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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can an AI marine research assistant search the whole web or only the files you upload?
It works best when it answers from the sources you choose rather than from an unrestricted web crawl. You can connect websites, URLs, documents, audio, and video, then limit the assistant to approved scientific and conservation materials. Elizabeth Planet said, “I added a couple of trusted sources to the chatbot and the answers improved tremendously! You can rely on the responses it gives you because it’s only pulling from curated information.” For marine research, that source control is often what makes answers more dependable.
Can you build a marine AI assistant from research papers and historical ocean data?
Yes. A no-code RAG assistant can ingest PDFs, DOCX, TXT, CSV, HTML, XML, JSON, URLs, audio, and video, so marine teams can combine research papers, historical records, monitoring files, and website content into one searchable system. Stephanie Warlick said, “Check out CustomGPT.ai where you can dump all your knowledge to automate proposals, customer inquiries and the knowledge base that exists in your head so your team can execute without you.” The same approach can help researchers retrieve ocean information faster without manual searching across separate archives.
Is AI taking over marine biology?
No. In marine work, AI is most useful for processing large volumes of information such as satellite imagery, sensor data, and vessel activity, while scientists still interpret results and make research and conservation decisions. OceanMind uses AI with satellite data plus fishing regulations and licenses to recognize vessel activity and flag suspicious behavior for analysts and regulators. That shows AI acting as a force multiplier for human experts, not a replacement for them.
What makes an AI answer about ocean conservation reliable enough to trust?
Reliable answers usually come from retrieval-based systems that ground responses in approved sources and show citations, not from a general chatbot guessing from patterns. The provided benchmark states that CustomGPT.ai outperformed OpenAI in RAG accuracy, and the feature set includes anti-hallucination with citation support. For ocean conservation, the practical standard is to restrict answers to validated research, rules, and internal guidance that users can verify.
Can AI help beach cleanup and plastic waste teams, or is it only for large research labs?
AI can help smaller teams too. The page source states that AI can help identify the location of large plastic deposits, and a no-code setup means local cleanup groups can also use it for volunteer FAQs, disposal guidance, and program knowledge. Evan Weber said, “I just discovered CustomGPT, and I am absolutely blown away by its capabilities and affordability! This powerful platform allows you to create custom GPT-4 chatbots using your own content, transforming customer service, engagement, and operational efficiency.” That makes AI practical for community organizations, not just large labs.
What marine research data should stay out of an AI assistant?
For any public-facing assistant, only include materials you are comfortable making available to users, such as approved reports, reference content, or published guidance. Keep confidential, restricted, or unapproved information in tightly controlled internal deployments instead. Security controls still matter: the provided sources state that the platform is GDPR compliant, does not use your data for model training, and is SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Related Resources
These reads expand on how AI is shaping research, communities, and access to critical knowledge.
- AI And Social Justice — Explores the ways AI can influence equity, advocacy, and systemic change across social impact efforts.
- Enterprise Knowledge Search — Shows how AI-powered search helps organizations surface trusted internal information faster and at scale.
- AI For Indigenous Communities — Examines how AI tools are being used to support cultural preservation, access, and community-led innovation.
- AI In Mental Health — Looks at how AI is being applied in mental health contexts, from support tools to broader care accessibility.