The Catlin Seaview Survey is the first comprehensive mapping of the Great Barrier Reef. Before now, less than 20% had been properly studied.
(CNN) -- Doing for our oceans what Google Street View has done on land, a team of marine scientists is building up an extraordinary picture of the world's coral reefs.
Armed with the latest camera technology, the Catlin Seaview Survey is taking marine science into uncharted waters in a bid to transform our understanding of one of the planet's most diverse, but endangered eco-systems.
The team has been mapping Australia's Great Barrier Reef since last September using deep water robots and a revolutionary camera called the Seaview SVII.
"I think the SVII is a game changer," says lead scientist, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg.
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"It's automating high-definition images at a scale which has not been done before."
As well as taking 360-degree images every three seconds, the camera also records the exact location and direction of a photo using GPS, enabling scientists to accurately gauge the health of a reefs over time.
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"So far we are only halfway through Catlin Seaview Survey expeditions, but we've collected almost a hundred kilometers of transects," Hoegh-Guldberg added.
"You just can't do that normally. You'd be taking a hundred years to do this with normal divers out there with normal cameras. So, getting that technology right has been incredibly important."
More than 50,000 photos in total will be taken during expeditions to 20 separate reefs with each image stitched together using special software. A picture of reef life is already emerging with many locations available to view on Google Earth.
Heogh-Guldberg was one of the first marine biologists to link coral damage to climate change. And while he and others have been monitoring the effects of climate change on reefs for decades, they've never been able to do it on such a large scale.
"We don't have that global baseline for how reefs are doing across the planet. Coral reefs exist in over 50 countries and they stretch across much of the tropics and subtropics. There's 375,000 kilometers of reef around the world," says Hoegh-Guldberg.
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When the three-year project is completed, reef data will have been boosted considerably, he says.
Monitoring some of the world's remotest reefs will enable scientists to more accurately answer when, where, and most importantly why coral reefs around the world are declining.
"One of the parts of the project is to create essentially a databank called 'The Global Reef Record,'" says Hoegh-Guldberg.
Huge amounts of digital video and physical measurements are being fed into a high-speed storage system, he says, and will be available to scientists all over the world.
"One of the legacies of the Catlin Seaview Survey is to create essentially that baseline information that everyone has the rights to use and then develop this complex picture of how the world is changing," he says.
"This is the sort of science we need to do right now to get a real picture of the risk and vulnerability to things like global change to coral reefs."
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Heron Island is a coral cay in the Great Barrier Reef, home to one of the world's most important coral research stations and temporary home to the Catlin Seaview Survey team.
The team developed special equipment for the survey, a camera called the SVII. By taking a high definition picture every three seconds, it captures panoramic images of the reefs while recording their exact location with GPS technology.
Half of the coral of the Great Barrier Reef has disappeared over the last 27 years. Researchers want to capture the "magical paradise" before it's too late.
Coral is colonies of tiny animals sharing a common skeleton -- they are at huge risk from both natural and man-made changes to the ecosystem.
"This is the sort of science we need to do right now to get a real picture of the vulnerability of coral reefs," says the survey's lead scientist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg.
Reefs are home to a quarter of all marine species on the planet. They are also the "heart and lungs of our planet," says Hoegh-Gulberg, "yet we're abusing them."
The crown-of-thorns starfish is the greatest natural threat to coral populations. Outbreaks of this coral-feeding fish can devastate entire reefs. Reasons for outbreaks remain unclear, but researchers hope that the survey will shed some light.
A researcher comes face to face with a giant Maori Wrasse. Fishes are vital to the upkeep of their habitats: "When you take the fishes out the ocean, you take out the gardeners and the pest control officers," says Hoegh-Guldberg.
The hawksbill sea turtle is a critically endangered species of turtle. Here one swims through the Great Barrier's Agincourt Reef.
A sibling to the seahorse, there are around 200 species of pipefish, which tend to inhabit the more sheltered areas of the reefs.
A researcher studies a large potato cod in Cod Hole, a small area of the Great Barrier Reef famous for its rich population of the fish.
It may be called a cuttlefish but in fact it's a mollusk. This eight-armed creature forms part of a complex web of life in the Great Barrier Reef.
When spawning, sea cucumbers release their gametes into the surrounding currents for reproduction by nearby larvae.
The Catlin Seaview Survey team are hoping that their expansive research will bridge a gap between scientific awareness and public understanding of our vast underwater ecosystems.
Blue christmas tree worm
Tropical fish with protruding teeth off the coast of Heron Island.
Sharks swarm above the Osprey Reef, part of the Great Barrier Reef.
A parrotfish exhales while hiding in the coral off the coast of Heron Island.
A pipefish noses around the Great Detached Reef.
An orange starfish clings to the coral of the Osprey Reef.
A pink anemonefish hides away in the Ribbon Reef.
Anemone coral in the Great Barrier Reef's Tijou Reef.
Sweetlips fish in the Norman Reef.
Large cuttlefish in the Ribbon Reef.
A pink-eyed invisible goby rests on coral in the Flinders Reef.
A clown fish swims through a vibrant anemone.
A nudibranch, a type of marine mollusk, on the Tijou Reef.
A camouflaged pink fish off the coast of Lady Elliot Island, the southernmost coral cay in the Great Barrier Reef.
A turtle swims through a reef off the coast of Heron Island, a coral cay that is home to one of the world's most important coral reef research stations.
Sources: GBR Marine Park Authority/UNESCO
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