Important Innovations

French Adventurer Crossing Atlantic in a Barrel Jean-Jacques Savin Atop His Barrel Oceanic Entrepreneur Barreling by Currents He's being called The French Barrel Man.  71 year old Jean-Jacques Savin is a retired military parachutist and French innovator-adventurer.  He is making his way across the Atlantic Ocean in a big orange barrel that's actually a sophisticated barrel-shaped capsule.   Savin is taking a very innovative approach.  The craft is being transported and guided solely by ocean currents.  He is literally barreling across the Atlantic Destination - Caribbean Savin left the Canary Islands off the west coast of Africa on December 26.  He hopes to reach the Caribbean by the end of March.  The craft is travelling at 1 to 2 miles per hour.  There's a porthole that allows him to observe fish swimming underneath the barrel.  And, he's dropping markers along the way to allow the international marine observatory organization JCOMMOPS to study ocean curren

Surprise Find by WHOI Photo by WHOI Underwater Discovery Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute scientists have discovered a massive cold water coral reef in the Atlantic Ocean off the southeastern US.  The scientists believe it's been there for thousands of years. They discovered it last week. Submersible Alvin Spots a Thriving Ecosystem  Using their submersible Alvin that's deployed by the research vessel Atlantis, they collected samples of the coral.  The reef is massive. It's 85 miles long and at a depth of 1/2 mile.  It's about 160 miles off of Charleston, SC.  Cameras onboard Alvin captured the sight of the dense, cold water coral reef.  WHOI scientists say it's a thriving underwater ecosystem. Mountains of Coral According to the scientists, the site is covered with mountains of living coral.  It's growing on top of dead coral that they believe dates back thousands of years.  They found large amounts of a coral called Lophelia pentusa, a whitish,