Longest Continuous Live Broadcast from NOAA's Aquarius
This story entered on 19th Sep, 2007 09:10:41 AM PST

Scientists and educators from NOAA’s National Marine Sanctuary Program will be streaming 200 hours of live reports over the Internet for a nine-day period from Aquarius the world’s only undersea scientific facility starting Monday, September 17. To view the live stream go to: http://www.vbrick.net/noaa/.

While living underwater in the Aquarius ocean laboratory, scientists will investigate changes to corals and marine life in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and Webcast their activities in real time to students and general audiences via the OceansLive.org education Web portal.

The introduction of streaming video will accelerate the process of harvesting the hard data. The mission, named “Aquarius 2007: If Reefs Could Talk,” will conduct research mainly on sponge biology and ecology and long-term monitoring of coral and fish species.

The mission will use highly advanced technology such as VBrick streaming video, which will allow for results to be compared in a real-time environment to previously collected data, going back to 1994. The scientists are excited about using broadcast web-based educational programming in their underwater research to assess reef variations, which may be due to anthropogenic climate change and associated natural variability as well as human contributions in the form of pollution.

Aquarius is owned by NOAA and is operated by the NOAA Undersea Research Program’s (NURP) Undersea Research Center at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

OceansLive: http://www.oceanslive.org

Aquarius: http://www.uncw.edu/nurc/aquarius

Virtual Dive to Aquarius: http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/technology/diving/aquarius/aquarius.html

Contact information
Name: Andy Shepard
Tel: (910) 962-2446
sheparda@uncw.edu