Underwater

Data centers require heavy-duty cooling and maintenance. Microsoft has now finished a two-year test of an unconventional solution – dropping a data center to the bottom of the sea – and found that it was more reliable than land-based facilities.

More than 10 years ago, François-Alexandre Bertrand came up with a concept for a novel above/below watercraft named the Platypus. The first Blue Ocean edition was sold last year and now his company has launched a new version, the Platypus Swordfish.

Fabien Cousteau, grandson of famed underwater filmmaker and scuba co-inventor Jacques Cousteau, is planning to build an underwater living habitat and research station three times the size of any ever built, named after the grandson of Poseidon.

In recent years, fish farms have increasingly started using underwater ROVs (remotely operated vehicles) for cleaning the nets that enclose their fish pens. A relatively new one, the StealthCleaner, has a unique triangular form factor.

Radio waves travel poorly through the water, which makes it difficult for divers or submersibles to wirelessly transmit information to the surface. Scientists are trying to change that, though, by developing an underwater version of Wi-Fi.

Dutch submersible maker U-Boat Worx has unveiled what's claimed to be the lightest manned submersible ever built. The Nemo can be towed on a trailer by car for launch from shore, or hauled onto a yacht for underwater fun at sea.

Marine aquaculture pens have to be regularly checked for holes, plus the fish need to be inspected for parasites. And although the job is typically performed by human divers, it turns out that a robotic sea turtle may be a better choice for the task.

Although autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are electrically-powered, they're launched from fuel-burning surface vessels. A new, more environmentally-friendly system is being designed to replace those ships with wave-powered underwater AUV stations.

The annual Ocean Art Underwater Photo competition, now in its eighth year, is a chance to get up close and personal with our marine cousins so many times removed. Here are all this year's winners and runners up in a spectacular photo gallery.

Although many scuba divers utilize wearable computers to track dive stats, those devices can't record an actual map of the underwater route that the user travelled. The newly-developed Brizo, however, is claimed to do exactly that.

Surface-supplied diving systems find balance between snorkelling and scuba by strapping you to an air supply floating atop the water. Typically these systems rely on compressed air, but the ExoLung uses a more sustainable air supply: you.

Given how 360-degree video cameras allow viewers to feel as if they're "in" the viewing environment, it would follow that one of their best uses would be for shooting underwater footage. Well, the 360bubble Deep is designed to help that happen.