The idea is to use a large community of listeners to identify the sounds of fish in a healthy coral reef, and then send that information to artificial intelligence to do it alone.
It is a project of Google’s Arts & Culture division, which explains that in recent years a group of university researchers has installed special microphones in coral reefs. They are called hydrophones.
Marine biologist Steve Simpson is the leader of this project. The University of Bristol professor says that “on the reef there are thousands of species of fish that ‘pop’ and grunt and croak as they communicate with each other.” A soundscape full of life and in which you can also “hear the shrimp making sounds that, together, make the reef seem to bubble.”
It is these noises, these vocalizations of fish and others, that have been captured during the last year.
Mary Shodipo says the recorders are “on various reefs and also adjacent areas, where there is overfishing.” The marine biologist explains that “the objective is to compare these sounds and better understand the effects of fishing on the soundscape of the reefs, which is an important indicator of coral health.”
The problem is that the study material is too extensive for the team. Mary Shodipo recalls that the system is on “24 hours a day and now we have hundreds of hours to listen.”
This is where netizens can help.
“We need everyone’s help to form a collective of listeners,” he says. The results of this work, says the biologist, “will be used later to train computers to automatically identify the sounds of fish.”
It is on a site created by Google that Internet users can help. First there is a training process and then it is time to listen to the sounds and identify the sounds of the fish.
Recordings that, in addition to training Artificial Intelligence, will serve another purpose, says the project leader. Steve Simpson explains that “mixes will be built. Recordings where we will put the sounds of many fish”.
These audios created by biologists will then be played on reefs that are in decline. The idea is to repopulate these ecosystems.
Steve Simpson says that it is possible to fool the fish. The sounds serve as a lure and “when we reproduce these sounds underwater in areas that we want to recover, we manage to attract a new generation of animals that begin to live there.”
To access this project and help with this Google initiative, go this way.
Source: TSF
