Google features Apo Island

MANILA, Philippines - After featuring images from Antartica, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and the Amazon River, Google Street View goes underwater by capturing panoramic images of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, Hawaii in the US and Apo Island in the Philippines.

“Google Street View has become a way to virtually explore the world. It makes sense that we bring that technology underwater,” Goggle spokesman David Marx said during a Google+ Hangout event in Tokyo last week.

Apo Island, one of the featured underwater destinations, is a volcanic island and protected marine reserve located at the southeastern coast of Dauin, Negros Oriental.

“At Apo Island, a volcanic island and marine reserve in the Philippines, you can see an ancient boulder coral, which may be several hundred years old,” Google said in its official blog.

A popular dive and snorkeling site among tourists, Apo Island can be reached by a 30-minute boat ride from the village of Malatapay, Zamboanguita in Negros Oriental.

“Apo Island is famous for being a dive spot. I hope divers who see it (on Google Maps) will help boost tourism in the Philippines,” Marx said in an interview with ABS-CBN News Channel (ANC).

According to a CNN report, Google partnered with Caitlin Seaview Survey in documenting the world’s reefs using high-resolution 360-degree images to create an archive that scientists can use to study the effects of climate change and spread public awareness on the role the oceans play in sustaining the planet.

“It’s about introducing to the wide number of people on this planet the impact we’re having on these coral reefs,” said Richard Vevers, project director of the Catlin Seaview Survey.

“Until we make coral reefs and the important ecosystem in the ocean relevant to people on the planet, we’re not going to get action,” Vevers noted.

“The more people see the ocean, the more they will feel they are a vital part of the earth,” Marx added.

Using a custom-designed rapid-fire camera, controlled by a tablet and GPS recording device, the group took 15,000 panoramic photos underwater, which is made of three separate shots per view.

“It took three days to shoot one location with 5,000 images per location. We patched all these images to make a 360-degree panorama,” Marx told ANC.

Future sites will include Bermuda, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean and the Coral Triangle, an area in the western Pacific that includes the waters of the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste and the Solomon Islands where coral reefs retreated to after the last Ice Age.

To capture images at greater depths, at about 98 to 328 feet, the group plans to send down special remotely operated vehicles outfitted with remote-controlled digital single-lens reflex cameras.

“Google Maps tries to be as comprehensive as possible and puts as many things on the map as we can,” Marx said. “The ocean isn’t just a blank, blue space. The more we can show that, the more Google Maps become better and more comprehensive.”