Ted Ciamillo’s pedal-powered submarine may seem like a stunt, but marine biologists are paying serious attention (Image: Subhuman Project)

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SOME men mark their 40th birthday by buying a flashy new car, changing jobs or finally getting started on that novel. Ted Ciamillo decided he would pedal across the Atlantic in a one-man submarine he has designed and built himself.

It may sound like a crazy stunt dreamed up by an adrenalin junkie, but the plan, dubbed the “Subhuman project”, has attracted serious attention from marine biologists. That’s because the sub, when it takes to the seas later this year, could for the first time allow them to explore the upper layers of the ocean silently and unobtrusively, revealing marine life as it has never been seen before.

Ciamillo, a machinist by training and an inventor by trade, does have a track record in underwater exploration. In 1997 he made his name designing a James Bond-style underwater propulsion vehicle called the Hydrospeeder, which looks something like an underwater motorbike. Although the company that sold the Hydrospeeder later folded, Ciamillo remained keen to speed up underwater exploration. “I found myself frustrated by how slowly you move under water, especially with a bunch of dive gear on your back,” he says. “It’s like dropping someone in the middle of the forest in a wheelchair.”

So, in collaboration with marine biologist Frank Fish of West Chester University in Pennsylvania, who specialises in the biomechanics of cetacean swimming, Ciamillo designed a carbon-fibre “tail” for divers, called the Lunocet. Modelled on Fish’s CAT scans …