Why Erika Woolsey Sees Virtual Reality Tech as an Ocean Conservation Tool

Woolsey’s goal is to make the ocean more accessible to the masses so that they might strive to protect it. After all, it’s “our life-support system on Earth,” she says. Indeed, humans rely on the ocean for food security, economic stability, marine-derived medicine, and climate regulation. Yet "our ocean is overexploited, underprotected, and pretty much out of mind,” she adds, recalling the unprecedented global mass-bleaching event that inspired her to join The Hydrous as a cofounder in 2016: "It was really shocking to see how an ecosystem or a site that I had studied for years could be essentially destroyed in a really short period of time, and yet the public response was not proportional to what was really happening."For the past few years, Woolsey has been touring North America with National Geographic Live to help more people experience virtual dives. Now The Hydrous is teaming up with Silverback Film –the natural history production company behind Netflix’s “Our Planet” and “The Dinosaurs”–and immersive production studio Submersa Studios to bring innovative and interactive ocean experiences to new audiences in museums, aquariums, and other venues.An affiliate at Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, Woolsey has also been conducting research that suggests immersive tech bolsters not just education but empathy. "We're seeing significant increases across both ocean literacy [...] as well as emotional connection," she says. The research supports something Woolsey has observed first-hand in her work with The Hydrous. "When people come out of the VR headset, it reminds me of people taking off a dive mask, when you're floating with your buddy on the surface of the water, and they just want to tell you what they saw," she says. "Sometimes, people have tears in their eyes when they come out of the VR.”