Homes for Whales

Google Earth Tour

How to install Google Earth and the Homes for Whales tour

1. To get free Google Earth for your PC, Mac or Linux system, or for your smartphone, or tablet, go to this site: http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/earth/index.html

2. Choose the product you want to download. For most people on computers, it will just be necessary to click on the top right of this page where it says “Download Google Earth” and then click “Agree and Download” when it comes up.

3. Download the WDCS Google Earth kmz file (1.9 Mb).

4. Open Google Earth, then go to File - Open and find the WDCS Google Earth kmz file.

5. Once it has launched, look on the left-hand side (outside of the main Google Earth window), at the box called “Places”. Scroll down to “WDCS Homes for Whales and Dolphins”. Now click on that to make sure it is check-marked and thus enabled.

6. Now go back to the main Google Earth window and look at the navigation icons in the top right hand corner. You can click on the slider to zoom in, while the navigation icons above allow you to move around at any angle. Play with it for a few seconds to get used to the movement. Of course, if you have a tablet or smartphone, you can do the navigation by touching the screen, pinching to zoom in, etc. as you would on any map or image.

7. Now you’re ready to look for the 12 WDCS areas. Each one is outlined clearly in yellow. Some areas are networks so they will have multiple yellow boxes to show the areas proposed for protection. You can look in any order you wish. The areas are located as follows: Scotland, western Mediterranean, SW Australia, New Zealand, Kamchatka (Russia), off Costa Rica, Antarctica, Bay of Bengal/Bangladesh, Amazon River basin, western North Atlantic (off Newfoundland), eastern Caribbean (French & Dutch islands) and western Indian Ocean (between Seychelles and Mauritius).

8. After you choose to look at an area, you will see the WDCS logo in the middle. Click on the logo and you can see a 3-4 photo slide show of whales and dolphins found in the area. There is also the name of the area and some basic facts about it on the pop-up. When you’re done simply click the pop-up box, or move on.

9. Five of the 12 areas have short videos you can watch. If you see a second icon with a photo of a whale next to the WDCS logo, that means it has a video. In that case you can view the photos or the video, or both, one after the other. Again, close the box when you’re done, or just move on to the next site.

10. The exciting thing about Google Earth kmz files is that you can get other kmz files for more layers to see the locations of other protected areas, satellite tracks of species, and many other things in the ocean. You can build up your own collection, viewing them separately by checking or unchecking the boxes in the Places and Layers files to the left.

11. Known issues - it may not be possible at the moment to view the layer on iOS or Android mobile devices. We are working to resolve this. If you need further support contact webmaster@wdcs.org.