“People protect what they love,” Jacques Cousteau once said. But people can’t love what they don’t understand, says Sly Lee, founder of the Hydrous, a non-profit creating 3-D coral scans to advance scientific research.

Inspired to bring science to the public, Lee was searching for a way to communicate science in an understandable way when he joined a 3-D mapping project of the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor. Lee put his experience on that project toward his passion: coral reefs. Since then, he has scanned coral reefs in Palau, Hawaii, the Solomon Islands, Easter Island, Guam, Saipan, and the Maldives.

To create the 3-D images, Lee dives with a standard camera and scans a 33-by-33-foot section of the reef, creating about 3,000 photographs. Depending on visibility, currents and complexity of the coral, that process can take anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes. Later processed in Autodesk Memento, the photographs become high-resolution, interactive 3-D digital images.

Lee hopes to put this technology into the hands of citizen scientists who can help create a worldwide map of corals.

“The real power is to bring access to those who will never see a coral reef,” Lee says. “The ultimate question is: How do you make someone care about something he or she will never see?” The Hydrous has recently partnered with Maker Ventures, Open ROV, and Surf for Life, and an expedition to Indonesia is planned for later this year. For more on future projects, visit thehydro.us.