell what kind," Capt. William A. Nicholson, manager of the Navy's deep submergence systems project, under whose purview Sealab falls, told a news conference on San Clemente Island at noon. Barth swam with Cannon about 20 feet to a spherical transfer capsule which the aquanauts had ridden to the bottom. The capsule started topside immediately, but because of its 25,000-pound bulk it took more than half an hour to reach the top. By that time Cannon was dead. Navy doctors said they believed that the cause was a cardiac arrest. Nicholson said the death raised grave questions about man's ability to operate in the sea. And until the questions are answered, all sea lab diving is to be suspended.”

February 25, 1969 [The Tampa Times]: “Sealab death probe set. San Diego—The Navy's formal inquiry into the death of Sealab 3 aquanaut Berry L. Cannon opens tomorrow under a three-man board headed by the commander of naval weapons laboratory. Final autopsy results confirmed that carbon dioxide poisoning caused the death of Cannon, 33. He died Feb. 17 while attempting to check a helium leak in the Sealab habitat 610 feet deep on the ocean bottom of San Clemente Island. Coroner Robert Cerason said yesterday Cannon's heart and lungs stopped functioning fee to carbon dioxide poisoning, causing acute hemorrhaging in the lungs. Sealab officers reported yesterday that an empty chemical canister was found on the support ship Elk River. It is part of an aquanauts breathing system for removal of carbon dioxidein exhaled gases.”