Marine

Most small watercraft need anchors just like bigger boats, but many down-sized anchors struggle to hold these vessels in place, even breaking apart. If you ride a personal watercraft (PWC), like a Jet Ski, stowing a metal or aluminum anchor in the craft’s onboard storage containers can wreak havoc, sometimes almost punching through in rough conditions. That’s no good aboard an inflatable, either. Australian-based Cooper Anchors has designed a world-first lightweight, plastic anchor with a weighted tip, straight streamline shank and small blade that work harmoniously to drive deep into the sea bed and hold your craft in place. What’s more, it’s flexible, tough, won’t scratch or puncture your PWC or inflatable and weighs less than 1kg. Read More

The appropriately named ‘sofa boat’ is essentially a sofa slapped on top of a floating platform that is sure to make maneuvering among other craft in crowded marinas a most relaxing affair. The all-electric craft employs a joystick for steering, a folding sun canopy covering for some protection from the sun’s rays and a solar version is on the way. Read More

It seems that Sir Richard Branson's quest to conquer unexplored frontiers isn't limited to space tourism.The Virgin boss's latest acquisition is a DeepFlight three-person aero submarine that "flies" through the briny deep using the positive buoyancy system developed by Graham Hawkes. Christened Necker Nymph, the flying sub will find a home on Branson's 74 acre private island in the British Virgin Islands where it will launch from shore as well as operating from the luxury 105 foot catamaran Necker Belle - just add a quiet US$25,000 to the weekly hire price tag. Read More

Back in January 2007, we brought you the story of Greg Kolodziejzyk, a Canadian adventurer who was planning to break the human-powered transatlantic record. What made Greg’s record attempt so interesting was that he was going to do it in a fully-enclosed pedal-powered sea kayak. The boat was still under construction at the time. Flash forward to January 2010, and Greg has had to call off the transatlantic attempt due to logistic problems. His new boat, however, is a marvel of marine engineering, and he’s planning on pedaling it from Canada to Hawaii. Read More

Endangered blue whales appear to be singing a happier song according to researchers studying the haunting sounds these huge mammals broadcast beneath the waves. Specifically, a drop in frequency has been noticed and a list of possible causes have been examined - from climate change to a rise in human-produced ocean noise - but it seems the explanation could actually be a positive one. It's believed the drop may be caused by the increase of blue whale numbers following bans on commercial whaling activities … in other words, the males don’t need their voices to travel as far to attract a mate. Read More

As art museums go, the Micropolitan Museum has a very small collection. Literally. Presented by the Institute for the Promotion of the Less than One Millimetre, the Micropolitan Museum of Microscopic Art Forms is an online “portrait” collection of mini- and micro-organisms photographed through a microscope. Inside the virtual museum’s halls you can find a zooplankton family portrait next to the glowing image of a mother copepod posing with her children (Okay, her children are actually egg packages). Down the hall, a postmodern bloom of diatoms shares exhibit space with a Rubenesque polysiphonia cystocarps. Read More

“The deep sea is the Earth’s largest continuous ecosystem and largest habitat for life. It is also the least studied,” says Dr. Chris German, who along with hundreds of other Marine Life scientists from around the globe is shedding light on these mysterious depths through an unprecedented census of deep-sea marine inhabitants. Their recordings have yielded astonishing findings of more than 17,500 species of often bizarre marine creatures - from oil-eating tubeworms to elephant-eared octopods - inhabiting the blackest depths between 200 meters and up to 5, 000 meters (~3 miles) below ocean surface. Even more remarkable is the ability of these deep-sea creatures to live and thrive in topographically challenging environments where food availability is marginal, at best. Read More

Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich rose from obscurity and successfully navigated the shady world of early Russian privatization to become one of the world's wealthiest self-made billionaires. His 40-man private army of security personnel make him one of the best-protected businessmen in the world, and when his private gigayacht the Eclipse is handed over in time for Christmas this year, it will be the largest (at a staggering 560ft) and most expensive (at US$1.2 billion) private yacht the world has ever seen. Security will be as tight as you'd expect, with missile defence and intruder detection systems - but the Eclipse's most notable feature is a privacy system that can detect the digital cameras of snooping paparazzi and blind them with laser bursts, ruining spy photos. Read More

It's often said that we know more about the depths of the Universe than the ocean floors of our own planet, but this might soon change with OceanoCam, a newly-developed cheap underwater camera for capturing high-definition video at great depths, aimed at both research community and the entertainment industry. Read More