Study brings the Great Barrier Reef to YouTube

A study will have you diving in the Great Barrier Reef without the need of certification. It's called the Catlin Seaview Survey and is being done with Google, the University of Queensland Global Change Institute, Underwater Earth (a non-profit) and Catlin (an insurance company). It will use an underwater camera that will take thousands of 360 degree underwater panorama shots. The images will be stitched together for viewers to be able to pick a spot in the Great Barrier Reef that they would like to see and go to it. According to the University of Queensland, "Google is collaborating with the Catlin Seaview Survey and is working on a new feature on Panoramio (which links photos to locations), so that the 360-degree panorama images can be uploaded and made available to millions of people worldwide." Watch the video below to see a glimpse of the survey.

Around 50,000 panorama images will be made available from Catlin Seaview Survey, in partnership with Google Earth and Google Maps. The survey will have a dedicated YouTube channel, as well as will be broadcasted via Google Hangouts. Viewers will be able to see live streams of surveyers on the ocean floor. The aim of the project is to survey the health of the coral reefs that comprise the Great Barrier Reef. The idea is to determine how environmental changes, including climate change affects underwater ecosystems, such as the Great Barrier Reef. The survey will be conducted in depths, ranging from 0 meters to 100 meters underwater (for reference, human recreational divers are only allowed to go to 40 meters maximum).