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Marine Conservation / Feed

Bringing together many of our community's tech types like bioacoustics, biologging, drones, remote sensing, machine learning, and more, the Marine Conservation group is a meeting point to begin innovative collaborations and answer difficult questions.

discussion

Project Spotlight: Monitoring tropical freshwater fish in Kakadu National Park with drones, underwater cameras and AI

Stephanie O'Donnell

12 July 2023 3:40pm

This was such a fantastic presentation in our June Variety Hour show. Andrew and his team are exploring applications of a whole range of technologies, anda are looking to share...

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Stephanie O'Donnell

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!

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discussion

Need for statisticians in conservation?

Lev Birman

6 July 2023 8:23pm

Hello, WildLabs community!I'm currently a Ph.D. student in statistical physics at Virginia Tech, but I am contemplating a shift to a pure and applied statistics Master's program...

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Carly Batist

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   

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careers

Fisheries Analyst (Pacific) 

Global Fishing Watch

15 June 2023 12:15pm

With a focus on using and combining vessel tracking data, other satellite derived datasets and big data methods and AI generated estimates related to vessel identity and activity, the Fisheries Analyist with Global...

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Link

Sofar increases battery life of montioring buoys with sleep setting

Ellie Warren

13 June 2023 12:08am

This article covers how Sofar's Spotter monitoring buoys can collect data for longer periods of time by improving battery life. According to this article, "GPS Sleep turns off Spotter’s GPS sensor during sampling dwell periods, increasing its battery life by at least 25% and...

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https://www.sofarocean.com/posts/gps-sleep-spotter?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=sp_gps_0612
Link

Celebrating World Oceans Day: Revitalizing the marine ecosystem with technology-driven engineered reefs to accelerate CO2 capture

Esther Githinji

9 June 2023 10:14am

As we celebrate World Oceans Day this month, we are reminded that addressing climate change will take more than any one organization. It will require companies, governments, NGOs and communities, all working together, with the aid of technology, to improve the efficiencies of...

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Think | IBM

Experience an integrated media property for tech workers—latest news, explainers and market insights to help stay ahead of the curve.

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UNEP Executive Director - Inger Andersen's take on why African nations have the power & tools to re-design a plastic pollution-free future

Esther Githinji

5 June 2023 1:28pm

Inger Andersen, the Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) explains how the innovative approaches towards curbing plastic pollution witnessed across African nations can help in pivoting to a plastics-free future through pioneering innovative manufacturing,...

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Link

Register your #WorldEnvironmentDay Event or Activity and Share it with the World

Esther Githinji

5 June 2023 1:07pm

It's World Environment Day! This year the focus is on solutions to plastic pollution under the campaign #BeatPlasticPollution. How are you getting involved to solve plastic pollution using conservation technology?

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Link

New Paper: Identification of fish sounds

Ellie Warren

5 May 2023 12:40am

Xavier Mouy recently shared this new bioacoustics paper on Twitter. This research focuses on identifying fish sounds in relation to specific species through the use of three underwater portable audio-video platforms. The proposed array designs successfully identified fish sounds...

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https://t.co/dDpXPfokjH
discussion

Field testing of a radio telemetry system to be deployed in the sea.

Hari

24 January 2023 6:52am

Hello everyoneWhat kind of tests do you put aquatic tags through to get them field ready? Currently, we are testing a radio telemetry system. We are leaving the tags at 20...

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Akiba

21 March 2023 8:52am

Oh, great link! Been doing marine projects recently and a big headache is protecting submerged electronics. I've kind of heard of many of those techniques, but great to see them collected all in one place and with first hand experienced commentary regarding them. 

Gwen Harris

12 April 2023 2:32pm

Not sure exactly how your telemetry will be deployed, but if it's going to be attached to an animal in a relatively non-invasive way, you might check with zoos or aquariums that have similar species. 

I worked in that industry for a long time and we tested telemetry for seals, sea lions, polar bears and elephants. There might have been more, but that's all I can think of off the top of my head. This can help improve attachment methods and test how tough the animals will be on the equipment. 

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