Google is turning to artificial intelligence to assist in protecting the coral reefs, TechCrunch reports.

Google has developed an artificial intelligence tool called SurfPerch in collaboration with Google Research and DeepMind to assist marine biologists in understanding coral reef ecosystems and their health. The tool was trained on thousands of hours of reef audio recordings, enabling scientists to monitor reef activity at night and in deep or cloudy waters, providing valuable insights for conservation efforts.

To create this AI tool, Google invited the public to listen to reef sounds on their Calling Our Corals website and identify fish sounds. Over 400 hours of audio recordings from reefs around the world were crowdsourced, resulting in a bioacoustic data set focused on reef health. By leveraging this collective effort, Google was able to develop a library of new fish sounds to refine the SurfPerch model, allowing it to quickly adapt to detect new reef sounds.

Through a collaborative effort with marine biologists such as Professor Steve Simpson from the University of Bristol and Ben Williams from University College London, the SurfPerch model has shown promising results in analyzing and understanding reef communities. By incorporating bird recordings and identifying common patterns between bird songs and fish sounds, researchers were able to enhance the model’s performance.

Using the combined data from Calling Our Corals and SurfPerch, researchers have been able to differentiate between protected and unprotected reefs in the Philippines, track restoration outcomes in Indonesia, and gain a better understanding of fish community dynamics on the Great Barrier Reef. This AI tool has proven to be a valuable asset in studying coral ecosystems and addressing conservation challenges.

The project is ongoing, with new audio being continuously added to the Calling Our Corals website to further train the AI model. Google emphasizes the potential of this technology to efficiently analyze new data sets, eliminate the need for costly processing resources, and unlock new opportunities for reef conservation and research. Through innovative approaches like SurfPerch, scientists are better equipped to protect and preserve fragile marine ecosystems like coral reefs.

Article Source
https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/06/google-looks-to-ai-to-help-save-the-coral-reefs/