If you want to know what’s in Davy Jones’s locker — besides sunken ships — Mike Shelby at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) might have just what you’re looking for.

Shelby is the manager for NOAA’s Ocean Explorer 12,000-page-or-so website, which lets you explore the world’s ocean realms without getting your feet wet.

Armchair oceanographers use the site to follow NOAA-sponsored ocean explorations in near real time. And, in the near future, thanks to QuickTime 7 and robotic vehicles equipped with high-definition cameras that prowl the ocean depths, they'll be able to see the world far under the waves in HD.

“The Mac provides a much simpler, more integrated way of doing things.”

Into the Deep in HD

“In tracking explorations for NOAA’s Ocean Explorer office, we’ve always used QuickTime, iMovie and Final Cut Pro to create movies for the site,” says Shelby. “And we’ve posted high-definition stills on the site. But now that ROVs and submersibles are getting equipped with high-definition video cameras, and now that QuickTime 7 is out, we’ll be able to provide HD video coverage over the Internet as well.”

One of the first NOAA-sponsored expeditions to capture the undersea world in HD involves the “Lost City,” a hydrothermal field located nearly dead center in the Atlantic Ocean.

Work Under the Waves

Led by Dr. Robert Ballard — best known for his discovery of the Titanic in 1985 — and Dr. Deborah Kelley, a team of shore-based researchers explored the hot spring fluids surrounding limestone towers that stand taller than skyscrapers near an undersea mountain larger than Washington’s Mt. Rainier.

Ballard supervised from the NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown, floating just above the Lost City.

And in a first for oceanographic research, Kelley, who discovered the unique hot spring system in 2000, directed science operations from a command center thousands of miles away at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Following Along in Real Time

Composite video, audio and scientific data that the expedition’s free-swimming robot, Hercules, captured were transmitted in real time by satellite to researchers at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography and to the University of Washington by Internet.

Web coordinators from NOAA, working on PowerBooks in Final Cut Pro and QuickTime 7, readied composite video, sounds and text for frequent logs on the Ocean Explorer website, so researchers, educators and the public could follow along.

QuickTime 7 and HD Video

“One of the advantages of using QuickTime in general is that it’s ubiquitous across Windows and Mac,” says Shelby. “But it also provides very high quality images at a small file size. And that’s even better with QuickTime 7. We’re able to show a larger screen size on the web and still be able to keep our files sizes small because QuickTime 7 allows you to crunch files down to a smaller size.

“We may even be able to make them a little smaller than what we have now, and still deliver HD video in a widescreen format on the web.”

Next Page: The Lost City, Found