Discussion on:

Coming soon: World's largest underwater hotel

Interest in the marine environment is rapidly declining in the reality of the current global economy. We can see it in the declining enrollment of marine science courses in colleges as well - which has plummeted since 2007 - both because of the lack of educational grants and and after graduation job opportunities. NASA is even closing many of it's marine environmental and ecological oriented programs and laboratories. Bottomline - there just isn't a market (profits) to drive these kinds of interests at any really grand scale as envisioned in the above article. It's too easy to have the experience online with underwater web cams - never getting wet, or risking drowning. What interest there is in the underwater world will proceed via the cheaper and safer robot explorers/tools - just as space exploration has.