big red thing?
I think, isolated from its context this image is very strange and funny :
Cesar Harada (28) is an French-Japanese inventor and entrepreneur.
Cesar invented a ground-breaking sailing technology, a boat that changes shape, “Protei”. Originally developed to clean up the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Protei is an Open Hardware project now developed by an international community of scientists, engineers and designers for many other applications such as nuclear radiation sensing off Japan, plastic sensing in the Pacific garbage patch, red tide studies in Mexico and much more.
Cesar is also the general coordinator of the future International Ocean Station. Former Project leader at MIT, Cesar teaches Masters in Design & Environment at Goldsmiths University in London. Cesar graduated in 2009 from the Design Interactions course at the Royal College of Arts in London, his collaborative project Open_Sailing received the Ars Electronica Golden Nica award for the [NEXT IDEA].
Yesterday we went aerial mapping a landscape that is just about to change radically : restoration of the oyster reef in Mobile Alabama, Dog river mouth - known as Helen Wood Park beach. In two hours from now (2011 January 22 6AM), hundreds of volunteers will come to install a massive oyster reef here. From 8AM today "Volunteers will be deploying approximately 23,000 bags of oyster shells to create new reefs and habitat at the mouth of Dog River" - see them in action here .
Aerial mapping Prof. Dawn McKinney & Prof. Leo Denton of the University of Mobile South Alabama. Thanks to Shannon Dosemagen for organizing the trip.
We took about 5000 aerial pictures that I turned into 3 very large resolution maps to make one huge map (at the top of the post):
Download these full resolution maps to your computer as .zip file (27mb). If you want to learn how to make one of these map, check this post.
This time, in addition of aerial photography, I also took ground samples (~250x microscopy), sand, sediment, organic material taken at regular interval. The idea is : if we are able to say what is on the ground - sometimes we may find oil spilled still - we can qualify and quantify what we see on the aerial pictures. We will come back in a few weeks to map again and see the effects of installing an artificial oyster reef here : "before and after" :) 
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date : 20110121@15:41, low-tide.
Location : 30.57562, -88.07847
Mapping for Grassroots Mapping & LA Bucket Brigade.
Photos : Prof. Leo Denton and Prof. Dawn McKinney
Stitching : Cesar Harada
Left at 10:45 - return 20:30
Milleage : start 761963 - end 764803
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Re-Posted on the Grassroots Mapping blog page : http://grassrootsmapping.org/2011/01/mapping-river-dog-mouth-mobile-alabama/
