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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.

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