Soon, you’ll be able to explore the Galapagos Islands without even leaving your desk chair. Google is using their famous Street View technology to map and record the Galapagos, enabling users to get a ground-view of the islands using Google Maps.
Google sent a team of hikers to explore the Galapagos for 10 days. Each hiker is equipped with a trekker, a 42-pound backpack topped with an orb that uses a system of 15 cameras to capture the hiker’s surroundings. The whole rig is controlled by a computer, also in the backpack.
The team has captured images of the trails, forests, and even the center of an active volcano according to project leader Raleigh Seamster. The Google team did not stop with just exploring the islands, though. They also worked with the Catlin Seaview Survey, a group that uses panoramic cameras similar to the Google trekker orbs to record coral reefs around the world. With Catlin, the Google hikers brought Street View under the sea, filming marine wildlife like sharks and sea lions in their natural habitats.
While the novelty factor for being able to see the Galapagos on Google Maps is high, the company is not just sending its staff there for attention or obsessive completionism. Google seeks to learn how human elements such as climate change and tourism affect the environment of the Galapagos. They have partnered with the Charles Darwin Foundation and the Galapagos National Parks Directorate to use their Street View images to study the island. In a blog post on the Galapagos venture, Seamster wrote, “in order to protect these Galapagos Islands, we must understand them.”
Google can now count the Galapagos among the series of unusual locations they have mapped with Street View. Previously Google has deployed its trekkers to Mount Kiliminjaro in Tanzania, the Antarctic, and the Fukushima Daiichi disaster area, where a large earthquake and tsunami damaged a Japanese nuclear plant in 2011.
Google is on a mission to catalog the world, even the bits that are obscure, remote, or flat-out dangerous. After the Galapagos Islands, the big question is: where will they go next?
Google sent a team of hikers to explore the Galapagos for 10 days. Each hiker is equipped with a trekker, a 42-pound backpack topped with an orb that uses a system of 15 cameras to capture the hiker’s surroundings. The whole rig is controlled by a computer, also in the backpack.
The team has captured images of the trails, forests, and even the center of an active volcano according to project leader Raleigh Seamster. The Google team did not stop with just exploring the islands, though. They also worked with the Catlin Seaview Survey, a group that uses panoramic cameras similar to the Google trekker orbs to record coral reefs around the world. With Catlin, the Google hikers brought Street View under the sea, filming marine wildlife like sharks and sea lions in their natural habitats.
While the novelty factor for being able to see the Galapagos on Google Maps is high, the company is not just sending its staff there for attention or obsessive completionism. Google seeks to learn how human elements such as climate change and tourism affect the environment of the Galapagos. They have partnered with the Charles Darwin Foundation and the Galapagos National Parks Directorate to use their Street View images to study the island. In a blog post on the Galapagos venture, Seamster wrote, “in order to protect these Galapagos Islands, we must understand them.”
Google can now count the Galapagos among the series of unusual locations they have mapped with Street View. Previously Google has deployed its trekkers to Mount Kiliminjaro in Tanzania, the Antarctic, and the Fukushima Daiichi disaster area, where a large earthquake and tsunami damaged a Japanese nuclear plant in 2011.
Google is on a mission to catalog the world, even the bits that are obscure, remote, or flat-out dangerous. After the Galapagos Islands, the big question is: where will they go next?