Going to New Depths For a Swimming Pool

The title track of Jaws, that 1975 Steven Spielberg anti-‘David Attenborough’ classic about a homicidal shark, is ridiculously simple: two alternating notes, quickening their pace, to suggest approaching, unstoppable danger. As the deepest man-made swimming pool in the world opened in Dubai this week, our advice would be not to wear water-resistant earphones and play that atmospheric John Williams track. Appropriately named ‘Pearl Diving Pool’ (PDP) — the traditional practice of diving deep for pearls that formed the industry and trade on which cities like Dubai (and Abu Dhabi) were built from a fishing village in the early 20th century — the structure is 196 ft 10 in deep with an area of some 53,819 sq ft. Yes, not your regular building society pool.

Constructed for Dubai’s crown prince Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, PDP will ‘primarily be an indoor scuba-diving facility for training and recreational purposes, with facilities for education, training and recreation’. The depth of the enterprise may well make the pool double as an art installation, not to mention a bold statement in the backdrop of the United Arab Emirates’ natural desert landscape. Now, for a dubki, folks won’t have to travel to places like Fujairah with its Gulf of Oman seafront. Deep inside, though, we all know how shallow all this sounds.