The Future of AI-Powered Coral Reef Restoration
Coral reefs are an extremely biodiverse ecosystem and represent one of the Earth's most vulnerable habitats. One new artificial intelligence tool could provide some saving grace for these underwater habitats.
Dr. Taryn Foster heads up Coral Maker, which restores coral reefs by growing small coral plants in nurseries before transplanting them onto depleted reefs. This is a labor-intensive and expensive process.
AI-Powered Robots
The ReefSound project, being developed by students from the Singapore University of Technology and Design, could potentially save marine ecosystems around the globe from plastic pollution. This portable, battery-operated robot detects coral fragments without disturbing sensitive habitat by taking multiple images analyzing health metrics and then feeding the information into an algorithm that provides feedback on the condition of the reef.
AI-predictive models would allow real-time decision making when implementing conservation efforts, acting quickly when threats pose a level of urgency, mapping vulnerable areas accurately and rapidly. Moreover, this AI could assist all relevant stakeholders in the sea to manage and conserve marine resources for future generations.
Dr. Foster and colleagues want to ramp up their attempts to plant hundreds of hectares of coral reefs every year using AI-powered robot tools. The Coral Maker startup, partnering with engineering software firm Autodesk, designed an AI-assisted cobot system that automates many repetitive tasks of coral propagation, allowing scientists to focus on the more complex ones.
AI-Power Monitoring
Coral reefs boast extraordinary biodiversity but suffer the fate of being one of the most endangered ecosystems in the world. It is vital to monitor their health to gain the requisite knowledge to protect this ecosystem; AI has huge potential in this regard, and researchers around the world are exploiting its potential in innumerable ways.
In one instance, a team of researchers is utilizing underwater sensors and cameras to detect signs of bleaching so fast that the particular reef's status can be evaluated, thus possibly protecting the reefs in the future.
Marine biologists can tap into AI technologies to perform the tedious and time-consuming tasks. Karlsson et al. (2022) describes the underwater robot design that allows for fast collection of coral samples for threat analysis compared to diving.
Another challenge being addressed is fast providing scientists the data they need in order to make informed conservation decisions by actually mapping coral reefs in 3D through images obtained with off-the-shelf cameras.
AI-Powered Data Collection
Coral reefs are complex ecosystems that require monitoring skills and methods. AI tools are to be used to navigate these challenging underwater domains and allow for fast collection of data. AI technologies may help researchers increase the success of coral nurseries and conservation efforts.
As it is, reef access is limited under the conditions and data collection relies mostly on scuba diving and visual survey techniques. Robotic technologies would greatly amplify data collection rates and enable long-term monitoring (Dunbabin et al., 2023). AI image processing algorithms can also obtain important information on ecological and habitat structure using visual 3D reconstruction and classification techniques.
Other ways of collecting data include acoustic monitoring, environmental DNA analysis, and surveys done by citizen scientists. Acoustic monitoring operationalizes underwater microphones to record sounds, for instance, of shrimps snapping while they forage or parrotfish nibbling on coral polyps. These audio files collected during the recordings can later be analyzed to ascertain presence/density of these species and health condition of the reef such as bleaching or disease (Zamani et al., 2022).
While Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is sought by organizations for collecting and analyzing customer data, customers are increasingly skeptical. In a recent survey, 81% of Americans expressed a fear of companies using their personal information against them-and many choose to avoid purchasing products powered by AI.
AI-Powered Decision-Making
AI can rapidly manage large data sets and identify patterns. In operational decision-making, AI can also act quickly and accurately, learning from the outcome of prior decisions.
AI-enabled decision-making systems are making a name for themselves in a variety of different fields-from healthcare to finance and customer service. In the meantime, they are streamlining processes for businesses on one hand while making the businesses more customer-centric and optimizing further out supply chains, to mitigate risks.
Solving problems regarding environmental concerns such as saving coral reefs often requires multidisciplinary approaches. Their very complexity draws from the interactions among the fields of biology, chemistry, physics, engineering, and even economics and politics. In such applications, AI-supported decision-making will prove a very powerful tool in a responsible manner.
