How Artificial Intelligence Can Help Us Conserve Our Planet

There are a lot of varying opinions in the world about artificial intelligence, shortened to AI, yet it seems when it comes to conservation and protecting the ocean, this new technology could be overwhelmingly positive. So far, AI is proving itself to be a brilliant technological solution to the biodiversity and climate crisis we are facing on both land and in the ocean; it has even recently been rated one of the top emerging technologies which could benefit conservation.

So what exactly is AI? Most simply, AI is a term which describes software systems which are capable of making decisions that would traditionally require a human brain. They also possess other skills such as voice recognition, visual perception and translation between languages. These systems are run on algorithms which help the computer imitate human intelligence to solve problems, analyse data, identify patterns and make educated guesses about the future. Before we get too deep into the technicalities, let’s just focus on what AI can do to help aid scientists with conservation.

Computer systems can be trained to identify which photos out of thousands contain rare species, allowing us to sift quickly through camera trap images and find the ones of interest. AI can also recognise specific animal calls out of thousands of hours of recordings from the field to help us determine the presence of a species. In short, AI can do the job of hundreds of people more quickly, more cheaply and more effectively, allowing millions of pieces of data to be sifted through and only the valuable pieces presented to researchers. This new technology is allowing us to collect information on our natural environment faster than ever before, an essential as the effects of humans are increasingly taking their toll on the planet as climate change, overfishing and plastic waste reshape the way many creatures live their lives. Using this new mass of data, researchers are able to design more effective conservation measures which hope to directly help our species and habitats which are most vulnerable. Let’s look at some of the ways AI has already helped us learn about and protect our incredible planet.

AI used in conservation can take several shapes and can be used for collecting data, analysing data and establishing patterns. Kaiko is a Japanese remotely operated underwater vehicle which can explore 11000m under the surface of the ocean! Already it has discovered several species which could be valuable in future medicines for a variety of illnesses. Crabster is also an underwater AI robot which has been developed in Korea. The robot has been designed to repair damaged underwater infrastructures such as oil and gas pipelines in conditions where the currents are too dangerous for divers to complete the work. The design is based on how real crabs move about in deep water to help it remain stable against powerful currents and waves.

Hypergiant is another company which has used AI to their advantage by incorporating it into their bio reactor which is used to grow algae. AI monitors the tanks that the algae grow in and accordingly adjusts conditions such as pH levels, light and temperature to maximise growth. This algae is excellent at absorbing carbon and is being used to help lower the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere which contribute to climate change.

Climate change is not the only issue being tackled though with multiple projects using AI to combat plastic pollution. For example, we have huge databases of photos which depict plastic pollution, whether they are taken by individuals and uploaded to an app or taken from satellites and show large garbage patches in the ocean. AI can quickly sort through these images and identify various types of plastic items in each one, collecting data on how many bottles, cigarette butts and crisp packets are present. This would take thousands of volunteer hours to do by human power alone and the data is already being used to target the sources of the most common types of littered plastic. AI robots are also slowly making their way around our planet collecting pieces of plastic trash, helping to eradicate plastic at both the start and end of its life.

NOAA have also taken advantage of AI to advance their knowledge of our marine world. In order to create marine protected areas to conserve species such as humpback whales, we must first know where they are and using the human eye to find migrating whales in our vast oceans is fairly tricky. However, humpbacks are famous for haunting songs which can travel hundreds of miles and over 14 years, NOAA have collected 190,000 hours of acoustic recordings of whale songs in remote locations. They taught AI systems how to recognise a whale song and now the software has amazingly listened to their entire dataset to pinpoint which Hawaiian islands the whales visit and to establish patterns in their location. AI has even found whales living at Kingsman reef, a site never before documented to inhabit humpbacks.

There are currently many other varied uses of AI in terrestrial-based conservation which could equally soon be used in our oceans to protect marine species. For example, Kafue national park in Zambia covers 22,400 square kilometres, posing a massive challenge to the anti-poaching team who want to protect the thousands of elephants which live there. Often, poachers enter the park at night via the lake on the park’s border disguised as fishermen. However, now a 19 kilometre long virtual fence has been created across the lake which uses infrared thermal cameras to record all boats entering and exiting the park. Whilst these cameras were initially monitored by humans, AI has now taken over this 24/7 job and triggers alerts when suspicious activity is seen. This has allowed staff to be placed on the ground protecting and caring for the area instead, rather than using their precious time watching computer screens. Similar technology can also be used in our oceans to track fishing vessels to detect illegal fishing activity and help prevent poaching of endangered species taking place.

In Brazil, AI has been used to analyse 150,000 satellite images ranging from 1985 to 2002, an almost impossible task to undertake by human power alone. The images cover 8.5 million square kilometres of the country and have shown the dramatic water losses the region has suffered due to development, climate change and deforestation. This research uncovered that the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland, has lost 74% of its surface water, with the knock-on effects of this being crushing for many animal species such as jaguar and tapirs. In this case, AI revealed the shocking seriousness of the situation in Brazil, leading environmentalists to step up their actions and forcing the general public to wake up to the ecological issues surrounding them. Using AI in this way could benefit so many ecosystems around the world, from tracking sea level changes to the size of coral reefs to the extent of ice sheets.

As mentioned earlier, AI can also do the laborious task of looking at photos taken by camera traps and identifying the photos which contain a species of interest. This was used in the Congo and in 2020 alone, 50,000 images were analysed by AI at a rate of 3,000 photos per hour! Using humans to do this task would have taken months or even years, time we simply don’t have when local species such as gorillas and elephants are being targeted increasingly frequently by poachers. With AI becoming so developed, hundreds of camera traps have now been set up in central Africa to help protect some of our most iconic species and there is no reason why the same can’t take place for our most famous ocean creatures too.

An astonishing 95% of our oceans are unexplored whilst we have more detailed maps of the surface of Mars than we do of the sea floor of the Earth’s oceans. AI could finally help us get real insight into the enormous blue expanse which fills 70% of our planet and contains 3.8 billion years of history. Most importantly however, it seems AI may be the key to helping us learn about the ever-changing state of our oceans, giving us a chance to change our actions before we lose the magic in this enormous natural wonder.

By Neve McCracken-Heywood