Gov. Charlie "Green" Crist capped off a week focused on energy-saving, climate improvement initiatives with a visit Friday to the SRI Wave Energy Buoy project at USF's Knight Oceanographic Research Center in St. Petersburg. 

The SRI project aims to produce electric power from ocean waves. The California-based company's prototype is a cylindrical device surrounded by a rubbery material that SRI researchers call an "artificial muscle." It's strapped to a buoy in the waters of Tampa Bay, about one mile east of downtown St. Petersburg, so that researchers can measure how much electricity the waves generate.

Researchers think hundreds of “artificial muscles” could, together, create a thousand watts of power.