Spy the seabed for science!

I might as well tell you that right away spy mission not formed Do not wear a wetsuit. The French research institute Ifremer, entirely dedicated to ocean knowledge, is looking for volunteers to “spy” on the underwater world… On-line. All Internet users can participate in this participatory scientific mission on This new platform is called “Ocean Spy”.

Discover new species

To better understand marine ecosystems, Ifremer constantly photographs the ocean floorEspecially at certain strategic points in the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans, using oceanographic ships or fixed cameras, these images are then analyzed. But there are a lot of them, so researchers need volunteers sitting comfortably at home behind their computers, to review them Hundreds of hours of videos And the Thousands of photos. It’s just a matter I lend the same To locate fish, molluscs, crustaceans, starfish, marine worms or corals found there and thus collect information about them Quantity and quality of underwater lifeuntil Discovering new species and assessing the impact of climate change. You don’t need a degree to help science.

Three ecosystems, ranging in depth from 6 to 2,200 metres

Three different ecosystems have been proposed. The first consists of monitoring what happens in the deep sea near hydrothermal sources, which is kind of… Underwater heaterswhich fall either Off the AzoresIn the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, or in the Pacific Ocean, off North AmericaOn the back of Juan de Fuca. In these two very different environments, but in extreme conditions, Internet users will be able to observe amazing wildlife, – Depth of not less than 1700 meters: Shrimps, crabs, snails, cliff fish, mobile or tube worms, but also their terrestrial cousins ​​of spiders. “These photos are valuable because they are There is still a lot to learn about this speciessuch as their behavior or the evolution of their populations”“, explains Marjolein Matabus, researcher at the “Deep Ecology” laboratory in Everemr, in A I reported.

There is another observation site at the bottom of Brest portThe imaging system allows monitoring biodiversity in coastal environments. Part Three focuses on cold-water coral reefs in the Pacific Ocean Lambaul CanyonIn the Bay of Biscay. “For 5 years, a camera placed in a coral garden will photograph a colony for 15 minutes every day. This allows us to follow the behavior and growth of these corals, and to discover the fauna associated with the reefs in the Gulf of Gascony,” explains Julie Turul, a research engineer in deep marine habitat mapping.

If animals pass through the camera field, they must be recorded! This allows you to comment on photos and Save valuable time for experts. A similar operation was launched seven years ago, mobilizing 1,700 participants and saving scientists 80 days of work. This data can be used to power algorithms Artificial intelligence for image recognition, which in the future will enable automatically sorting accumulated underwater images.

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