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
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- @emilyhuston
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Hi! I am currently pursuing a masters degree in wildlife conservation and management, and I am looking to gain more information and form connections with people who are interested in all the same things :)
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- 6 Groups
- @reny.tyson.moore
- | She/Her/Hers
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Currently a data scientist in industry working on mechanistic models of risk, previously worked on modeling coral reefs. I am interested in the potential for emerging technologies and new ideas to help us solve environmental crises.
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- @SteveL
- | He/him
I am an ecologist developing low-cost tools to support conservation of marine resources
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- 3 Discussions
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Fauna & Flora
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- 3 Discussions
- 10 Groups
- @claumemo
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- @GrunCrow
- | She/They
Computer Scientist
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Background in sustainable development + data science, AI for bioacoustics (BSc Cooperation and Development, Italy; MSc data science, Sweden)
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- @Stelios
- | he/him
I am a Software Developer living in Berlin, Germany. Previously studied Informatics (BSc) and Data Science (MSc) in Athens, Greece.
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I have mixed experiences from 20+ years doing SATCOM and other IT roles with the US Army. I also have 4 years experience working in the marine environment doing forage fish spawning research. My goal is to advance my abilities in AI to bring into the realm of wildlife research.
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Link
New Paper: Identification of fish sounds
Ellie Warren
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....
5 May 2023
Careers
Data Scientist (Geospatial), Global Fishing Watch
Global Fishing Watch
Global Fishing Watch are looking for a data scientist to join the Research and Innovation team. Help us tackle geospatial data fusion problems to produce the most complete picture of human activity at sea.
19 April 2023
Article
HydroMoth GroupGets Campaign is Open
Ellie Warren
If you've been waiting to try a HydroMoth, join the GroupGets campaign before limited supplies run out
17 April 2023
Careers
Office & Warehouse Exec
SafetyNet Technologies
We create Precision Fishing technology to help commercial fishermen catch their target species more consistently & sustainably.
5 April 2023
Link
The rush to increase deep sea mining
Ellie Warren
This new article about the future of deep-sea mining caught my eye, because it's a topic we'd hope to cover in our upcoming sustainability series. It's a subject we'd still like to highlight on WILDLABS as most tech...
16 March 2023
Careers
Skylight | LATAM & Caribbean Partner Relationship Manager
Jordan Steward
Skylight is looking for someone who loves our ocean, has a deep interest in apply cutting-edge tech to protect it, is proficient in English and Spanish, and has a background in partnership building and training.
10 March 2023
Article
Zooplankton Prosome and Lipid Sac Segmentation
Andrzej Białaś
A machine learning-based solution that can segment the Prosomes and Lipid sacs with sufficient accuracy helps to recognize the ecological plasticity of key Arctic copepods. It allows scientists to learn more about the...
15 February 2023
Careers
Research Associate - Machine Learning (Underwater Sound)
Stephanie O'Donnell
You will develop and apply novel approaches and machine learning techniques for the detection, classification and identification of marine fauna from passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) validated with paired visual...
10 February 2023
Careers
Engineering Manager, Skylight
Allen Institute for AI
On the AST Skylight team, you will work with talented engineers, domain experts, and product managers to uncover illegal fishing by developing the tools that help countries around the globe combat this problem.
10 February 2023
Careers
Technical Officer – IMOS Animal Tracking Facility
Stephanie O'Donnell
IMOS Animal Tracking Facility is hiring a Technical Officer to assist with the preparation, deployment and maintenance of acoustic receivers to monitor movements of tagged animals & continue to develop operational...
7 February 2023
Here's a fascinating new case study on Ocean Tracking Network's work with underwater gliders to track tagged marine species like crabs. If you're interested in biologging, marine tech, or fisheries' tech usage, take a...
13 January 2023
Link
An online portal to help governments, researchers, conservation advocates & others monitor activity throughout the world’s marine environment, as well as design & implement protected areas. The Marine Manager is...
13 January 2023
June 2025
October 2025
event
Lacey Hughey and 3 more
September 2024
event
Vanesa Reyes
| Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Are you working on a solution that protects, restores and supports the ocean and its blue economy? Do you need networks, expertise, talent... |
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Marine Conservation | 4 years 7 months ago | |
| Thanks so much for this Kortney! |
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Marine Conservation | 4 years 9 months ago | |
| Is this offer still open |
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Camera Traps, Marine Conservation | 5 years ago | |
| Thanks Kate - that's really helpful. The company in question are investors in an emerging high-end aquaculture venture and I assume their interest is around utilising... |
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Marine Conservation | 5 years 2 months ago | |
| Hi everyone! I'm working on a project to detect and then predict where to find Derelict Fishing Gear in Coastal Waters along a 160km... |
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Marine Conservation | 5 years 11 months ago | |
| Hi Don, I agree, it's very intriguing. I think they're using the Remora. It looks like a solar powered GPS tracker. I couldn't find much more... |
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Marine Conservation, Latin America Community | 6 years 3 months ago | |
| ATLAN Space recently announced a pilot launch that will use autonomous drones and computer vision to report illegal fishing in the Seychelles islands. This article gives... |
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Marine Conservation | 6 years 8 months ago | |
| Recently the National Whistleblower Center has worked on analyzing the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships ("APPS"), which... |
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Marine Conservation | 6 years 10 months ago | |
| I wanted to post a resource for all who may be interested. The National Whistleblower Center is a non-partisan, nonprofit organization that... |
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Marine Conservation | 6 years 10 months ago | |
| The Okinawa Prefectural Government recently released this summary report on the symposium on Henoko-Oura Bay, in Okinawa Japan, organized... |
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Marine Conservation | 6 years 10 months ago | |
| The top 20 submissions are open for public voting through Oct. 19, so you can go test out what people built. |
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Marine Conservation | 7 years 7 months ago | |
| Speaking of data interpretation, creating an IUU risk score was the challenge for this team from the Data Science for Social Good summer fellows program. I saw a presentation on... |
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Marine Conservation | 7 years 8 months ago |
Computer Vision Competitions on Natural-World datasets
5 April 2023 4:26pm
Tools & Experiences with Sea Turtle Monitoring
17 March 2023 1:00pm
21 March 2023 1:00pm
Hey Amelia, thanks for reaching out and sorry for my late feedback. I am sharing my address: mtalii@baharihai.org for more conversation about this. we can schedule an online call and also introduce the teams when ready. Thanks
30 March 2023 6:00pm
In 2020, I made a survey of sea turtle research databases and an outline for a design of the most commonly required features. At that time, building such a database seemed too risky for me, but if you are interested, please do drop me a line.
After I published the list, I also found out about Torsooi
The rush to increase deep sea mining
16 March 2023 9:19pm
Opinion | A Rush to Mine the Deep Sea Is Underway. It Must Be Stopped. - The New York Times
A scramble to mine the deep sea could soon commence. And once it begins, there will be little hope of reining it in.
•
15 Mar 2023
Skylight | LATAM & Caribbean Partner Relationship Manager
10 March 2023 5:21pm
Underwater Fish Datasets from the Mediterranean
15 August 2022 11:45pm
26 September 2022 9:32pm
Not sure if audio data would be of any use to you, but if so FishSounds has some - I just tried their search function and there is a location tag for 'Mediterranean & Black Sea'.
You might try reaching out to the folks at Name that Fish, Innovasea, or perhaps an entity on the Fisheries Tech list would have Mediterranean stuff?
21 October 2022 7:52am
Hi,
If this is still relevant, you can try reaching out to the Belmaker lab, they do BRUV surveys in the eastern Mediterranean and have hours of video, some of it I believe is annotated. Particularly, Shahar might be helpful, he's the PhD student running point on the project.
2 March 2023 2:03pm
We have made available our underwater videos on YouTube as a playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnhVZKKy8WkZKriCIV6r7upWhHNVrU_7L
It's about 1.113 short video clips with annotation and each is linked to the corresponding www.iNaturalist.org observations. The iNaturalist.org observations are research quality and have been uploaded to GBIF.org. The observations have been made between 2014 and 2022 around the Ionian Islands (Greece).
If you would need the original videos please contact me.
Zooplankton Prosome and Lipid Sac Segmentation
15 February 2023 1:44pm
Catch up with The Variety Hour: February 2023
14 February 2023 6:26pm
How do I get started with mobile phones in sea turtle monitoring?
13 February 2023 10:01am
Research Associate - Machine Learning (Underwater Sound)
10 February 2023 10:19am
Engineering Manager, Skylight
10 February 2023 10:14am
Technical Officer – IMOS Animal Tracking Facility
7 February 2023 12:30pm
International Congress for Conservation Biology
16 January 2023 2:53pm
Case Study on Monitoring Aquatic Species with Gliders and Biologging Gear
13 January 2023 3:51am
Global Fishing Watch's Marine Manager Raises the Bar on Ocean Monitoring
13 January 2023 12:09am
With New Global Accessibility and Data Features, Marine Manager Raises the Bar on Ocean Monitoring - Global Fishing Watch
Latest release of online tool will help more people monitor and manage greater expanses of the seas.
Job: Software Engineer at Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory
19 December 2022 7:59pm
Crowdfunding Aerial Baseline Study of Ghost Gear in Koh Phangan, Thailand
18 December 2022 11:06am
Using drones to find ghost gear in Koh Phangan, Thailand & study the impacts on marine megafauna | Experiment
crowdfunding science research funding crowdsourcing experiment openaccess
Upcoming PAM & R Ocean Science Courses
16 December 2022 3:27pm
Join NASA’s harmful algal bloom ML challenge and win prizes!
15 December 2022 7:56pm
ONLINE TRAINING: Project Planning for Wildlife Conservation
15 December 2022 7:11pm
New: Satellites for Biodiversity Award
5 December 2022 2:08pm
Image datasets of Indo-Pacific fish species
19 November 2022 6:57pm
Underwater Camera Trap Video Confirms 1,100-Mile (1800-km) Swim of Tagged Great White Shark
25 October 2022 10:20am
Shark Lab Data Analyst
24 October 2022 7:12pm
New paper: Benthic animal-borne sensors & citizen science combine to validate ocean modelling
10 October 2022 4:15pm
Benthic animal-borne sensors and citizen science combine to validate ocean modelling | Scientific Reports
Developments in animal electronic tagging and tracking have transformed the field of movement ecology, but interest is also growing in the contributions of tagged animals to oceanography. Animal-borne sensors can address data gaps, improve ocean model skill and support model validation, but previous studies in this area have focused almost exclusively on satellite-telemetered seabirds and seals. Here, for the first time, we develop the use of benthic species as animal oceanographers by combining archival (depth and temperature) data from animal-borne tags, passive acoustic telemetry and citizen-science mark-recapture records from 2016–17 for the Critically Endangered flapper skate (Dipturus intermedius) in Scotland. By comparing temperature observations to predictions from the West Scotland Coastal Ocean Modelling System, we quantify model skill and empirically validate an independent model update. The results from bottom-temperature and temperature-depth profile validation (5,324 observations) fill a key data gap in Scotland. For predictions in 2016, we identified a consistent warm bias (mean = 0.53 °C) but a subsequent model update reduced bias by an estimated 109% and improved model skill. This study uniquely demonstrates the use of benthic animal-borne sensors and citizen-science data for ocean model validation, broadening the range of animal oceanographers in aquatic environments.
Long-term tracking of whale feeding behavior via satellite now possible with new tag
4 October 2022 5:20pm
Multi-day workshop: Machine Learning Advances for Marine Acoustics & Imagery Data
4 October 2022 5:20pm
Conservation leadership: Learning
4 October 2022 2:29pm
ONLINE COURSE: Monitoring and Evaluation for Wildlife Conservation
4 October 2022 2:04pm
ONLINE COURSE: Project Management for Wildlife Conservation
4 October 2022 2:00pm
17 March 2023 4:23pm
Great webinar! I am working with the Dominica Sea Turtle Conservation Organization and would love to get in touch about the apps Mtalii and his team use for collecting their data. We're looking to streamline our process and make it easier for our volunteers to help capture vital nesting and sighting data on Dominica. Hoping to connect with Mtalii so we can implement some of the awesome apps they've been using for their turtle research. Feel free to message me! Thanks!