Two legendary sea explorers are in South Florida this week to help promote a project that gives people a glimpse at an ocean they've likely never seen.
Seakeepers, a group of global yacht owners based in Miami, recruits owners of yachts to install sensors or bring aboard scientists to deploy devices along their routes across the globe.
Sylvia Earle, the world's leading female ocean explorer, and Fabien Cousteau, the grandson of Jacques Cousteau, are supporting the project at the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show, which runs through Monday.
The inexpensive devices capture data and video from some of the deepest places ever seen, as much as seven miles below the ocean surface.
"It is pretty amazing. The idea of the technology allows us to come on the epicenter, if you will, right over the top of the ship," said deepsea engineer Kevin Hardy. "And right below is areas of the ocean that we've never been to before."
The project is bringing back exciting video, but there's still so much left to explore, Earle said.
"The ocean itself, we know something about the surface, We know a little bit about the deep parts, the bottom," she said. "It's that juicy part in the middle, that's the ocean itself, that's still mostly unknown and mostly unexplored. And yet it moves the world. Life in the ocean and the water itself that's what makes earth earth."
The yachts, Cousteau says, aren't just expensive toys for the rich. They're floating research centers.
"Taking on this platform, of these yachts and these mega yachts as part of the fleet, if you will, so that we can educate the world on why oceans are so important is absolutely paramount to the mission," he said.
For more info about Seakeepers, click here.
