Not exactly 'Finding Nemo,' but Pompano Beach's underwater cam is cool | Gadget Daddy

We'll go underwater today, substituting a keyboard and monitor for a snorkel and mask.

A few weeks ago, the city of Pompano Beach installed a high-tech underwater camera 15 feet below the Fisher Family Pier. The pier extends 900 feet into the Atlantic Ocean.

The camera, according to a city press release, offers "a real-time window into a hidden world teeming with colorful fish and fascinating creatures." The camera was "donated by Shipwreck Park, a nonprofit Pompano Beach corporation ... in recognition of the City’s support of the Wahoo Bay project."

Wahoo Bay is an environment education project. To learn more, visit this website: https://wahoobay.org.

The underwater camera can be found on this website: https://www.pompanobeachfl.gov/webcams.

There are three links on the page. One is for the beach, another the above-water view of conditions at the Hillsboro Inlet, and the third is the underwater camera feed.

The underwater camera can rotate 360 degrees horizontally and 180 degrees vertically. It also can zoom in and out. It had to be mounted and chained to one of the pier's pilings. It also needed an electrical connection and a way to link what it was looking at back to the Internet. Not exactly a plug-and-play installation.

One television reporter ended his broadcast about the camera by saying: "If you watch long enough, you never know what creature will swim past the lens!"

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Well, seasoned scuba divers may disagree. That close to shore, the sea life would be pretty predictable: many varieties, but mostly sergeant majors, grunts, angel fish and the occasional Florida pompano.

No Jaws — or likeness thereof. No Flipper. No Charlie the Tuna. Not even a clownfish like Nemo.

But it's a little like having a saltwater aquarium without having to worry about feeding and tank maintenance.

“We are thrilled to showcase the beauty below Pompano Beach’s stunning ocean waters, thanks to this innovative technology,” Pompano Beach Mayor Rex Hardin told a reporter.

No need to lug around fins and a scuba tank either.

Lonnie Brown can be reached at LedgerDatabase@aol.com.