The underwater camera at the Okaloosa Island Pier has reached nearly 2 million viewers in its first month of operation, drawing a global audience that has surprised even the project’s creators.
- Since going live in late August, the camera has recorded 1.9 million unique views from 183 countries, with viewers spending a total of 1.9 million hours watching marine life beneath the pier. The average viewing duration is 1 hour and 6 minutes.
“I don’t think anybody envisioned it getting this much attention, especially as quickly as it did,” said Mike Norberg, Coastal Resources Manager for Okaloosa County. “There are underwater cameras similar to this in other parts of the United States and throughout the world, and even those have not received as much attention as this one has.”
Norberg said he spoke with a group that monitors similar underwater cameras worldwide, and even they were amazed at how quickly the Okaloosa Pier camera gained viewership.
The project’s reach has been entirely organic. Okaloosa County hasn’t advertised the live stream through any direct marketing sources, with 1.46 million views driven through YouTube’s “Suggested Videos” feature alone.
- “It appears that all of these views are being driven naturally through media outlets, social media, and online communities,” Norberg said.
Peak viewership reached 42,546 people watching simultaneously, with an average of 2,425 viewers at any given time. The top five viewing countries are the United States, India, Japan, Indonesia and Thailand.
In the United States, all 50 states have tuned in, with Florida leading viewership, followed by Texas, Alabama, Georgia and California. Even the state with the lowest viewership has recorded 315 views and 375.1 hours of watch time.
From reef to pier
The project originally aimed to place a camera at the Beasley Snorkel Reef nearly five years ago but shifted to the pier due to cost and infrastructure concerns.
“Ultimately, it was going to be too costly by the time we would have installed all the infrastructure to support it,” Norberg said. “So we shifted gears and started coordinating with the Okaloosa Island Pier.”
- The county’s Natural Resources Team installed the Fathom Ocean camera system themselves, working closely with the pier’s IT department and management. The existing infrastructure at the pier, including internet connectivity, allowed costs to be cut significantly.
The installation wasn’t without challenges. Norberg said there were several struggles during the process, and they had installed the camera a couple days before ultimately deciding to make it live.
“After the brief struggles, I wasn’t going to delay it any longer,” laughed Norberg.
The Pier’s Facebook page made a single post announcing the camera after teasing “some big things coming” for several days, and the response was immediate.
“It went gangbusters,” Norberg said. “Within a couple days, I was getting messages from folks all around the world talking about how cool this camera is.”
What’s swimming by…
The camera captures a variety of marine life, with scaled sardines, herring and pinfish being the most common species visible on a day-to-day basis. Viewers can see hundreds or thousands of individual baitfish within the frame at any given time. One viewer has reportedly logged 60 different species so far.
“Those are really the most abundant species of bait in the area in general,” Norberg said.
But it’s the larger, more charismatic species that have generated the most excitement. Loggerhead turtles, dolphins, and several shark species, including nurse sharks and a bull shark, have all made appearances.
- “When you have a big loggerhead turtle swimming right in front of the camera, that really excites people,” Norberg said.
There are also a number of other species with recreational and commercial importance, including juvenile cobia and mangrove snapper, as well as tropical species like surgeonfish and small damsels.
“The mix of species really varies and I think over the next year we’ll see shifts,” he said. “From the science side, it will be great to capture on video, and potentially document, these shifts in fish communities.”
The ‘bait cam’
Eric Brown, Okaloosa Island Pier manager, said the camera has become an unexpected tool for local fishermen who use it to check conditions before heading to the pier.
“A lot of locals are calling it the ‘bait cam,’” Brown said. “They don’t have to always call us. They are pulling up the stream on YouTube and can see that there’s definitely bait here.”
- Brown said water clarity and bait are the two biggest factors for fishermen, and the camera provides both pieces of information at a glance.
The pier’s Facebook page has grown from just over 40,000 followers in August to 59,000. Brown said the response has been overwhelmingly positive, with viewers even sharing videos of their pets watching the camera.
“People have been sending us their videos of their pets,” Brown said. “I have probably three or four dozen different videos of cats attacking screens.”
Businesses and medical offices have also embraced the camera, with some purchasing TVs specifically to display the live stream. The pier itself has a dedicated TV showing the feed.
- “I’ve had some friends of mine that have it as their aquarium now in their homes,” Brown said. “They put it up on the TV and they leave it there all day.”
Educational impact
University professors have reached out to say they use the camera as a tool for fish identification in marine science courses. Teachers have reported running the stream in their classrooms across Okaloosa County.
“It’s really cool to hear that in college classes, this is being implemented,” Norberg said. “At the grade school level, teachers have commented about how they have it running in the background of their classes.”
The educational opportunities extend beyond traditional classrooms. Norberg said the camera provides people who may not have the physical ability to dive or snorkel a chance to experience the underwater world.
- “This camera is an opportunity for people to experience the underwater world digitally and in the comfort of their home or classroom,” he said.
Technical details and conservation
The camera is programmed to rotate through four different positions, with each stop lasting about 20 minutes. One position points south, one west, and two face north, with one angled upward for a different perspective.
- An automated wiper arm rotates around the dome to remove algae and marine growth that would otherwise make viewing impossible.
The team adjusted the camera’s white balance to show more natural underwater colors rather than the typical blue hue viewers might expect.
“That white balance correction helps show the true colors of what’s going on under the water,” Norberg said. “It’s akin to if we were diving and pulled out our flashlights.”
The system does not use artificial lighting at night to avoid disorienting sea turtles. Norberg said adding light underwater could potentially confuse and disorient sea turtles, including babies working their way to the water after hatching.
- “We are avoiding using a light at night to help make sure that we’re balancing the conservation aspect of this camera as well as providing viewership opportunities,” he said.
Brown emphasized the pier’s commitment to ecotourism, which has been his primary focus over the past five years.
“It’s all about giving the world the eye as to what’s in our local waters,” Brown said. “We’re very proud of our pier, and we’re very proud of our clean ecosystem around the pier.”
Looking ahead
Norberg said university students may study changes in the marine community over time using archived video from the camera. He’s working on ways to capture and archive footage directly from YouTube.
- “My long-term excitement is being able to document all of this,” Norberg said. “As we see during the summer when the tiger sharks show back up, it’ll be interesting to see the viewership associated with that.”
The camera has maintained consistent viewership even during network outages, with numbers bouncing back quickly after repairs.
“Even when we’ve had outages, those numbers bounce right back up,” he said. “At one point I was concerned that when we had some lags in the video that we were going to lose all our viewers, but that hasn’t happened and the Pier does a great job communicating any temporary downtime.”
Brown said the pier is working with the Natural Resources Team to add signage with QR codes that will allow visitors to access the camera stream quickly on their phones when at the pier.
The camera project builds on an already strong partnership between the pier and the county’s Natural Resources Team. The two have collaborated on many underwater pier cleanups, tiger shark tagging research and sea turtle awareness initiatives.
- “The Natural Resources Team has been phenomenal,” Brown said. “I never thought a discussion over what kind of turtle lights I could put on the pier would develop into an underwater camera. It’s been great.”
For Norberg, watching people experience what he sees as a diver on a regular basis has been the most rewarding aspect of the project.
“I think the coolest part about it is that the viewership numbers have been pretty consistent,” he said. “People are able to experience what I as a diver experience on a regular basis. You can look down into the water when you’re on the pier and you can see marine life, but once you’re underwater, it’s a completely different world.”
