Guest Speaker: Dr. Zachary Randell- ROV Surveys within Kelp Forests

Since 2022, the Seattle Aquarium’s Coastal Climate Resilience (CCR) program has advanced the use of relatively low-cost, compact, and customizable remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) as a novel way to monitor shallow coastal ecosystems, particularly kelp forests.

By combining high-resolution underwater imagery with open-source AI analyses, the goal of this work is to generate new insights into the resilience of kelp, invertebrate, and fish communities. The approach is designed to be scalable and adaptable, with integration into other data sources such as scuba diver surveys and satellite imagery. Importantly, the open-source model has enabled volunteers with specialized skills to make novel contributions to semi-autonomous ROV flight controls and AI-based image processing and data extraction.

At its core, CCR emphasizes transparency, reproducibility, and collaboration—empowering scientists, conservation practitioners, and community partners to expand these methods and strengthen collective efforts to conserve and restore coastal ecosystems in the face of climate change.

You can learn more about this work here:

https://github.com/Seattle-Aquarium/Coastal_Climate_Resilience