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Virtual undersea exploration with Catlin Seaview Survey via Google!

The global insurance company, Catlin Group Limited, has partnered with Google and the nonprofit Underwater Earth to launch the Catlin Seaview Survey. The mapping expedition is scheduled to begin in September 2012, and the goals are to let people explore the ocean remotely and to perform the first detailed study of the composition and health of coral reefs!

“The Catlin Seaview Survey comprises a series of studies, which will reveal to the public one of the last frontiers on Earth: the oceans,” chief scientist for the project Ove Hoegh-Guldberg said in a statement. “For the first time in history, we have the technology available to broadcast the findings and expedition through Google.”

So far, the mapping will be available ONLY for the Great Barrier Reef near Australia, BUT that reef is called “Great” for a number of reasons, one of which is that it is 2,300 km (over 1,429 miles) long!

The CAMERA for the Catlin Seaview Survey has a depth range of zero to 100 meters and can capture thousands of 360-degree underwater panoramas. When the images are “stitched” together,  people will be able to go for a “virtual dive.”

This capability should be great for people like me! I once promised one of my photographer/diver friends that I would never compete with him underwater! 😉

With Panoramio, a location-based photo-sharing site, the panoramas will be uploaded for an audience of millions! Although I personally do not believe that all of the applications of Panoramio are “benign,” this use seems like a very GOOD one, particularly with regard to education, and with a goal of not destroying the oceans before we know what is there. Roughly 50,000 panoramas will be uploaded, and they will be accessible through Google Earth and Google Maps!

“One of the goals of the project is to understand the effects of climate change on the ocean by doing comprehensive surveys over time. Three distinct surveys will be done: shallow reef, deep-water, and mega-fauna. The shallow reef survey will use image recognition software to quickly take visual census of corals, fish, and other organisms. The deep-water survey will use diving robots to explore the reef at depths of 30 to 100 meters, where little is known. The mega-fauna survey will study the migratory behavior of tiger sharks, green turtles, and manta rays in response to increasing seawater temperatures.”

The plan for the Catlin Seaview Survey is to expand globally. To someone like me, who once considered marine microbiology as a career, the opportunities of the survey seem bounded only by their costs and their rewards.

-Bill at

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