Geoexporatorium
The Marine Geoexploratorium “My Coast”, is an interactive data exploration interface developed in collaboration between the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) and The Department of Primary Industries Future Farming Systems Research and Fisheries Research Divisions.
Its aim is to provide coastal communities with a better understanding of coastal marine habitats along the Port Philip Bay and the coastline extending from Port Lonsdale to Cape Otway. My Coast, gives users access to coastal bathymetry, maps, coastal habitat information, images, video and other multimedia content, within the interactive and intuitive Google Earth interface.
The content displayed in this interface was based on LiDAR-derived marine habitat models and bathymetry of the Victorian coast, as well as underwater video transect conducted by the DPI Fisheries Research Division. The My Coast Google Earth interface was designed around 3 main components:
A welcome and navigation screen: Allowing user to directly navigate to marine habitats of interest by clicking on the corresponding images.
Welcome to the Marine Geoexploratorium 'My Coast'
| Clickable Habitat icons of 3 types: providing information specific to each particular marine habitat and displaying images or videos of what they look like. Type1: Habitat balloons providing broad textual information about the Victorian coastal habitat and presenting transect video clip captured by DPI’s Fisheries Division for a specific geographical location (in standard (SD) and high definition (HD) formats). The bottom of the page provides clickable icons for the sub habitats and a “home” hyperlink to go back to the main Welcome screen. |  | | |  Type 1. Habitat balloon |
| Type 2: Sub habitat balloons displaying image and text information with a clickable “habitat residents” icon at the bottom of the balloon. | | | |  Type 2. Sub habitat balloon |
| Type 3: The habitat residents balloons displaying textual information and an image slide show of animal and vegetation species present in the selected habitat. | | | |  Type 3. Habitat residents balloon |
Bathymetry information: allowing users to view the coastal underwater relief. The bathymetry layer can be activated by clicking on bathymetry icon or guided tour icon in the My Coast introduction accessible from the 'Welcome screen'.
Please note the bathymetry information is composed of a large amount of files and may take a long time to download, a total of approximately 800 Mb of data can be viewed through the "My Coast" data exploration interface and users without a high speed internet connection or with limited band width may experience delays in the playing of videos and the displaying of the bathymetry information.
An introductory video to My Coast
The following silent video provides an overview of the My Coast interface as it navigates along the Victorian coastline. The video presents some of the features of the My Coast interface and depicts how users can navigate thorough the interface and obtain information about different marine habitats.
An introductory video to the bathymetry information
The following bathymetry information video provides an overview of the underwater relief component of the My Coast interface. It presents some of the coastal bathymetry and explains the process of transect video capture by the DPI Fisheries Research Division.
Explore!
The "My Coast" Google Earth KML file can be downloaded to your local computer and to viewing this file you must have Google Earth installed on your computer, this can be download for free from Google Earth.
Contact
For more information on My Coast, contact Dr. Jean-Philippe Aurambout on jeanphilippe.aurambout@dpi.vic.gov.au and Mr Falak Sheth on falak.sheth@dpi.vic.gov.au at DPI or Lawrance Fern on lawrance.fern@dse.vic.gov.au at DSE.
© The State of Victoria, 1996 - 2012.
This document was last reviewed on 22/08/2011