How do you count manatees? Ideally, standing by a river while playing with the aquatic mammals. However, in a world where manatee populations face increasing threats, a faster and more accurate method is imperative. Enter artificial intelligence. A model developed by scientists at Florida Atlantic University uses a deep-learning-based method to count manatees in images captured by cameras. A study published in the journal Scientific Reports describes how the model can use even low-quality images to estimate manatee populations in shallow waters. “Eventually, we think this model will be very helpful to understand manatee demographics in real time,” study lead author Xingquan Zhu, a professor at FAU’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, told Mongabay in a video interview. “How many are there? What are their habitats? Where do they go for food?” Answering these questions is helpful to plan conservation actions, prevent habitat loss, and design rules for boaters and divers. Manatees (Trichechus spp.) have long been tracked with the help of GPS devices attached to their tails. However, the harsh marine environments they often inhabit lead to the tags breaking down quickly. The use of physical tags also imposes a restriction on the number of animals that can be monitored in one go. “Plus it’s also quite labor-intensive,” Zhu said. These gaps prompted Zhu and his team to start thinking about adopting artificial intelligence to estimate manatee populations in an affordable and real-time manner. The model is trained to identify manatees in shallow waters and count their…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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