The newest trend on yachts? Submersibles
Charles Kohnen, co-founder of the submersible manufacturer Seamagine Hydrospace, estimates that there are 200 manned vessels worldwide. Some are used by scientific institutions, others for tourism.
But a growing number belong to a select group of yacht owners.
While a ticket aboard a submersible tour, like the one that ended in tragedy this year en route to the Titanic shipwreck, is too pricey for most people, owning a submersible requires another level of wealth and boating infrastructure.
Only sufficiently large yachts — at least 120 feet — can hold a sub, which typically costs $2 million to $7 million — not including the cost of a crane to lower the sub, the speedboat needed to board, and services like mapmaking and guides that can run about $15,000 per day.
“It’s not like a fancy car,” Kohnen said. “It’s more like a $5 million spacecraft.”
Just as having a helicopter and launchpad on a yacht was hot in the 1980s, Kohnen said, getting a personable submersible is increasingly a thing for the wealthy.
Ofer Ketter, whose company, Submerge, caters to personal sub owners, sees a similar trend. “You have a megayacht, a super yacht — a submersible has become the next thing to have,” he said.
Some submersible owners lend out their vessels for documentaries and scientific research, while others are in search of never-before-seen species or want to explore shipwrecks.
And there is a kind of mixed-use model that is versatile for everything from an underwater wedding to cocktails on the reef, dinner or a poker game, said Craig Barnett, Triton’s director of sales and marketing.
The personal submersibles industry has grown with the size of yachts.
When Seamagine started in 1995, mostly robots were used for deep-sea scientific work because lowering submersibles into the ocean with people inside was unwieldy, Kohnen said.
The company built a model that could be boarded from the water, and this relaunched an era of manned submersibles for science and tourism.
Around 2005, Seamagine got its first yacht commission — and competition.
Another submersible manufacturer, U-boat Worx, started operations in the Netherlands, and Triton soon followed.
Yachts were becoming bigger, but, Kohnen said, people were also starting to value experience-seeking over luxury.
Such an undwerwater adventure can take months of planning to scout, map and set up. Submerge has coordinated five expeditions with three private clients this year, Ketter said, and the company works with about six luxury travel firms, including submersible manufacturers.
A typical day “in a good spot” usually involves a few dives that last about an hour or two, with breaks for meals, Kohnen said.
“Even after a thousand dives, it never stops being exciting.”
The fatal implosion of Oceangate’s Titan tour shined a harsh spotlight on deep-sea adventure, Kohnen said, but the craft involved was an “outlier” that was not built to specifications and had been a cause of concern in the submersible community for years.
Ketter said that his company had not had any cancellations since the implosion.