Session: S-168
Optical Technology and Computer Vision for Marine Conservation and Sustainable Management

This symposium will address cutting-edge advances in optical technologies and image processing tools that improve the quantity, quality and timeliness of scientific information used for policy decisions on the sustainability of living marine resources. Advanced underwater optical systems are more readily available providing stereo imagery, accurate measurements, and increased sampling volume. Innovative platforms, such as fixed and mobile... [ view more ]

This symposium will address cutting-edge advances in optical technologies and image processing tools that improve the quantity, quality and timeliness of scientific information used for policy decisions on the sustainability of living marine resources. Advanced underwater optical systems are more readily available providing stereo imagery, accurate measurements, and increased sampling volume. Innovative platforms, such as fixed and mobile autonomous platforms, provide cost-effective deployment of optical systems for conducting visual surveys from marine habitats like coral reef ecosystems that were previously difficult to sample. The increasing demand for collecting optical data from these data-limited areas has resulted in large volumes of imagery data exceeding the capacity of human annotators. For this reason, computer vision has made critical advances for streamlining the processing of underwater imagery data using automated image recognition tools. The state of the art in assessing marine ecosystems using remotely collected optical datasets has progressed rapidly in recent years. However, there is a need to improve the standardized annotation, storage, and accessibility of the ever-growing catalog of underwater images to produce actionable information for marine conservation researchers and managers. We will examine how these recent advances in optical technologies can be applied to the assessment of marine populations and habitats for the sustainability of living marine resources. We will also examine where further technical developments are required, and improvements in the cost, size, simplicity of optical tools and their operations for use in various environments for more accessibility to a broader range of researchers and citizen scientists.