The use of artificial intelligence in becoming more common amongst researchers looking at residents of the ocean. It is being used to listen to, and even look for, critically endangered animals. But the new technology is not perfect, meaning humans will continue to play a role.
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00:00Antarctic blue whales are the largest animals on earth, but they're rarely seen.
00:10Instead, scientists rely on underwater microphones to listen out for these critically endangered
00:15animals.
00:16They can produce sounds that travel hundreds if not thousands of kilometres, so listening
00:22for them provides us a really good means of understanding where they are.
00:29But listening back to thousands of hours of audio is tedious and slow.
00:34AI is now being used to turbocharge that process.
00:38And that means better answers more quickly, less time for expert scientists spent listening
00:48to sounds and more time being able to focus on important ecological questions like whether
00:53or not these animals are recovering.
00:57Each species that Dr Miller listens for has its own unique sound wave pattern it makes,
01:02which the AI can be trained to spot.
01:04When it's listened to enough of those sounds, it can begin to recognise them on its own.
01:11Further north in the Tasman Sea, researchers from the CSIRO are trialling a new project.
01:16They're using a special AI camera to count seabirds, like the endangered shy albatross.
01:22Essentially the AI is replacing the mammoth amount of data that you have to trawl through.
01:28Getting caught in fishing nets is one of the biggest threats to these animals.
01:32Knowing how many there are means better decisions can be made in real time to protect them.
01:37It's quite a difficult task for, you know, a human can count 1, 2, 3, 4 and then after
01:42that it gets a little sloppy.
01:44But the technology isn't perfect.
01:46At least for now, humans are still needed to make sure the AI isn't getting things
01:49wrong or making things up.
01:51Yes, so we have a little bit more training to do.
01:54Algorithms are getting better and it's almost a renaissance for this field so it's a great
02:00time to be listening.
02:02A new technology transforming conservation research.