Jules Verne Trophy is now held by Groupama which has beaten the round the world record under sail via the three capes, circling the World in 48 days, 7 hours, 44 mts (an average actual speed of 24.6 knts and 28,523 sailed miles whilst the official optimum course amounts to 21,760 miles) after 2 failed attempts.
Setting out on 31st January 2010 whilst the weather `window' was not particularly favourable, how a few days at 25/30kts changes a 600+ mile deficit (so about 1 day in relation to the 2005 reference time of Bruno Peyron's Orange2) thanks to a dazzling final sprint from the Equator, to lowering record by 2 days!
Congratulations to Franck Cammas the skipper, Stan Honey the navigator and all the other members of the crew (watch leaders Fred Le Peutrec and Steve Ravussin, helmsmen/trimmers Loïc Le Mignon, Thomas Coville and Lionel Lemonchois, and the three bowmen Bruno Jeanjean, Ronan Le Goff and Jacques Caraës, supported on shore by router Sylvain Mondon)
Thomas Coville, back on the team spirit that reigned aboard Groupama 3 : "We gave our opinion when it was requested or when we had something to contribute to the group, but overall we had a respect for the decision which had been taken. Decision team was especially Stan and Frank. We were in complete confidence. There are times when maybe we would have personally done differently. But the force we have had was to have a group that acted as a group and not by ego. When one has a different view, it is sometimes important not to show or to assert in order to enable the group to be right. We have all respected that so Frank and Stan were in the best condition to take the best decisions."
The Louis Vuitton Trophy is a series of match race regattas in America's Cup Class yachts whose finals are held these days in Auckland.
This event enjoys widespread TV coverage, but the racing is also be covered live on the Internet through live streaming and race coverage highlights plus 3-D interactive Virtual Eye tracking from the race course, along with expert commentary and analysis.
In digging (about 200 meters deep) into the ice of West Antarctica (Ross Ice Shelf), to their utter surprise, NASA scientists found a shrimp-like creature (Lyssianasid amphipod) and also discovered a tentacle of jellyfish, in this polar desert.
NASA scientists were using a borehole camera to look back up towards the ice surface when they spotted this pinkish-orange creature swimming beneath the ice.
And they believe the probability that these two animals swim into the hole of six inches in diameter, about 20 kilometers away from open water, is 'almost zero'.
If higher-forms of life are able to survive underneath the hostile environment of Antarctic ice, the discovery by the NASA team furthers the debate as to how easily it will be to find extraterrestrial creates in the solar system.
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Scientists are gaining new insight into the mechanisms involved in the generation of huge steep underwater waves that occur between layers of warm and cold water in coastal regions of the world's oceans.
Researchers at the University of Rhode Island said they discovered large amplitude, non-linear internal waves can reach heights of 490 feet (160 m) or more in the South China Sea, and the effects the waves have on surface wave fields ensure that they are readily observable from space.
The URI scientists' observations showed that the Earth's rotation modifies internal waves as they travel cross the deep basin. This effect mainly influences the internal waves that form on the 24-hour period of diurnal tides, dispersing the energy and inhibiting the steepening process. Internal waves that form on the semi-diurnal tides are not affected in this way, are more readily steepened and then break into the energetic, short period waves.
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Translation from Serge Poirot article in Ouest France
Fragmented garbage, trapped by the currents are concentrated in a vast area in the Sargasso Sea. The impacts are unknown, but we know that many animals suffer of this situation.
For twenty-two years, researchers and students in oceanography of the American Association Sea Education went to draw their fine mesh nets - more than 6 000 times - in the waters of the Atlantic between Nova Scotia (Canada ) and the Caribbean. They were counting the different species, but also waste.
In late February, at a conference in Portland (Oregon), they drew a not very appetizing statement in this unprecedented campaign. Since 1997, we knew the existence of a large garbage dump in the Pacific, "a continent of plastic" had imaged the sailors fell over.
80% came from continents
Sea Education has found a comparable concentration in the Atlantic, about 1 000 km from U.S. shores, in the Sargasso Sea. An area larger than France, where light plastic waste is concentrated of 200,000 fragments per square kilometer and with a depth of ten meters.
As the circling currents and winds are low, this "plastic soup" does not disperse. The wastes stay there, derived for many consumer products, most big like confetti. One hundred million tonnes of plastics are produced each year worldwide, Greenpeace said a tenth ends in the ocean. From this mass, 20% comes from ships and offshore platforms and 80% from land.
The fish eat, we also ...
The sustainable qualities that make the success of plastic objects become a major problem once they are in the sea. They last. But not in the form of bottles, boxes, bags or cans. Under the action of the sun, waves, abrasion, they crumble into ever smaller pieces.
"The impacts on the marine environment remain unknown, observes Kara Lavender Law, an oceanographer from Sea Education. But we know that many marine animals eat the plastic and that has a negative effect on birds in particular. "
The next expedition, in June, will pursue the issue.
In 2008, oceanographer Charles Moore has published a study estimating the number to 267 species of animals - mammals, fish, birds, turtles - affected by waste plastics. Nearly half of the seabirds eat at one time or another by mistake. Sometimes they die, with an digestive tract obstruction.
Humans could also suffer the consequences.
The pieces of plastic, like sponges, concentrate pollutants which absorbed by fish, may well go back to our plates.
During this time, David de Rothschild and his crew are running an eco-expedition in the Pacific ocean called Plastiki (from San Francisco to Sydney) on a catamaran made of newly developed plastic bottles which are easier to recycle.
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