Flying Under The Ocean

This is a cool video of a new experimental swimsuit called "oceanwings."

Similar to wingsuits for BASE jumping (skydiving), oceanwings have underarm and between the leg wings or spans of material that essentially gives a person float.

With oceanwings, instead of flying through the sky, you can fly through the water.

They are made by Aqua Lung which makes and sells professional and recreational scuba diving equipment. 

For someone that loves the water, oceanwing diving looks beautiful, calming, and a heck of a lot of fun. 

Not sure in the video, how the guy is breathing under water (since they don't seem to show any sort of air tank), but maybe he is just going on bated breath. ;-)

Flying Under The Ocean

Under The Beautiful Sea

The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) is looking for a place to stash some new military capabilities.

In a DARPA news release (11 January 2013) it states they are looking to support the navy by placing hibernated deep-sea capsules with payloads at under water locations and at the seafloor strategically around the globe--"almost half of the world's oceans are more than four kilometers deep" providing "cheap stealth".

The capsules with carry non-lethal payloads for "operational support and situational awareness"--such as command, control, communication, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR). 

Examples of pre-deployed payloads could be unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and probably, unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). The release specifically states that this is "not a weapons program," but you could imagine future evolutions of this.

The initial capabilities sought are for "situational awareness, disruption, deception, networking, rescue, or any mission that benefits from being pre-distributed and hidden." 

The deep-sea capsules will need to survive under extreme pressure and be able to communicate at vast ocean depths to be remotely awoken and recalled when needed. 

Having capabilities available when and where needed--from the bottom of the sea to forward deployment--potentially mitigating some use of costly and non-stealth land bases.

I think this is an exciting idea especially since China was able to demonstrate its anti-satellite missiles in January 2007 in shooting down its own satellite, and I would think that these new underwater pods being sought may be able to provide some alternatives for sensing and communicating in conflicts where satellites are destroyed or disabled and/or other military muscle in not readily available. 

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Rakel SdPC)

Under The Beautiful Sea

Jelly Fish, I Got One

This guy was terrific.

We were at Chesapeake Beach on the Bay.

There was a sign warning of jelly fish.

Unfortunately, this place didn't have a net.

This man actually caught one. 

And here he is displaying it on a branch. 

Afterwards, he goes over to what appears to be his mother and shows it to her. 

She looks at it with a funny scrowl, then moved in for a little closer look.

The jelly fish ended up falling unto some sea shells and then he retrieved it--all covered in these pieces and shards. 

Then back in to the water--toss...one, two, three.  

It was fun watching this scene, as well as a woman playing catch with her dog in the surf, a couple of teenagers collecting sea shells, and the beach patrol doing their thing. 

The jelly fish kept us out of the water--for the most part--but it didn't keep us from having a nice time. 

(Source photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Jelly Fish, I Got One