New open-water streaming Shark Cam turns every day into Shark Week

Want to watch sharks patrolling the deep in real-time without putting on a wet suit? A set of new live cameras installed off North Carolina’s Cape Fear makes any week shark week.

Part of a network of 75 live-cams installed around the world by Explore.org, the so-called “Shark Cams” provide an unfiltered view of the animals’ natural underwater home.

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Installed at various depths in a shark-heavy area 34 miles off the North Carolina coast, the cameras stream an uninterrupted look at the habitat to the web with no ads and at no cost, and without resorting to luring in marine life by dropping food in the water.

Viewers will, of course, see a wide variety of fish and other underwater life. But the star of the show is the sharks.

“Let’s face it, as cool as sea turtles and fish are,” Charlie Annenberg, founder of Explore.org, the nonprofit media arm of the Annenberg Foundation, told VentureBeat, “we’re all tuning in to this camera to see sharks.”

Since the launch of the Shark Cams earlier this month, they’ve already spotted a number of sandsharks, and Annenberg said it shouldn’t be long before a great white glides by.

Since it’s extremely difficult to transmit signals underwater, a cable is tethered from the cameras to a platform above the surface. High-frequency radios then communicate the signal to an 1,800-foot tower in Winnebow, N.C. From there, another wireless signal links to a network inside a television station in Wilmington, N.C. Finally, it’s sent over Time Warner cable servers to the Explore.org site. The process takes just milliseconds.

This, of course, is after the cameras capture the imagery. And making sure that happens is in and of itself a triumph of technology, according to Explore.org. With the cameras frequently covered by microbial organisms, they have to be able to frequently clean themselves. That’s achieved by installing a system known as CleanSweep that swings a magnetic arm automatically across the camera housing every few hours.

Open diving for the masses

To Annenberg, the web of live cams are a gift that has no commercial agenda, and asks nothing of those who use them: “People can congregate, learn, take [screen shots] of what they see, and share within a community.”

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For veteran scuba divers, spotting sharks in the wild is common. But for everyone else, being able to sit back and quietly wait for the chance to see one is rare, especially without anyone luring them in with food. The Shark Cams “allow people to experience nature they may never see,” Annenberg said. “Think about it, without chumming or any trickery, we are giving people the experience of a 50-foot and 100-foot dive.”

Indeed, he added, the Explore.org live cam network in general, and the Shark Cams in particular, are for anyone from kids to adults to scientists and are “the future of zoos…. We are opening the doors for a new kind of citizen science.”

There are other live shark cams on the web, such as one Animal Planet runs at the National Aquarium in Washington, D.C., or another at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. But Explore.org’s Shark Cam is likely the only one in the world in open waters. Asked how much the project cost, Annenberg demurred. “Explore.org is philanthropic media organization,” he said. “the currency we care about is people’s time. That’s what we value.”

But one thing is clear: Annenberg loves sharks, and launched Shark Cam to “help people fall in love with the world again.” Plus, he said, the best thing about the project is the sharks. “Period. Who doesn’t want to see the biggest marine predator circling prey in its natural habitat? It’s pure beauty.”

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