In Australia, The Age reports how Dr. Chris Simpson, a coral reef specialist who “was exploring the Kimberleys through Google Earth, a practice he has incorporated into his job [ha!]” has discovered extensive new formations of rare fringing coral reefs on remote parts of the Western Australian coast.
The article has a good read, with pictures that provide some visual clues as to where these areas are:
Buccaneer Archipelago:
Cape Bougainville:
Some points:
- Are those some gorgeous beaches around there or what?
- Why didn’t The Age just do us all a favor and link to these locations in Google Maps? Some newspapers are still not using neogeo tools that are practically mainstream by now.
- The democratization of access to satellite imagery continues to produce the kinds of discoveries we hope for. Other ones making use of huge regions of freely available high resolution include the discovery of an ancient Roman villa, archaeological sites in France and Egypt and meteorite craters.
Perhaps The Age refrained because otherwise there’d be countless visitors inclined to head on over? Probably the last thing that’s needed.
I don’t think so — the slide show that accompanies the article names the features in the images, so it was easy to find them via geonames.org.