China is working to launch its first deep-sea tourist submersible capable of sending explorers as far down as 1,000m by 2030, rivalling a handful of largely Western ventures.
Engineers at the China Ship Scientific Research Centre in Wuxi, Jiangsu, have been working to build a tourist submersible for three passengers and a crew member per trip, according to local media.
The project has been in development for nearly four years and the prototype is likely to be launched by the end of this year.
“People will be able to travel to a depth of about 1,000 meters in the submersible," Ye Cong, director of the research centre, told China Daily.
"After more than four years of research, engineers have finalised the structural design,” the director said, adding that once the prototype was ready they would conduct sea trials and “improve upon the design based on the results”.
The submersible includes a panoramic viewport, which is the most challenging structural feature to develop, according to the engineers.
China already has dozens of tourism submersibles in operation but those can only dive to around 20m and their operations are restricted to reservoirs, lakes and coastal waters.
Deep-sea submersible tourism, luring wealthy travellers to explore new worlds under the ocean's surface, has remained one of the most exclusive and least regulated sectors of the travel industry.
It has been attempted by only a handful of countries and remains dominated by Western private ventures.
It has not been without accidents.
Ocean Gate’s Titan, an experimental submersible, imploded at a depth of almost 4,000m in June 2023, killing all five people on board, including the company’s chief executive.
An investigation later found that Titan, which was on its way to the wreck of the Titanic, imploded because of poor engineering and multiple failures to test the vessel, raising questions about safety standards and oversight in deep-sea tourism.
India is also conducting a series of “wet tests” for its new deep-sea submersible that is reportedly capable of taking three people deeper than where the Titanic rests. The Matsya-6000 is said to go down to a maximum depth of 6,000m, almost twice the depth of the Titanic wreck at 3,600m.
Private providers like EYOS Expeditions are organising underwater dives for ultra-wealthy clients, typically going down to 300-1,000m in high-end submersibles built by Triton Submarines.
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