If you’re already yearning for an ocean vacation, complete with snorkeling, I have just the vicarious voyage for you …
Photo by Angelique800326 via Wikimedia Commons
The Google Oceans mapping tool is one more way in which Google packs up the imagination and sends it sailing around the globe. You’ll love Google’s Street View program for its ability to “drop” you into almost any destination from here to the ends of the earth. Now, with Oceans, you can just as easily plunge beneath the surface of wild waters worldwide—for free.
Photo by U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service – Pacific Region via Wikimedia Commons
Talk about a tropical getaway!
“We’ve published images in seven continents, down the Amazon and in the Arctic,” Jennifer Austin Foulkes, the Manager of Google’s Oceans Program, said in a press release. “We want to make these special underwater locations as accessible to people as the roads and landmarks they explore in Google Maps every day.”
Ready to go? Here’s how:
Simply visit the Google Oceans website, choose an image or map location that intrigues you, and click to dive in.
Seeing the beauties of the ocean’s waters just underscores our need to ocean ecology and stopping global warming. I would wager that most people have no idea of the life complexity that exists under the waters around the world. Many species of plants, fish, mammals depend on certain conditions that are increasingly threatened and destroying habitats. Maybe Google’s easy ocean website access will catch the hearts and minds of our 20+ year old voters around the world into making better decisions regarding regulations to care for our ocean resources.
Agreed!