Citizen scientists invited to analyse underwater robot images

Underwater robots are revolutionising the way marine scientists survey the seafloor. Previously, marine scientists had to don scuba gear to carry out surveys to track the location of aquatic life, but autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) allow scientists to take detailed surveys, even at depths where divers cannot operate.

An AUV called Sirius, belonging to the University of Sydney’s Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR), has collected millions of seafloor images at sites around Australia. These images will be used as part of a collaborative science project to track the location of kelp and sea urchin populations.

“These images are collected on an annual basis and help scientists to monitor and understand changes in habitats,” said Associate Professor Stefan Williams from the ACFR.

“Excitingly, we can also create 3D maps by pairing images taken at the exact time from parallel cameras positioned next to each other,” said Dr Renata Ferrari Legorreta, a postdoctoral fellow in the University’s School of Biological Sciences. “I use them to look at the relationships between the structural complexity of underwater habitats and the abundance of sea urchins.

“I’m investigating issues such as what it is about kelp forests that makes them so vulnerable to long-spine sea urchins and why, if you remove all the urchins from an area, the kelp doesn’t simply grow back.”

Thousands of budding marine biologists - or ‘citizen scientists’ - have been invited to examine some of the AUV images to map the location of kelp and sea urchin populations and track how these organisms are responding to changes in the oceans. This collaborative science project, Explore the Seafloor, is part of National Science Week, held from 10 to 18 August.

“The crowd-sourcing contribution of these citizen scientists will be key to our understanding of how marine ecological dynamics work across many sites around Australia,” said Dr Ferrari Legorreta. “It is only with their help that we can judge these hundreds of thousands of images.”

Currently, massive sea urchins are heading south on the East Australian Current and destroying all kelp beds in their path, turning healthy kelp beds into marine lunarscapes denuded of seaweed and sea life. With the loss of seaweed forests, biodiversity collapses, with potentially significant environmental and economic impacts to fisheries and tourism.

Explore the Seafloor is also supported by the University of New South Wales, University of Tasmania, University of Western Australia, James Cook University, Australian Institute of Marine Science, CSIRO and ABC. It finishes on 2 September.