Google Earth Now Integrates Ocean Content

Download the new Google Earth 5.0 and explore the ocean. Until recently, the computer visualization that totally revolutionized geography essentially would not go below sea level. Google Earth 5.0 fixes that and adds wonderful layers of marine content and data.  As a Contributing Partner of the oceans advisory committee, SeaKeepers CEO John Englander joined luminaries such as former vice president Al Gore, Dr. Sylvia Earle, and songwriter and ocean advocate Jimmy Buffet at the launch at the San Francisco Academy of Sciences in February. The new ocean layer of Google Earth, Englander said, is an “extraordinary” leap forward in the marine conservation movement. “This software provides the public a great opportunity to fully appreciate that Earth is an ocean planet.”

The major update was inspired by a comment that Dr. Earle, oceanographer and SeaKeeper Award recipient, made in jest to John Hanke, the Director of Google Maps and Earth. Dr. Earle praised the firm’s online mapping service, but suggested it be called “Google Dirt” because it ignored the 71 percent of the planet covered by water. “That kind of got under my skin,” Hanke recalled. “She was right. We had been blind to the ocean.” Hanke’s team and an advisory group assembled by Dr. Earle worked on the multi-faceted Oceans project for nearly three years.

The software now maps the ocean floor, letting users explore it in 3-D. Google Earth users can click icons on sea maps to see videos of creatures that live in those locations. Users can also “swim” undersea through canyons as deep as the Mariana Trench. Thousands of mapped data points offer images, video clips, and commentary on everything from undersea volcanoes, logs of real ocean expeditions, dead zones, chlorophyll levels, and even shipwrecks. This expansive information is provided by dozens of collaborators, among them universities, the National Geographic Society, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, NOAA and the Smithsonian Institute. SeaKeepers is currently developing a visualization of it’s fleet of ships and other platforms carrying the SeaKeeper 1000TM monitoring system.

As the software was demonstrated at the gala, Dr. Earle commented, “Talk about a dream coming true.” She added, “For the first time, everyone from curious kids to serious researchers can see the world, the whole world, with new eyes. In a stroke, [this technology] brings life and character to the blue part of the planet, and makes obvious the many ways land, water, atmosphere and living systems connect.”

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