Computer Vision Methods For Coral Reef Assessment

Across the world, coral reefs, with their delicate ecological balance, are suffering from the effects of climate change and pollution. In order to influence decisions makes to take action, accurate large scale monitoring systems need to be in place. With the proliferation of digital cameras and automatic acquisition system, scientists around the world is already acquiring enormous amounts of images with valuable data. However, the analysis remains manual, which is both time consuming and error prone. This joint project with biologists and underwater imaging experts from Scripps Institute of Oceanography, University of Queensland and US Geological Survey, address this problem by developing computer vision methods for large scale coral reefs assessment.