🪸 Let's Save Coral Reefs with AI

Coral reefs are among the most diverse and valuable ecosystems on the planet, but they face major threats from climate change, ocean pollution, and other reasons. Using AI to monitor and safeguard these fragile ecosystems can help conservation efforts.

🔔 You can help with this: the Google project Calling in Our Corals offers the chance to participate in processing coral reef recordings to train the SurfPerch model.

SurfPerch is an AI model developed by Google Research and DeepMind to assist marine researchers in swiftly identifying reef recordings and better understanding coral reef ecosystems and their conditions.

How does this work?

🐠 The health of coral reefs is indicated by the number of marine inhabitants, which can be identified by the sounds they make.

🎵 Marine biologists have recorded hours of reef sounds from around the world. Processing them manually is time-consuming, but through crowdsourcing, Google created a fish sounds library and trained the SurfPerch algorithm. SurfPerch now quickly recognizes new reef sounds, simplifying data analysis.

This data helps scientists track ecosystem health, detect illegal fishing, and evaluate the success of reef restoration efforts.

🙂 We also took part in the experiment, listening to reefs in the Philippines and the sounds of fish, crabs, and shrimp.

How can I help?

The site provides a simple audio guide for identifying the sounds of various marine dwellers and distinguishing them from background noises such as motorboats.

After that, select a country, such as Indonesia or the Philippines, and get started:

1⃣ Listen to healthy coral reef sounds and compare them with those of unhealthy reefs.

2⃣ Train your ear on various ocean sound types.

3⃣ Click when you hear a fish sound.

Sources: Experiments with Google, TechCrunch

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