[Coral-List] Artificial intelligence for coral restoration

[Gaétan Morand]

Dear Coral List,

We are starting a new project here in the Maldives. We've been transplanting genetically diverse coral on specially designed frames for approximately 18 years, recording monitoring pictures every 6 months.
Now we are beginning to use artificial intelligence (convolutional neural networks) to analyze these pictures. With more than 175,000 pictures of more than 500,000 individual colonies, we hope to gain significant insights on coral growth and best transplantation practices.

In parallel to that we are building an autonomous solar catamaran which will enable us to increase monitoring efforts of our frame collection, alongside naturally occuring colonies.
We will be happy to share our progress if it can help you with your research. We believe that the catamaran will become an invaluable aid to marine research, as similar devices could be used in a wide variety of applications : from basic surveys to advanced monitoring missions, for instance in the context of M.P.A. establishment and management.

Feel free to contact us if you have any feedback or questions. There is more general information about the program on our crowdfunding campaign (https://igg.me/at/ai4corals).

Simon Dixon & Gaetan Morand
Reefscapers Maldives
www.reefscapers.com