Researchers will use artificial intelligence to help monitor the health of the Great Barrier Reef, after being fed thousands of photographs taken by a “diverse team” of citizen scientists.
Key points:
- More than 50,000 images of the Great Barrier Reef were captured by citizen scientists as part of the Great Barrier Reef Census
- Tech giant Dell will analyze the photos and put together a snapshot of the reef’s health
- The program aims to identify parts of the reef that need help
Conservation group Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef recruited dozens of boats to help survey more than 300 reefs from the tip of Queensland to Lady Elliot Island in 2020 and earlier this year.
Divers and recreational divers took more than 52,000 photographs of the reef in order to capture a snapshot of its health.
Citizen scientists were then asked to help identify problem areas, including bleaching, to help better target restoration efforts.
Chief executive Andy Ridley said that in some ways the project had been a victim of its own success, thanks to the efforts of a “diverse crew in a flotilla of boats”.
A neon damsel swims among bleached corals and crown-of-thorns starfish in the Great Barrier Reef. (Provided by Mark McCormick)
“We built a platform [for the photographs] but it was complicated and I was asking a lot of citizens,” Ridley said.
“We asked them to look at the photograph and segment it and identify the type of coral and it took a long time and many of them did not finish it.
“So now we have the artificial intelligence to do that part.”
Tech giant Dell developed the new artificial intelligence system that will see around 13,000 images of the reef analyzed a week, or around one minute per photo.
Researchers were inundated with thousands of photographs of citizen scientists. (Supplied: Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef)
The Singapore-based company’s data science team worked with several universities to develop Great Barrier Reef census technology to identify five critical coral categories in each image.
The analyzed data will then be shared with researchers at the University of Queensland and James Cook University to help prioritize reef conservation efforts when the program starts in a few days.
A flotilla of reef and tin excursion boats participated in the reef census earlier this year. (Supplied: Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef)
But Mr Ridley said citizen scientists still needed to play their part.
“We still want people to verify what they can see in images — humans are good at that,” Ridley said.
“There is a great danger in handing things over to machines and the human element, the emotional element, is taken out of it.
“This is a very important part of the conservation of the building.
“Our perfect world is a mix of science and reef management, the role of artificial intelligence and the role of individuals to help bring it all together.”
The Great Barrier Reef consists of more than 4,000 individual reefs over a distance of 2,300 kilometers. (Provided by Riptide Creative)
James Cook University’s Katie Chartrand had taken part in the citizen polls, which she described as “critical”.
Dr Chartrand said the survey results of the flotilla of tour boats, tins and superyachts that took the census earlier this year were a mixed bag.
“The barriers we’ve been looking at in this survey are varied in terms of their health,” he said.
“Some reefs look spectacular, others are in shambles.
“They’ve been crushed by cyclones, recent major bleaching events in 2016 and 2017, and others are starting to show good signs of recovery, so we can see new recruits from this massive spawning event helping some of the ‘these areas.
“But it’s really not enough time to tell how this recovery is going.”
The next census of the Great Barrier Reef will take place in October.