Important Innovations

MIT's Underwater Sensor Network to Take the Ocean's Pulse Source:  MIT Powered Solely by Sound Waves To investigate the vast unexplored areas of the oceans, MIT engineers are building a submerged network of interconnected sensors that send data to the surface.  It's an underwater internet of things to monitor temperature changes from climate change, ocean pollution and marine life over long time periods.  The MIT team has invented a battery-free sensor, powered by sound waves. The device can monitor the ocean environment at great depths over long periods of time with no battery.  The submerged system uses the vibration of piezoelectric materials to generate power and send and receive data. Underwater Communications System This MIT invention appears to be a major breakthrough.  Up until now, the difficulty of deploying deep water sensors to study ocean conditions has been greatly limited by their battery life.  It's very difficult to change batter...

Parachute-Like Device Part of Barrier System That Captures Plastic Pollution Source:  Ocean Cleanup Pacific Garbage Patch Success The Ocean Cleanup is a foundation, headquartered in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, that develops advanced systems to rid the world's oceans of plastics.  They just reported the successful use of parachute-like devices as part of their Ocean Project System 001B in the Pacific's so-called Garbage Patch to aggressively capture ocean plastic pollution and it worked brilliantly. Parachute-Like Devices Attached to Barrier Worked Beautifully The Pacific Garbage Patch, loaded with plastic pollution that gets worse environmentally daily, is three times the size of France and twice the size of Texas.  Floating plastic is light, fast moving and difficult to contain on the ocean long enough for humans to recover it.  By attaching the parachute-like device to the organization's barrier, the system slowed down the fast moving plastic enough to...

World's Largest Research and Expedition Vessel Source:  REV Ocean Photo Norway Based REV Ocean Rev Ocean, based in Norway, is currently building the REV, the world's largest research and expedition vessel.  Rev Ocean's CEO Nina Jensen has been honored  by the World Economic Forum as one of the world's top 5 visionary leaders determined to save our oceans.  REV Ocean is globally known for is dedication to identifying technology solutions for the health of the oceans. REV  REV is fitted to house 60 researchers, marine scientists, oceanographers and engineers at any given time.  Outfitted with highly advanced equipment, its mission and promise are to uncover sustainable and environmentally helpful solutions for the world's oceans which are under threat.  Construction on the vessel is being done in Romania and is progressing at a rapid pace. Oceanic Needs Only 5% of the ocean has been explored but there's evidence that the entire ocean ecosyste...

Making an Environmental Impact One Plastic Bottle at a Time Coral Reef Fish Like all great ideas,  this one is elegantly simple.  Recycle ocean dumped plastic bottles and containers into  packaging for PC's.  Tech giant Dell is doing it.  It's another bit of genius from Michael Dell, making an environmental difference. 5 Trillion Pieces of Plastic Afloat The amount of floating plastic is staggering and the impact is unfathomable. More than 5 trillion pieces of plastic polluting the world's oceans 8 million tons of plastic ocean-dumped yearly In some places, plastic outnumbers plankton 26 to 1 If you consume an average amount of seafood, you've injected 11,000 plastic particles every year. From Discarded Plastic to High Tech The program is called "Dell Ocean-Bound Plastics Packaging Program".  They're pulling plastic out of the water and recycling it for their desktop and laptop computers.  It's green packaging.  The operation is...