AI to the rescue for Great Barrier Reef

Developed by the University of South Australia (UniSA) with input from Queensland and Victorian scientists, the platform will absorb data from photographs, videos, satellite images, and marine sensors. Machine learning and AI will be used to interrogate the data, providing information to a central dashboard for real-time monitoring of the world’s coral reefs. 

The UNESCO World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef (GBR) – the world’s best known reef and one of Australia’s most heralded ecological and tourism sites - has been decimated by severe bleaching events since 2016, exacerbated by ongoing crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks and coastal development. Worldwide, 75 per cent of reefs experiencing bleaching-level heat stress in the past two years, driven primarily by the climate crisis and its warming effect on the oceans.

The technology will bring together datasets from organisations like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL) and Australia’s CSIRO. According to the researchers, having a centralised platform that can provide environmental scientists with real-time predictions could be an important tool in the fight to stall the degradation of the world’s reefs.