Our journey through the world of watercraft this August, when we celebrated Sea Month here on autoevolution, has taught us all a great deal of things. Perhaps the most important one is that there is a diverse list of things called tourist submarines out there, that such an experience should probably be included on everyone’s bucket list.
One of the last such contraptions we’ll bring to your attention this month is the Mark Series, a range of “tourist submarine with no compromises” built by a Finnish company called Mobimar.
The latest version (that's a relative term, as it dates back to the 1990s), is the Mark V, which is in use in several places around the globe, including Lanzarote, Tenerife, Gran Canaria, Italy, Egypt, and China. The sub can carry scores of people to depths of as much as 57 meters (187 feet), and it kind of looks like a scale U-boat, minus the thrills of riding inside a weaponized submergible military platform.
When it comes to the Mark V, there are three versions of it available, capable of seating 35, 50, or 65 people. The crew is no larger than three people for any of these versions, and they all offer incredible views of the underwater surroundings thanks to the many windows and the passengers’ ability to stand upright thanks to the 1.9 meters (6.2 feet) height of the interior.
According to the company making the thing, “reliable AC-thrusters makes the vessel excellent to maneuver” while underwater, where it can go, in a “minimum amount of time,” up to 20 times per day (for the smallest version), depending on how much the operators want to push the thing.
Photo: Mobimar
The Mark V is the latest in a line of such beasts that started not with the Mark I, as you’d think, but with the Mark II, “the first ever tourist submarine built in Finland.” It entered service back in 1987 in Korea and was largely based on diving submarines that used support vessels as a home when not submerged.
The rather small attached gallery (there seem to be very few pics of these things available, which is strange given how they're tourist submarines) also includes a photo showing where in this world the Mobimar tourist submarines can be experienced. You need to be warned though the last update to it seems to have been made all the way back in 2017.
On the other hand, the latest technical upgrade to the Mark V we were able to learn about took place back in 2015, when one called Jiah and operated by a company called Seogwipo Submarine, based on Korea’s Jeju Island, received new electrical systems.
If you happen to be one of the hundreds of thousands of people to have visited underwater worlds on board one of these things, feel free to share your experience in the comments section below.
Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies. Full profile
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