What made the XL Catlin Seaview Survey so unique …

. . .surrounding THE game-changing science was a communication, education and outreach program equal in focus, designed to engage a broad audience of scientists, conservationists, policymakers, educators, students, media aND the general public, led by Underwater Earth, with heavy founding partner involvement.

ENGAGING THE WORLD’S

MEDIA

A key focus and success factor of this project has been media engagement. The world’s high-profile publications and online media have written about our work; our game-changing science; the innovative technology behind the program; our powerful imagery; the virtual dives in global platforms such as Google Street View, Google Earth and Google Expeditions; our far-ranging partnerships; our scientific findings and alas, the demise of coral reefs around the world triggered by the Third Global Coral Bleaching Event.  Conservatively, we have calculated the project has been mentioned in over 9,000 online features, with an estimated reach in the billions, and a media value in excess of $200 million with key highlights including the front cover of the New York Times; an eight-page feature in TIME Magazine and online; and being credited in the top 100 new scientific discoveries for 2015, again by TIME Magazine. Added to this are some 10-plus documentary features including David Attenborough’s series about the Great Barrier Reef, and the Emmy award-winning feature-length Netflix-Originals documentary focused on the program’s work, Chasing Coral.

THIRD GLOBAL CORAL BLEACHING EVENT

Given the timings and global nature of our surveys, we were able to not only record in 360-degree imagery, but reveal to the world the true scale of the devastation to coral reefs around the globe caused by coral bleaching. Our scientific and rapid-responses surveys during the period 2014 to 2017 documented coral bleaching in locations around the world including Hawaii, American Samoa, the Maldives, Japan, New Caledonia and the Great Barrier Reef. As the magnitude, severity and global nature of the coral bleaching unfolded, we teemed up with NOAA and Google in September 2015 to announce and publicise the bleaching event as the Third Global Coral Bleaching Event and by November 2015, the world’s media were making this one of the biggest climate-change stories in the lead-up to the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21).

the chasing coral Phenomenon

For three years, Director Jeff Orlowski and his documentary team at Exposure Labs followed the work of the XL Catlin Seaview Survey as we tracked, captured and revealed the impacts of global bleaching on the world’s coral reefs. The result was the award-winning, Netflix-Original documentary Chasing Coral. The film is the result of over 500 hours of underwater footage, coral bleaching submissions from volunteers in 30 countries, as well as support from more than 500 people in various locations around the world. Film audiences get to witness the highs and lows of marine science as the team juggles underwater camera technology to create a time-lapse camera for recording coral bleaching as it happens. The effort is anything but straightforward as the scientists doggedly battle technical malfunctions and the force of nature below the waves. With its breathtaking photography, nail-biting suspense, and startling emotion, Chasing Coral is as dramatic as it is breathtaking in its beauty. Chasing Coral has won many awards to date including the Sundance Film Festival US Documentary Audience Award (where it premiered in 2017) and an Emmy for Outstanding Nature Documentary. Since its release in 2017, the compelling nature documentary film has been screened more than 1450 times across the world and viewed by an estimated 50 million people (updated stats pending from Exposure Labs).

outreach and

EDUCATION

The XL Catlin Seaview Survey program was designed to further engage and educate global audiences through schools and education programs such as the AXA Ocean Education program; powerful outreach partnerships; digital communication initiatives and community engagement activities. At it’s height, the program had in excess of 3 millions social media followers and was taking the world virtual diving in the millions and much of this work continues and indeed, is growing today.

AXA XL ocean Education

The AXA Ocean Education programme is a leading provider and innovator of education resources for schools to help drive greater understanding of the importance of the ocean and help inspire the next generation of scientists and decision-makers. At the programme’s core are two central components: teaching resources and live education events, which provide unique opportunities to connect students directly with scientists and researchers working in the field on marine issues. Through these free and publicly available resources, AXA Ocean Education aims to increase ocean literacy globally and foster appreciation of ocean science careers and sustainability.

Find out more here.

underwater google street view

Back in 2011, the Underwater Earth team conceptualised underwater Google Street View as the perfect way to engage the world with the ocean and Google agreed. Underwater Earth embraced this photography and tech challenge. In a short few months, the SV underwater 360-degree camera system was prototyped, built and tested allowing the team to begin collecting their first underwater 360-degree content and this is where underwater Google Street View first began. For the first time people could be transported underwater in a truly immersive way allowing them to virtual dive the world’s coral reefs. When underwater Google Street View was formerly announced to the world in September 2012 on the stage at Monterey Film Festival, more people virtual dived in the first month alone than have ever dived in person.

Fast forward nine years and the SV camera systems have been used on over 70 missions across the globe with well over 1 million images taken in this time. The best of our images are used for communication, education and awareness programs touring the world online and in exhibits, including in the World's Ocean collection on Google Earth.

Anyone with internet access can self-navigate a virtual dive in stunning high-resolution to explore and learn about these environments and better understand the issues they face.

New virtual dives are still being launched periodically by Underwater Earth so watch out
for them.

UQ’s Open-access learning

As well as benefiting marine science, The University of Queensland wanted to ensure the visual data from the coral reefs surveys was also applied to innovative teaching and open-access learning opportunities through lecture materials as part of the Massive Online Open Course (MOOC).

Tropic 101x’ focuses on the problems and solutions to managing tropical coastal ecosystems and ‘Denial 101’ helps you make sense of climate science and equip you to respond to climate change denial.

Google expeditions in the classroom

Building on Underwater Earth’s partnership with Google, a series of underwater field trips built to revolutionise ocean literacy using XL Catlin Seaview Survey were integrated in to Google’s launch of Expeditions to the world. Using Google Cardboard and the Google Expedition platform, millions of students got to virtual dive in their classrooms in the first months after launch. Virtual underwater field trips to classrooms and to local communities all around the world continue today.