Google Earth Goes Deep

Want to take a dive off Lanai, one of the Hawaiian Islands? Did you ever dream of exploring the Mariana Trench, the deepest location on the surface of the Earth's crust? Or join the Volvo Ocean Race, a triennial yacht race around the world?

Now, you can -- at least virtually -- with the latest version of Google Earth, Google's virtual globe of the planet. In addition to providing free satellite images of the entire world, Google Earth 5.0 now offers maps of the planet's ocean floors -- in 3D -- with imagery provided by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the United States Navy, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO).

But it's more than just an interactive map of the ocean. Added features include user-selected pop-up windows that draw upon Google's vast storehouse of information. And the content contributors read like a who's who of ocean research.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium provided a Seafood Watch primer that shows you what seafood to avoid for health and environmental reasons. Barbara Block of Stanford University and Patrick Halpin of Duke University offer the tracks of shark travels recorded by radio transmission to satellites. Ross Swick of the University of Colorado-Boulder provides an animation of the shrinking Arctic ice cap over the last three decades. Philip Renaud of the Living Oceans Foundation contributed underwater video of the Red Sea as a chronicle of the condition of coral reefs.

Also, there is a historical function of Google Earth -- so you can view topographical maps of an area now and compare it to how it looked in the past. In this way, the program has become a powerful environmental record that shows the dramatic changes happening to the planet's landscape due to climate change.

There's also an audio function, so you can record and share your own personal tours.

Google has produced a nice little video about Google Earth's new ocean function. Since it was launched in 2005, more than 500 million people have downloaded Google Earth.

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• Download Google Earth 5.0

image: The Philippines on Google Earth with ocean layer pop-up links shown, Google, NFGIS, AND, Europa Technologies, ZENRIN (click on image to enlarge)