If you’re looking for a unique vacation with family and friends or a place to celebrate a special occasion, enjoy an unforgettable meal, get married or spend your honeymoon, consider underwater tourism at a submerged hotel or restaurant. Underwater tourism offers everyone — divers and nondivers alike — a fascinating experience. No certification or knowledge of dive tables and gas laws is required; you don’t even need a swimsuit. Underwater tourism is also an opportunity for investment and enterprise that’s waiting to be leveraged.
Since diving experience is not needed, anyone can visit. Age and fitness level don’t matter, and there’s no risk of barotraumas, decompression sickness or nitrogen narcosis. Underwater residential structures keep their internal pressure constant and equal to surface pressure — 1 atmosphere (ATA) — regardless of depth, so a stay is unlimited in duration. Surprisingly, only a few underwater residential and commercial buildings exist that can provide such subaquatic experiences.
Dining
The two most well-known underwater restaurants are the Red Sea Star restaurant in Eilat, Israel, and the Ithaa Undersea Restaurant in the Maldives. The Red Sea Star, which opened in 1998, has 130 seats. It lies submerged under 18 feet of water and is reached by crossing a 200-foot bridge. The restaurant’s cross shape and pentagonal alcoves increase surface area to facilitate viewing. Each of the restaurant’s 62 tables has a framed window, and additional windows are arranged around the ceiling, which is covered with more than 200 elements that resemble enlarged sea pebbles. The colors and shapes of jellyfish, sea cucumbers, sponges and other marine plants inspire the restaurant’s interior décor, and a flooring of transparent epoxy poured over sea sand evokes the sensation of floating weightless in the water. The interior’s red-orange pallet of colors was chosen after extensive experiments and investigations of changes in light properties at depth and its effects on people’s faces and plates of food to ensure a positive customer experience when red becomes bluer.
The Ithaa Undersea Restaurant at the Conrad Maldives Rangali Island resort opened in 2005 and is situated 16 feet below the surface. Diners reach the restaurant from shore using a wooden dock. The all-glass, aquarium-like structure, built by M.J. Murphy Ltd., seats 12 and provides a 270-degree panoramic view overhead.
Hotels
Perhaps the most famous underwater hotel is also the smallest, the Hotel Utter Inn (Otter Inn), a one-room steel cube submerged 10 feet below the surface of Sweden’s Lake Malaren. From a distance, it looks like a little red shack floating on the lake. Downstairs, there’s a single room with windows on each side, two beds and a table. It opened in 2000 and is accessible by boat. Despite its simplicity and modest design, guests generally report a pleasant and memorable, once-in-a-lifetime experience.
The Poseidon Undersea Resort in Fiji, which has not yet opened to the public, is more advanced in its design as well as its integration into the surrounding environment. Built by Bruce Jones of U.S. Submarines Inc., the resort will be 40 feet below the surface and feature 20 bungalows. The architecture of the suites and service areas uses a modular configuration and submarine technology. The central steel corridor is permanently fixed to the structure’s base on the seafloor, and each unit running off the corridor is neutrally buoyant. A service area and restaurant/bar are on one side, and a library, conference room and wedding chapel are on the other. Access is via elevators in vertical tunnels. Curvilinear surfaces composed of transparent acrylic compose 70 percent of the structure to maximize the view.
Design
Most submerged structures follow classical commercial or military underwater designs using aquarium or submarine technology, or they are essentially terrestrial structures that have been sealed and submerged. By and large, traditional terrestrial building materials including steel-like matrix, glass, acrylic and concrete are utilized with minimal need for innovative or advanced materials.
Underwater architecture for residence and tourism is a challenging and exciting field that has not yet flourished, although the technology and knowledge are (or are becoming) available. The creation of inspiring underwater facilities brings opportunities to evoke the exciting aquatic world or use cutting-edge materials based in nanotechnology, extreme textiles or innovative water-building technology. Although he was referring to nanotechnology when he said it, Nobel laureate Richard Feynman’s famous quote applies: “There’s plenty of room at the bottom.”
© Alert Diver — Q3 Summer 2012