Living Underwater Record Broken By Florida Man And He’s Not Stopping
A Florida professor has been living underwater for 74 days.
A Florida man is in the news, but not for something crazy like wrestling an alligator or a lawsuit over mac & cheese. Instead, Joseph Dituri is in the news for breaking a world record as the person who has lived underwater the longest, according to AP News. The university professor has been living underwater for 74 days after being submerged back on March 1.
Joseph Dituri is a retired U.S. Naval officer in addition to being a professor at the University of South Florida. He holds a doctorate in biomedical engineering, which allows him to use his engineering skills in the world of medicine and biology in an effort to improve and advance healthcare treatment.
The reason the professor chose to start living underwater wasn’t only to beat the old record, but to conduct important research. Every day, Joseph Dituri monitors how is body is reacting to the extreme pressure of the environment to see if there are any significant physiological side effects. In addition, he is conducting medical and ocean research in collaboration with the Marine Resources Development Foundation.
Rather than living underwater in a submarine, Joseph Dituri is living in a luxurious hotel called Jules’ Undersea Lodge. Situated on the ocean floor in Key Largo, Florida, this is the only underwater hotel in the country. From the inside, it looks like an influencer’s paradise with its cozy living quarters and huge bubble window that allows visitors to watch sea creatures and passing scuba divers.
The previous owners of the living underwater world record were Bruce Cantrell and Jessica Fain, who were also university professors (from Tennessee). They lived in the Jules’ Undersea Lodge as well, lasting 73 days, two hours, and 34 minutes. Now that Joseph Dituri has beaten their record, he plans to stay within the hotel until June 9, making it an even 100 days of living underwater.
As he continues living under the ocean’s surface, Joseph Dituri won’t just be napping and admiring the ocean floor—he will continue running online classes and broadcasting his interviews from within his small studio. The professor has kept up his engineering courses for the University of South Florida, reaching as many as 2,500 college students from within his ocean bubble. We can only imagine the fascinating questions that his students must be asking him.
In his free time while living underwater, Joseph Dituri manages to stay busy by regularly exercising, napping, and eating protein-rich meals like eggs and salmon. If he has access to Netflix or other streaming services, hopefully he avoids watching films like The Abyss, Underwater, or Deep Blue Sea. But he may actually like those films since his nickname is “Dr. Deep Sea.”
One thing Dr. Deep Sea is understandably missing is the sunshine, which is hard to come by when you’re living underwater. Once he returns to the land’s surface, he looks forward to getting up early to go to the gym so that he can walk outside and see the sunrise in the morning.
