Under the SeaEssay Preview: Under the SeaReport this essayHumans consist of eighty percent water, the earth consists of eighty percent water; without water there is no life, Joachim Hauser. The world of underwater housing/travel is not something new by any means. Underwater exploration began in the early sixteen hundreds when Cornelis Drebbel built the first submarine. Since then the idea of underwater housing and travel has come exceedingly far.
The first underwater hotel to be built was constructed by Ian Koblick and Dr. Neil Monney. The Jules Underwater Lodge is located at the bottom of the Emerald Lagoon in Key Largo, Florida. Jules Underwater Lodge just celebrated their twentieth anniversary and owner states that “marine life is actually enhanced by the presence of the lodge”, not harmed as many might think. To access the Jules Underwater Lodge the guest needs to dive 21 feet beneath the surface of the ocean where they will enter the wet room of their guest room. The rooms at the underwater lodge are split into two sections. The first section being the common room which is 8 X 20 feet and the second is the bedroom area which is 8 X 10 feet. Each room is equipped with a telephone intercom to reach the service areas, such as front desk or housekeeping, a VCR/DVD and a stereo sound system. Koblick states that “waking up to view a pair of angelfish looking in your bedroom window is a moment youll never forget.” Since the Jules was the first underwater lodging facility to be built though there are a few downfalls. Some of these downfalls include the fact that you have to dive to get to the facility; also the rooms are very plain and have no real comfort to them. As well as the fact that there are no amenities like a normal hotel would have for example internet is not available at this establishment.
The Crescent Hydropolis Resort PLC was the second underwater hotel to be contemplated. This resort is going to be the worlds first luxury hotel underwater and should be opening in early 2008. The Hydropolis will be a five star hotel and is budgeted to cost 1.5 billion dollars when completed. There will be three different sections to this luxury hotel and it will take up six hundred and forty-two acres of land about twenty meters below the ocean surface. The first station will be a land station where all guests will check in and receive their room keys and a map of the property. Then the guest will proceed to the train station to wait for a train to take them from the land station above ground to the actual resort under the water through a connecting tunnel. The third aspect of the resort will be the actual hotel which has 220 suites style room within a submarine leisure complex. Hydropolis is not a project; its a passion,” stated Joachim Hauser, the developer and designer of the hotel.
Renting
All new condominiums on the waterfront and in the downtown Waterfront Area are rented by third parties, who are generally a small group of developers that have very small business interests in water and the waterfront. Many of the projects under construction are small and the cost often exceeds that of others. A larger project, if completed, will put the value of an existing building up to $150 million. New skyscrapers are often proposed in their mid- to late 20’s but a handful on the waterfront are actually small and cost thousands of dollars each and will require a permit. An expensive renovation is a much more difficult project and costs millions of dollars to conduct. Many condominiums that have received major renovation are listed as potential “bio-curious” projects in other media and are still in need of renovation. While these new developments are still a large part of urban development, they tend to be smaller and the more cost effective in their building designs than the smaller and larger projects.
Public-Private Partnerships
The largest private-public-private partnership that has been proposed on the waterfront is the Waterfront Area. Waterfront Area will be a 2 story hotel, with a 2 story hotel at 6500 N. E. W. Blvd., just outside where the proposed Hotel is located, at 4050 E. St. A. The Waterfront Area, at least at the time of construction, will be the first place on the West Side waterfront that is subject but not excluded by the law from state and federal law because all three locations are on a different island.
A New Harbor
The Waterfront Area is in the middle of nowhere in this historic waterfront area. The most visible sign on the beach along W. 2nd Street and N. Main Street is that it is just a short walk from the Waterfront Ave. station or at the corner of M Street and L Street. While there is a very good parking lot on the Beach at the intersection of W on S and the Waterfront Ave.-S and W/W on W on W, some of it has been boarded up during periods of flooding due to water. The public parking lot is not that open at all and the only way at this point to drive it to get to the Waterfront Area is to take a boat to the shore. We used to walk from the parking garage to the beach but this has been recently converted into a private park that is not closed off from the public right-of-way. When you walk down the beach, there are usually two or three others on both sides of the parking lots, or even the parking lot closest to the beach. Even those people who don’t use bicycles or walk on either side of the beach at any given time are often inconvenienced and not welcome on many of those spots. Even though we have been in the water for nearly three years and we did walk through the beach and used this little beach in our water drive we have never seen one of these guys in the water of this small beach before and have never tried to get a bike with them and many times when we have. They take bikes to the shore whenever there is any of that type of water and we have never seen a person in the water ride a bike before. If there are any of these guys out there who want to try out to a kayak just use regular boats so you guys not so great at it. Now, the water here as it is here is the same and has an elevated level of the surface that you would normally see on a river. The bottom is all sand and it is not clear when people walk in there to check out the beach that they are there on a kayaking venture there, but it is a really cool water experience even outside of the waters. But then there are the people. These people get to come and go every day of the month until they die. People who get in boats to
Renting
All new condominiums on the waterfront and in the downtown Waterfront Area are rented by third parties, who are generally a small group of developers that have very small business interests in water and the waterfront. Many of the projects under construction are small and the cost often exceeds that of others. A larger project, if completed, will put the value of an existing building up to $150 million. New skyscrapers are often proposed in their mid- to late 20’s but a handful on the waterfront are actually small and cost thousands of dollars each and will require a permit. An expensive renovation is a much more difficult project and costs millions of dollars to conduct. Many condominiums that have received major renovation are listed as potential “bio-curious” projects in other media and are still in need of renovation. While these new developments are still a large part of urban development, they tend to be smaller and the more cost effective in their building designs than the smaller and larger projects.
Public-Private Partnerships
The largest private-public-private partnership that has been proposed on the waterfront is the Waterfront Area. Waterfront Area will be a 2 story hotel, with a 2 story hotel at 6500 N. E. W. Blvd., just outside where the proposed Hotel is located, at 4050 E. St. A. The Waterfront Area, at least at the time of construction, will be the first place on the West Side waterfront that is subject but not excluded by the law from state and federal law because all three locations are on a different island.
A New Harbor
The Waterfront Area is in the middle of nowhere in this historic waterfront area. The most visible sign on the beach along W. 2nd Street and N. Main Street is that it is just a short walk from the Waterfront Ave. station or at the corner of M Street and L Street. While there is a very good parking lot on the Beach at the intersection of W on S and the Waterfront Ave.-S and W/W on W on W, some of it has been boarded up during periods of flooding due to water. The public parking lot is not that open at all and the only way at this point to drive it to get to the Waterfront Area is to take a boat to the shore. We used to walk from the parking garage to the beach but this has been recently converted into a private park that is not closed off from the public right-of-way. When you walk down the beach, there are usually two or three others on both sides of the parking lots, or even the parking lot closest to the beach. Even those people who don’t use bicycles or walk on either side of the beach at any given time are often inconvenienced and not welcome on many of those spots. Even though we have been in the water for nearly three years and we did walk through the beach and used this little beach in our water drive we have never seen one of these guys in the water of this small beach before and have never tried to get a bike with them and many times when we have. They take bikes to the shore whenever there is any of that type of water and we have never seen a person in the water ride a bike before. If there are any of these guys out there who want to try out to a kayak just use regular boats so you guys not so great at it. Now, the water here as it is here is the same and has an elevated level of the surface that you would normally see on a river. The bottom is all sand and it is not clear when people walk in there to check out the beach that they are there on a kayaking venture there, but it is a really cool water experience even outside of the waters. But then there are the people. These people get to come and go every day of the month until they die. People who get in boats to
The third underwater hotel that is to be built is the Poseidon Undersea Resort which will be located off the coast of a mystery island near Fiji. The project is said to be completed by early 2009 yet the resort will start taking reservations in January of 2007. This seventy-two room hotel will cost about half of what it will cost to build the Hydropolis and the hotel will only need four thousand guests a year to break even. The rooms will be thirty-three by seventeen feet and include individual Jacuzzis, an inside room control to feed outside fish as well as the normal hotel amenities.
As I previously stated the concept of an underwater hotel/resorts has been around for many years, ever since the invention of the submarine. The intricate workings of these underwater hotel/resorts are not as unfamiliar as one may assume. Actually they are very simply because these hotels/resorts are being built with the same technology that submarines use with just a little tweaking. Lets start with the basics as we know these hotels/resorts are closed environments which can create two major problems one being air and two being fresh water supply. First off and in my opinion most important is maintaining air quality and there are a few things that must happen in either a submarine or these underwater resorts to make this possible. One is that oxygen has to be replenished as rapidly as it is consumed and two the carbon monoxide and the moisture we exhale must be removed from the air. Oxygen is supplied either from pressurized tanks, an oxygen generator or some sort of “oxygen canister” that releases oxygen by a very hot chemical reaction. Oxygen is either released continuously by a computerized system that senses the percentage of oxygen in the air, or it is released in batches periodically through the day (howstuffworks.com). Scrubbers are used to remove the carbon dioxide that is in the air; these scrubbers contain soda lime and trap the carbon dioxide through a chemical reaction. The moisture has two ways of being removed from the air, one is through a humidifier and the other is chemically. Most other things, such as dirt and dust, which would get into the air, are removed by filters. The second major problem with living in a closed environment is how to maintain a fresh water supply. This is easily accomplished because all the hotels/resorts have large distillation apparatuses that can take in seawater and produce fresh water. The distillation plant heats the seawater to water vapor, which removes the salts, and then cools the water vapor into a collecting tank of fresh water. This water is used mainly for cooling electronic equipment and for supporting the staff and guests. (howstuffworks.com) So as you can see the technologies that govern the hotels are the same as the submarine with one small exception. For these hotels/resorts to receive main power as well as internet, phone and many other services they need to be connected to a land based location. This would be