Craig B. Cooper (born September 8, 1949) is a professional

aquanaut An aquanaut is any person who remains underwater, breathing at the ambient pressure for long enough for the concentration of the inert components of the breathing gas dissolved in the body tissues to reach equilibrium, in a state known as sat ...

from the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

who served from 1991 to 2010 as Operations Manager for the

Aquarius Reef Base The Aquarius Reef Base is an underwater habitat located off Key Largo in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, Florida, United States. It is the world's only undersea research laboratory and it is operated by Florida International Univer ...

underwater habitat Underwater habitats are underwater structures in which people can live for extended periods and carry out most of the Circadian rhythm, basic human functions of a 24-hour day, such as working, resting, eating, attending to personal hygiene, and ...

. Cooper is known to fellow divers by the nickname "Coop".

Education and professional diving career

Cooper began

scuba diving Scuba diving is a Diving mode, mode of underwater diving whereby divers use Scuba set, breathing equipment that is completely independent of a surface breathing gas supply, and therefore has a limited but variable endurance. The word ''scub ...

for recreation in 1964. He graduated from

Virginia Tech The Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, commonly referred to as Virginia Tech (VT), is a Public university, public Land-grant college, land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States ...

in 1971 with a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

degree in

Biology Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, History of life, origin, evolution, and ...

. During and after college he conducted fisheries research with the Virginia Cooperative Fishery Unit, New Jersey Fish and Game and the U.S. Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife. In 1973 Cooper graduated from the Ocean Corporation, a

commercial diving Commercial diving may be considered an application of professional diving where the diver engages in underwater work for industrial, construction, engineering, maintenance or other commercial purposes which are similar to work done out of the wate ...

school. He then worked for Taylor Diving & Salvage for eleven years as a commercial diver in many different parts of the world. His work included air, mixed gas, and

saturation diving Saturation diving is an ambient pressure diving technique which allows a diver to remain at working depth for extended periods during which the body tissues become solubility, saturated with metabolically inert gas from the breathing gas mixture ...

. He also gained experience with welding habitats. Cooper was diving near the Ixtoc oil platform when it exploded in 1979, killing a friend of his. Cooper subsequently worked with oil well firefighter

Red Adair Paul Neal "Red" Adair (June 18, 1915 – August 7, 2004)Obituary: Red Adair

In 1984 Cooper joined the

North Carolina Department of Transportation The North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) is responsible for building, repairing, and operating highways, bridges, and other modes of transportation, including ferries in the U.S. state of North Carolina. History The North Carolina ...

as an underwater bridge inspector. This work soon evolved to include underwater bridge construction of concrete piles and foundations. The

University of North Carolina Wilmington The University of North Carolina Wilmington, or University of North Carolina at Wilmington, (UNC Wilmington or UNCW) is a Public university, public research university in Wilmington, North Carolina. It is part of the University of North Caroli ...

contacted Cooper in December 1990 after acquiring the Aquarius underwater laboratory. In January 1991 Cooper began managing the refurbishment of Aquarius in drydock prior to its deployment at its present site in the

Florida Keys The Florida Keys are a coral island, coral cay archipelago off the southern coast of Florida, forming the southernmost part of the continental United States. They begin at the southeastern coast of the Florida peninsula, about south of Miami a ...

in 1993.

Aquarius

As Operations Manager at Aquarius for the National Undersea Research Center (NURC), Cooper supervised the daily activities of the underwater habitat. He also served as

Coast Guard A coast guard or coastguard is a Maritime Security Regimes, maritime security organization of a particular country. The term embraces wide range of responsibilities in different countries, from being a heavily armed military force with cust ...

-licensed

Captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader or highest rank officer of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police depa ...

, Diving Medical Technician, and habitat technician during missions aboard Aquarius. Cooper commented of the scientists participating in a June 1995

marine biology Marine biology is the scientific study of the biology of marine life, organisms that inhabit the sea. Given that in biology many scientific classification, phyla, family (biology), families and genera have some species that live in the sea and ...

mission aboard Aquarius, "In many ways this is like a space mission... We need to keep a close eye on them to make sure everything's okay." During

Hurricane Gordon Hurricane Gordon was an erratic, long-lived, and catastrophic late-season hurricane of the 1994 Atlantic hurricane season. The twelfth and final tropical cyclone of the season, Gordon formed as a tropical depression in the southwestern Caribbea ...

in 1994, Cooper helped rescue a crew of scientists and divers who had to evacuate Aquarius and climb up a rescue line to the surface in 15-foot seas after one of the habitat's generators caught fire. As of 2008, no scientists or staff members had been injured at Aquarius due to storms. In July 2004, Cooper took part as a habitat technician in the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations 6 ( NEEMO 6) mission, one of a series of

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

-NOAA missions which use Aquarius as an analog environment for space exploration. The NEEMO 6 crew lived and worked underwater aboard Aquarius for ten days. In April 2005, Cooper served as a habitat technician during the NEEMO 8 mission, the crew of which lived underwater for three days. Other missions aboard Aquarius in which Cooper has participated include a June 2006 mission with the

U.S. Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest displacement, at 4.5 million tons in 2021. It has the world's largest aircraft ...

Specialized Research Diving Detachment (SRDD) during which NURC divers investigated the possibility of using

rebreather A rebreather is a breathing apparatus that absorbs the carbon dioxide of a user's exhaled breath to permit the rebreathing (recycling) of the substantial unused oxygen content, and unused inert content when present, of each breath. Oxygen is a ...

s during excursions from Aquarius. During the investigation of the death of Aquarius aquanaut Dewey Smith in 2009, the panel of outside experts asked Cooper to organize a test in which the hydraulic hammer in use near Smith at the time of his fatal accident was again used underwater in the vicinity of an Inspiration closed circuit rebreather (CCR) similar to the one Smith had been using. Cooper is a friend of

SEALAB SEALAB I, II, and III were experimental underwater habitats developed and deployed by the United States Navy during the 1960s to prove the viability of saturation diving and humans living in isolation for extended periods of time. The knowledge ...

aquanaut Bob Barth, whom he regards as a mentor. In 2003, Cooper, Barth,

Supervisor of Diving

Mark Helmkamp and NOAA Captain Craig McLean organized a partnership allowing Navy divers to take part in Aquarius saturation diving missions. In a blog entry written in 1999, Cooper wrote of his fellow Aquarius topside personnel and habitat technicians, "If the scientists are the astronauts, these guys are the junior Bob Barths." After leaving the Operations Manager position in 2009, Cooper continued serving with Aquarius in his capacities as diver, medical technician and habitat technician, as well as working on program development and collaborations with other agencies. In March 2010, Cooper retired as Operations Director of Aquarius., cited in At Cooper's retirement ceremony, Barth commented, "You're the only one, don't be the last!" Cooper subsequently joined the team of retired

University of Connecticut The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university system with its main campus in Storrs, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1881 as the Storrs Agricultural School, named after two benefactors. In 1893, ...

professor Richard A. Cooper, who hopes to build an undersea lab called SeaBase 1 in the

Belize Barrier Reef The Belize Barrier Reef is a series of coral reefs straddling the coast of Belize, roughly offshore in the north and in the south within the country limits. The Belize Barrier Reef is a long section of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System, ...

Personal life

Cooper has raised Arabian show horses and Friesian draft horses with his wife, Kathleen, at their farm in

Wake Forest, North Carolina Wake Forest is a town in Wake and Franklin counties in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located almost entirely in Wake County, it lies just north of the state capital, Raleigh. At the 2020 census, the population was 47,601, up from 30,117 in ...

Publications

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References

External links

Cooper's self-profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cooper, Craig 1949 births Living people American underwater divers Aquanauts Missing middle or first names Place of birth missing (living people) University of North Carolina at Wilmington people Virginia Tech alumni People from Wake Forest, North Carolina