Underwater biological surveys have been conducted around the Antarctic continent for several decades, and our knowledge of the species present in the shallow waters (<50 m) is reasonably comprehensive. However, the waters below 50 m remain underexplored on the account of difficulty of access, financial barriers and relatively few operational platforms capable of deployment to such depths. Here, we demonstrate that personal submersibles, now increasingly deployed by the expedition cruise industry, can be vessels of opportunity for biological research in the polar regions. We describe direct observations of the rarely encountered scyphozoan Stygiomedusa gigantea at water depths of 80–280 m in Antarctic Peninsula coastal waters as an example of the potential that personal submersibles present for the scientific community, and we outline possible research avenues for utilizing these platforms in the future.

几十年来，人们一直在南极大陆周围进行水下生物调查，我们对浅水区（<50 米）中存在的物种的了解相当全面。然而，由于难以进入、资金障碍以及能够部署到如此深度的操作平台相对较少，50 米以下的水域仍未得到充分探索。在这里，我们展示了个人潜水器，现在越来越多地被远征邮轮行业部署，可以成为极地地区生物研究的机会。我们描述了对罕见的 scyphozoan  Stygiomedusa gigantea的直接观察 以南极半岛沿海水域 80-280 米的水深作为个人潜水器为科学界呈现的潜力的一个例子，我们概述了未来利用这些平台的可能研究途径。