Google is making strides in marine conservation through a cutting-edge AI tool designed to enhance marine biologists’ understanding of coral reef ecosystems and their health. This tool, named SurfPerch, was developed in collaboration with Google Research and DeepMind. It utilizes thousands of hours of audio recordings from reefs, allowing scientists to “hear reef health from the inside,” monitor nocturnal reef activity, and track reefs in deep or murky waters.
The initiative began with an invitation to the public to listen to reef sounds via the web. Over the last year, visitors to Google’s “Calling in Our Corals” website have listened to over 400 hours of reef audio from different global sites and were prompted to click when they heard fish sounds. This activity generated a significant “bioacoustic” dataset focused on reef health. By crowdsourcing this effort, Google successfully created a library of new fish sounds, which were instrumental in refining the AI tool, SurfPerch. Consequently, SurfPerch can now be rapidly trained to identify any new reef sound.
A Google blog post detailing the project explains, “This enables us to analyze new datasets far more efficiently than previously possible, eliminating the need for costly GPU training and opening up new avenues for understanding reef communities and their conservation.” The post was co-authored by Steve Simpson, a Marine Biology professor at the University of Bristol, and Ben Williams, a marine biologist at University College London, both of whom focus on coral ecosystems, climate change, and restoration.
Interestingly, researchers found that they could enhance SurfPerch’s model performance by incorporating bird recordings. Despite the inherent differences between bird songs and reef sounds, the model recognized common patterns that improved its learning capability.
By merging data from the Calling in Our Corals project with SurfPerch, initial trials have enabled researchers to discern differences between protected and unprotected reefs in the Philippines, evaluate restoration success in Indonesia, and gain insights into fish community relationships on the Great Barrier Reef.
The project remains ongoing, with new audio continuously being added to the Calling in Our Corals website. This will further train the AI model and bolster Google’s efforts in marine conservation.
