Jellyfish 'RoboCop' will help save the world's oceans by patrolling US waters like an aquatic spy

Virginia Tech: Autonomous Robotic Jellyfish from virginiatech

From Wired 

This five-and-a-half-foot robot jellyfish could be the future of Navy underwater surveillance. Seriously. Maybe.

Certainly, if a team of engineers from Virginia Tech gets its way.

Meet the Cyro, an autonomous robot with eight mechanical legs ringing its metal chassis, designed to mimic the unique, efficient underwater propulsion of a jellyfish.

Covered in silicone to replicate the jellyfish’s wavy, bioluminescent mesoglea — the jelly, basically — the Cyro weighs a staggering 170 pounds, all thanks to a five-year grant from the Office of Naval Research.

The robot is still a prototype, years away from being in the water.

But it represents a new kind of testbed for oceanographic surveillance, the Cyro’s basic application. Like the bird- and insect-shaped drones the Air Force is developing, a jellyfish-like spybot has a natural stealth advantage.

“Mimicking a natural animal found in a region allows you to explore a lot better,” says Alex Villanueva, a graduate student at Virginia Tech working on the Cyro.

It’s a much different model for underwater propulsion than the Navy’s used to.

Jellyfishes move, uniquely, by flapping themselves about.

“It’s not necessarily the best hydrodynamics propulsion mechanism, but the jellyfish has a very efficient metabolism: energy going in comes out as hydrodynamic energy,” Villaneuva says.

The Cyro isn’t there yet, but it gets three to four hours of swimming time out of its rechargeable nickel metal hydride battery.

And it’s also a launch-and-forget robot.

There’s no remote controls on the Cyro.

Place it into the water, and its roll-pitch-yaw sensor package, pressure sensors and software do the rest.

That’s something for the Navy to think about as it considers designs for its forthcoming unmanned underwater vehicle fleet.

There’s no saying whether the Navy will purchase the ‘bot, and its inventors are comfortable emphasizing its civilian potential as an oceanographic research testbed.

But should the Navy decide it needs a surveillance tool that looks like a massive jellyfish, there’s one on offer.
 

Links :

• DailyNews : Jellyfish 'RoboCop' will help save the world's oceans by patrolling US waters like an aquatic spy
• GeoGarage blog : Bioinspired Robojelly fuelled by hydrogen

Find treasure with Google Maps

In September 2012 our team discovered a paper map that has been verified as Captain Kidd's treasure map.

However, we haven't deciphered all the clues yet and its up to you to access his map and uncover the secrets.

If we all work together, we can solve the mystery and find the long lost treasure.

From GoogleLatLon

Archeological analysis has confirmed that our Google Maps Street View team has indeed found one of history’s long lost relics: a treasure map belonging to the infamous pirate, William “Captain” Kidd.

The map was found on a recent expedition in the Indian Ocean, as part of a deep-water dive to expand our underwater Street View collection.
Captain Kidd was rumored to have buried his treasure around the world, and tales of a long-lost treasure map have lingered for generations.

When Dr. Marco Meniketti, an independent archaeologist, confirmed that this was Captain Kidd’s 315 year-old map, we were very excited.
However, as seen in the video, the map contains a variety of encrypted symbols and is not readily decipherable.
We need your help to decipher these symbols and find Captain Kidd’s treasures; therefore we’ve decided to digitize the map and make it accessible to everyone.

 Our digital version allows anyone to explore Captain Kidd’s long-lost treasure map

To access Captain Kidd’s treasure map, click here or on the “Treasure” button in the top right corner of Google Maps.
If we all work together, we can solve the mystery.

Be sure to follow the Google Maps G+ page or https://twitter.com/googlemaps as we work together to decipher the clues to Captain Kidd’s buried secrets.

The living sea

"All that we do is touched with ocean, yet we remain on the shore of what we know"

Richard Wilbur

The film is a survey of the world's oceans, emphasizing that it is a single interconnected ocean and the dependence of all life on the planet.
The film shows researchers tracking whales, a Coast Guard rough-weather rescue squad, a deep-ocean research team, and the Palau Islands, which contain an unusual jellyfish habitat.

The Living Sea celebrates the beauty, power, and importance of the ocean.
Underscored by the music of Sting and narrated by Meryl Streep, the motion picture explores our relationship with the sea.
Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary/Short Subject (1995).

Finding Nemo 3D - 10 funniest scenes in Finding Nemo

From TheFanCarpet

The Academy Award®-winning creators of "Toy Story," "A Bug’s Life," and "Monsters, Inc." dive into a whole new world of computer-animated fun, fantasy, and heartfelt emotion with this splashy underwater adventure - Finding Nemo.
The film follows the comedic and eventful journeys of two fish – Marlin and his son Nemo – who become separated in the Great Barrier Reef when Nemo is unexpectedly taken from home and thrust into a fish tank in a dentist's office overlooking Sydney Harbor.
Finding Nemo is arguably one of Pixar’s most iconic films.
Ten years later, it is still as hilarious to both kids and adults as it was when it first came out.
So, in celebration of the upcoming 3D release, here are (in no particular order) ten of the film’s funniest scenes...

	Dory speaks whale Easily one of the most memorable scenes, Dory’s facial expressions as she tries to summon the whale and attempt different dialects (“Did that sound a little orca-ish?”) will have moviegoers of all ages in stitches for years to come. Bonus: After Dory and Marlin are dropped off at the Sydney harbour, Marlin gives his own attempt to thank the whale. Dory’s oblivious quip, “Wow, I wish I could speak whale...” is enough to make anyone double over with laughter.
Bubbles protects his bubbles Nemo gets a bit of a scare on his first day in the dentist’s tank when Bubbles swims furiously towards him as he is inspecting the trunk where he keeps his, erm, bubbles... This 7-second character introduction became one of the most quotable lines in the film, right up there with Dory’s “Just keep swimming!”
	Sharkbait ooh-ha-ha! From Mount Wanna-hock-a-loogie to the Ring of Fire, Nemo’s induction to the tank is hilarious as the gang pulls off a rather anti-climatic “serious” ceremony. Ending with Gurgle’s final “Sharkbait” awkwardly trailing off, everything about this scene is absolutely priceless.
Marlin meets Dory If you were a kid when this movie came out, no doubt you could recite this scene forward and backwards, blindfolded with your hands tied. Between Dory’s apologetic explanation of her condition and Marlin’s disbelief, this scene gets better and better with every line.
	Squirt gives the run-down Crush and Squirt put on an air of professionalism to help their new fish friends properly exit the current. Dory’s unwavering attention to their advice contrasts hilariously with Marlin’s look of sheer panic (“It’s like he’s trying to speak to me I know it!”) as they try to figure out just what Squirt means by “rip it, roll it, and punch it.”
Just keep swimming No list would be complete without Dory’s favourite phrase (second only to “P. Sherman 42 Wallaby Way Sydney I remembered it again!”) It’s hard not to laugh as she happily breaks out into an opera version while leading Marlin down to the darkest part of the eerie ocean floor.
	Fish are friends So a great white shark invites you to his party. What could possibly go wrong? At least that’s what Dory is thinking (definitely not Marlin). Thanks to the now-famous pledge (“fish are friends, not food!”), this scene is infinitely quotable – and, if you thought it was great before, just wait until you see these sharks in 3D!
Dory meets Squishy Dory unknowingly tries to befriend – but instead gets stung by – a tiny baby jellyfish, and the pair soon realizes they should have heeded her warning. But Dory’s adorably innocent attempt to adopt the jellyfish always brings a smile to any viewer’s face.
	Marlin meets Crush Crush and Squirt give Marlin and Dory a proper lesson in exit etiquette and send them on their way, but not before giving us the most quotable scene in the entire movie. Now give me some fin, dude, yeah totally awesome, noggin!
Esc-a-pay! The sharks’ meeting goes terribly wrong when Bruce-I-Never-Knew-My-Father gets a whiff of Dory’s blood and forgets his “fish are friends” promise. But Dory saves the day by remembering that oh yeah she can read! Well, sort of. Either way, this line never gets old.

Scientists capture amazing views of the Great Barrier Reef

From CNN

Doing for our oceans what Google Street View has done on land, a team of marine scientists is building up an extraordinary picture of the world's coral reefs.

Armed with the latest camera technology, the Catlin Seaview Survey is taking marine science into uncharted waters in a bid to transform our understanding of one of the planet's most diverse, but endangered eco-systems.

The team has been mapping Australia's Great Barrier Reef since last September using deep water robots and a revolutionary camera called the Seaview SVII.

"I think the SVII is a game changer," says lead scientist, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg. 

 Extraordinary creatures from the reef

"It's automating high-definition images at a scale which has not been done before."

As well as taking 360-degree images every three seconds, the camera also records the exact location and direction of a photo using GPS, enabling scientists to accurately gauge the health of a reefs over time.

"So far we are only halfway through Catlin Seaview Survey expeditions, but we've collected almost a hundred kilometers of transects," Hoegh-Guldberg added.

"You just can't do that normally. You'd be taking a hundred years to do this with normal divers out there with normal cameras. So, getting that technology right has been incredibly important."

More than 50,000 photos in total will be taken during expeditions to 20 separate reefs with each image stitched together using special software.

A picture of reef life is already emerging with many locations available to view on Google Earth.

Heogh-Guldberg was one of the first marine biologists to link coral damage to climate change.

And while he and others have been monitoring the effects of climate change on reefs for decades, they've never been able to do it on such a large scale.

"We don't have that global baseline for how reefs are doing across the planet. Coral reefs exist in over 50 countries and they stretch across much of the tropics and subtropics. There's 375,000 kilometers of reef around the world," says Hoegh-Guldberg.

When the three-year project is completed, reef data will have been boosted considerably, he says.

"This is the sort of science we need to do right now to get a real picture of the risk
Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Catlin Seaview Survey

Monitoring some of the world's remotest reefs will enable scientists to more accurately answer when, where, and most importantly why coral reefs around the world are declining.

"One of the parts of the project is to create essentially a databank called 'The Global Reef Record,'" says Hoegh-Guldberg.

Huge amounts of digital video and physical measurements are being fed into a high-speed storage system, he says, and will be available to scientists all over the world.

"One of the legacies of the Catlin Seaview Survey is to create essentially that baseline information that everyone has the rights to use and then develop this complex picture of how the world is changing," he says.

"This is the sort of science we need to do right now to get a real picture of the risk and vulnerability to things like global change to coral reefs."