Education
Fish Eye Project: Team on a mission
Live dives streamed to the Internet enable audiences around the world to follow divers and communicate with them wherever they are, in real time
Text By Sarah Pollard I
t’s the morning of November 24, 2014. Go time. Members of the Fish Eye Project team are exhausted and running out of time. In less than three hours, they’re due to broadcast a live
dive from Victoria’s Saanich Inlet. Media and viewers from around the world are expected to tune in, including more than 4,000 students. A CBC crew plans to follow along from a Vancouver classroom and new sponsor Aqua Lung Canada will be watching. It’s easily Fish Eye’s biggest event to date. So far, the technology isn’t
cooperating—in fact, not much is working: not dive timings, tech, or weather. There’s still 300 feet (91m) of Ethernet cable to be run and already some of the test divers in the water are fi nding themselves caught up in the lines. Last night, the lead computer crashed; in aborted trials the previous week, water penetrated the housing of two cameras, fl ooding both. Now, with 15 minutes to go, a windstorm has kicked up from the southeast—a nasty surprise, given the location’s usually reliable shelter—leaving the support team on the dock scrambling to chase down the gear tent. Worse? The wind has drastically reduced broadcast bandwidth and fi nding a fi x is proving diffi cult. With fi ve minutes to go, someone tethers a cell phone to a laptop, nabbing a spotty Internet connection. It’s a down-to-the-wire save. These are the kind of last minute
hurdles the Fish Eye Project team has come to expect. They’re hazards of the mission the not- for-profi t organization has taken on the past four years: hosting live educational dives that rely on real- time technologies for broadcast around the world. Fish Eye’s co-founder Mike Irvine
has mixed emotions about that November day. “The dive worked,
26 Magazine
but barely,” Irvine says shaking his head. “The stress was huge. We’ve never failed at an event, but we came damn close to it on that one.” Limited margin for error has
taught the team to build in plenty of contingencies for the elements it can control, and to get comfortable with improvisation for those it can’t. Fish Eye’s big-picture commitment to furthering ocean literacy helps members to take the tough lessons in stride. The early glitches are also a measure of how far the organization has come.
‘Edutainment’ When the Victoria, B.C.-based Fish Eye Project launched in 2012, the goal was to develop a unique form of ‘edutainment’ that wowed audiences
Above: World Ocean’s Day IMAX event
poster. Full face masks with
comms, and HD cameras head up evolving technology
and inspired interest in the health of the world’s oceans. Fish Eye’s “live” dive experiences, streamed to the Internet, enable audiences from around the world to follow divers and communicate with them wherever they are, in real time. Getting buy-in from schools has been a key thrust of a mandate to foster the next generation of ocean stewards.
Innovation on a shoestring With little budget to speak of, the organization has relied on volunteers from the outset. The recipient of only a small, event-targeted grant and some generous gear sponsorship since, Fish Eye is largely propelled by the grit and determination of those who give their time. Right now, that means a group of about
Photo: Cathy Sturgeon, Scot Stevenson
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68