Virtual dives
Immerse 360° is a 9-minute guided dive on Palau's reefs with manta rays, sea turtles and sharks, narrated by Dr. Erika Woolsey and paired with free classroom resources. It is free to watch on a phone in a Cardboard viewer.
Programs
From virtual dives to immersive worlds.
Every Hydrous program brings people closer to the ocean through science-based, immersive learning, in classrooms, museums, theaters and homes.
Flagship · in production
Ocean Day: California Coast
Our next chapter is a cinematic, multi-platform ocean experience co-created with Silverback Films (Our Planet) and Submersa Studios, filmed in stereoscopic 8K in California's kelp forests.
Audiences spend one day in the kelp forest across four dives: Dawn (discovery), Noon (relationships), Dusk (systems) and Midnight (connection). One production becomes three formats: a touring exhibit with LED domes and interactive projections, a VR series for headsets, and a personalized online learning platform.
What we do
Our programs
Synchronized group dives
Live-narrated dives that hundreds of people take together, in a theater or online. Manta Ray Eden filled National Geographic's 450-seat VR theater; Expedition Palau reached learners in 17 countries as an official UN Ocean Decade event.
Education kits
Coral Reefs: A Learning Expedition in a Box gives classrooms a 122-page Dive Journal with six lessons, card decks, a 3D-printed coral and a VR viewer: 8+ hours of learning for ages 10 and up. Nearly 500 kits have reached students and educators in 20 U.S. states.
Research
We study whether immersive media changes how people learn about and feel toward the ocean, with Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, the University of Oregon and the University of Gothenburg, through a collaborative National Science Foundation award and National Geographic–funded fieldwork.
Open-access collections
Free 3D coral models, 360° photospheres viewed more than 4 million times, the Smithsonian coral collection and AR Reef, an award-winning augmented-reality reef you can explore on a phone.
Tethys, a pocket marine biologist
An AI-powered video avatar of Dr. Erika Woolsey that answers questions about coral reefs and ocean conservation from peer-reviewed science. It is in pilot with National Geographic Live audiences.
United Nations Ocean Decade
Decade of Ocean Empathy
The Hydrous leads the Decade of Ocean Empathy, an endorsed programme of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021–2030). It creates immersive ocean experiences, leads research on ocean literacy and learning, and builds an international community around them.
Dive in with us.
Support immersive, science-based ocean learning for people everywhere.