As part of a partnership with the federal institute for biodiversity in Brazil, ICMBio, we mounted a Street View camera onto a raft and floated out to a ring shaped island, or atoll, that is only accessible to crews with authorization from The Brazilian Navy and ICMBio. According to Tom Nora, a Googler who led the collection team, the raft was a useful solution to one of the team’s biggest challenges: the changing tides that caused the atoll to quickly fill and empty.
“Because of the tide changes, we had to stay in the atoll – which is pretty much an island without clean water – so no shower or sink,” says Tom. “The power on the island, coming from a local solar power plant, was not working. All three people that were living on the island were biologists, so they didn’t know how to fix it. Since I’m an electrical engineer and had experience with power electronics, I was able to fix it for them. It was a great win-win situation.”