Grassroots September 2016, Vol. 16, No. 3

Article glints off the waves and bright primary colour boats bob in the harbour. On the island, pastel stucco houses stair-step up toward a grey, crenelated castle. Above water, everything seems lovely. Then I’m underwater. The sea around Ischia, it turns out, provides a perfect place to show people the contrast between a healthy ocean and an acidified one: In one part of the harbour, colourful schools of fish rush past me. Sea grasses undulate. Eel squiggle by brilliant coral reefs. Along the bottom potter various species of sea snail. Next, I turn to the part of the harbour where volcanic vents have created an acidified environment: The corals, the eel, and many of the fish have disappeared. Everything looks red-brown and murky as certain types of algae have taken over. However, in late March, Facebook released the Oculus Rift headset, an immersive VR setup intended for mass market use, priced at $599, about $1,500 with a bundled computer. The first 30 Rift games have gone on sale, with another 100 to follow by the end of the year. Competitors such as HTC Vive, Sony PlayStation VR, and the Microsoft HoloLens are on the way. There are reports that both Google and Apple have projects targeting this new market. Meanwhile, the ocean VR experiences produced by VHIL are building on a decade of social science research that shows people who have a VR experience are more likely to change behaviour in ways that benefit the planet. For instance, various VHIL studies have shown:  In my headset, Prof.FioMicheli of Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station in Monterey says, “One of the most difficult parts of my research is getting people to care about ocean acidification.” Full disclosure here: I knew all about ocean acidification before the VR tour; I’ve written about it for various magazines. But as I took off my VR headset, I felt upset and deeply sad. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then an experience — even a digital one — seems to be worth many more. As music video director and VR entrepreneur Chris Milk has put it, VR is an “empathy machine.” “The virtual reality platform allows someone who has never even been in the ocean to experience what ocean acidification can do to marine life. We are visual creatures, and visual examples can be very striking,” explains Kristy Kroeker, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz and a consultant on the VR project. There was a lot of hype about VR in the 1990s, followed by technical challenges, missteps, and public disappointment. This time, the technology seems poised to become a mass experience. Costs have come way down and computing power is improving all the time. Google cardboard headsets and the Samsung Gear VR dipped a toe into this new universe last year, but experts generally said they were not quite ready for prime time. If people have a VR experience of cutting down an old-growth redwood, they are more likely to conserve paper. Grassroots   If a person has a VR experience of cutting down an old-growth redwood tree — feeling the vibration and sound of the chainsaw, the crash of the tree as it falls — that person is more likely to conserve paper. If a person takes a VR shower and sees their avatar or doppelganger eating coal to represent the amount of energy used, that person is more likely to conserve water. People who experienced an early version of my ocean acidification “dive” — one with more cartoonish graphics and less accurate biology — cared more about the issue than other people who just watched a video about it. VHIL is developing a fish avatar project, which will take movement data from electronically tagged fish in the kelp forests of Monterey Bay and transfer it into a virtual reality where people will be able to join the fish in their underwater world. The project’s goal is to enable individuals to “adopt a fish,” thus becoming more invested in the bay’s future. Currently, VHIL is working on how to distribute the latest ocean acidification experiences. Obviously, Google Expeditions provides one outlet. But having secured project funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Stanford team now hopes to get as many views as possible for the documentary and the game as well. They’re also designing studies to measure the effect of the content. Cody Karutz, the Stanford team’s hardware manager, acknowledges that there’s still quite a bit of work to be done fine-tuning these experiences. September 2016 Vol 16 No. 3

Grassroots September 2016, Vol. 16, No. 3 | Page 14