Five-Star Hotel Under the Sea

Feb. 10, 2005 — -- President Bush may talk about a mission to Mars, but Bruce Jones is betting there is still a healthy thirst for exploration into underwater worlds on our own planet.

Jones, who has spent 17 years designing and selling submarines for private use, has $40 million invested to build a luxury hotel where the most expensive rooms will be submerged 50 feet under the sea off Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas.

Unlike the Jules Undersea Lodge -- the only undersea hotel now in existence, located off the coast of Key Largo, Fla. -- guests at the Poseidon won't need to put on a wet suit and dive to their accommodations. They also won't need to worry about changing pressure levels since the accommodations will be maintained at above-surface pressure. Instead, they can glide to their $1,500-a-night underwater abodes by escalator.

"I think there are a tremendous number of people who would be interested," said Jones, "including anyone who is looking for a different experience."

Each room will feature fortified, transparent acrylic walls that look out onto coral gardens. There will be controls in each room that guests can use to adjust the lighting of the underwater worlds outside their windows and to release food for fish swimming just outside. The rooms will also feature individual Jacuzzis for those who may be inspired by their surroundings to get wet.

It sounds impressive -- but will it happen? It's hard to say, considering Jones' project is only the latest in a string of grand ideas to expand real estate under the sea.

In the 1960s and '70s, Jacques Cousteau, the French marine explorer, inspired many aspiring aquanauts, including Jones, to imagine underwater worlds of the future. The French architect Jacques Rougerie constructed three major underwater habitats between 1977 and 1981, though none ever made it into the water. He has also designed an undersea village for the Virgin Islands that has yet to be realized.

There is also Ocean Base One, an undersea research station dreamed up over the last decade by ocean enthusiasts at the nonprofit Ocean Technology Foundation in Groton, Conn. As imagined, this fixed habitat about the size of a supermarket could be extended off the back of a roaming ship or sit on the continental shelf about 600 feet below the surface. Divers would reach the base by elevator.