MARINE INNOVATION
Personal
subs
52 TREASURE COAST BOATING
BY SUSAN BURGESS
A Vero Beach company is producing
submarines for yacht-based deployment
Jules Verne’s 1870 science fiction tale Twenty Thousand
Leagues Under the Sea, with its adventures on the
submarine Nautilus, was a fantasy. But today, anyone
with enough money can buy or charter a personal
submarine capable of carrying several people nearly
a mile beneath the sea.
Include a yacht big enough to transport it, and every corner
of every ocean is accessible.
Want one? Go to Vero Beach.
Triton Submarines LLC opened in 2007 with four experts in
submarine design, engineering and assembly. Their intention
was to make elegant submarines for yacht-based deployment.
The subs they designed are lifted from the boat by a crane
arm and settled gently into the water.
“There are only three other companies in the world who
make these submarines,” says Marc Deppe, Triton’s vice
president for sales and marketing. “But Triton is a Bentley
or Rolls Royce and they are a Honda or Volkswagen. We are
catering to a different clientele.”
Triton’s subs feature a transparent bubble-shaped passenger
compartment ensconced between bright yellow catama- >>
South Florida Dive Journal PHOTOS
Triton Submarines LC in Vero Beach makes submarines that hold two or three people and will dive as far as 3,300 feet below the surface. A sub that will
go 36,000 feet down — nearly 6 miles — is in the works.
This Triton sub can hold three people within its bubble-like passenger compartment.
At the top is the hatch the men climbed through to get inside.