Explore the ocean with interactive tours in Google Earth

At the beginning of April, Google announced a new default layer for oceans in Google Earth.
The new oceans layer includes hundreds of sites generated from data, images, and videos from organizations like National Geographic, NOAA, and dozens of others.

National Geographic ocean explorer, Sylvia Earle, narrates a highlight tour through some of the best photos and videos in the 'Explore the Ocean' layer in Google Earth : -> GE Explore-oceans

In the same announcement, Google featured a new narrated tour called Hope Spots in the Ocean Showcase which displays eight places around the world considered to be indicative of the health of the world's oceans and marine life.
Take a tour with Mission Blue : -> GE_Hope-spots

Quiet moods meditative moments

As hundreds of thousands of air passengers disrupted by the consequences of the Icelandic volcano ashes, two of the three creators of the Marine GeoGarage are stranded abroad : Loïc in Barcelona (Spain) and I in Dakar (Senegal) travelling for business.

So waiting the resuming of the passengers flights, we have to be patient, reading, watching movies or listening music, tracks such as "The Young Daughter of the Sea" from the 1973 album "L'Apocalypse Des Animaux" composed, arranged, produced and performed by Vangelis...

This is a new example showing we need to take into account how fragile the human race really is to vagaries of nature.

Image of the week : Easter Island, the most isolated island in the world

Seen from space, Easter Island (Rapa Nui) looks anything but egg-shaped (GeoGarage location)
The German Earth observation satellite TerraSAR-X flew over this small and remote volcanic island, acquiring snapshots that show that man-made structures can be seen easily even from space. This image shows the principle town of Hanga Roa, on the northwestern coast (in yellow), and the airport, in the western part of the island (black line).

The island is has an area of just 160 square kilometres and owes its name to the Christian festival of Easter. The Dutchman Jakob Roggeveen landed on its shore on Easter Sunday, 5 April 1722, and chose the rather unimaginative name.
Located about 3600 kilometres from the mainland of Chile and more then 4000 kilometres from Tahiti, Easter Island can justifiably be described as the most isolated island in the world. The nearest neighbours – about 50 descendants of the mutineers on the British naval vessel HMS Bounty – live 2000 kilometres away on the small island of Pitcairn.

James Cook, who stopped at Easter Island in 1774 during his second expedition to the South Seas, was less than delighted with the island.
He wrote in his journal: "No Nation will ever contend for the honour of the discovery of Easter Island as there is hardly an island in this sea offering less refreshments, and conveniences for Shipping than it does."
This is no surprise: the island was formed when lava flows from three volcanoes joined to form a landmass between them.

More on : DLR (Germany's national research center for aeronautics and space)

Surfing session in Pohnpei, Micronesia

-> location on Marine GeoGarage

The world's smallest sea horse

In 2003, marine biologist Sara Lourie, a member of the University of British Columbia-based Project Seahorse marine conservation team, has identified the world's smallest known species of seahorse. The pygmy seahorse called Hippocampus Denise averages 16 mm (.64 inch) in size, smaller than a fingernail, and lives in coral in the tropical waters of the western Pacific.

In 2009, five new pygmy seahorse species were found in the Red Sea.

Hippocampus satomiae, little bigger than a pea, has been recently found on reefs in Indonesia.
Note : animal names ending in -ae honor women, in this case Satomi Onishi, a diving guide who collected the first specimen.

Little bigger than a pea, the smallest known sea horse, was discovered at a depth of about 15 meters on reefs in Indonesia, from Derawan island off Kalimantan to northern Sulawesi and Borneo.
Like other pygmy sea horses, its size and camouflage make it difficult to spot. This species resembles, in texture and color, the sea fans with which it lives. It has a pouch in which it carries its young, which are only 3mm in length.

The sea horse is displayed at the Quentin Wheeler International Institute for Species Exploration, Arizona State University.

The seahorses are a genus of fishes within the family syngnathidae, which also includes the pipefishes.
There are more than 80 species of seahorse, mainly found in shallow tropical and temperate waters throughout the world.
They prefer to live in sheltered areas such as seagrass beds, coral reefs, or mangroves.
Seahorse populations are said to have been endangered in the recent years due to overfishing and habitat destruction.

Links :

• Biologists find tiny animal in Indonesian waters
• Pygmy seahorses