Open Coral AI aims to accelerate data analysis and reporting of coral reef health by developing a free, online tool that employs AI to address bottlenecks in coral reef monitoring. Unlike many available tools that require sophisticated equipment, Reef Support (a Netherlands-based social enterprise) is developing a tool that allows for citizen scientists to participate in coral monitoring with easy-to-use cameras. Data will be collected from reef monitoring sites in Indonesia and Colombia, with staff and volunteers trained to take pictures, in coordination with Indonesia Biru Foundation and Corales de Paz. The collected data will be labeled and used to create a baseline AI model, validated by external experts, and tested in-situ by partner organizations. The final version of the AI tool, along with a guidebook, will be launched and shared via social media by the end of 2023.

Rapidly changing ocean environments has led to the global decline of kelp forests and the ecological services they provide. Although excitement around kelp forest restoration has grown in recent years, the capacity to implement large-scale projects has remained largely unchanged due to an insufficient supply of kelp seed. Through this project, the startup West Coast Kelp (WCK) will construct an efficient and innovative system to produce kelp seed (at a lower cost than other producers), plant 400 kelp plants, and monitor their growth over a 4-month period. By increasing the supply of high quality kelp seed, WCK will enable Canada's emerging kelp restoration projects focusing on the other components of restoration such as modeling and genomics.

Associação Tatauga Dive is a nonprofit along the Brazilian coast that exposes youth to ocean science and recreation through their TransforMAR project, which SOA has supported with multiple grants since 2020. In 2022, it was endorsed by the IOC Secretary as part of UN Ocean Decade. This grant supports their exciting initiatives to establish a coral nursery in a local public school, which will be implemented into their science curriculum. They will evaluate the Paraty mangrove conservation status, carried out by their students. Since the major mangrove problem in Paraty is an expansion of the enterprises as marinas, we expect to raise awareness of the Paraty population of this situation to increase political pressure to conserve the mangrove areas. And in continuation of their core mission, they will take 110 local students diving to expose them to the wonders of the ocean for the first time. Importantly, this initiative takes place in a location of high poverty, low education and ocean literacy, and no treated sewage. Brazil, with its 8,000 km of coastline and vast mangrove communities has great potential to impact blue carbon sequestration worldwide, but lags behind other countries due in part to the actions of the last political administration.

With this grant, Instituto Monitoramento Mirim Costeiro (IMMC) will build on previous SOA support for their work to educate and inspire children living in Garopaba, Santa Catarina, Brazil (Junior Ocean Guardian and Junior Coastal Monitors) by incorporating drone survey and data processing into their curriculum for 500 public school students. To date, MMC's curriculum includes traditional scientific methods which may become insufficient in the face of technological advances. Through the purchased and deployed drone, MMC will introduce children to advanced methods for monitoring biotic and abiotic interactions at the coastal interface. And by guiding them through simple analysis exercises, familiarize them with data science. Training the next generation is especially important in Brazil, which boasts the largest subtropical coastline in the world (8,000 km.) Ortho-mosaics of drone images will be produced as final products.

Carbon Ethics (PT Iklim Muda Sentosa) has received multiple grants from SOA to support the enhancement and scaling of their blue carbon activities to over four hectares in Dompak (where they are the only organization implementing restoration) and Pangkil Islands in the Indonesian state of Bintan. Indonesia is among the top global areas for blue carbon sequestration through mangrove forests. Through impactful partnerships and support from the World Resources Institute and the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry, Carbon Ethics is well positioned to continue their innovative leadership in this space. With this grant, they will conduct a feasibility study, select a new restoration site, establish a mangrove nursery, enhance their waste reduction infrastructure, as well as continue their work to plant 2000 mangroves per month and conduct various capacity-building exercises.

Every year, there are thousands of boats sailing all over the ocean. And thousands of scientists, meteorologists, climatologists lacking in-situ data or means to deploy their equipment (buoys, floats). Oceanovox is bringing innovative citizen science to the sailing world to capitalize on this data-gathering opportunity. Using offshore racing such as IMOCA and Class 40 sailing races in 2023, they will engage sailors and the public in their effort to deploy sensors on sailboats to benefit French oceanographic and climatology organizations like Ifremer, CNRS, and Météo France, which will benefit from in-situ data on atmospheric pressure, temperature, and salinity as they work to understand and communicate around climate and climate change.

The University of Malaysia's South China Sea Repository and Reference Centre (RRC) has received two previous SOA grants to digitally archive over 1000 marine specimens from its database in Malaysia into national and international biodiversity inventory platforms (e.g. MyBIS and OBIS) and update their website as a public resource to incite interest in preserving the unique species of the South China Sea, publishing two articles in peer-reviewed journals along the way. As a final step, they’ll complete a final addition to their website: their enhanced digital repository interface “Malaysia Aqua Archive,” adding high resolution photos and enabling analysis of large datasets. The larger goal is to engage a broader range of stakeholders, support conservation efforts, and inform policy decisions for resource management.

mymizu (“mizu” means water in Japanese) is a tech-driven free water refill platform that connects people to 11,500+ locations around Japan & 200,000+ globally where they can refill their water bottle, instead of buying bottled water. Last year, they partnered with a leading coding school, creative agency, and tech experts to build an open source web app version of mymizu via a tech hackathon. With this grant, they will further develop their open source platform and app to improve the quality and impact of the crowdsourced refill spot data they make available to hundreds of thousands of users for free. They will also develop “Action Packages” for city governments, nonprofits, schools, universities and companies to use as a guide to self-organize and grow the mymizu movement (eg. organizing local events). They aim to double the number of partner stores from 2,250 to 5,000 by 2024 and are currently exploring growing chapters in Vietnam, Kenya and Ethiopia.

The AIAM project will introduce Artificial Intelligence (AI) in marine movement tracking ecology. Collecting marine animal movement is a laborious and expensive process, and AI tools can help optimize it, by, for example, suggesting optimal deployment locations. The AIAM project will first classify tracking data, inferring features of each individual (e.g., species, sex, age) from the spatiotemporal properties of its movement track record, and secondly forecast new locations given the segment of a trajectory. These tools will compose an open-source toolkit available for the marine ecology research community and can complete partial datasets and generate synthetic data.