catlin seaview survey

Celebrate World Oceans Day with the Catlin Seaview Survey

June 9, 2015

Yesterday, June 8th was World Oceans Day. What better way to celebrate it than to look at Street View under the oceans, a feature first introduced in 2012. Google, in conjunction with the XL Catlin Seaview Survey team have recently released 40 new underwater Street View locations. In addition, the Google LatLong blog is releasing a series of articles by members of the XL Catlin Seaview Survey team.

The blue markers for some of new imagery do not yet show in either Google Maps or Google Earth, so we recommend for now using the map in the Google LatLong blog post to find and explore some of the new locations.

A reef in the Solomon Islands.

Mantis Reef (Great Barrier Reef, Australia)

Google or the XL Catlin Seaview Survey team needs to develop a smaller camera system that can be remote controlled so that it doesn’t scare off the fish. Nearly everywhere you look in the imagery, there are shoals of interesting fish in the distance, but finding close up shots is really difficult. Clearly they are a bit camera shy, presumably because of the size of the Street View camera plus diver.

News roundup: Nessie, New Islands and Finding your Way Home

April 23, 2015

Loch Ness gets Street View

As part of the Catlin Seaview Survey Google have captured Street View from a boat that travelled the length of Loch Ness in Scotland and even stopped and took some photos in the water. We were not able to find the underwater footage from Google Earth, so we recommend sticking with Google Maps for this one. The water is very murky and the only monster to be found is the little green Nessie who replaces the Street View ‘yellow man’.

Glacier retreat creates new islands
As glaciers around the world retreat, new coastal islands are formed. Read more about it here. This would keep mapmakers busy, if it wasn’t for the fact that most of these islands are appearing in relatively uncharted territory. We noticed when looking at the Greenland Street View that Google Maps’ coastline of Greenland is quite inaccurate. Google Earth’s yellow coastlines are even less accurate globally, but they fade out as you zoom in so it is not normally noticeable.

Google Earth helps reunite a man with his family after 20 years.
Similar to the story of Saroo Brierley, a policeman in the Andaman Islands used Google Earth to help Ram Jeevan who ran away from his home in India at the age of 12 to find his way home. Find the full story here.

More underwater maps to explore in Street View

June 10, 2014

Back in 2012, Google released some amazing underwater Street View imagery from a few areas around the world. As part of World Oceans Day last Sunday, Google has released some additional underwater Street View imagery that is equally stunning. In partnership with the Catlin Seaview Survey, you can now dive and explore some additional locations in Belize and the Philippines including the Belize Barrier Reef and Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park.

From the Google Lat Long Blog:

The Catlin Seaview Survey team has documented many underwater locales around the world using their 360-degree panoramic SVII cameras, including a growing number of UNESCO Marine World Heritage Sites. We’ll continue to add this imagery to Street View in Google Maps as it’s collected. In the spirit of World Oceans Day, the goal of this project is to expose the world to the beauty of these marine habitats, and to create a scientific baseline record so that their changing health can be monitored over time.

To learn more about these new additions, check out the full article on the Lat Long Blog or explore Google’s entire collection of underwater Street View imagery at maps.google.com/ocean.

You can also check out this article from last year that discusses some of the technical hurdles that they face when working to capture this kind of imagery.

The latest developments in Google Ocean

May 16, 2014

Google first released their 3D Ocean feature in Google Earth more than five years ago, and it’s something that has seen steady improvements over the years. Here are some of the more interesting recent developments:

USS Mohawk, shipwreck by Trident Imaging

(via + Google Ocean Program)

Catlin Seaview Survey & Google Ocean at the 2014 Economist World Summit

From Google themselves, here’s more of what they’ve launched with Underwater Earth recently:

We are happy to announce 7 new underwater street view collects off Monaco and Mexico, including whale sharks and coral reefs in partnership with Australian non profit partner Underwater Earth’s “Catlin Seaview Survey” and launched in honor of the Economist Ocean Summit, where Prince Albert II of Monaco dove below Rocher Saint Nicolas virtually using the new Liquid Galaxy videowall. We also released the first ever San Francisco shoreline imagery collected from the water in partnership with Marine Advanced Research by placing a Google trekker camera atop the stable autonomousWAM-V® USV robot. Underwater Earth aims to reveal the reefs with more to explore at maps.google.com/ocean.

There have been some amazing developments to Google Ocean over the years, and it’s only getting better. What’s your favorite feature so far?

Street View goes underwater

September 26, 2012

Yesterday Google released Street View imagery for a few new countries, but they also released their first ever underwater imagery — and it looks amazing!

As reported on the Google Lat Long Blog, the new imagery is thanks to a partnership with The Catlin Seaview Survey. For now you can find it in Google Maps but it’s not yet available in Google Earth. I expect it will be soon, but no word on it yet.

In the meantime, here are some great sights to see:
• Swim with a turtle
• Follow a manta ray
• Watch a sunset
• Dive in Maui’s Molokini crater
• Snorkel in Oahu’s Hanauma Bay

They’ve also posted a video that shows how the imagery was captured, which involved a special camera called the SVII.

When you notice the imagery finally appear in Google Earth, please leave a comment below and let us know. For more, check out the full post on the Google Lat Long Blog.