Richard Branson to announce new venture in Calif.

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. (AP) — Billionaire adventurer Richard Branson says he plans to travel to the deepest parts of the world’s oceans in a single-person submarine.

Branson announced in Newport Beach this morning that he and fellow explorer Chris Welch plan to make five dives over the next two years. They’ll take turns traveling to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific, the Atlantic’s Puerto Rico Trench and South Sandwich Trench, Diamantina Trench in the Indian Ocean and the Molloy Deep in the Arctic Ocean.

Branson will take the first dive later this year to the Marianas Trench, which at 36,000 feet is deeper than Mt. Everest is high.

He showed off the sub, a blue-and-white plane-like craft with stubby wings and a cockpit that will be able to travel for miles over the ocean floor.

The founder of Virgin Airlines plans to make a larger sub that can hold more people and offer trips to tourists for a sizable fee.