Bishop Museum's newest exhibit, “Explore ExCORE: The Art of Underwater Science,” is open and swimming with deep-sea underwater footage from across the Indo-Pacific region.
“In a nutshell, what we do is take the latest available technology to explore and document biodiversity on coral reef habitats in ways that our predecessors were unable to because they didn't have access to the technology we have now,” said Richard Pyle, the director of ExCORE at the museum.
Pyle co-created the new exhibit with partner Brian Greene. They said they wanted to have a permanent place to document the biodiversity of the Indo-Pacific region in a way that entertains and informs about the threat of climate change and habitat destruction.
Pyle hopes the film will help people realize the importance of maintaining the documented ecosystems by showing what will be lost if conservation action is not taken.
“Biodiversity is far and away the most valuable resource on earth for the future of humanity,” Pyle said.
“Most people have no idea how much their lives and the lives of their children utterly depend on the health of biodiversity for our survival, for the oxygen we breathe, for the food we eat. And our job at ExCORE is to document the existence of that biodiversity on earth before it's lost.”
The exhibit also features the evolution of deep-sea cameras and technology since the 1970s. With the latest technology, lenses and cameras for 6K and 8K film can cost upwards of $30,000 each.
“If you want to get into underwater photography, take a wad of $100 bills, climb up to the tallest building on the windiest day and start throwing them out there to get used to the feeling,” Pyle joked.
He added that although the exhibit focuses on the film captured by the most advanced technology over the past few years, their total library of footage from the last decades holds hundreds of hours of video.
Pyle said that after an average dive, they will come back with one or two terabytes of data, which provides anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour of usable footage that can be seen in the exhibit.
“Explore ExCore: The Art of Underwater Science” is now open to the public and can be visited during normal Bishop Museum hours.
