New underwater imagery on Google Maps

Australia and Asia Pacific is home to some of the world’s top marine biodiversity hotspots and, to celebrate World Oceans Day on June 8, a group dedicated to recording and revealing the world’s coral reefs in high-resolution 360-degree panoramic imagery has launched a window into the underwater world.

The XL Catlin Seaview Survey team has worked with Google to launch the largest-ever collection of underwater imagery on Google Maps, featuring 360-degree virtual dives from 20 reefs across the region including the Philippines, Indonesia, the Solomon Islands, the Cook Islands, Australia and American Samoa.

You can now dive in and explore Mantis and Wishbone reefs in Australia many others across the Asia Pacific region. This new imagery joins other Australian imagery including underwater Sydney Harbour and more Great Barrier Reef imagery.

You can also see how the underwater surveys are conducted by going behind-the-scenes on dives at Indonesia’s Bunaken National Park, the heart of the Coral Triangle.

Often called the “underwater Amazon,” the Coral Triangle is a 5.7 million square kilometre area that spans from the Philippines in the north, down to Indonesia and as far as the Solomon Islands in the east. This giant triangle is also home to 76 per cent of known coral species and more than 3000 species of fish.

Every dive begins with getting the divers rigged up and the special 60kg camera off our research boat Makarena and into the water. The SVII is a revolutionary camera system that creates high-resolution 360-degree images of the underwater environment using technology similar to Google Street View.

By attaching SVII to an underwater scooter, the survey team can cover distances of up to two kilometres in a single dive, taking about 3000 images each time.

They've also added instruments to the camera set-up, including a depth transponder (altimeter) so that they can read the altitude of the camera from the seafloor, which therefore allows them to gather standardised scientific information said to be at a volume and scale which was previously unattainable to the marine science community. 

USing the SVII camera in the waters off Manado, the Catlin Seaview Survey has seen large schools with hundreds of reef fish such cascade down the healthy reef slope. They've greeted by a dolphin and a free swimming banded sea snake among many other species.

For a window into the underwater world see image gallery and Google oceans links .