Movies

VIRTUALLY LIVING UNDERWATER: UNDERWATER OBSERVATORY

TED / John Delaney
by John F. Williams

underwater ovservatoryImagine watching live events unfold underwater any time of day or night in high-def video from the comfort of your own home.  Fish fishing, hydrothermal vents venting, volcanoes erupting, landslides sliding, or simply the sideways gait of a deep water crab seeking some morsel for dinner.

Fibre optic cables have already been installed off the Oregon coast that will enable researchers, and the public, to watch these kinds of events in high-definition video from anywhere in the world.  This is part of a world-wide ocean observatory that is now under construction.  If you want to see an entertaining lecture about this project, take a look at the embedded video of a TED Talk by John Delaney of the University of Washington, Seattle.   Also see the article on this site about what Oceans Canada is doing with all their underwater footage (Digital Fishers: Science, Game, or Both?)

 

There are also more great TED Talks about our marine world, including, believe it or not, a great talk by Jim Toomey — the cartoonist who draws Sherman’s Lagoon.

Comments are closed.

art artist audio birds crab drawing ecosystem educate Elwha environment field guide filmmaker fish food food web forest gallery games mammal marine media Movies music ocean octopus oyster Pacific Pacific Northwest painting photos plastic pollution Puget Sound restoration Salish Sea salmon science Scuba sculpture underwater video water watershed whale written

Recent Media Articles

Blue Hope
Blue Hope

I found myself excitedly telling my friends about this book, saying: “It’s such a great coffee table book that it almost makes me want to buy a coffee table.” Joking aside, I’ve long been a fan of Sylvia Earle. I even had a chance to sit down and chat with her quite some years ago

Read More »

Baseline, What Baseline?
OnceAndFuture Title Page

Preserving and restoring nature are key items on our global agenda. But it’s complicated. What do we preserve? What are the goal posts for our restoration efforts? J.B. MacKinnon takes a hard look at these issues and at getting one’s mind around nature in general. His 2013 book, The Once and Future World, is written

Read More »

Are Herring Runs Rebounding
Herring eggs

David Albright put together a very good short video about Spring 2023 herring spawning, including some underwater footage by our friend Laura James and some of the cultural connections.

Read More »

Importance of parasites

One of the things that caught my attention about this radio story was that it was aimed at broadening our notions of what an ecosystem is. While much of the media’s attention is still on the charismatic megafauna, other less obvious and less beloved elements are also of vital importance. When was the last time

Read More »

Future Ecologies
Future Ecologies podcast

A broad-spectrum collection of invitations to see your world in a new light – set to original music & immersive soundscapes, and weaving together interviews with expert knowledge holders.

Read More »