Out of the archives and onto the internet.
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and Digitization Program Office, in collaboration with The Hydrous, a non-profit organization whose mission is to create ‘open access oceans,' worked to digitize and create online experiences for a collection of coral and reef-dwelling specimens. The purpose of this project is to make ecosystems and collection more available and visible, and to preserve these type specimens digitally for future generations and research. The specimens are split across 5 lessons/modules that mimic a dive profile (immerse to ascend) and progress together, but can also be explored individually.
This collaboration between The Hydrous and the Digital Projects Office (DPO) at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History is a particularly special one. The work I had done previously with The Hydrous focused mostly on underwater photogrammetry and outreach projects but with the resources and expertise from the Smithsonian, we were able to not only create very accurate and photorealistic 3D models of otherwise hidden gems from the archives, but also tell some unique and interactive stories using their custom 3D model viewer platform.
Our community of coral scientists and educators collaborated to select over 100 specimens from the collection to digitize for this project and developed curriculum to pair.
My role as a technical lead was to create a framework for the content that translated our lessons to this interactive platform. As we got deeper into the project, our work also drove development of a new 3D model viewer with technical and interactive requirements from our team pushing the rollout of new features and capabilities designed specifically for the DPO.
This was a very unique and interesting project (with so much more content than is possible to share here). Have a browse on the Smithsonian’s website to dive deeper.
