As a wary technologist and an enthusiastic amateur waterman, when I first heard of theBlu, I was prepared to dismiss it as a waste of funds. For those who have yet to get wet inside its virtual oceans, theBlu is a distant relative of one of those old virtual fish tank screensavers on your computer. But instead of a lowly fish tank, theBlu is a virtual world simulating several habitats in the ocean, with dozens of species swimming around.

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My suspicion was that the cash that went into constructing this ambitious web-based marine land would be better spent on preserving the real ocean or supporting scientific fieldwork. I thought that there’s no way that an on-screen Blu ocean could ever convey the majesty, peace or excitement I feel in the real, seemingly limitless blue ocean. A large part of what makes the ocean thrilling for me is the rawness and lack of distraction as well as the physical challenges it presents when you are sailing, diving, surfing or swimming. Why bother trying to replicate the thing if we could never experience the essence of it as a digital reproduction?

And then I “dove” into theBlu.

It was along a virtual stretch of the California coast that I know well, filled with kelp forests and, in deeper, greener waters, schools of albacore. What came as a surprise to me was the jolt of immersion that I received. It was the same jolt I get when I stare slack-jawed at National Geographic films or photos, or when I spend time in the ocean itself.

The ocean environment created by the theBlu team is stunning, and it should be. The 100 or so creatures and the eight ocean habitats that it contains were supervised by big-gun Hollywood animators like Andy Jones, who won an Academy Award for his work on Avatar. Like a sort of Etsy for 3-D artists, theBlu gives makers an opportunity to create fish and environments to expand the virtual world; the rest of us can purchase our favorite clownfish or bigeye tuna, and unlock new species by donating funds that go to nonprofits like WildAid that are represented by certain marine animals. You’re buying computer animals to protect the real thing. (Get a look at theBlu’s big Times Square debut in the exclusive video above.)

It’s an approach that has promise. The times that the ocean has gripped my spirit are exactly the times when I have been furthest from methods of donation and commerce and communication. And the times I am in front of my computer, I am the furthest away from being inspired by the sea. Overlapping the inspiration and the ability to donate and share could be powerful.

“We draw a lot of parallels between the interconnected and powerful nature of the internet and the ocean.”

One of theBlu’s founders, Neville Spiteri, shares my concerns and my hope. In a recent conversation, Spiteri echoed all my doubts and explained why he proceeded to make the world anyway. “We asked if it was smart to put energy into a technology product versus the real ocean,” Spiteri said. “But we draw a lot of parallels between the interconnected and powerful nature of the internet and the ocean. Nothing else can reach so many people at once. If you look at how transformative the internet has been, hopefully we can look back in 30 or 50 years and say the reefs are coming back, and the path to that was through the web.”

The trick will be to entertain and foster the same love for the oceans with theBlu that Jacque Cousteau‘s old movies did for prior generations of often landlocked people, Spiteri says. Cousteau’s son, Jean-Michel, once told Spiteri that only old men watch those movies anymore. There isn’t a modern, interactive medium that parallels Cousteau’s old adventures, and Spiteri hopes that is what theBlu can become.

My only remaining worry is that theBlu might not be ambitious enough. Eric Cheng, photographer and publisher of popular underwater photography forum Wetpixel, noted inaccuracies in how some of the animals were positioned along each other in theBlu. Katie Harmon, an editor at Scientific American who is writing a book on octopuses, noted that the ecosystems largely did not interact — sharks were not eating fish. It’s not an accurate simulation yet, although with ocean explorer Sylvia Earle (who The New Yorker dubbed “Her Deepness” in a July 1989 profile) and scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography advising the project, Spiteri hopes it can be one day.

If anything, the incompleteness of theBlu is not the real worry — maybe it’s even a feature, serving as a striking parallel and reminder of how incomplete our understanding of the ocean is, despite our dependency on it for food and oxygen and life as we know it. It’s a little hard to worry about the simulation when the explorers of the deep have barely begun to understand the great vastness of the thing itself.

Brian Lam is the founder and editor of all-things-ocean blog The Scuttlefish.