Live YouTube webcam showing sea life in Miami’s harbor just yards from the shore – from sharks to manatees – becomes an online hit
- Called Coral City Camera, it’s located next to an ‘urban reef’ in PortMiami
- A vast array of creatures has dropped by, including stingrays and barracuda
- It’s billed as a ‘real-life aquarium screensaver you can enjoy all day’
This makes for fin-tastic viewing!
A live YouTube webcam showing the toings and froings of sea life in Miami’s harbor has become an internet sensation.
The action that it shows takes place just yards from the shore – and some of the creatures that have dropped by to say hello include parrotfish, pufferfish, West Indian manatees, stingrays, nurse sharks, lemon sharks, blacktip sharks, great barracuda and angelfish.
Two grunts – French and white varieties – go mouth to mouth in front of the ever-popular Coral City Camera
Good g-reef: A sleek blacknose shark drops by for a nose around
Called Coral City Camera, it’s located next to an ‘urban reef’ on the north-east tip of PortMiami.
It has been deployed in 10ft of water by Coral Morphologic – creator of innovative underwater media – and streams 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with the footage available on both the Coral City Camera website and YouTube.
And according to the website, ‘it makes for a real-life aquarium screensaver you can enjoy all day’.
A nurse shark sweeps past the camera, which sits in about 10ft of water
A southern stingray glides past the Coral City Camera lens
The best time to log on to the live stream is late afternoon as that seems to be the time of the ‘most fish activity.’
But don’t despair if you log on and don’t see any sea life.
The website adds: ‘Fish activity varies over the course of the day, depending on the tide, weather, and water clarity.
‘Sometimes, that means that very few fish will be seen, but typically patience will be rewarded, as the fish are rarely far away.’
A few weeks back a mother manatee swam past, followed by her calf
In addition, the Coral City Camera Instagram and Twitter pages also post short highlight videos, with recent clips showing ‘a nurse shark flying in from above’, a gliding stingray and an ‘adorable little cutie of a smooth trunkfish’.
The camera, which went live in February, was deployed as a ‘hybrid art-science research project’ and to give people a glimpse at the ‘urban marine ecosystem’ around the shores of Miami.
It explains: ‘The project was launched with the idea that the incredible biodiversity living just below the waterline in Miami should be a point of civic pride that engages the public to protect what they know and love.’
Click here to see a catalogue of sea life filmed so far.