World Oceans Day raises awareness of human impact on the oceans and mobilizes people for sustainable management of this critical global life source. Can AI help vital marine research and conservation efforts, assess our already dire impact on the seas that cover 70% of the planet, or remove the waste and plastics poisoning the natural resource that provides 50% of the planet’s oxygen?
World Oceans Day has been coordinated since 2002 and officially recognized and observed by the United Nations as of 2008. This international day supports the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and fosters public interest in protecting the ocean. This year’s theme is “Awaken New Depths.”
“The UN is joining forces with decision-makers, indigenous leaders, scientists, private sector executives, civil society, celebrities, and youth activists to showcase how our relationship with the ocean needs to urgently change since our efforts to date have only skimmed the surface.”
The UN hopes to motivate momentum for the ocean, “the lungs of our planet,” at a time when 90% of large fish populations have been depleted and 50% of coral reefs destroyed.
Can AI Help Ocean Conservation Efforts?
AI and machine learning are powerful tools for assessing, understanding, and monitoring the vast expanse of our planet’s oceans. We’ve only explored 5% of the entire ocean, yet pollution, waste, and climate change affect all of it.
AI can process, analyze, and model huge amounts of data, including satellite images and data from sensors and buoys. It can help produce forecasts of potential impacts, identify the location of large plastic deposits, track marine life, and much, much more.
Nick Wise, CEO of non-profit OceanMind told Reuters:
“It’s not really possible for a human to look at all of the data that’s available and interpret it and draw out what really matters in any reasonable length of time, particularly given that fishing activities and other maritime activities happen everywhere all the time. Sifting through all of that and working out what is worth looking at is very much a job for a computer.”
OceanMind’s AI uses satellite data from NASA or the European Space Agency combined with a database of fishing regulations and licenses. The system is trained to recognize fishing vessels and their activities and to flag anything that’s amis to OceanMind analysts and, in turn, regulators.
AI for Monitoring and Protecting Marine Life
Nautical Crime Investigation Services is a startup that uses AI and monitoring technology to enable the policing of marine crimes, including illegal fishing, and criminal vessels at sea. The company was co-founded by Dyhia Belhabib who developed a database called Spyglass into the world’s largest record of the criminal history of industrial fishing vessels. Belhabib gave the data to Global Fishing Watch, a non-profit backed by major foundations and which partners with Google for it’s data tools. Global Fishing Watch also uses satellite data, and AI trained on fishing patterns and even types of fishing equipment to track fishers.
Whale Seeker monitors marine mammals, again using aerial and satellite images to identify whales or polar bears processing images in tiny fractions of the time it would take human analysts or biologists. Whale Seeker helps ships to avoid colliding with whales. Not only are whales beautiful creatures vital to the ocean ecosystem but they also capture carbon, storing up to 33 tonnes in their lifetimes.
Scientists have been recording ocean and marine life sounds for years, even broadcasting the sounds of healthy coral reefs to dying reefs to encourage coral larvae to return. These scientists are building repositories of underwater sounds that AI might help them understand and preserve and eventually even communicate with ocean ecosystems. AI algorithms can quickly and accurately identify fish species from such recordings. Jesse Ausubel, co-founder of the International Quiet Ocean Experiment (IQOE), says:
“In the old days, you could put a microphone in the water for a year. Then it would take me three years to listen to the tapes: it’s one thing to listen to Ed Sheeran or Mozart and spot the difference, but our ears are not attuned to the difference between waves breaking, humpback whales, ships or snapping shrimp. Play a computer a few hours of snapping shrimp and it can become an expert very quickly.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA has AI initiatives and partnerships that use AI to identify protected species using images and sound recordings. It’s tracking the last 360 North Atlantic right whales and can identify each individual. This knowledge helps research and conservation. The NOAA is counting seals and documenting turtle behavior, too.
The transformative potential of AI is also being explored for ocean-going robots that can gather data and samples in remote and hard-to-reach locations.
Reducing and Removing Plastic Waste
Researchers at the Universities of California, Berkeley, and Santa Barbara in the U.S. have developed an AI model that simulates the impact of plastic waste reduction policies. The model can simulate multiple interventions and has even achieved a scenario where plastic waste could be cut to zero.
Environmental organization The Ocean Cleanup is using AI to create maps of ocean litter in remote locations so waste can be gathered and removed. The process is far more efficient than previous manual efforts, which required ships and planes. It’s also using AI from Deeper Insights to detect and release creatures that enter cleanup areas which consist of an 800-metre floating barrier with a retention zone where plastic accumulates.
In other projects and initiatives. The Nature Conservancy has partnered with Microsoft to enhance geospatial tools and web applications for climate adaptation and resilience planning and scale conversation impacts with AI. There are further fascinating examples and hopefully each will have it’s own impact in protecting and sustaining the oceans and ocean life.
We also looked at how AI is enhancing environmental protection and sustainability for World Environment Day 2024.