Explore life beneath the waves in honor of World Oceans Day

Google and its partners are committed to using technology

to better understand and protect the ocean. 

From Google_LatLon by Jenifer Austin and Brian Sullivan, Google Ocean Program

Covering more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, the ocean remains one of the most uncharted and undiscovered ecosystems on the planet.

Home to the majority of life on Earth, the ocean acts as its life support system, controlling everything from our weather and rainfall to the oxygen we breathe.
Yet despite the ocean’s vital importance, the ocean is changing at a rapid rate due to climate change, pollution, and overfishing, making it one of the most serious environmental issues we face today.

Walk the coastline of Larsen Bay, Samoa, home to some of the most pristine coral reefs in the Pacific

Mapping the ocean is key to preserving it.
Each image in Google Maps is a GPS-located digital record of these underwater and coastal environments, which can be used as a baseline to monitor change over time.
This comprehensive record of coral reefs showcases the beauty of these ecosystems and highlights the threats they face, such as the impact of increasing storms in the Great Barrier Reef and of rising water temperatures, factors causing the reefs to bleach white.

 These two images taken just one year apart, demonstrate reef deterioration from ocean warming.

With just one click, you can swim underwater alongside some of the most wondrous and exotic creatures, including great white sharks in Australia.

Google recommends you check out these amazing “street views” of ocean life:

• Dive with giant ocean sunfish (Mola mola) and giant parrotfish off the coast of Bali.
• Swim underwater alongside schools of giant travely in Mexico.
• Do the backstroke with humpback whales in the Cook Islands.
• See the breathtaking beauty of sea turtles in Timor-Leste.
• Search the ruins of shipwrecks in Aruba.
• In American Samoa, you can go for sunset walk along Ofu Airport Beach, or walk along Ofu beach, known as one of the most scenic beaches in the world.
• In Chagos Islands, you can tour Ile du Sel, a tiny island vegetated with a thick forest of coconut palms, and explore the famed bird nesting habitat of Grande Ile Bois Mangue.

Mola mola, the world’s heaviest bony fish, in Crystal Bay, Bali

 Two humpback whales swimming in the Cook Islands in the South Pacific

As the ocean changes, we must change with it by creating new technologies, to help document the state of the ocean today and how it changes in years to come.
Working closely with XL Catlin Seaview Survey, we’re announcing a select group of new partnerships for our underwater Street View program to map and publish more imagery of our ocean and water systems for the world to understand and explore.

• NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries: Expanding our current partnership to bring unprecedented access to American marine protected areas
• Reef Check: Engaging and training volunteer citizen scientists to participate in ocean mapping and data collection
• Blue Ventures: Developing locally-managed marine areas for biodiversity and the benefit of coastal people throughout Madagascar and the Indian Ocean
• Our World Underwater Scholarship Society: Providing a program of firsthand underwater-related experiences to selected scholars across the world
• GUE’s Project Baseline: Empowering a global network of highly skilled SCUBA divers to create a lasting visual legacy of underwater conditions in oceans, lakes, rivers, springs, and caves all over the world

In addition to underwater and coastal Street View imagery, Global Fishing Watch, developed in partnership with nonprofits SkyTruth and Oceana, is producing the first public and interactive view of industrial fishing at a global scale.
With so much of what happens on the ocean going unnoticed, Global Fishing Watch will aim to empower governments, the seafood industry, research institutions and the public with new tools to better inform sustainable practices and management policies.

This World Oceans Day, we hope that you’re inspired to learn more about ocean change.
So dive into the deeps of the sea and become engaged to protect the ocean and understand how it supports us, so that all of us can better support it in return.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog :  Google SeaView : Ocean survey launches on Great Barrier Reef / Dive into the Great Barrier Reef with the first underwater imagery in Google Maps / Caribbean has lost 80% of its coral reef cover in recent years / Take a virtual swim with the dolphins on protected Brazilian islands 
• Google LatLon : Dive in to the heart of the Coral Triangle in Asia, home of the richest coral reefs on Earth

Yacht entering harbour in rough seas

Very skillfull helmsman on this Delphina 37'

harbour entrance of Savaneke on Bornholm Island, part of Denmark in the Baltic.

 Bornholm island with the GeoGarage platform

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Yacht capsizes in surf at Spanish port of Zumaia

The Golden Gate bridge from the air

The Golden Gate Bridge from the air. from Makai Creative

Explainer: how do you measure a sea’s level, anyway?

ESRI : Mean Sea Level, GPS, and the Geoid

From The Conversation by Gary Griggs

There are about 330 million cubic miles of water in the world oceans today, 97% of all the water on the planet. Early in our planet’s 4.5 billion year history, water from the atmosphere and from the interior of the Earth gradually collected in the low areas on the planet’s surface to form the ocean basins, accumulating salts along the way.

 OK, but which sea’s level? And how do you know what it is?

Wally Gobetz, CC BY-NC-ND

The level of the ocean around the Earth, and therefore the location of the shoreline, are directly related to the total amount of water in the oceans, and also closely tied to climate.
As climate changes, so does sea level.
Throughout the history of the oceans, which goes back about 3.5 billion years, give or take a few million, climate has constantly changed and, in response, sea level has gone up and down. As seawater warms, it expands and sea level rises.
As the Earth warms, ice sheets and glaciers melt and retreat, adding more water to the oceans, which raises sea level.

Sea level change between 1993 and 2008 NASA/JPL

People have been keeping track of sea level, or the elevation of the oceans, for about 200 years.
Until fairly recently, this was done with tide gauges, which are water-level recorders anchored to some structure along the coastline.
It might be a wharf, a concrete breakwater or some other solid structure that is stable over long periods of time.
The oldest tide gauge in the world is on the coast of Poland and was installed in 1808.
In the United States, there are two tide gauges that have been in operation since 1856, one in New York and one in San Francisco.
There are many others as well, but most of them are much newer; many were set up over the past 50-75 years.

Installing a tide gauge in Alaska. 

NOAA Photo Library, CC BY

A tide gauge is essentially a large pipe inserted into the ocean, which has a float inside that moves up and down as the water level changes.
As the tide rises and falls each day, these gauges record those changes in water level, day after day, year after year.
These instruments were first set up to provide accurate information on water depths so ships could enter and leave ports safely.
As time went on, however, it became clear that sea level recorded on these instruments was rising globally.

 A tidal gauge, ready to be installed

Each of these official tide gauges keeps track of sea level at a particular coastal location.
Many coastal areas are not stable, however.
Some are sinking (such as New Orleans or Venice), and some are rising (Alaska and Scandinavia, for example).
Each tide gauge keeps track of how sea level is changing relative to the land on which it is anchored.

 NOAA tide gauge data for Grand Isle, Louisiana (near New Orleans), where sea level is rising relative to the land at 9.03 mm/yr (36 inches/century) due to subsidence of the Mississippi delta area. NOAA

Even though sea level rose around the world at a rate of about 1.7 millimeters per year over the last century (nearly seven inches per century), because some gauges are on coasts that are rising and some on coasts that are sinking, these local sea-level rise rates will vary.
In parts of Alaska, the land is rising faster than sea level, so the tide gauge actually records a drop in sea level relative to the land.

NOAA tide gage record for Juneau, Alaska, where local sea level is dropping relative to the land at 13.16 mm/year (4.3 feet/century) due to uplift of the coastline. NOAA

These geographic variations were resolved in 1993 when two satellites were launched that use radar to measure the level of the ocean very precisely from space.
This high-tech approach eliminates the problems of land motion on Earth and has given us a new global sea-level rise rate over the past 22 years of 3.2 millimeters per year, the equivalent of 12 inches per century.

Global mean sea level as measured by satellite. University of Colorado/NASA

Elevations on land, contour lines on maps and depths on nautical charts are based on the long-term average of sea level.
This is complicated by the fact that sea level around the world at any instant is not the same, due to local variations resulting from differences in water temperatures, currents, atmospheric pressure and wind.
In order to bring some order to all of these geographical variations, and to provide a constant point of reference, a datum or base level was established based on averaging out the elevation of sea level from many tide gauges over an extended period of time.
This datum is now called the North American Vertical Datum (or NAVD) and is the elevation (close to mean sea level) on which all map elevations are based.
So if a wharf, highway or building is “20 feet above sea level,” it is 20 feet above this official North American Vertical Datum.

Links :

• Eyeontherise : Ever wonder whether your home would be affected by rising sea levels? Florida International University has launched a new web app called Sea Level Rise Toolbox that shows the possible impact of a 6-foot rise in sea levels. After downloading the free app, it allows users to type in their home address, then click on an orange tab to see the projected increase of water levels.

Google's global fishing watch is using 'manipulated data'

Source: Windward

From Wired by Liat Clark

Last week, Google, Oceana and SkyTruth announced they were launching a battle against overfishing everywhere.

A noble pursuit, Global Fishing Watch combines interactive mapping technology and satellite data with the all-important Automatic Identification System (AIS) transmissions every tanker, passenger ship and commercial vessel above a certain size is mandated by the UN to send.

Global Fishing Watch then visualises the routes taken, to show when a fishing boat strays into or lingers in waters it shouldn't.

The only problem, maritime analytics company Windward tells us, is that any vessel engaging in illegal activities is gaming the system and manipulating AIS data.

We can't rely on what we're seeing.

"Until 2012, AIS data was super reliable because it wasn't commoditised. Nobody had it, so no one needed to clean the data or check it," Ami Daniel, a former naval officer and cofounder of Windward, tells WIRED.co.uk.

 MarineTraffic

"Two years, there was suddenly so much data out there, so many open source portals like marinetraffic.com providing free access to [vessel positions] for everybody.
People understood they were being looked at.
Once that happened, spontaneously different industries started to manipulate the data."

According to a report by Windward that looked at AIS data from mid-2013 to mid-2014, there has been a 59 percent increase in GPS manipulations.
From July 2012 to August 2014, that data also showed:

• Final ports of call were reported only 41 percent of the time
• 1 percent of all ships used a fake identifying number (IMO) over the past year
• A quarter of all vessels switch off their AIS at least 10 percent of the time

Windward reveals enhanced MARINT solution (IMDEX Asia)

Windward is crunching AIS data -- the more than 100m shipping data points produced every day -- and satellite imagery with its algorithms, taking into account the aforementioned manipulations and comparing these against past behaviours, home ports and vessel ownership, as well as general trading patterns and economic profiles.
Its software calculates how urgent the erroneous data stream is, then alerts its clients to the fact.
These include oil and gas companies in South America and West Africa and governments in South East Asia and West Africa.
Interested parties include navies, as well as national intelligence agencies.
There are many reasons a vessel would choose to manipulate its AIS transmissions.
At the most serious end of the spectrum are the illegal activities.
"The UN found a super strong connection between fishing and smuggling and terrorism," Daniel tells us.
"Fishing vessels have defacto authorization to enter any point they want in the world because the fishing industry is a global one. So it's not irregular for a vessel to go from Africa to Europe. Yet everything they do in open seas in between is unaccountable."
Human trafficking and smuggling are two of the most worrying reasons for manipulations.
Then there are plenty of economics ones -- the vessels Google and co are trying to track, which are engaging in overfishing or fishing in restricted regions for profit.
According to Windward's report, Chinese fishing vessels account for 44 percent of all GPS manipulations.
"They want to fish wherever they want," says Daniel.

 An illustration of AIS data manipulation in action, pertaining to GPS manipulation.

Source: Windward

It's also well known that there is a high demand for things like rhino horns and ivory in China, and that that demand is a key reason the illegal export trade in Africa has accelerated in recent years.
It's interesting, then, to look at one of the visualisations Windward has created from its analysis.
It shows a vessel turning on its AIS data somewhere off the south coast of Mexico.
It then reappears near Chile, then bizarrely crops up in the middle of Antarctica, well and truly landlocked, before curving up and heading to China.
It's so clearly doctored, but what's interesting is how it was doctored.
Daniel says a common tactic among crews is to log GPS stats that show you're a few thousands kilometres south or north of where you actually are.
Looking at this particular example, the vessel heading for China appears to have made a route that perfectly mirrors the outline of South Africa, just a few thousand kilometres south.
Daniel says crews have been "crossing the cables", or physically connecting them to a computer and using software to manipulate the GPS coordinates.
There's plenty that can be manipulated.
The data sent through AIS includes longitude and latitude, speed, course, rate of turn, depth, its unique signifier (IMO) and more.
Each manipulation might suggest a different reason, and that's what Windward is working to reveal with its algorithms.
Altering the depth, for instance, betrays that you are carrying either less or more (in weight) than you should be, and could mean a number of things.

Animated satellite map showing every large commercial fishing vessel

 in the Atlantic Ocean between 2012 and 2013.

 Same map, only centered on the Pacific Ocean.

Map breaking vessels down by country of origin.

Spanish boats are in blue. Japanese boats in green. Korean boats in red

(All images courtesy of  Vox )

Fishing vessels around South Georgia and the South Sandwich islands

Photo: Global Fishing Watch

The existence of something like Global Fishing Watch, is inarguably a good thing.
It isn't claiming to be battling human trafficking accurately, but shedding light on what is a huge global issue.
It focuses purely on fishing vessels, with its first interactive map featuring 3,125 ships, and their 35 million data points collected over 2013-2014.
Oceana has referred to the tool as "groundbreaking", and it is certainly helping shed some light and transparency on the problem, the point being vessels are incentivised to show they are fishing appropriately and where they should be.

The issue is, Global Fishing Watch is absolutely using AIS for a mission in was never prepared for. When the UN agency International Maritime Organisation mandated that every vessel turn on and use its AIS in 2002, it was purely for safety reasons.
The data is transmitted back and forth between vessels that might be near each other, to ensure collisions are avoided -- and it's doing a good job of this all these years.
In these instances, perhaps when your vessel is traversing a strait, the longitude and latitude is transmitted every few seconds.
Many of the other data points are transmitted intermittently and manually.
As Daniel puts it, "you don't have to be sophisticated at all in many cases -- you just punch in the code".
So despite AIS being mandated, the world's oceans are essentially operating on what Daniel describes as "an honour system".

The obvious issue facing Global Fishing Watch is that the very vessels overfishing the waters are the ones that will be working to hide their tracks.
In fact, it will only be the inadvertent errors made by commercial and government vessels, and the very foolish behaviour of oblivious ill-doers, that will be caught out by Global Fishing Watch.
It is only watching those that want to be seen.

In an interview with our sister site, WIRED.com, Oceana's VP for the US, Jackie Savitz, admitted that false reasing were an issue, but that its model "can detect erratic AIS transmissions".
"If we see pings from a vessel every hour for a month, then it goes silent, but suddenly comes back on weeks later, we can pick that up and possibly trigger enforcement against them for not transmitting as they are supposed to."
The problem, as Windward points out, is that crews are becoming more savvy to the various AIS manipulations they can make -- it's not as easy as looking for those switching off any more.
In fact, few would use this tactic as it is a rather obvious red flag.

 Windward’s maritime surveillance system (MarInt) shows a Japanese fishing boat that entered the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of Angola, allegedly without permission.

So how can we even begin to stem this problem?
Windward could be just one part of the solution, and in years to come as satellites become more cost effective, and there are more of them, we will have better data to attack the problem.
In the meantime though, it's more about raising awareness to keep pace with those becoming savvy enough to game the system on a daily basis.
One stat might go a way in helping that push.

The Windward report compares the fact that 1 percent of ships are using fake IMO numbers (a 30 percent rise on the previous year), to airport security.
1 percent is equal to several hundred vessels being "'in disguise' at any given time", which is "akin to having over 1,000 people going through John F. Kennedy International Airport each day using fake IDs".
In the context of airport safety and customs regulations, that figure would be staggering and totally unacceptable.

Apply it to the open seas and suddenly the limits of our acceptance, is vastly lowered.
Of course port authorities have a certain degree of responsibility and control.
But just as we discovered when Ebola screening was first suggested for airports and ports, it would be virtually impossible to check every ship that comes to UK shores.

One way of bringing more attention to the problem, is to get the world of finance involved.
And that's exactly what Windward hopes to do.
Daniel points that 90 percent of the world's trade happens at sea, and most of our commodities are transported that way.
And while crude imports in 2013 were estimated to be worth around $2,823 billion (£1.8bn) -- half of which were transported by sea -- Windward points that "the financial trading on this volume is estimated to be nine times larger than the transport value".
Financial trading models take into account things like commodity flows, and the false data could be leading to costly distortions.
One of the reasons oil tankers might hide their positions or depths, Windward postulates, would be to impact global oil prices.

 Ramtin’s journey to Malaysia

Hamoda K’s journey to Karachi
As the two images show, the MMSI number of the Hamoda K and the Ramtin (Volga) match.

Iranian tanker hacks AIS to disguise itself off Singapore

(courtesy of gCaptain)

The reach of this problem is vast and winding.
As such, Daniel believes he and his 30-strong team has found the last "Wild West".
He refers to this phrase over and over, and it's clear why.
The technology revolution has crept up on every sector, its wildfire turning even the most traditional of industries on its head.
Considering the planet is made up of 70 percent water -- water being traversed by more than 200,000 AIS-fitted vessels everyday, from the smallest of fishing boats to cruise liners -- the fact that an accurate representation of activity on our seas escapes us, seems incredible.
"It's one of the reasons I get up in morning everyday," says Daniel.
"This isn't just another app -- this is something huge. This is all ocean trades. No one knows what's happening there, and therefore we think it's one of the last analogue domains waiting to be digitised. There's going to be a very big change. But we have to do it well, with the right data -- or there will only be more trouble."

AIS is the industry standard -- it's reliable for the purpose it's designed for.
For everything else, we need to make sure we are gaming the system too.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Loose blips sink ships: leaky communications threaten marine vessels / Concern over 'high seas security loophole' / Superyacht GPS spoofing experiment on the high seas / How the International Space Station and Automatic Identification System (AIS) saved a man lost at sea / Can technology end pirate fishing? / Boom in satellite ship tracking / Space station keeps watch on world's sea traffic  / Rising fraud in the high seas / The plan to map illegal fishing from Space / Monitor illegal fishing weirs in the Persian Gulf / Smile! Satellites can see your illegal fishing from space / How Google Earth is busting Persian Gulf nations for overfishing / West African fishing communities drive off 'pirate' fishing trawlers / Google can track ships at sea ; detailed maps planned of sea bottom / Catapult and Pew Charitable Trusts launch pioneering technology to help end illegal fishings
• Bloomberg : Heard the one about the Chinese ship that sailed on land? No joke 
• Orbcomm : Satellite AIS Data Steers Another Vessel to Illegal Fishing List