Does anyone know of anybody who has tried, successfully or not, to shoot a 360x360 underwater pano? 

I would guess that it would take a lot of Photoshoppin to get the images to line up since 1. there ain't no way you can get a perfect rotation around the nodal point, 2. you'll probably be at least a few inches off due to current or from wave action, 3. trying to get everything to line up for one shot is good, but staying neutral while rotating would be a huge accomplishment, 4. the underwater housing might get in the way requiring more photos than normal.

I'd like to try just for the fun of it to show folks what it looks like under an oil rig off the Texas coast. If you've never been under one underwater, think of it like a huge coral and barnacle encrusted reef stretching hundreds of feet vertically and horizontally. Tons of fish, lots of neat things going on.

I guess you could use it commercially also, since you might be able to entice scuba resorts to shoot local reefs or other hotspots to attract divers and snorkelers. Other than that, I don't think Flipper or Nemo have a lot of expendible income to contract a tour.

After you buy the camera housing -

1st  thing you are going to find is that with the sun directly over head and at 15 feet all your color is lost except YELLOW.  So light fill is necessary.  Best water is first 10' depth.  Below that your colors start filtering out.

2nd water clarity in the gulf is not too good as I recall.  Surface wave action keep the water particulates stirred up - first 10' you might get 15 to 20' horizontal visibility.

3rd because of constant surface wind/wave action it will be difficult under best conditions to keep from moving 2 - 3' off point.  That surface motion is propagated down to around 30' or so,  then you start being affected by currents.  At 30 foot depth, all color is filtered out and every thing is monochromatic blue.

This was taken between 3 and 5 feet depth in Cancun few years ago.  Self explanatory :

http://www.360texas.com/tips/rd/fishpanorama/index.htm

For 30'+ depth still shots and movies you can see them here.  We took them while diving in Cancun, Mexico

http://www.360texas.com/virtualtour/mexico/cancun/scuba/index.htm

Dave

yep we did some in cairns a few years ago I think we used a cp950or 995 and we custom made the underwater enclosure Heres the url

http://www.divepix.com.au/

Hope you like em

Craig