Virgin Oceanic pops Sir Richard Branson's ocean exploring cherry

Sir Richard Branson has his fingers into everything from space flight to air travel and lots in between. He is set to take is Virgin empire under the sea. Branson has launched a new enterprise called Virgin Oceanic. The goal of Virgin Oceanic is to explore the seas in a manned craft and map the bottom of the ocean at some of its deepest points.

Virgin oceanic will work with some of the most important scientific institutions in the world to collate the data collected on its voyages and to catalog the ocean life it finds that may have been undiscovered before. Branson also hopes to have some fun and set some world records.

The single person sub that the enterprise will use looks like an underwater airplane and Branson will pilot some of the missions himself. The ship will use Google mapping technology to chronicle the dives as they happen and share the discoveries made as well as the footage of the missions with the world. The company believes that it will set as many as 30 world records with each dive being the world's first solo dive to the bottom of the five deepest trenches in the world.

[via Virgin]