In honor of Darwin’s upcoming 200th birthday, I decided to explore the Galapagos on shiny new Google Earth 5.0 with extra fantastic ocean capability. It is SPECTACULAR – stuffed with videos, blogs, cruises, and photos. So here’s how I wasted an hour exploring. I’m not providing links since it’s more fun to find the sweet sweet procrastination important educational materials yourself.
- Zoomed into Puerto Ayora, the main town on the island of Santa Cruz. Checked out the Darwin Station and a photo of Lonesome George. Was hoping to find some historical photos to get a handle on growth, but no luck.
- What’s this red hat symbol? Sacre bleu, a video of Jacques Cousteau diving with marine iguanas in 1971. Bonus sea lion harassment of iguanas!
- Onto the island of Floreana. Read about critically endangered Floreana coral, with pretty photos.
- Anchor symbol – oceanographic goodness! An unusually well-written blog about a Woods Hole geographic expedition (on SIO’s R/V Revelle) to explore sunken volcanoes. They’ve got interviews with a huge cross-section of the scientists and crew.
- Awww, Galapagos penguin chick begging for food off Isla Isabela.
- I wonder what’s underwater? Swim over to Alvarado Ridge. There need to be some hidden easter-egg-type goodies in the Google Earth deep sea.
For a bonus, check out the largest initials on the planet, carved right into the sea floor!!! That’s the glory of supplying the bathymetry data – DTS/SIO is Dr. David T. Sandwell of Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
For more Google Ocean, Peter Etnoyer on Deep Sea News has been playing, too – see here and here and here.
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I was bummed there was no Witman filter. Which got me to thinking – there should be some layer out there for marine research sites! If you click on each one, you get a list of authors and pubs. Perhaps even a picture from one of the studies.
Anyone out there with the skillz? What a cool online repository that would be!
Of course, there should also be a layer for Bars Where Great Ideas Were Cooked up. Hence, the Bongo Bar in Puerto Ayora really needs a marker! As does the excellently creepy shrine to Darwin with the Boobie on the front (stay tuned to IAC next week!).
I like! Though it would be really amusing to see the dispersal gradients of pubs emanating out from marine labs…
Actually, that could be quite useful to folk to see where the unexplored study sites in their local area are. Hrm. If only I had the skillz. Or rather, if only I had the time.