Our partner, Antal Börcsök, designed this exciting experience at the Tela Marine aquarium, so that it feels like you’re going on a real dive. You enter a “dive shop,” complete with tanks, gear and an air compressor. But instead of a scuba mask, you place a VR headset over your eyes and splash into the water.

This twelve-minute adventure takes you to the most iconic parts of Tela Bay. In the “Jardin de Alce” the highly endangered elkhorn coral grow in jungles. At ”Grua Fantasma” you dive among the sunken remains of the banana operations that dominated the bay over a century ago. “El naufragio” is a shipwreck where 16th century French cannons still lay on the seafloor. And you can watch as scientists try to understand the mysteries of Tela’s coral by studying the skeleton of the massive “Casita” coral colony.

This project was made possible through the support of the 2025 Stanley Creators Grant and Hidden Compass’s 2025 Pathfinder Prize. Check out this trailer for the VR experience created by our partner Joseph Henry of Triton Society.