Although they cover over 70% of our planet, only 0.6% of the world oceans are protected. It is estimated that we only know about 1 in 10 species in the ocean, which is unsurprising given that 90% of the ocean is more than half a mile deep and still remains largely unexplored. How might technology help us discover, understand and protect the vulnerable ecosystems below the waterline?
Marine Conservation is a fast-growing group in the WILDLABS community, capturing a wide variety of tech expertise within its member base, including those working with bioacoustic gear and hydrophones, AUVs and drones, sensors, machine learning, and more. By bringing together WILDLABS members from so many areas of conservation tech, the Marine Conservation group is the perfect place to collaborate on big, complex issues like marine biodiversity monitoring, coral reef health, plastic pollution, and sustainability.
The Marine Conservation group forum is also your place to chat about and solve the challenges unique to using conservation technology in marine environments. Whether you're struggling with deep-sea connectivity or salt water impacting gear longevity, or looking for remote solutions for long-term reef monitoring or biologging data collection, this group wants to help you explore the possibilities!
Check out some of the key marine conservation tech resources, conversations, and virtual events from across the WILDLABS platform:
Tutorials and Talks to Watch on Demand:
- Virtual Meetups: Developing cost-effective, open-source marine megafauna tracking, Jake Levenson
- Tech Tutors: How do I use open source remote sensing data to monitor fishing?, Max Schofield
- Virtual Meetups: eDNA for Aquatic Biodiversity, Alice Valentini
Case Studies, Tools, Research, and News:
- Southern Right Whales & Genome and Satellite Technology, Emma Carroll | eDNA & genomics, satellite data, biodiversity monitoring, climate change
- Building Experts Into AI, Whale Seeker | Machine learning, marine conservation, AI ethics
- Using AIS Data to Investigate the World’s Fishing Ports, Max Schofield | Remote sensing, data visualisation, fishing monitoring
- Small-scale fisheries and tech resources, Dan Steadman | Fishery monitoring, webinars, best practices
- Press Release: BAS Giant Iceberg Mission, British Antarctic Survey | Climate change, AUVs, remote sensing
- Case Study: Thermal imaging, drones, and loggerhead sea turtles, Megan Ossmann | FLIR, Duo Pro R camera, drones
- eDNA sampling to detect invasive snails in shipping ballast water, Gavin Shelton | Invasive species, eDNA, shipping
- Sustainable Fishing Challenges: Fish Catch Monitoring, Dan Steadman | Biologging, sensors, fishing monitoring
Conversations and Questions:
- Satellite tags for marine turtle recommendations | Alasdair Davies
- Calling all hydrophone users! | Team Open Acoustic Devices
- How difficult is it to build a buoy and constrain it in place? | Lindy Knowles
- Methods to detect Derelict Fishing Gear | Nandini Mehrotra
- Drone Mapping for Algal Blooms? | Harold Tay
- Minimising habitat impact of trawling gear | Dan Steadman
- Estimating carbon from 3d models of mangroves | Mark Brown
- Can we detect gillnets in turbid water? | Aurélie Shapiro
- New low cost DIY temperature loggers for reef monitoring | Harold Tay
- Machine learning to detect fish bomb blasts | Jamie Macaulay
Header Image: Emma Vogel
PhD student from Brazil. Currently I am using satellite transmitters and biologgers to study the behavior of the sei whale
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Conservation Biologist
- 2 Resources
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- @team
- | team
Make the stories that make this life worth living.
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Petnerup
Animal tech startup founder
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- @Mumonkan
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Conservation X Labs & Wild Me
Software Engineer for Wildlife Conservation
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- @aranFish
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CTO at SafetyNet Technologies
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- @mikew
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I’m a biogeographer rooted in deep ecology.
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Wildlife Drones
Wildlife Drones has developed the world’s most innovative radio animal-tracking system using drones so you can track your radio-tagged animals like never before.
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- @lobrien
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Low K-Shot Animal Reidentification pipelines
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Article
Nature Tech for Biodiversity Sector Map launched!
Carly Batist and 1 more
Conservation International is proud to announce the launch of the Nature Tech for Biodiversity Sector Map, developed in partnership with the Nature Tech Collective!
1 April 2025
Article
Call for nominations for the Tusk Conservation Awards 2025
20 March 2025
Funding
Arctic Community Wildlife Grants Program
World Wide Fund for Nature/ World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
WWF's Arctic Community Wildlife Grants program supports conservation, stewardship, and research initiatives that focus on coastal Arctic ecology, community sustainability, and priority Arctic wildlife, including polar...
7 March 2025
Article
Advancing Hierarchical Classification of Ocean Life
Lilli Wakinekona Carlsen
Join the FathomNet Kaggle Competition to show us how you would develop a model that can accurately classify varying taxonomic ranks!
4 March 2025
Careers
Customer Support and Marketing Specialist
Thomas Gray
We are hiring for a customer support / marketing specialist.
20 February 2025
Link
GhostNetZero.ai
Alex Rood
Using advanced AI technology, GhostNetZero.ai analyzes the collected sonar data to identify specific locations where ghost nets are likely to be found. This enables the recovery of these abandoned nets and helps to rid...
13 February 2025
Funding
Osa Conservation is launching our inaugural cohort of the ‘Susan Wojcicki Research Fellowship’ for 2025, worth up to $15,000 per awardee (award value dependent on project length and number of awards given each year)....
10 February 2025
Careers
New PhD - Drones, seaweeds & climate change
Chris Yesson
A PhD opportunity for anyone interested in coastal drone surveys, seaweeds, climate change and the chance to do a whole bunch of different computer modelling including AI-driven species distribution modelling to assess...
30 December 2024
Funding
The International Climate Initiative opened its Thematic priorities call for proposals. Besides on the development of finance and business models, the call addresses several marine conservation topics.
25 November 2024
Article
FathomVerse: Gaming for the Good of the Ocean
Lilli Wakinekona Carlsen
Dive into meaningful play with FathomVerse!
20 November 2024
Careers
Arctic Acoustic Technician
Alex Rood
WCS iseeking candidates for an acoustic technician position to support the Western Arctic Program’s ongoing work using passive acoustic monitoring to study marine mammals, fish, and underwater noise in the Canadian...
19 November 2024
Funding
Ocean Exploration and Discovery Request for Proposals
Frank van der Most
The Schmidt Ocean Institute (SOI) and the National Geographic Society have a joint call for "early career scientists who can lead ship-based research, technology, or conservation projects aboard SOI’s Falkor (too)"
13 October 2024
June 2025
October 2025
event
Lacey Hughey and 3 more
March 2024
December 2023
| Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| @Andrew_Hill I wonder if you could let us know more about the time keeping difference btw the regular AudioMoth and the HydroMoth (which is said to do better)? |
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Acoustics, Marine Conservation | 2 years 9 months ago | |
| Hello,The hydrophone_survey_results.pdf file is not opening. Is the link still working? I would be keen to see it. Thank you. |
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Marine Conservation | 2 years 10 months ago | |
| If you're looking to identify collaborators - probably lots of organizations listed in the Conservation Tech Directory would be interested (quick prelim search yields orgs like... |
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Marine Conservation, Open Source Solutions | 2 years 11 months ago | |
| Fascinating article, combining machine learning and acoustical signals to correlate coral reef health.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science... |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Marine Conservation | 2 years 11 months ago | |
| Hi Wildlabbers, This week's Tech Tutor Jamie MacAulay is talking about how to use and analyze large acoustic data using... |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Marine Conservation | 3 years 7 months ago | |
| Would certainly be cool to see a tutorial on this! Looking forward to that! |
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Marine Conservation, Sensors | 3 years 8 months ago | |
| Materials Engineer at Running Tide - https://jobs.lever.co/runningtide/f1f38773-1369-4a5c-a6ae-ce952a10ad3c Electrical Engineer at... |
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Marine Conservation | 3 years 9 months ago | |
| Hi Mauman. Did you have a specific application in mind? There are quite a few IoT systems but they all need to be pieced together. If there's a specific application... |
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Marine Conservation | 3 years 11 months ago | |
| "On a side note, I've discovered it's really hard to say "I'm interested in small buoys" without creating awkward silence in a room. "... |
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Marine Conservation | 4 years 4 months ago | |
| Hi Wildlabbers, Welcome back to Tech Tutors for season 2! This season's first episode featured Oceanmind's... |
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Marine Conservation, Geospatial, Sustainable Fishing Challenges | 4 years 5 months ago | |
| Hi @teds@vulcan.com and all, Please check out https://iot.wildbook.org Cloud-based data management and computer vision for photo ID using the WIldbook platform. We... |
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Marine Conservation | 4 years 6 months ago | |
| Hi Akiba, I made a mistake, I did manage to find some +/-0.05 degC thermistors for USD4 on Digikey, so the USD9 figure can be feasible in low quantitites. I actually... |
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Marine Conservation | 4 years 6 months ago |
