Skyfall by Bond. Whalefall by Virgin. A year ago, the day before Thanksgiving, we got a unusual call – could we help pull a dead 70′ Fin whale off the beach in San Diego, CA, and sink it off La Jolla in 900 meters of water? The task was large, first to pull the whale [...]

/By Chris Welsh Over the summer, we’ve done a half dozen more test dives learning about the sub’s behavior. Things like locking in the buoyancy seem simple, but were vexing – we would have trouble initiating a descent, then in the same dive be heavy and have a challenge returning to the surface without dropping [...]

Oceanic has entered the manned test phase yesterday with the first free, off the hook testing. For the last two weeks we have been testing and improving launch and recovery and pulling together the details. The first manned test by Chief Pilot Chris Welsh was brief; life support was good, and launch and recovery went [...]

-By Chris Welsh Putting it all in perspective: There are few unexplored places left on Earth. The ocean depths below 25,000 feet/7000 meters encompass 2% of the ocean… an area larger than the state of Texas. While we have conquered space and the moon numerous times, the Deepest Place in the World Club has only [...]

By Chris Welsh Sir Richard Branson and I made an expedition to the Silver Banks coral reef region off the Dominican Republic to finish our Poseidon rebreather training and had the rare treat to observe and swim with Humpback Whales. The Humpbacks come through the area for several months in the winter to calve and [...]

By Chris Hames (The sub has no wings in these pictures – they weren’t necessary at this stage of testing.) The past week was full of excellent progress on the project. Our submarine started a series of tank and on-tether sea testing near our shop and performed better than expected. We were testing out of [...]

When you want a new perspective on things, sometimes the best people to talk to are children. With that in mind, Here There Everywhere – News for Kids got 20 children to quiz me on Virgin Oceanic. They actually made us think about our project in whole new ways and had some very imaginative ideas…