How a little robot could help save coral reefs

Research on coral reefs is often of low technology: diving bottles, waterproof paper, pencils, spreadsheets.

"Underwater, we are very practical," Emily Darling, marine ecologist and conservation scientist at the Wildlife Conservation Society told The Daily Beast. "But coral reef scientists also need to be at the forefront, and now, with all the threats to the reefs, we need to work faster and smarter."

Coral reefs are essential to the health of ocean ecosystems and provide food, storm protection and economic resources to humans. They are also extremely vulnerable: estimates suggest that they could disappear completely by 2050.

In the race to protect what they can, researchers like Darling are developing hardware and software technologies innovative ways to increase the careful work of biologists and conservationists.

Darling is working on a project with the Wildlife Conservation Society and the World Wildlife Fund to develop software that will help coral researchers collect, analyze and share their data more effectively. "We use the tools provided by Silicon Valley to meet the needs of scientists on the ground," she told the Daily Beast

Project Calls for Assistance in Marine Ecological Research Management, or MERMAID. It's an online and offline application that allows scientists to easily enter data that they would otherwise have to grab by hand in a spreadsheet. "This allows scientists, in one click, to download a clean sheet to use for analysis and reporting," said Darling.

It will also include a dashboard showing all the places in the world where scientists have entered data. Researchers-Programmers will have the opportunity to include only their contact information and no data, a summary of their data, even their complete data.

This range of options is key, to support and encourage collaboration in the race to save Darling said, "It also allows scientists around the world to track and identify interventions that work "It saves scientists time, so they can assess whether their conservation efforts are making a difference," she said. 19659002] Although MERMAID is customizable according to the needs of scientists, it is sufficiently standardized to facilitate large-scale analysis of several projects at once. exhaustive cleaning of the data, which can take years. "Myself and other colleagues conducted a global synthesis, and it took three years to compile the data," said Darling. "It's the time that the reefs do not have."

But with MERMAID, says Darling, all the data will already be in the same architecture, and with the same metadata.

At present, the testers in Fiji, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea pilot the software. Darling said that they are hoping to launch the beta version of MERMAID by the end of July.

"When we talk to potential users, people want it done right now, they want to have it ten years ago," she said.

On the Great Barrier Reef, scientists are building equipment to directly address the challenges facing the world's largest reef.

The RangerBot, for example, is a self-contained underwater robot designed to identify and kill the starfish's crown of thorns, which attack coral, and the monitor thinks coral bleaching and the quality of water. The robot has a powerful camera system, and uses artificial intelligence to navigate the complex environment of a coral reef, as well as to recognize and identify its targets. starfish.

"It is based on the latest approaches in robotics and artificial intelligence," writes Matthew Dunbabin, professor of electrical engineering and robotics at the Queensland University of Technology, who developed the robot in an email at the Daily Beast. Developed in partnership with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, the RangerBot project received $ 750,000 from the Google Impact Challenge Australia in 2016.

Using RangerBots to patrol the reef would be cheaper than human divers, and would cross the reef more quickly and effectively. The robots are currently being field tested in the Great Barrier Reef.

Although the system was originally built for specific tasks on the Great Barrier Reef, it can easily be adjusted to meet the needs of monitoring and management of other reef systems across the world. "The software architecture of the systems has been developed taking into account the expansion of tasks," said Mr. Dunbabin. "The system can be easily updated with new sensing modules, similar to how plugins work in applications, without having to change hardware."

Emma Prime, polymer researcher with Deakin in partnership with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation University, develops an ultrathin film to protect corals from the sun, avoiding light to reduce bleaching. The biodegradable film is 50,000 times thinner than a human hair and, when tested, reduces light penetration by 30%.

"The next phases will involve additional testing of the film in a range of environments, and on a growing scale, to validate the film's work as planned," Prime wrote in an email to The Daily Beast.

Dozens of other projects – ranging from the construction of three-dimensional digital reef models to catalog their decline to the use of low-voltage electrical currents to stimulate coral growth – are also under way. the world. "Coral reefs are in crisis, and we must have all the options available," said Darling.

In the end, conservation scientists are well aware of what is needed to save coral reefs: fish less, improve water quality, reduce carbon emissions that cause pollution. heat shock and ocean acidification, manage tourism. But that does not correspond to the new innovation. Darling said. "As long as the technology is in sync with the things we know, we should bring it to the table."