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" The water is rising. Already the murky, greenish sea is swirling around my feet, and it&amp;#039;s coming up fast. Fortunately, I&amp;#039;m staying dry inside a 54-in.-wide watertight acrylic sphere attached to the front end of a 3.5-ton canary-yellow submarine built by an outfit called SEAmagine Hydrospace Corporation. This craft is the prototype for a line of personal vehicles that its makers say could change the personal submarine business from a fringe toy for the rich to an industry. &amp;quot;My long-term objective, in one word, is Boeing,&amp;quot; says president and CEO William Kohnen, sitting next to me in the pilot&amp;#039;s seat. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s room for a company the size of Boeing in the undersea-vehicles market, and we want to be it.&amp;quot; Well, maybe eventually. Meanwhile, it&amp;#039;s a perfect day in Southern California, all azure skies and crystalline sunshine, and a small crowd has gathered on the dock here in Huntington Beach to watch us slowly sink below the surface.  As the water laps over our heads, the dome vanishes, leaving the powerful illusion that I&amp;#039;m not in a submarine at all, but simply sitting underwater, perfectly dry. We descend slowly to the bottom and hover there. I lean forward and look down at the dark silt beneath my stocking feet. A mud-colored fish wriggles across the seabed, startled by our presence. Overhead, the sun is a quivering yellow-white blob amid the silvery underside of the surface. I expected the descent to be creepy or claustrophobic, but instead it&amp;#039;s oddly serene, almost dreamlike. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not about getting from point A to point B,&amp;quot; Kohnen says. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s about the ability to hover, and take it all in.&amp;quot; The urge to own and operate your personal submarine has long been a nearly impossible dream. For a century, subs have found widespread use as research and military platforms, but a market for leisure craft has remained elusive. Lately these watercraft have found a niche as playthings for the wealthy: A mega\u00ADyacht without a submarine is like an RV without a Weber grill. Russian oil billionaire Roman Abramovich has a two-man sub aboard his 377-ft yacht Pelorus, while Paul Allen&amp;#039;s 413-ft $450 million Octopus sports a 10-passenger model. Of course, with the worldwide supply of such billionaires a bit depressed at the moment, most personal-sub makers are hoping simply to hold on until the next economic upturn. If the high-end market can survive, technology and design developments might make these vehicles available to a lower tax bracket.  The technical challenges are formidable. Given the corrosive effects of seawater, the incredible pressures that build with depth, and the inherent danger, submarines are very difficult to operate safely and cheaply. Critical systems must be redundant, and structural components have to be engineered to withstand loads many times greater than those likely to be encountered. Add it all up, and submarines are heavy, complicated and expensive.  But that&amp;#039;s changing as new materials like high-strength composites and titanium find uses in maritime construction. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s finally got to the point where you can build a small, deep-diving sub for a reasonable cost, thanks to the digital revolution,&amp;quot; legendary sub designer Phil Nuytten says. &amp;quot;We can fit all the electronics that used to be the size of a toolbox into a space the size of your thumb. Video cameras that once were 4 ft long and weighed 350 pounds can now be built the size of a roll of Life Savers.&amp;quot;  The Ocean Pearl&amp;#039;s versatility doesn&amp;#039;t just make for a thrilling joy ride for passengers like me. It&amp;#039;s also been a boon for underwater researchers. One of the first customers to receive a SEAmagine sub was George Bass, founder of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology and the man behind the excavation of a half-dozen ancient shipwrecks in the Mediterranean. He&amp;#039;s been operating submersibles since the 1960s, but SEAmagine&amp;#039;s panoramic views blew him away. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s just like you&amp;#039;re sitting in your living room,&amp;quot; Bass says, &amp;quot;except you&amp;#039;re 150 ft down, watching the excavation.&amp;quot; Recreational sub builders still face considerable hurdles. Maintenance costs alone can be expected to run on the order of $30,000 a year. Between dives, many submersibles must be winched in and out of the water, and their batteries and compressed air tanks recharged. Rubber seals also must be inspected after each dive. Servicing a sub is an exacting and time-consuming process, requiring a skilled crew.  Indeed, some industry insiders are raising warning flags about the idea of selling subs for leisure. &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re marketed as toys,&amp;quot; says Richard Boggs, technical superintendent at the yacht management firm Camper &amp;amp;amp; Nicholsons International. &amp;quot;But a submarine is no more a toy than a helicopter is. They&amp;#039;re very complex machines, and they require a high degree of technical competence and training to operate safely.&amp;quot; Boggs has been working with submarine manufacturers and yacht managers to establish industrywide guidelines modeled after the ones used by commercial sub operators.  Beneath the waters off Huntington Beach, murky sunlight plays over the silty bottom. William Kohnen lets me take the controls. Maneuvering forward and to the side is easy, I find, but staying at a constant depth takes finesse. For safety&amp;#039;s sake, the Ocean Pearl is positively buoyant--if power fails, it will float to the surface. To stay submerged, I have to toggle a thruster that pushes us down. The trick is, you have to anticipate the need well in advance. It&amp;#039;s like flying a hot air balloon, but in reverse.  Soon I find that I&amp;#039;ve botched the timing, and the Ocean Pearl is accelerating toward the surface. The water above the canopy bubbles and froths, and the blue Southern California sky reappears, framed in aqueous silver. So it goes. Conquering the undersea world is a magnificent undertaking, I remind myself, but no one ever said it was going to be easy. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/outdoors/a3833/4298377/>