Help Oceanographers Comb the Ocean Floor From the Comfort of Your Screen
Hidden Treasures of the Deep Public contributors will be able to identify fish, scallops and other organisms in each image. Here's a scallop and a monkfish, for example. Users can also provide basic measurements and describe whether the seafloor is sand or gravel, and whether they see boulders and other interesting objects in the frame. Courtesy HabCam Group, Woods Hole Oceanographic InstitutionIdentify seafood and other objects as you trawl a virtual seafloor. End-of-summer blues have you thinking of your next beach vacation? Now you can virtually swim along the ocean floor and stare at the interesting starfish, scallops and other bottom-dwellers that lurk there. For science! A new interactive website called Seafloor Explorer needs the public's help to identify objects and seascapes in a few million underwater photos. The project is starting with 100,000 images, but there are more than 40 million in all. The photos come from the HabCam group, an...