Editing SEALAB (section)

==United States Navy Genesis Project==
[[File:"Scientists in the Sea" program (cropped to Capt George Bond).jpg|thumb|left|upright|Dr. (Captain) George F. Bond, senior medical officer and principal investigator for the SEALAB I and II experiments.]]
Preliminary research work was undertaken by [[George F. Bond]], who named the project after the [[Book of Genesis]], which prophesised humans would gain dominion over the oceans. Bond began investigations in 1957 to develop theories about [[saturation diving]]. Bond's team exposed [[rat]]s, [[goat]]s, [[monkey]]s, and human beings to various gas mixtures at different pressures. By 1963 they had collected enough data to test the first SEALAB habitat.<ref name=sul>{{cite journal |last=Chamberland |first=Dennis |author-link=Dennis Chamberland |year=1986 |title=Sealab: Unfinished Legacy |journal=Proceedings |volume=112 |issue=1 |pages=72–82 |publisher=[[United States Naval Institute]] |url=https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1986/january/sealab-unfinished-legacy |url-access=limited}}</ref>

At the time, [[Jacques Cousteau]] and [[Edwin A. Link]] were pursuing privately funded saturation diving projects to study long-term underwater living. Link's efforts resulted in the first underwater habitat, occupied by [[aquanaut]] [[Robert Sténuit]] in the Mediterranean Sea at a depth of {{cvt|61|m}} for one day on September 6, 1962. Cousteau's habitats included [[Conshelf I]], with a 2-person crew at a depth of {{cvt|10|m}} near Marseilles, placed on September 14, 1962, and [[Conshelf II]], placed in the Red Sea at depths of {{cvt|11|and|27|m}} on June 15, 1963. Later that year, the Kennedy administration decided to open a new "race" frontier, directing the navy to begin the SEALAB program.<ref name=sul/>