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Street View is great for visualizing destinations before you arrive, but increasingly it is also being used to take people places they may never be able to go in person. Richard Vevers and Underwater Earth have partnered with Google to begin creating the full 360-degree views of coral reefs needed to make them part of the Street View universe. Vevers explained to us during a session at Google I/O that, “people don’t value what they can’t experience. Coral reefs are disappearing and need help. By sharing them through Street View we hope to generate interest and awareness, encouraging their preservation.” In addition, the large volume of data being collected by the project will also serve as a scientific baseline for future studies of how reefs and other sensitive ocean bottom areas are faring.

As you might expect, underwater Street View requires some fancy engineering. Because of the way lenses behave underwater, the team needed to design a new camera rig. By using three very-wide-angle-equipped cameras, the current Seaview cameras — dubbed SVII — can capture left and right images that are merged into a 360-degree panorama, as well as a direct downward image. The downward image is used for compatibility with existing scientific databases, which are primarily composed of images taken by shooting straight down. You can see one underwater Street View below — for the full collection, hit up Google’s Ocean Street View website.