Posiedon Myster Island

WebUrbanist brings us this pick for luxury subsea accommodation. The above picture is of The Posiedon Myster Island: “The Poseidon Mystery Island is competing for the title of the world’s first luxury underwater resort. The complex will be designed by Bruce Jones, famous for designing a series of $80-million luxury submarines with their own private state rooms and plush carpets, designed for voyages of up to three weeks in length. The project will cost $105 million and will be submerged next to a private island at a depth of 40 feet with an amazing view of the ocean floor.”

Hydropolis Underwater Hotel, Dubai

Underconstruction since, at least, 2007 Dubai’s Hydropolis is the world’s first luxury underwater hotel. The design calls for three elements to bring visitor’s minds from the sand to watery splendor: the land station, the welcome center for guests, the tunnel connecting the structure via train to land, and the 220 suites within the submarine hotel-complex. Regardless of being underwater – It’s one of the “largest contemporary construction projects in the world”, consuming an area of over 260 hectares.

Apeiron Island Hotel, Dubai

While only partially underwater the Aperiron hotel in Duabi is impressive indeed. Dubai FAQ’s tell us:

The Apeiron Island Hotel is a concept hotel of 7 stars in Dubai. If the plans ever get funding, The Apeiron Hotel would be the second self awarded 7 star hotel to be built in Dubai. The Apeiron would have 350 luxury apartment rooms of jungle theme. The hotel itself is to be built on an island about 300+ meters off the coast of Dubai – and accessible only by helicopter or boat. The topfloors of the hotel will contain a man-made jungle with butterflies and other insects. Other features in the design include an art gallery, cinemas, conference facilities, shopping, an underwater spa with pool, an underwater restaurant, and private lagoons & beaches for the guests.

Jules Undersea Lodge

If you are looking for a hotel you can stay in tonight you are going to have to put aside luxury but options are available including Jules Undersea Lodge in Key West, USA.

Once a fully-functional underwater research lab Jules Undersea Lodge now offers underwater rooms for those interested in living with a full view of the reef. Guests of the undersea hotel can choose from a variety of options which include, meals, the rental of diving equipment and SCUBA instruction. The Lodge also offers educational programs, which teaches guests about underwater habitats, and allows them to visit undersea laboratories used by aquanauts to conduct research into sea life.

Sweden’s Utter Inn

If Jules’ Lodege didn’t impress you with its lack of luxury accomidations then be sure to scroll right past this offering, Sweden’s Utter Inn. Information is sparse on this no-frills accommodation but Wikipedia tells us: “Utter Inn (Swedish) or in English, Otter Inn, is an art project by Mikael Genberg which offers underwater accommodation to the public. The facility is entered through a typical Swedish red house located on the surface of the water. The only representation of this concept is, at this point, located in Lake Mälaren near the town of Västerås in Sweden.”

Turkey’s Underwater Hotel

This hotel is so secretive, the name is still under wraps but it claims to be opening in 2010.  But, a highly cloaked press release tells us… Visitors to Istanbul will soon have a chance to view the most spectacular ocean views on the planet. A 7 floor, self appointed 7-star hotel is being built underwater where a tobacco factory was once located (clue?). There will be exhibition halls, and restaurants, and all rooms will be sea facing.

The inauguration of these accommodations is set to coincide with the area’s taking over as the Cultural Capital of Europe in 2010.”

Trilobis Floating Apartment – An Investment Opportunity?

We we sought to find the world’s best underwater hotels and we seem to have mostly failed. But there is one manufacturer of floating homes that has an interesting product, Trilobis. The company’s Trilobis 65 model is a semi-submerged apartment environment. Reaching 20 metres LOA it has space for the comfortable living of six people at sea.In addition to the undersea compontnet, eco-tourists might flock to a hotel that offered Trilobis 65′s for rent because it was designed to allow anyone to live through a self sufficient, non-polluting dwelling cell in unison with their ocean surroundings. Further, the shape of Trilobis 65 allows the annular aggregation of more modular units, creating island colonies.

So if you have an entrepreneurial spirit, consider purchasing a few Trilobis model homes. Otherwise our suggestion is to wait a few years until the technology exists to help develop the market for underwater resorts.

Hit hard by the internet crash in 2000 cable laying ships (video) were hard pressed to find contracts laying subsea communication cable and took on less traditional projects like oceanographic research (see video below).

With eight long years behind us and the internet seeing a rebirth in what is called Web 2.0, the impressive cable laying ships are back in business. The SMH writes:

It grabbed the attention of wave riders this morning, but surfers of the web are likely to benefit most from a large ship moored near Sydney’s eastern suburbs beaches.

French vessel Ile De Sein was moored off Tamarama Beach this morning, as part of a project to lay 9000 kilometres of submarine cable between Sydney and Hawaii.

The cable, being laid by telecommunications company Alcatel-Lucent in partnership with Telstra, aims to boost the internet capacity between Australia and the US.

“The explosion of user-generated online content means we need more capacity than ever before with the United States, which is already the destination for two-thirds of all Australian traffic on the internet,” Telstra Wholesale’s Kate McKenzie said.

The cable is expected to be active by the end of the year.

The presence of the large ship so close to shore brought back memories of the Pasha Bulker, the bulk carrier that ran aground on Nobbys Beach, Newcastle, following a storm last year.

But a police spokesman said Ile De Sein had not issued any distress calls this morning. Continue Reading…

Watch The Video

CNET has put together an interesting slideshow detailing the operation. We encourage you to view the entire show which can be found HERE but the following are some highlights:

The Ile de Sein is a massive ship that sports a crew of 60, who work in shifts to lay cable 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The cable that runs between Australian and Hawaii isn’t straight; it needs to run around undersea mountains and past crevasses, as well as follow the rugged terrain of the sea floor.

Many months of planning were involved in plotting the best undersea route for the cable. A member of the project commented that the undersea cables can reach depths of 5,000 meters (3 miles) or more.

This is the fiber-optic cable that gets run under the sea–separated into different layers. The functional part of the cable is only 17 millimeters thick. This is coated in a flexible white plastic, which forms the outer layer.

The cable is dropped straight to the sea floor without any weights or additional protection. The only additional baggage is the optical signal amplifiers, of which 121 were used in the connection from Sydney to Hawaii, one every 75km (46.5 miles).

This is the cable spool, in which the massive amounts of undersea cable necessary to make the Sydney-Hawaii connection are stored. It’s 7 meters deep and about 15 meters in diameter. All the cable is laid in the spool by hand.

The cable is run live from the ship–data is continuously being sent down the cable–even as it drops to the ocean floor. This gives an indication of the performance of the cable and enables it to be continuously monitored.

This is the machine that runs the cable out to sea. In particularly deep oceans, the cable may not touch the ocean floor until it is 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) behind the ship or more. It is thus important to carefully monitor the stresses on the cable.

This is were the rubber meets the road, the hydraulic arm that lays the cable off the ship’s stern

Be sure to check out the entire slideshow with photography by Alex Serpo starting HERE

Video courtesy of Diesel Duck

Submarine cables world map. Click

Sea-Fever‘s Peter Mello submitted the following story to our Maritime News Discoverer;

A flotilla of ships may have been dispatched to reinstate the broken submarine cable that has left the Middle East and India struggling to communicate with the rest of the world, but it took just one vessel to inflict the damage that brought down the internet for millions.

According to reports, the internet blackout, which has left 75 million people with only limited access, was caused by a ship that tried to moor off the coast of Egypt in bad weather on Wednesday. Since then phone and internet traffic has been severely reduced across a huge swath of the region, slashed by as much as 70% in countries including India, Egypt and Dubai.

While tens of millions have been directly affected, the impact of the blackout has spread far wider, with economies across Asia and the Middle East struggling to cope. Governments have also become directly involved, with the Egyptian communications ministry imploring surfers to stay offline so business traffic can take priority. “People who download music and films are going to affect businesses who have more important things to do,” said ministry spokesman Mohammed Taymur. Continue Reading At The Guardian…

Chart Of The Cable

Graph Of Affected Areas

(Source: Renesys)

UPDATE: 2nd Cable Reported Cut

The BBC Tells Us:

The first cable – the Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe (FLAG) – was cut at 0800 on 30 January, the firm said.

INSIDE A SUBMARINE CABLE 1 Polyethylene cover 2,4 Stranded steel armour wires 3,5 Tar-soaked nylon yarn 6 Polycarbonate insulator 7 Copper sheath 8 Protective core 9 Optical fibres Not to scale

A second cable thought to lie alongside it – SEA-ME-WE 4, or the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 cable – was also split.

FLAG is a 28,000km (17,400 mile) long submarine communications cable that links Australia and Japan with Europe via India and the Middle East.

SEA-ME-WE 4 is a submarine cable linking South East Asia to Europe via the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.

The two cable cuts meant that the only cable in service connecting Europe to the Middle East via Egypt was the older Sea-M-We 3 system, according to research firm TeleGeography.

The firm said the cuts reduced the amount of available capacity on the stretch of network between India and Europe by 75% percent.

As a result, carriers in Egypt and the Middle East re-routed their European traffic around the globe, through South East Asia and across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Continue Reading…

Related Links:

• Study on Subsea Cable Cuts
  
• Live Internet Status Report
• How To Fix An Undersea Cable

UPDATE 2:

The AP is reporting: Ships did not cut internet cable 

We have taken a look at ways to harness the ocean’s immense power before but this alternative energy solutions is slightly different. Using subsea moorings and 100′ diameter turbines this solution targets Gulf Stream currents to produce power. Inhabitat.com tells us;

The idea is to have underwater turbines placed right in the middle of the Gulf Stream current. The turbines are designed to be about 100 feet in diameter. These will be connected to a buoy that holds the electricity generating equipment. The gulf stream carries billions of gallons per minute, so the impact of these turbines would be minimal if negligible to the current itself.

Look for the first prototype to be launched by Dania Beach Florida based Center of Excellence in Ocean Energy Technology in the first quarter of 2008.

(You can find related multimedia HERE)