RESEARCH at a former Forest quarry aimed at opening up the oceans for further exploration and scientific investigation is being featured on a major American news channel.

A team from CNN’s Blueprint programme visited DEEP at the former TS Thomas quarry off the A48 between Lydney and Chepstow at Tidenham.

The work at the former National Diving Centre is part of a special half-hour show in which CNN’s Max Foster travels across the UK exploring innovations from homes for humans in the depths of the oceans to flying taxis.

London-based journalist Foster travelled to Gloucestershire to how startup DEEP is hoping to spark a a renaissance of ocean exploration with its underwater Sentinel habitat.

Ethan Butler, the chief development officer at DEEP, told Foster: “Our motto is is to make humans aquatic – not just certain humans, all humans.

“You could come down by a submarine and never get wet, never have to study scuba, never have to do anything but just experience it.

“That opens up access to the ocean to millions.

“Every other breath we take is thanks to oxygen produced by the ocean, the ocean is a major carbon sink.

Our goal is to help understand that and all of the other myriad ways of the ocean benefits us all whether we recognise it or not.”

Their main use for the modules would be scientific research and the aim is to have people living and working 200 metres underwater for 28 days at a time.

Lead diver Phil Short explained: “Those modules can be bolted together, so the possibility for subsea villages is absolutely there.

“We know all this stuff about our solar system and beyond, but we don't know what's on the bottom of our own oceans.

“I want to go live there so I can learn.”