A brief survey of people’s favorite ocean movies reveals, first (thank you AI) Ocean’s 11–which has nothing to do with the ocean. Other ocean movies are mostly about storms and sea monsters. Given that more people have walked on the surface of the moon than traveled to the deep ocean, it seems crucial for ocean literacy that new tools are created to help connect people with the mission of protecting the ocean. Bea Maggipinto’s virtual environment of the deep ocean is meant to do just that.
“We want to change the perception people have of the deep sea. That it’s not a scary place, that it’s a fascinating place that needs our attention and stewardship,” said Bea Maggipinto, the lead designer of Echo of the Abyss, a virtual reality experience that sends players on a freediving quest into an ocean environment.
Maggipinto is a Carnegie Mellon University Portugal dual-degree PhD candidate between CMU Center for Transformational Play, and the Interactive Technologies Institute Laboratory for Robotics and Engineering Systems at the University of Lisbon (LARSyS). At CMU, Echo of the Abyss is part of her work at Carnegie Mellon’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute in the School of Computer Science.
Maggipinto began her career on the corporate side and has worked global NGOs such as Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and the Packard Foundation on creative campaigns and theory of change projects. Her research focuses on environmentalism and sustainability. She presented a paper about Echo of the Abyss at the international Tangible Embodied and Embedded conference, an annual event that addresses issues of human-computer interactions and new ways to bridge the gap between physical and digital worlds. The 2025 event’s focus was on sustainability.
Ocean Conservation Trust said ocean literacy “covers programs and activities in both formal and informal education and communication, ensuring that emotional connection to the Ocean and behaviour change are goals, rather than simply knowledge exchange.” Games like Echo of the Abyss meet that criteria.
“It was really interesting to see during the demo moments how, while some people were divers and curious to try the experience, others had a fear of water. They were unsure, but I could see they wanted to try. They were a bit afraid, but some did decide to try it and were pleasantly surprised,” Maggipinto said. “Part of the point of Echo of the Abyss is to try to get people into an environment where they might face barriers in real life, and fear might be one of them.”
Echo of the Abyss aims to foster a sense of connection and curiosity toward marine ecosystems by allowing players to embody a diver, guided by aquatic animals, in a safe and contemplative virtual environment. Maggipinto, herself a freediver, said the design leverages theories from human-computer interaction and ecopsychology. It also draws on the idea of the “hydrocommons”–which sees hydro cycles as an exchange of water between human and non-human bodies and is a way of imagining human entanglements with nature. The goal of the game is to promote environmental stewardship and emotional engagement with the ocean.
While Echo of the Abyss is not currently aimed at the consumer VR experience market, the development team is working on expanding the game to include new scenes to connect the animals in the game to real-life problems, such as climate change. Maggipinto said she hopes that this work will advance understanding of how games and play can shape human behavior and make ocean conservation efforts more effective.
“We want to make people feel more connected to the ocean so that they will feel compelled to protect it.”
