The following blog is copied and re-posted from The League of New Worlds, Atlantica Expeditions webgroup pages, with permission:


"It has never happened in all of human history before. Not even one
time.

But one day soon, a group of pioneers will depart the slivers of land
on this ocean planet and venture forth into a completely alien world,
with no intention of ever returning to live on land.

In the past, we have gone there for voyages, but our hearts and our
homes have always been on the shore – dry and relatively safe. Here,
all crowded together on our continents where nearly seven billion
people have crowded together, struggling and often fighting one
another. But there are a few of us who today look outward on a vast
and quite empty domain waiting for us. Here on land is a place where
we have had no worry about air to breathe or choking on our own waste
gasses. We have ventured to other slivers of land to stay. We have
ventured to space, but not yet to stay. When the Atlantica II
pioneers depart the pier of a small central Florida community in a
few years hence, it will be the very first time in all of history,
out of a 100 billion living souls, that any have dared to venture
into a completely alien world - to stay.

It will be the cultural equivalent of a new epoch of mankind. From
that small pier we as human beings will finally leap out of the
cradle of civilization that has held us for more than 5,000 years.
There we will find ourselves in a world where we have to master not
only our shelter but also our air and wall-to-wall protection from a
place outside that is totally alien and hostile to our lives.

I have thought about it hundreds of times. What it will be like to
board that boat on that pier, surrounded by a small band of pioneers
and point our boat due east. About 15 or so miles from shore, the
skipper of that boat will help us to board the Dan Scott Taylor
submarine waiting for transport to the Challenger Station – the hub
of the fist human city on the ocean floor.

After having thought about it countless times, I can only imagine
what it will be like to take in the last breath of fresh sea air,
watch the sun climb high in the sky over us, and then bid it all
goodbye. Our destiny is not here, but down in this vast frontier
below. It will be the cradle of a totally new civilization of men
and women and children and families. I have thought about the
submarine rolling in the swells over the Community of Atlantica
below. I have imagined what it will be like to slide into the
submarine and close the heavy hatch after me, spinning its wheel and
locking it into place.

It is not really difficult to imagine that, since the submarine is
already in our possession and since I have made that trip in and out
of her many times. And that is what makes this dream so
electrifying. It is not a dream. We are holding and building the
hardware. It is a reality that is slowly turning into the wind and
about to catch the winds of destiny.

I fully plan to skipper the DST II down to the undersea community and
dock her safely. There we will exit to our new human community. And
there we intend to grow and prosper, commanding the planets greatest
resource treasures – a place mostly unknown and seriously
underappreciated today, a three dimensional world of vast importance
to tomorrow’s generations. Many of them will be born here – the
descendants of a new empire of men and women dedicated to the
freedoms of our culture and the stewardship of this brave, new world
of which we have only made a casual acquaintance.

This describes the voyages and the enterprise of the Atlantica
Expeditions. You can read about it in detail in the book, Undersea
Colonies. If you are reading these words, please consider joining us!"

Dennis Chamberland
Atlantica Expeditions Leader
Written in the New Worlds Explorer Habitat
February 2009