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When Google rolled out its Street View maps, who among us didn't plug in their home addresses and were amazed (or frightened) that they could see their street and house in great detail. It was almost magic in the way you could travel to almost any street in the world and get a street view of any address with 3D representations of famous locations. It is, in a word, Cool!

 Google has upped the cool factor once again. The armchair traveler in each of us can now explore underwater vistas and coral reefs without a snorkel or the inconvenience of going through airport security.

Google has previously offered computer-generated views of the sea floor terrain, but this is the first time it has incorporated live-action underwater imaging into its mapping product.

"We want to be a comprehensive source for imagery that lets anyone explore anywhere," Jenifer Foulkes, Google's ocean program manager, told the BBC.

"This is just the next step to take users underwater and give them the experience of an area that most people have been to - seeing sea turtles, seeing manta rays, crazy pencil urchins and beautiful fish."

The program director stated that this service would help scientist analyze data and track the health of reefs and the effects of global warming on such a sensitive ecosystem. Locations added to the service include Australia's Great Barrier Reef near Heron Island, Lady Elliot Island and Wilson Island, as well as Hawaii's Hanauma Bay and Molokini Crater and the Philippines Apo Island.

But while Google's engineers provided technical support to the project, the actual photography and stitching together of the images was carried out by scientists funded by the Catlin Group, a Bermuda-based insurance firm.

To do so, they developed a submersible fitted with three wide-angle lenses designed to take high resolution images in low light conditions.

The equipment took a 24-megapixel photograph from each lens once every four seconds to provide 360-degree views, as the rig moved over the reef at about 2-3km/h (1-2mph).

My suggestion for Goggle next Street Views project--the Moon and beyond!