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
No showcases have been added to this group yet.
- @rowan
- | they / them
Octophin Digital
Jack of all Trades. I've been a zoo keeper, a conservation geneticist and a web developer who specialises in conservation projects and orgs.
- 1 Resources
- 5 Discussions
- 15 Groups
Deep Voice Foundation
I'm the CEO of Deep Voice, an NGO aims to use AI to ease the burden of analysis on acoustic data in marine conservation
- 0 Resources
- 5 Discussions
- 4 Groups
- @KB
- | she/her
Wildlife ecologist specializing in animal movement modeling and habitat selection with a strong interest in conservation policy and management decisions.
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 17 Groups
- @trish_lai
- | she/her
UCD SVM Student
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 11 Groups
Data Scientist
- 0 Resources
- 8 Discussions
- 12 Groups
- @StephODonnell
- | She / Her
- 196 Resources
- 676 Discussions
- 31 Groups
Associate Wildlife Biologist M.S. Student
- 2 Resources
- 19 Discussions
- 7 Groups
I am a conservation technology advisor with New Zealand's Department of Conservation. I have experience in developing remote monitoring tech, sensors, remote comms and data management.
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 15 Groups
- @Phil_HWS
- | Virtual Fencing
Innovations with Wildlife Fencing to mitigate Human Wildlife Conflict
- 0 Resources
- 4 Discussions
- 2 Groups
Technical Specialist at FFI: loves data management, maps, remote sensing & GIS for conservation
- 2 Resources
- 2 Discussions
- 9 Groups
- @sam.cope.king
- | she/her
ProtectedSeas
Marine Monitor (M2) Senior Scientist
- 0 Resources
- 1 Discussions
- 5 Groups
- @roxirisa
- | roxi
Biologist I consider myself a data scientist with a passion for nature and with an extensive experience in species distribution modeling, handling large data sets from different sources such as gbif, eBird, xeno-canto, Worldclim, Terraclimate, ocean color e NASA among others. But
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 9 Groups
Article
Hundreds of tons of the toxic chemical have likely littered the ocean floor near Santa Catalina Island for decades.
4 June 2022
Article
"A drone emitting orca sounds will be used in attempt to guide the animal, whose health is fast deteriorating"
1 June 2022
October 2025
event
Lacey Hughey and 3 more
March 2026
September 2024
event
Vanesa Reyes
event
Vanesa Reyes
| Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, together with The Prince of Wales’s International Sustainability Unit, have announced the launch of... |
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Marine Conservation | 8 years 2 months ago | |
| Hello all! There is an upcoming seminar on turtles in Yonkers, NY on Saturday, March 25th. If you care about turtles, you... |
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Marine Conservation | 8 years 5 months ago | |
| We are starting to deploy buoys to demarcate no entry, no-take zones in a recently declared Marine Fisheries Management Area in Cambodia,... |
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Marine Conservation | 8 years 8 months ago | |
| Hi Steph, Sorry for the late reply as I have other commitments currently. In our case, we are using facial scales pattern because we found out that each individual... |
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Marine Conservation | 8 years 10 months ago | |
| This news made me so happy this morning.. a fish chorus, what a delightful thought! And you can even listen to it! |
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Marine Conservation | 8 years 10 months ago | |
| The Niskin bottle, a seemingly simple tube designed to take water samples at discrete depths, is one of the most important tools of... |
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Marine Conservation | 9 years 1 month ago | |
| The Coral Trait Database houses physiological, morphological, ecological, phylogenetic and biogeographic trait information with the... |
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Marine Conservation | 9 years 3 months ago | |
| Algae technology is central to innovation to conserve biodiversity against the threats of climate change. I am part of a global scientific group called Ocean Foresters.... |
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Marine Conservation | 9 years 3 months ago | |
| An upcoming NOAA webinar might be of interest to this group: Ocean Exploration & MPAs: Priorities, Technological... |
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Marine Conservation | 9 years 4 months ago | |
| Hi John, Have you checked out Whale Alert? There may be some scope for applying/adapting the same technology for averting manatee strikes by applying it to the... |
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Marine Conservation | 9 years 4 months ago | |
| A new article argues that aesthically pleasing reefs are healthy reefs: 'This shows that mathematical approaches designed to assess... |
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Marine Conservation | 9 years 8 months ago |
ICOTEQ launch TAGRANGER® system of products
23 November 2023 1:25pm
AWMS Conference 2023
PhD Opportunity - Marine Bioacoustics and Behaviour Lab
16 November 2023 2:13pm
Researching Seagrass Habitats Along the Kenyan Coast
14 November 2023 6:47pm
Insight; a secure online platform designed for sharing experiences of conservation tool use.
7 November 2023 1:01pm
Correspondence among multiple methods provides confidence when measuring marine protected area effects for species and assemblages
20 October 2023 12:28pm
Marine Flyways - Seabird Tracking Database
20 October 2023 12:23pm
Marine Flyways - Seabird Tracking Database
Marine flyways are the major routes migratory seabirds regularly use to travel between their breeding and non-breeding areas.
Catch up with The Variety Hour: October 2023
19 October 2023 11:59am
Monitoring and Evaluation for Wildlife Conservation
18 October 2023 2:22pm
What Biologgers are you using?
30 August 2023 10:44am
7 September 2023 10:57am
Interesting. interesting. I'm probably jumping the gun here but I'm curious - are you getting any trends on types of biologgers or specific manufacturers people are talking about? Or is everyone using different tags/manufacturers?
7 September 2023 11:00am
Ah! It's great to find out about your tags - great video, thanks for sharing. We'd love to hear from some of your users about their experiences with your tags! Would you be able to share the poll with your user community?
12 October 2023 12:24pm
Hey Stephanie,
Thanks a lot! Sorry I missed your message but of course I can ask our users about their experience with sensors!
GOSH Community Call: Open Hardware for Marine Science Applications
10 October 2023 12:33pm
GEO BON Monitoring Biodiversity for Action
5 October 2023 3:10pm
🚀 New Grant: 'Satellites for Biodiversity Award' Round 2
2 October 2023 1:50pm
IUCN and AI2 to provide AI technology at no cost to fast-track implementation of newly signed UN High Seas Treaty
22 September 2023 9:54am
Senior Spatial Ecologist
24 August 2023 11:22pm
Reviewing Now: Animal Telemetry Postdoctoral Fellowship
24 August 2023 11:09pm
#Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge: Judges' Panel Honorees
4 August 2023 10:00am
Mapping seagrass with drones and AI
4 August 2023 2:00am
Mapping seagrass with machine learning and drones - GeoNadir
Drone mapping combined with machine learning is providing a new level of detail for mapping seagrass extent on the Great Barrier Reef.
#Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge: Community Choice Honorees
3 August 2023 10:00am
360 Camera for Marine Monitoring
25 July 2023 8:54am
28 July 2023 7:43pm
Hi Sol,
For my research on fish, I had to put together a low-cost camera that could record video for several weeks. Here is the design I came up with
At the time of the paper, I was able to record video for ~12 hours a day at 10 fps and for up to 14 days. With new SD cards now, it is pushed to 21 days. It costs about 600 USD if you build it yourself. If you don't want to make it yourself, there is a company selling it now, but it is much more expensive. The FOV is 110 degrees, so not the 360 that you need, but I think there are ways to make it work (e.g. with the servo motor).
Happy to chat if you decide to go this route and/or want to brainstorm ideas.
Cheers,
Xavier
3 August 2023 2:32am
Hi Xavier, this is fantastic! Thanks for sharing, the time frame is really impressive and really in line with what we're looking for. I'll send you a message.
Cheers,
Sol
3 August 2023 3:19am
I agree, this would be great for canopy work!
Stakeholder Engagement for Wildlife Conservation
13 July 2023 4:57pm
Grant Writing for Wildlife Conservation
13 July 2023 4:43pm
5 July 2024 3:19pm
Pinniped Time-lapse Camera Surveys in the Southern Chesapeake Bay and Eastern Shore 2019-2022
13 July 2023 2:46pm
WOPAM Day (World Oceans Passive Acoustic Monitoring Day)
12 July 2023 4:04pm
Request: Public datasets and models for marine videos (with fish looking fishy-ish)
12 July 2023 3:58pm
Project Spotlight: Monitoring tropical freshwater fish in Kakadu National Park with drones, underwater cameras and AI
12 July 2023 3:40pm
12 July 2023 3:58pm
During Andrew's talk, @dmorris put out a call in the chat that might be relevant to folks catching up on the video, so I'll drop it here too:
Re: Andrew's fish work... part of the reason I got in touch with Andrew a few weeks ago is that I'm trying to keep track of public datasets and public models for marine video that have basically this gestalt (video where fish look fishy-ish). I think we're getting close to enough public data to train a general-purpose model that will work well across ecosystems. My running list of datasets is here:
https://lila.science/otherdatasets#images-marine-fish
Let me know if folks know of others!
There are also a grand total of two public models that I'm aware of that sort of fall into this category... one is Andrew's:
https://github.com/ajansenn/KakaduFishAI
The other is:
https://github.com/warplab/megafishdetector
If folks know of other publicly-available models, let me know about those too!
Need for statisticians in conservation?
6 July 2023 8:23pm
12 July 2023 2:59pm
Hi Lev,
We always need more hands in conservation, from whichever field! Engineering, computer science, AI/ML, ecology, environmental science, communications, statisticians, etc.
I would say that conservation tech is moving heavily towards deep learning for data processing/analysis just because of the sheer amount of data being generated now, so it's always helpful if you have experience in that. But we still need ecological modeling (species distribution models, occupancy models, accumulation curves, etc.) to translate processed data into actionable conservation insights! So experience here too is a plus.
If you'd like to get a better idea of the diversity of programs, people, and orgs in conservation tech as you navigate your journey, the Conservation Tech Directory may also be a helpful resource for you.
All the best,
Carly
Sustained Effort: Can We Improve the Sustainability of Marine Telemetry Tags?
12 July 2023 9:30am
Making Waves: Open Hardware as a Solution to Scaling up Bycatch Mitigation
9 July 2023 12:14pm
4 August 2024 4:38pm