The 59-year-old German Rüdiger Koch broke the Guinness record this Friday as the man who has spent the most time underwater without depressurization, after spending 120 days 11 meters deep in a cabin off the Caribbean coast of Panama.
Koch left his capsule in the presence of Susana Reyes, winner of Guinness World Records, who confirmed the new title, previously held by the American Joseph Dituri, who spent 100 days in a submerged enclosure in a Florida lake.
“It has been a great adventure and now that it has ended, I almost feel regret (to leave), I have really enjoyed my stay here,” Koch told AFP minutes before leaving his confinement.
Koch, an aerospace engineer, entered his 30m2 cabin on September 26 attached to a futuristic house built off the coast of Puerto Lindo, in Portobelo.
“It’s beautiful when things calm down, it gets dark and the sea shines, it’s impossible to describe, you have to experience it yourself,” he said.
To celebrate, he toasted with champagne and smoked a cigar, before throwing himself into the sea, where a boat picked him up and moved him to the mainland to be treated with a party.
The housing to which the capsule is attached is circular in shape and is mounted on a cylindrical structure. To enter you must climb a hanging ladder or a forklift.
Once inside, a narrow spiral staircase descends through the cylinder to the submerged cabin where Koch was.
From the circular windows of his capsule, Koch saw fish. It had a portable toilet, bed, television, computer, exercise bike, fans, a small electric generator and satellite internet.
Two large digital clocks marked the times and four cameras watched him to confirm that he was not leaving the place. There he received food from abroad and was visited by a doctor and several relatives.
“We need witnesses who were monitoring and verifying 24-7 for more than 120 days and this verification was one of the great challenges that this record had,” Reyes told AFP.
This record “is undoubtedly one of the most extravagant” and required “a lot of work,” he added.
Koch, an admirer of Captain Nemo, was also accompanied in his confinement by a copy of “20,000 Leagues of Underwater Travel”, the classic work of the 19th century French novelist, Jules Verne.