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Innoceana is a young team (all under 33 years old) of professional scuba-divers, engineers, biologists, conservationists and Ocean lovers.

Innoceana’s interdisciplinary and international team combines biology and engineering to bring innovative solutions to protect the Ocean. We believe the lack of knowledge and resources of communities that border endangered ecosystems is a major obstacle to marine conservation. Innoceana addresses this issue by monitoring changes with low-cost and accessible methods that allow locals to play an active role in monitoring the Ocean, connecting people to the marine environment through citizen science. Community engagement improves protection and management of ecosystems while raising awareness and educating.

There are as many as 6 million active scuba divers and about 20 million snorkelers worldwide. If we assume that at least 50% of them owns a basic underwater camera (mostly action cams with a wide angle), we can assume that there are at least 13 million cameras available around the world. Each of them has the potential to record and map the coastal Ocean seabed, after proper training of the owner. This, along with the decrease on technology prices like ROVs (less than 4.000 USD) offer endless opportunities to map the Ocean at a low-cost.

The Crystal Floor generates underwater maps of hard coral colonies, seagrass meadows, kelp forest and other important ecosystems using different protocols. The Crystal Floor has proved the positive impact on marine conservation as it generates quantitative, qualitative and reliable data used by collaborative entities such as universities, dive centres, tourists, NGOs and other local institutions. Innoceana has trained locals, including rangers, tourists and the general public in Costa Rica and in the Canary Islands. We have been able to map valuable ecosystems such as the coral reef in an Island of Costa Rica or part of the seagrass meadows in the South of Tenerife, Spain. The protocol is simple, using photogrammetry and basic GPS tools to create 2D and 3D models of the coastal seabed, creating final models using an open source software.

The Crystal Floor method involves a collaboration between the Innoceana scientific team and the general public that engages and involves the diving community, fishermen, and surfers in mapping the Ocean.

There is a great opportunity to create a common database using open access platforms. We propose the use of Google Earth as it is a platform used worldwide with highly detailed information. It also gives an opportunity to add new data and is therefore a brilliant citizen and science tool. The information gathered by contributors will be recorded and added to the open source GoogleEarth platform, after a quality control performed by the Innoceana team.

As this information will be available for institutions and private companies to develop industries and solutions, governments will ask them to pay the value of this data that will be invested in order to finance the ROVs deep explorations (that we call “The Black Floor”) and the drone mapping completion for The Crystal Floor. Low cost ROVs with action cams and lighting systems have been proved by the Innoceana team to be another great low-cost tool to create 2D and 3D maps of the deep areas of the Ocean. The Innoceana scientific team will lead the ROV and flying drone mapping, involving and training communities around the world in these mapping systems.

This project will also measure the potential loss of biodiversity and ecosystems in different places due to the impact of various industries. The Crystal Floor will help defining solutions to support local communities involving industries that caused the damage.

This project goes further than just creating data. It will create a link between people and the underwater world, raising awareness about the threats faced by marine ecosystems in the world. The growing interest will in term attract more people to work on The Crystal Floor what will make this idea sustainable.

The produced maps and models will be presented in schools along with inclusive stories of sea animals, the stories will be created by the Innoceana education team and showing the Ocean threats creating awareness and education tools for educational institutions of any kind. Here is the first pilot project of this initiative: http://www.innotales.com/ 

In the prototype link we have a gallery of some of the 3D models created by the Innoceana team, some of them by local divers and some of them created by ROVs. All of them are georeferenced, calibrated and orientated in the space and time.

SUMMARY-FLOW: 

1. Training locals and creating maps of the coastline and key ecosystems collaboratively with divers and snorkelers using the available technology.
2. Creating more complex (deep, small scale, remote places maps using drones, ROVs and telegrametry). This part is lead by the scientific team of Innoceana.
3. Gather all the information in an open source databased on Google Earth (information quality control check by Innoceana team)
4. Create dynamic histories (INNOTALES) with the maps and animals to show the kids the threats in the Ocean.
5. Involve private companies and industries in the economical cycle of the project when they take advantage of the information (fees and taxes to use the data).
6. Study baseline changes in the ecosystems.

Innoceana

https://sketchfab.com/Innoceana

https://youtu.be/rnEWAX3GqJ4