Although they cover over 70% of our planet, only 0.6% of the world oceans are protected. It is estimated that we only know about 1 in 10 species in the ocean, which is unsurprising given that 90% of the ocean is more than half a mile deep and still remains largely unexplored. How might technology help us discover, understand and protect the vulnerable ecosystems below the waterline?
Marine Conservation is a fast-growing group in the WILDLABS community, capturing a wide variety of tech expertise within its member base, including those working with bioacoustic gear and hydrophones, AUVs and drones, sensors, machine learning, and more. By bringing together WILDLABS members from so many areas of conservation tech, the Marine Conservation group is the perfect place to collaborate on big, complex issues like marine biodiversity monitoring, coral reef health, plastic pollution, and sustainability.
The Marine Conservation group forum is also your place to chat about and solve the challenges unique to using conservation technology in marine environments. Whether you're struggling with deep-sea connectivity or salt water impacting gear longevity, or looking for remote solutions for long-term reef monitoring or biologging data collection, this group wants to help you explore the possibilities!
Check out some of the key marine conservation tech resources, conversations, and virtual events from across the WILDLABS platform:
Tutorials and Talks to Watch on Demand:
- Virtual Meetups: Developing cost-effective, open-source marine megafauna tracking, Jake Levenson
- Tech Tutors: How do I use open source remote sensing data to monitor fishing?, Max Schofield
- Virtual Meetups: eDNA for Aquatic Biodiversity, Alice Valentini
Case Studies, Tools, Research, and News:
- Southern Right Whales & Genome and Satellite Technology, Emma Carroll | eDNA & genomics, satellite data, biodiversity monitoring, climate change
- Building Experts Into AI, Whale Seeker | Machine learning, marine conservation, AI ethics
- Using AIS Data to Investigate the World’s Fishing Ports, Max Schofield | Remote sensing, data visualisation, fishing monitoring
- Small-scale fisheries and tech resources, Dan Steadman | Fishery monitoring, webinars, best practices
- Press Release: BAS Giant Iceberg Mission, British Antarctic Survey | Climate change, AUVs, remote sensing
- Case Study: Thermal imaging, drones, and loggerhead sea turtles, Megan Ossmann | FLIR, Duo Pro R camera, drones
- eDNA sampling to detect invasive snails in shipping ballast water, Gavin Shelton | Invasive species, eDNA, shipping
- Sustainable Fishing Challenges: Fish Catch Monitoring, Dan Steadman | Biologging, sensors, fishing monitoring
Conversations and Questions:
- Satellite tags for marine turtle recommendations | Alasdair Davies
- Calling all hydrophone users! | Team Open Acoustic Devices
- How difficult is it to build a buoy and constrain it in place? | Lindy Knowles
- Methods to detect Derelict Fishing Gear | Nandini Mehrotra
- Drone Mapping for Algal Blooms? | Harold Tay
- Minimising habitat impact of trawling gear | Dan Steadman
- Estimating carbon from 3d models of mangroves | Mark Brown
- Can we detect gillnets in turbid water? | Aurélie Shapiro
- New low cost DIY temperature loggers for reef monitoring | Harold Tay
- Machine learning to detect fish bomb blasts | Jamie Macaulay
Header Image: Emma Vogel
- @douggillespie
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University of St Andrews
PAMGuard software developer
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Fauna & Flora
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Technical Specialist at FFI: loves data management, maps, remote sensing & GIS for conservation
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- @rowan
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Octophin Digital
Jack of all Trades. I've been a zoo keeper, a conservation geneticist and a web developer who specialises in conservation projects and orgs.
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- @tobiaspetri
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Schäuffelhut Berger GmbH
data scientist/algorithmic dev - caught fire for movement ecology
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Ocean Science Analytics
Marine mammal ecologist and online technical trainer
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- @Naomi25
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Naomi Mkama Njarabi, a Tanzanian conservation ecologist and nature enthusiast, is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Biodiversity Conservation at the University of Dar es Salaam, following her completion of a Bachelor's degree in Wildlife Management
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A machine learning-based solution that can segment the Prosomes and Lipid sacs with sufficient accuracy helps to recognize the ecological plasticity of key Arctic copepods. It allows scientists to learn more about the...
15 February 2023
You will develop and apply novel approaches and machine learning techniques for the detection, classification and identification of marine fauna from passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) validated with paired visual...
10 February 2023
Careers
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.
10 February 2023
IMOS Animal Tracking Facility is hiring a Technical Officer to assist with the preparation, deployment and maintenance of acoustic receivers to monitor movements of tagged animals & continue to develop operational...
7 February 2023
Seeking Software Engineer for Marine Science Lab a UC Santa Barbara
19 December 2022
Using satellite imagery to detect and classify the severity of cyanobacteria blooms in small, inland water bodies.
15 December 2022
Conservation partnership launches new award to advance biodiversity conservation from space
5 December 2022
First known baited underwater video match of an individual white shark, based on facial scars and other unique features White shark undertakes 1,100-mile (1800-km) transboundary swim from South Africa to Mozambique
25 October 2022
Careers
This position (at California State University, Long Beach) provides data management & analysis support to Shark Lab research operations including shark tagging, active tracking, receiver data, AUV & UAV data...
24 October 2022
Oregon State University researchers have developed a new satellite tag that allows them to better track whales’ behavior, including previously unobservable feeding events during dives.
4 October 2022
The device could help scientists explore unknown regions of the ocean, track pollution, or monitor the effects of climate change.
26 September 2022
Explore BOEM data, build analytic tools, and recommend solutions for sea turtle relocation trawling approaches to reduce incidental risk. Prize: $40,000
21 September 2022
May 2024
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December 2023
Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, together with The Prince of Wales’s International Sustainability Unit, have announced the launch of... |
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Marine Conservation | 7 years ago | |
Hello all! There is an upcoming seminar on turtles in Yonkers, NY on Saturday, March 25th. If you care about turtles, you... |
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Marine Conservation | 7 years 2 months ago | |
We are starting to deploy buoys to demarcate no entry, no-take zones in a recently declared Marine Fisheries Management Area in Cambodia,... |
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Marine Conservation | 7 years 5 months ago | |
Hi Steph, Sorry for the late reply as I have other commitments currently. In our case, we are using facial scales pattern because we found out that each individual... |
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Marine Conservation | 7 years 7 months ago | |
This news made me so happy this morning.. a fish chorus, what a delightful thought! And you can even listen to it! |
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Marine Conservation | 7 years 8 months ago | |
The Niskin bottle, a seemingly simple tube designed to take water samples at discrete depths, is one of the most important tools of... |
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Marine Conservation | 7 years 11 months ago | |
The Coral Trait Database houses physiological, morphological, ecological, phylogenetic and biogeographic trait information with the... |
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Marine Conservation | 8 years ago | |
Algae technology is central to innovation to conserve biodiversity against the threats of climate change. I am part of a global scientific group called Ocean Foresters.... |
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Marine Conservation | 8 years ago | |
An upcoming NOAA webinar might be of interest to this group: Ocean Exploration & MPAs: Priorities, Technological... |
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Marine Conservation | 8 years 2 months ago | |
Hi John, Have you checked out Whale Alert? There may be some scope for applying/adapting the same technology for averting manatee strikes by applying it to the... |
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Marine Conservation | 8 years 2 months ago | |
A new article argues that aesthically pleasing reefs are healthy reefs: 'This shows that mathematical approaches designed to assess... |
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Marine Conservation | 8 years 5 months ago |
Reviewing Now: Animal Telemetry Postdoctoral Fellowship
24 August 2023 11:09pm
#Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge: Judges' Panel Honorees
4 August 2023 10:00am
Mapping seagrass with drones and AI
4 August 2023 2:00am
GeoNadir shared how drones and AI can help assess seagrass habitats at the Great Barrier Reef, as well as how satellite imagery can monitor seagrass on a wider scale.
#Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge: Community Choice Honorees
3 August 2023 10:00am
360 Camera for Marine Monitoring
25 July 2023 8:54am
Stakeholder Engagement for Wildlife Conservation
13 July 2023 4:57pm
Grant Writing for Wildlife Conservation
13 July 2023 4:43pm
Pinniped Time-lapse Camera Surveys in the Southern Chesapeake Bay and Eastern Shore 2019-2022
13 July 2023 2:46pm
WOPAM Day (World Oceans Passive Acoustic Monitoring Day)
12 July 2023 4:04pm
Request: Public datasets and models for marine videos (with fish looking fishy-ish)
12 July 2023 3:58pm
Project Spotlight: Monitoring tropical freshwater fish in Kakadu National Park with drones, underwater cameras and AI
12 July 2023 3:40pm
12 July 2023 3:58pm
During Andrew's talk, @dmorris put out a call in the chat that might be relevant to folks catching up on the video, so I'll drop it here too:
Re: Andrew's fish work... part of the reason I got in touch with Andrew a few weeks ago is that I'm trying to keep track of public datasets and public models for marine video that have basically this gestalt (video where fish look fishy-ish). I think we're getting close to enough public data to train a general-purpose model that will work well across ecosystems. My running list of datasets is here:
https://lila.science/otherdatasets#images-marine-fish
Let me know if folks know of others!
There are also a grand total of two public models that I'm aware of that sort of fall into this category... one is Andrew's:
https://github.com/ajansenn/KakaduFishAI
The other is:
https://github.com/warplab/megafishdetector
If folks know of other publicly-available models, let me know about those too!
Need for statisticians in conservation?
6 July 2023 8:23pm
12 July 2023 2:59pm
Hi Lev,
We always need more hands in conservation, from whichever field! Engineering, computer science, AI/ML, ecology, environmental science, communications, statisticians, etc.
I would say that conservation tech is moving heavily towards deep learning for data processing/analysis just because of the sheer amount of data being generated now, so it's always helpful if you have experience in that. But we still need ecological modeling (species distribution models, occupancy models, accumulation curves, etc.) to translate processed data into actionable conservation insights! So experience here too is a plus.
If you'd like to get a better idea of the diversity of programs, people, and orgs in conservation tech as you navigate your journey, the Conservation Tech Directory may also be a helpful resource for you.
All the best,
Carly
Sustained Effort: Can We Improve the Sustainability of Marine Telemetry Tags?
12 July 2023 9:30am
Making Waves: Open Hardware as a Solution to Scaling up Bycatch Mitigation
9 July 2023 12:14pm
pneumatic artificial muscle applications in conservation tech?
5 July 2023 6:59pm
Making Waves: Open Hardware as a Solution to Scaling up Bycatch Mitigation
2 July 2023 11:24am
The Wildlife Society Conference
19 June 2023 5:59am
Catch up with The Variety Hour: June 2023
16 June 2023 11:43am
FathomNet Workshop @CVPR 2023
15 June 2023 12:27pm
Fisheries Analyst (Pacific)
15 June 2023 12:15pm
Job Opening: Full Stack Developer at Marine Monitor (M2)
13 June 2023 6:47pm
Sofar increases battery life of montioring buoys with sleep setting
13 June 2023 12:08am
This article covers how Sofar's Spotter monitoring buoys can collect data for longer periods of time by improving battery life. According to this article, "GPS Sleep turns off Spotter’s GPS sensor during sampling dwell periods, increasing its battery life by at least 25% and significantly extending the duration of its deployment at high latitudes."
Celebrating World Oceans Day: Revitalizing the marine ecosystem with technology-driven engineered reefs to accelerate CO2 capture
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.
UNEP Executive Director - Inger Andersen's take on why African nations have the power & tools to re-design a plastic pollution-free future
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
Register your #WorldEnvironmentDay Event or Activity and Share it with the World
5 June 2023 1:07pm
It's World Environment Day! This year the focus is on solutions to plastic pollution under the campaign #BeatPlasticPollution.
How are you getting involved to solve plastic pollution using conservation technology?
Opportunity: Director of Digital, Data and Technology
2 June 2023 12:40am
Ashored Innovations: Hardware and Software for Sustainable Fishing
1 June 2023 9:46pm
Data Visualization in Service of Coral Reefs in Micronesia
17 May 2023 8:53pm
Happywhale: AI-Powered Whale Identification
16 May 2023 10:00am
28 July 2023 7:43pm
Hi Sol,
For my research on fish, I had to put together a low-cost camera that could record video for several weeks. Here is the design I came up with
At the time of the paper, I was able to record video for ~12 hours a day at 10 fps and for up to 14 days. With new SD cards now, it is pushed to 21 days. It costs about 600 USD if you build it yourself. If you don't want to make it yourself, there is a company selling it now, but it is much more expensive. The FOV is 110 degrees, so not the 360 that you need, but I think there are ways to make it work (e.g. with the servo motor).
Happy to chat if you decide to go this route and/or want to brainstorm ideas.
Cheers,
Xavier