Tales from Topographic Oceans

Link via Financial Times

Eric Schmidt says he has achieved his ambition of climbing Mount Everest, if only from the comfort of his own office using the 3D capabilities of Google Earth.

From today, Google’s chief executive can also plumb the deepest oceans after he announced the launch of “Ocean in Google Earth” at the California Academy of Sciences.

The upgrade to the standalone desktop program is significant. Google has cooperated with the US Navy, the National Geographic Society and dozens of other partners to create a detailed topography of the ocean floor down to the depths of the Mariana Trench.

There are also shipwrecks and bathyspheres created in its Sketchup program and layer upon layer of features picking out marine life, using video, text and photos to tell stories about the ocean ecosystem.