A surprising connection at Web Summit may save our coral reefs

Deborah Brosnan spoke on stage at Web Summit 2021. Her remarks led to a chance meeting, and a collaboration that may hold the answer to saving the planet’s coral reefs.

Coral reefs are among the most ecologically and economically valuable ecosystems on our planet. They cover less than 0.1 percent of the world’s ocean, but support more than 25 percent of marine biodiversity. Without reefs, coastal populations will become more vulnerable to environmental risks, and their homes and economic wellbeing will be jeopardised.

Today, we lose more corals in a day than we can currently restore in a decade. Up to half of all reefs have been lost, and most are threatened or declining. Living coral reefs are ecological infrastructure, breaking wave energy to protect people and property, to keep sand on the beach, and to create a buffer against storms and rising sea levels.

As such, they are fundamental not just to the health of our oceans, but also in limiting the destruction of climate change and the extreme weather conditions that are now already inevitable.

When Deborah Brosnan spoke at Web Summit 2021 about Ocean-Shot, and the challenges to coral reefs, the climate scientist and marine biologist made an invitation to the audience: use AI to help find a solution. Little did Deborah know that this invitation would be taken up almost immediately.

Chance meetings and shared challenges

Ocean-Shot is a programme – run by Deborah Brosnan & Associates, in partnership with John Paul DeJoria – that aims to restore coral reefs to scale.

Deployed first in the Caribbean, the programme’s goal is to restore biodiversity, provide jobs and build climate-change resilience. Ocean-Shot is installing its first tailor-made reefs off Barbuda in October 2022.

Ocean-Shot video: Deborah Brosnan & Associates/YouTube

Speaking during a Web Summit 2021 masterclass, Deborah announced an initiative that would support Ocean-Shot’s goals. This initiative offered access to an underwater platform – created by Deborah, alongside Antigua and Barbuda’s prime minister, Gaston Browne – that could be used to test AI technology.

In the audience was Nature Counts Foundation (NCF) founder David Lunsford, who had a background in fintech and data analytics. As it turned out, David was exactly who Deborah had been looking for when making the offer. David went backstage, and there – at Web Summit – an exciting collaboration was born.

Meaningful connection to help save our coral reefs

NCF builds and deploys underwater cameras to deliver imagery, live video footage and biodiversity metrics to project stakeholders, strengthening the overall understanding of marine ecosystem conservation and restoration activities through continuous monitoring.

The challenges for NCF were finding where to test this technology, and finding the right scientists and projects to help. When David heard Deborah speak, the opportunity for just such a test presented itself.

Existing monitoring solutions for reefs are usually expensive, periodic and non-standardised. NCF’s video technology, however, captures continuous, live underwater footage for monthly reports and daily standardised metrics on fish biodiversity.

This was the perfect solution for Ocean-Shot’s efforts to build and monitor reefs at scale.

A collaboration for our collective future

By harnessing science, AI and machine learning, Ocean-Shot and NCF hope to solve one of the most pressing ecological challenges we face as a planet: sustaining the coral reefs that support more than half a billion people every day.

In March 2022, NCF travelled to Barbuda to work with Deborah’s science team. Together, they successfully installed two NCF underwater video cameras on the coral reef habitat as part of the Ocean-Shot project.

Five months worth of video footage has been collected so far, and NCF’s AI technology is now analysing the videos to evaluate fish biodiversity metrics at the two reef sites.

NCF has developed and trained the AI to identify more than 200 coral reef fish species, and to calculate biodiversity metrics including species richness, maximum number of species, functional diversity, mean count per species, and functional richness.

This collaboration, born from a combination of chance and meaningful connection, continues to go from strength to strength.

To make meaningful connections, and to build collaborations that will help your work, get tickets to Web Summit 2022 today.

Main image of Deborah Brosnan: Web Summit