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Marine Conservation / Feed

Bringing together many of our community's tech types like bioacoustics, biologging, drones, remote sensing, machine learning, and more, the Marine Conservation group is a meeting point to begin innovative collaborations and answer difficult questions.

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Celebrating World Oceans Day: Revitalizing the marine ecosystem with technology-driven engineered reefs to accelerate CO2 capture

Esther Githinji

9 June 2023 10:14am

As we celebrate World Oceans Day this month, we are reminded that addressing climate change will take more than any one organization. It will require companies, governments, NGOs and communities, all working together, with the aid of technology, to improve the efficiencies of our activities and operations and to reduce costs, waste and emissions. Such an example is IBM and The Reef Company recently joining forces signing a joint initiative agreement aimed at bolstering their ocean conservation endeavors.

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UNEP Executive Director - Inger Andersen's take on why African nations have the power & tools to re-design a plastic pollution-free future

Esther Githinji

5 June 2023 1:28pm

Inger Andersen, the Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) explains how the innovative approaches towards curbing plastic pollution witnessed across African nations can help in pivoting to a plastics-free future through pioneering innovative manufacturing, packaging and design solutions.

This opinion first appeared in The Nation Africa

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article

Happywhale: AI-Powered Whale Identification

Happywhale

16 May 2023 10:00am

In this Conservation Tech Showcase case study from Happywhale, you’ll learn about how AI tools are helping researchers and citizen scientists identify and protect humpback whales. 

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New Paper: Identification of fish sounds

Ellie Warren

5 May 2023 12:40am

Xavier Mouy recently shared this new bioacoustics paper on Twitter. This research focuses on identifying fish sounds in relation to specific species through the use of three underwater portable audio-video platforms. The proposed array designs successfully identified fish sounds, and this paper covers instructions for others working in marine bioacoustics who would like to apply these ideas to their own work.

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event

EarthRanger User Conference

Jordan Steward

27 April 2023 5:52am

Back for its 8th year, don't miss this year's premier global annual event where conservation practitioners from around the world convene to discuss important challenges and solutions

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careers

Data Scientist (Geospatial), Global Fishing Watch

Global Fishing Watch

19 April 2023 10:34am

Global Fishing Watch are looking for a data scientist to join the Research and Innovation team. Help us tackle geospatial data fusion problems to produce the most complete picture of human activity at sea.

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discussion

Drones for IUU (illegal fishing activities & vessel monitoring)

Adam Roberts

20 March 2023 6:00am

Hi, new to Wildlabs and happy to have found itI am currently working on drone design (fixed wing), for the purpose of monitoring illegal fishing vessels. This will be done via...

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Adam Roberts

11 April 2023 5:48am

Hi Frank! Thanks so much for your reply. Yes I have been looking into the same sort of workflow as with camera traps etc and seem to be getting somewhere (although am yet to have my own data set with which to check!). 

Yes, with the transponder issue, actually NONE of the boats here have them! There has been a push to get boats to install them further down the coast, but it was marred by the usual corruption and forceless enforcement. So everything will be visual, rather than working on any signal given out by the boats themselves. I am looking into ai programs that can analyse footage and as you say, it can be done with species so I see no reason it cannot be done with vessels given the parameters to look for

 

Frank van der Most

14 April 2023 12:57am

Seeing the pictures that @lmccaskill uploaded got my brain storming, so to say. Are you working with similar small boats? I was assuming bigger fishing ships that are registered somewhere. If the boats are not registered and there are no existing photos of them, and you want to identify the individual boats, you'll need to build your own catalogue to train an AI.

However / in addition, if the boats have written text on them with a name or a code or number, like in the pictures, then it should be ridiculously easy to identify boats. No AI needed. I discovered recently that my laptop has started showing find results based on text in photos. If different boats are of the same model, again like in the pictures, then there is nothing else left than what is written on them ... well, perhaps the color scheme.

... or perhaps face recognition if the image quality allows it. But then you'll be at square 1 again with training an AI.

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discussion

Field testing of a radio telemetry system to be deployed in the sea.

Hari

24 January 2023 6:52am

Hello everyoneWhat kind of tests do you put aquatic tags through to get them field ready? Currently, we are testing a radio telemetry system. We are leaving the tags at 20...

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Akiba

21 March 2023 8:52am

Oh, great link! Been doing marine projects recently and a big headache is protecting submerged electronics. I've kind of heard of many of those techniques, but great to see them collected all in one place and with first hand experienced commentary regarding them. 

Gwen Harris

12 April 2023 2:32pm

Not sure exactly how your telemetry will be deployed, but if it's going to be attached to an animal in a relatively non-invasive way, you might check with zoos or aquariums that have similar species. 

I worked in that industry for a long time and we tested telemetry for seals, sea lions, polar bears and elephants. There might have been more, but that's all I can think of off the top of my head. This can help improve attachment methods and test how tough the animals will be on the equipment. 

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discussion

Tools & Experiences with Sea Turtle Monitoring

Stephanie O'Donnell

17 March 2023 1:00pm

Hi wildlabbers, Mtalii Ochieng gave us an awesome walkthrough all the tools and tech his team at Bahari hai is using in their work to monitor and protect sea turtles. The...

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Amelia Weissman

17 March 2023 4:23pm

Great webinar! I am working with the Dominica Sea Turtle Conservation Organization and would love to get in touch about the apps Mtalii and his team use for collecting their data. We're looking to streamline our process and make it easier for our volunteers to help capture vital nesting and sighting data on Dominica. Hoping to connect with Mtalii so we can implement some of the awesome apps they've been using for their turtle research. Feel free to message me! Thanks!

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The rush to increase deep sea mining

Ellie Warren

16 March 2023 9:19pm

This new article about the future of deep-sea mining caught my eye, because it's a topic we'd hope to cover in our upcoming sustainability series. It's a subject we'd still like to highlight on WILDLABS as most tech tools include elements mined from unsustainable operations - definitely something we'd like to discuss with this community soon!

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discussion

Underwater Fish Datasets from the Mediterranean

Sebastian Lopez-Marcano

15 August 2022 11:45pm

Hi Wildlabs,I am Sebastian the project manager for FishID. We are currently in the last stretch of...

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Carly Batist

26 September 2022 9:32pm

Not sure if audio data would be of any use to you, but if so FishSounds has some - I just tried their search function and there is a location tag for 'Mediterranean & Black Sea'. 

You might try reaching out to the folks at Name that Fish, Innovasea, or perhaps an entity on the Fisheries Tech list would have Mediterranean stuff? 

Shir Bar

21 October 2022 7:52am

Hi,

If this is still relevant, you can try reaching out to the Belmaker lab, they do BRUV surveys in the eastern Mediterranean and have hours of video, some of it I believe is annotated. Particularly, Shahar might be helpful, he's the PhD student running point on the project.

Falk Viczian

2 March 2023 2:03pm

We have made available our underwater videos on YouTube as a playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnhVZKKy8WkZKriCIV6r7upWhHNVrU_7L 

It's about 1.113 short video clips with annotation and each is linked to the corresponding www.iNaturalist.org observations. The iNaturalist.org observations are research quality and have been uploaded to GBIF.org. The observations have been made between 2014 and 2022 around the Ionian Islands (Greece).

If you would need the original videos please contact me.

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careers

Engineering Manager, Skylight

Allen Institute for AI

10 February 2023 10:14am

On the AST Skylight team, you will work with talented engineers, domain experts, and product managers to uncover illegal fishing by developing the tools that help countries around the globe combat this problem.

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