Divers adding to marine understanding?

You start off watching fish and photographing them. Frame them, hang them on the walls, describe them and their habits to your divers from observation. After a few years you build up a photographic catalogue of fish, fish books and you begin to understand the difference between the species.

Then you get a GoPro and realize that watching and filming reveals much more than you could possibly imagine.

That's the stage Ocean Spirit is right now, and its become a pursuit of knowledge. As diving magazines publish less, so the YouTube channels grow, and we can see amazing clips of marine action.

Now we have started publishing videos of the marine life we see, and writing a little about each creature we film, with the facts that are generally know. Sometimes we discover something new.

Who knew how romantic an octopus courtship could be?

https://youtu.be/yyZGoV1RyTI

Our YouTube Channel now has 1500 subscribers. It may not sound much but we are not in the middle of the USA China or the UK. So the powers of the internet discount our contributions. Surely the secret of expanding global knowledge of the ocean and the animals that depend on it rests with the residents of the Tropical Islands who dive with them every day? We have published over 800 videos, and some are very revealing.

Those sudden surges of terrible viz are caused by... goatfish, burrowing their snouts into the coral rubble and sand and throwing up food particles and clouds of sand. And dozens of opportunistic feeders follow them. Its a revelation.

https://youtube.com/shorts/ahsXH1UcAV8

While 1008 people actually read DEPTH Magazine, Ocean Spirit Channel has today 766 566 views of our videos.

Fabien Cousteau's Proteus Project is pursuing marine knowledge in a costly construction in the Caribbean. So scientists could view marine life more closely through the portholes. Is the return on understanding worth the enormous cost?