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AI-Powered Conservation: The Future of Coral Reef Protection with Andy Ridley · How To Protect The Ocean

• 1:00:03
  10 years ago, the Great Barrier Reef, the
• 1:00:05
  largest barrier reef in the world, one of
• 1:00:07
  the eight wonders of the world bleached,
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  like 93% of it bleached.
• 1:00:13
  And then the year
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  after it bleached again.
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  And then it's bleached a number of times
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  after that, some of it recouping.
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  Other times, other
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  places did not recoup as much.
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  And so we're continuing to see that
• 1:00:25
  degradation of the Great Barrier Reef.
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  How do you solve that problem?
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  You need more monitoring.
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  You need more data to help managers
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  understand the reef more, understand
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  where the most vulnerable
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  pieces are and how you get that.
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  How do you get that data?
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  Like you got to remember that the Great
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  Barrier Reef is the size
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  of the US coast, the West
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  Coast.
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  So if you go from the top of the border
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  of Canada and the bottom
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  of the top of the border
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  at Mexico, that's the entire coastline.
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  That's the entire size, the
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  length of the Great Barrier Reef.
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  How do you get all that data?
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  We use these days with technology.
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  You use citizen science and you use AI.
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  And we're going to talk about that on
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  today's episode of the How
• 1:01:03
  to Protect the Ocean podcast
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  because we have the founding CEO of
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  Citizens of the Reef, Andy
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  Ridley, who's here to talk
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  about his organization and what they've
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  done to combine AI and
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  citizen scientists to be
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  able to create this huge database of data
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  and be able to do
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  what people haven't been
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  able to do in a while and provide data
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  for management models
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  that are really helping
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  out.
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  So I'm going to talk about that on
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  today's episode and start the show.
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  Hey, everybody, welcome back to another
• 1:01:35
  exciting episode of the How
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  to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is
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  the podcast where you find out what's
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  happening with the ocean, how you can
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  speak up for the ocean, what you can do
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  to live for a better
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  ocean by taking action.
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  And action is what we're going to be
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  talking about today because
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  Andy Ridley is here today.
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  He is the founding CEO
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  of Citizens of the Reef.
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  And he's here to talk about what he took
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  when he first heard about the barrier
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  reef, the Great Barrier Reef,
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  bleaching 10 years ago, took that sort of
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  down moment and said, I'm going to turn
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  it into something positive.
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  I'm going to turn it
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  into something optimistic.
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  He was a serial entrepreneur before that.
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  He came back to Australia where he's
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  from, from the Netherlands and was like,
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  I want to do something
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  good for the barrier reef.
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  Came up with Citizens of the Reef with a
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  couple of other mates.
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  And look at that. I'm
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  already talking Australian.
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  I'm saying mates. Never mind.
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  But I am.
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  I'm really impressed with what him and
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  his group were able to accomplish and
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  have been able to accomplish
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  using AI and citizen scientists.
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  This is something where I can just
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  imagine you want to do something for the
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  ocean and you can do it from your own
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  home, wherever you are in the world and
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  just look at an image and categorize
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  reefs into three categories.
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  Right. One of the three categories or
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  maybe multiple categories using AI.
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  So it basically takes a snapshot.
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  Like people take pictures of the reef
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  that gets sent to you.
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  It comes up on your phone and you just
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  kind of look at it and you say, OK, look
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  at this outline that they I did.
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  Is that a branching coral,
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  a boulder coral or whatever?
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  And then you just
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  click and you confirm it.
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  And then five other people get to see the
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  same image and they click and confirm it.
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  Right. So five people total.
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  They get to click and confirm it.
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  That's pretty
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  incredible that you can do it.
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  And you can just do that within minutes.
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  Imagine doom scrolling for three hours on
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  TikTok and you're like,
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  ah, where the time go.
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  But imagine you did that for like five to
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  10 minutes, looking at a series of photos
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  to be able to say, hey, yeah, like this
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  is this is this type of coral.
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  This is this type of coral.
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  This is this type of coral.
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  And then you're you're helping the Great
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  Barrier Reef recover and be able to maybe
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  manage even better than it is now.
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  And hopefully stop from being bleached or
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  stop from from dying off.
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  And we're seeing each and every year.
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  Just imagine that.
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  Imagine taking something from your own
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  living room or from your bathroom or from
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  your walkout or from your commute.
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  And you're just on your phone and you're
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  helping the Great Barrier Reef and you're
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  staring at images of the ocean.
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  So you're connecting with the ocean
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  halfway across the world or maybe you're
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  on the coastline or
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  wherever you are in the world.
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  I think it's an amazing thing.
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  I want you to hear this interview because
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  Andy's just he's so inspiring for the
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  work that he's been able to do.
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  Such a creative
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  genius in my in my opinion.
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  And I just love for you
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  to hear this interview.
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  So here's the interview
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  with Andrew Andy Ridley.
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  He is the founding CEO
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  of Citizens of the Reef.
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  Enjoy the interview.
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  And I will talk to you after.
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  Hey Andy.
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  Welcome to the How to
• 1:04:15
  Protect the Ocean podcast.
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  Are you ready to talk
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  about corals and conservation?
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  Oh hey Andrew.
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  Really nice to see
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  you and you definitely.
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  All right.
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  I'm looking forward to this.
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  This has been I know it's been on the on
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  the docket for a while.
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  We've planned this interview and I've
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  been doing a lot of research.
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  I've been doing it.
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  It's been a lot of fun to dive in to
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  Citizens of the Reef, which is your
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  organization, which is the founding CEO.
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  And so I'm looking forward to talking
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  just about corals and conservation and
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  where we're at with conservation and why
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  you decided to put your two feet in and
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  say, hey, look, we need
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  to we need to help corals.
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  We need to help them.
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  You've got we're going to talk about AI.
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  We're going to talk about citizen science
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  and how AI has improved citizen science.
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  We're going to talk a lot about the work
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  you've done, some of the successes, some
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  of the challenges that you're facing.
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  And we're just going to
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  get into all sorts of things.
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  But before we do, Andy, why don't you
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  just let the audience know
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  who you are and what you do?
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  Well, I am Andy.
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  I live in I live in
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  Cairns in northern Australia.
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  So just just a few kilometers to my left
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  is the Great Barrier Reef.
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  Beautiful.
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  And so we're based up here in Cairns.
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  So Great Barrier Reef is very big.
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  I'll give you a give
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  you a kind of an idea.
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  If you put the Great Barrier Reef up
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  alongside the USA, it would go from above
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  the border with Canada to
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  below the border with Mexico.
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  So it's very bad.
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  We're sort of about the third from the
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  top is where we're based.
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  Yeah. And we have started citizens eight
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  years ago and it was off the back of I
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  know your your listeners will
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  have will know all about us.
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  But we had these two very, very serious
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  sequential bleaching on the Great Barrier
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  Reef back in 2016 2017.
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  And I think everyone kind of went into a
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  state of shock to see what had happened
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  and what was happening.
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  I think the message that went around the
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  world was the Great
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  Barrier Reef had died.
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  It hadn't died, but it
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  was incredibly serious.
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  It was like 90 some odd percent. Right.
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  That bleached. I think is what it was. I
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  think that was the headline.
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  Yes. It's sort of spot it.
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  So it's so in the northern end, there was
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  really, really significant bleaching.
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  And as you know, you know, with
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  bleaching, you get you get mortality if
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  it's there for a long while.
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  If the water remains hot and it's kind of
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  doldrums kind of weather conditions,
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  you'll start to get high
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  mortality of the coral.
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  But some parts of it did come back.
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  Yeah. I think on the top of the reefs,
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  you know, like the reef flat, you got on
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  a very, very high
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  levels of mortality coral.
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  But anyway, we said we there was a sort
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  of an emergency
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  conference held in Townsville.
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  Which is a city about four hours south of
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  Cairns held by the Marine Park Authority.
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  All of some of the top
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  scientists were there.
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  Yeah.
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  And everybody was there.
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  It's kind of like this
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  almost a palpable sense of panic.
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  Yeah.
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  And that really was basically the
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  question was, well, what
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  are we going to do about it?
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  And one of the things that came out of
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  that was we need much bigger data, much
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  more information on what's going on
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  across the whole of the system.
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  And actually same same thing across all
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  of tropical reefs around the world.
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  And that's kind of where
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  citizens sort of started.
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  How would we do that?
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  Knowing that we'll never have a billion
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  dollars to build a research for Tila.
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  How do we do that with, you know, the
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  smell of an Ollie rag,
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  which is kind of all we had.
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  And that's kind of
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  where citizens started.
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  Well, this is incredible because, you
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  know, to go to be inspired so much by
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  such a disaster, like such a pessimistic
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  thing that that's happened, right?
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  When you see the Great Barrier Reef,
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  which is like one of
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  the wonders of the world.
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  It's great. It's gorgeous.
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  People travel there, you know, just to
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  see it, you know, on a regular
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  basis from all over the world.
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  And then it goes, it bleaches like the
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  whole thing, you know, especially in the
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  north where it's even more remote.
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  You can argue and you're just like,
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  what's going on here?
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  Like, how do we do this?
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  Now, let me put me in a situation like
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  what were you feeling at that point?
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  What were you doing before this started?
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  Were you still involved in environmental
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  things or because like what made you feel like, you know,
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  you're going to go boom, no,
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  we need to start something.
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  We need to do something.
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  Yeah, I think it really was
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  driven by the event for me.
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  So in I was actually working in Amsterdam
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  on circular economy.
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  I was running a circular economy
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  organization called circular economy.
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  And I'd previously worked on I'd started
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  a project called Earth Out, which is the
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  sort of lights out in cities all over the
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  world that that campaign.
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  So I was always I've been in working in
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  environment so for a long while.
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  But as a me personally,
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  passionately love diving.
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  I love the great barrier reef is one of
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  my favorite places on the planet.
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  Maybe even my favorite most favorite
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  place on the planet.
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  So I was in Amsterdam when the first of
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  those big bleaching has happened.
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  And I'm 54 an hour when this happened.
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  I'd been 44 or something.
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  But yeah, my team that worked with me, I
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  had about 30 people in that team and
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  they're all much younger than me.
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  And you could see the
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  shock on their faces.
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  These are like, essentially 20 year old
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  30 year olds in in in Amsterdam from all
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  over the world, all working
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  on circular economy stuff.
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  The great barrier reef had died, which is
• 1:09:11
  what it said on Twitter, right? Yeah.
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  Was you could just see how emotionally it
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  was affecting people.
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  It was just like stunned.
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  Imagine this extraordinary place.
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  Now, thankfully, that
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  wasn't totally the case.
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  A lot of it survived.
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  But some friends of mine were working on
• 1:09:30
  a project up in back in Australia, which
• 1:09:34
  was, you know, around, you know, how do
• 1:09:37
  you engage people in conservation on the great barrier reef and.
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  They're asking my advice on it.
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  And I was being really irritating and
• 1:09:42
  offering lots of advice.
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  And they eventually went, oh, why don't
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  you come and start this thing up?
• 1:09:46
  So that's kind of how I kind of got back
• 1:09:48
  to Australia, got the thing got rolling.
• 1:09:51
  And then within a couple of weeks, we've
• 1:09:53
  been back in Australia.
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  The second of the bleaching has happened.
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  Right. Right. And I
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  remember being out on the reef.
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  I was out on more reef about 60 k's of 60
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  kilometres off Cairns offshore.
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  So right on the outer reef here.
• 1:10:05
  And you can literally see the soft coral
• 1:10:09
  kind of peeling off the
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  off the off the bedrock.
• 1:10:13
  And you're like, it was
• 1:10:14
  probably one of the most horrific.
• 1:10:16
  Yeah. Alarming.
• 1:10:18
  You know, it's just an
• 1:10:19
  it's melt, smelt of death.
• 1:10:21
  It was shocking.
• 1:10:23
  Now that that one in the
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  water smelt even on the water.
• 1:10:25
  Totally.
• 1:10:26
  And there was a lot of
• 1:10:30
  kind of denial about it.
• 1:10:31
  Like a lot of people sort of like we
• 1:10:32
  can't talk about it because it's tourism
• 1:10:33
  and they're all kind of fair.
• 1:10:35
  People have their livelihoods built on on
• 1:10:37
  this, you know, amazing place.
• 1:10:39
  But I think that what that did for us and
• 1:10:41
  with the Citizen Project was going, well,
• 1:10:43
  how like we're all talking about it.
• 1:10:46
  You can sign 100 petitions
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  and not make a difference.
• 1:10:49
  What do we what are we going to do here
• 1:10:51
  right now at a very practical level?
• 1:10:53
  And as I was saying, you know, there's
• 1:10:55
  that conference was held in Townsville.
• 1:10:56
  And one of the biggest things that came
• 1:10:58
  out of it is there's just not enough
• 1:10:59
  information about what's going on,
• 1:11:00
  particularly given
• 1:11:01
  it's such a large area.
• 1:11:02
  Same size as Germany or Japan.
• 1:11:05
  It's a massive area. So we thought,
• 1:11:07
  right, well, yeah, we bought some of that
• 1:11:08
  crowd economy, shared economy, Earth Hour
• 1:11:11
  lessons and all that into it and started
• 1:11:14
  to build this kind of motley flotilla of
• 1:11:16
  boats that turned into, I guess, one of
• 1:11:18
  the biggest research flotillas in around,
• 1:11:20
  you know, and it's all run by locals and
• 1:11:23
  whether it be traditional and arrangers
• 1:11:24
  or tourism vessels or dive boats or even
• 1:11:27
  the odd super you can get lucky.
• 1:11:29
  And that's how we kind of started the thing.
• 1:11:30
  So so you were right off the bat. I know
• 1:11:33
  that's in the name citizens of the reef,
• 1:11:35
  right? That's a that's a big part of it,
• 1:11:37
  where it's like, let's bring everybody
• 1:11:39
  together and let's let's try and solve
• 1:11:40
  this, like together, let's just figure
• 1:11:42
  out, we need we need more data, we need,
• 1:11:45
  we need more monitoring, we need
• 1:11:47
  information, as you mentioned before,
• 1:11:48
  right, that was the big those are the
• 1:11:50
  conclusions that came that came out of
• 1:11:51
  it's such a large place, you need to
• 1:11:53
  cover a lot of grounds.
• 1:11:53
  How, how did you build that? Did you
• 1:11:57
  build that community quickly? You know,
• 1:11:59
  where you had this flotilla of boats and
• 1:12:02
  stuff like, and how did that start?
• 1:12:04
  That's a really good question. So the
• 1:12:06
  answer is kind of yes and no. The no bit
• 1:12:10
  is, even after that meeting in
• 1:12:13
  Townsville, we knew that there was we
• 1:12:16
  almost sort of turned into a brief, you
• 1:12:18
  know, how would you get broad scale of
• 1:12:19
  constants from across such a large area
• 1:12:21
  when you haven't got enough money?
• 1:12:21
  Yeah, and, and why were you doing that?
• 1:12:25
  So really big part of this is actually
• 1:12:26
  what you're really trying to do is trying
• 1:12:28
  to build a targeting system. So with
• 1:12:30
  minimal resources, where do you put them?
• 1:12:32
  And that's a question on the Great
• 1:12:33
  Barrier, but it's also a question for
• 1:12:35
  tropical reefs everywhere. In fact, it's
• 1:12:36
  kind of a question for conservation,
• 1:12:38
  terrestrial or in the marine environment.
• 1:12:41
  And, and I guess the other part of it was
• 1:12:44
  you never have enough assets, you never
• 1:12:47
  have enough money, etc, etc. So what
• 1:12:50
  resources do you have?
• 1:12:51
  And, you know, on the Great Barrier Reef,
• 1:12:54
  what when we first arrived here, what it
• 1:12:56
  felt like was you'd have skippers on
• 1:12:58
  boats or dive instructors who knew that
• 1:12:59
  race really well. Yeah, but we're not
• 1:13:01
  really involved in any
• 1:13:02
  meaningful way in conservation.
• 1:13:05
  And yet they have all these years, you
• 1:13:06
  know, ever skipper has been working the
• 1:13:07
  reef for 30 years, they'll know more
• 1:13:09
  about the risk than any researcher.
• 1:13:10
  Right? So, and how do we tourism and
• 1:13:13
  fishing? Correct. Yeah,
• 1:13:15
  it's their livelihoods.
• 1:13:15
  And they generally passionately love the
• 1:13:18
  place that they work, right? Otherwise,
• 1:13:20
  they wouldn't stay there for so long. So
• 1:13:21
  so that sort of start to get those
• 1:13:23
  ingredients how to do it. But to be
• 1:13:25
  really honest with with you with
• 1:13:27
  citizens, the first three years, it was
• 1:13:29
  like a startup, it was we didn't have
• 1:13:31
  enough focus, we were struggling with,
• 1:13:33
  you know, how to do stuff, the technology
• 1:13:35
  wasn't good enough, you start from
• 1:13:36
  scratch, trying to think through a new
• 1:13:38
  problem, because essentially, it was, it
• 1:13:40
  felt like a new problem.
• 1:13:41
  And we took two years at least try and
• 1:13:47
  work out how to do to come up with like
• 1:13:49
  the basic idea. And then we started to
• 1:13:52
  pilot then COVID hit. And COVID was
• 1:13:55
  weird. If you're in Melbourne or Sydney,
• 1:13:57
  it was pretty terrible time in Australia.
• 1:13:58
  I think Melbourne was the
• 1:13:59
  city with the longest lockdown.
• 1:14:01
  But I'm hearing cans, what happened to
• 1:14:04
  Kansas a tourist town. But what happened
• 1:14:05
  in Kansas, no one came to visit. But you
• 1:14:08
  still had all you still had all the
• 1:14:09
  tourist boats, you still had all the
• 1:14:11
  people, we had a thing in Australia
• 1:14:12
  called JobKeeper, which is where people
• 1:14:14
  got paid, even though, you know, it was
• 1:14:17
  just trying to keep essentially keep
• 1:14:18
  everyone eating and paying their rent.
• 1:14:20
  And so you had all these people who work
• 1:14:22
  in the industry, the marine industry up
• 1:14:24
  here, you had all these boats, they still
• 1:14:25
  have to run their engines. And so that
• 1:14:27
  was the first 2020 was COVID year. And we
• 1:14:30
  just managed to get the first of our
• 1:14:32
  motley flotilla out there and and started
• 1:14:36
  to capture photographs.
• 1:14:36
  It's sort of weirdly, a bit like kind of
• 1:14:39
  a Dunkirk moment, all the small boats
• 1:14:41
  going out to help. It was kind of, yeah,
• 1:14:44
  it's an interesting interesting thing to
• 1:14:45
  see. And what you realize more and more
• 1:14:47
  the more and more I work in this is that
• 1:14:49
  people who live on those
• 1:14:50
  routes love them passionately.
• 1:14:52
  And, you know, a lot of them have got
• 1:14:54
  skin in the game, in terms of their jobs
• 1:14:56
  and their livelihood, but there is a deep
• 1:14:59
  love for this place.
• 1:14:59
  Well, and think about the challenges to
• 1:15:02
  right you you have this tragedy of
• 1:15:05
  bleaching and the largest coral reef
• 1:15:08
  barrier reef in the world. Yeah, you're
• 1:15:10
  trying to, you know, you get inspired
• 1:15:11
  you're like, okay, you know, you move
• 1:15:13
  from from the Netherlands to back to
• 1:15:15
  Australia with the family
• 1:15:16
  and everything and saying,
• 1:15:16
  all right, like, we're here to solve help
• 1:15:19
  solve this problem, do what we can
• 1:15:21
  monitoring, that's the thing. And then
• 1:15:22
  you go out, you try and get a bunch of
• 1:15:24
  people to go out, you have some
• 1:15:26
  passionate people who want to help out.
• 1:15:29
  And then a global pandemic hits, like,
• 1:15:31
  where everybody's got to stay inside,
• 1:15:34
  especially Australia, you guys struggle,
• 1:15:35
  like just like we did, where, you know,
• 1:15:37
  mandating continuing going back into into
• 1:15:40
  isolation, right, because of, you know,
• 1:15:43
  government protocols and so forth.
• 1:15:45
  The challenges just keep building and
• 1:15:47
  building and building.
• 1:15:50
  How do you like, how do you fight that
• 1:15:52
  when you want to do something so good yet
• 1:15:55
  outside factors that you cannot control
• 1:15:58
  cause you to have like, was that a big
• 1:16:01
  setback for you in
• 1:16:02
  terms of getting people out?
• 1:16:03
  Well, it was weird because it's obviously
• 1:16:07
  circumstance that none of us had ever
• 1:16:09
  like, no one had seen this before. Right.
• 1:16:12
  And, and so I at one point, I was being
• 1:16:15
  you know, I have a board and I was under
• 1:16:18
  orders by the board to work out how to
• 1:16:20
  shut down the organization because there
• 1:16:22
  was a kind of view at one point, we're
• 1:16:24
  like, you're gonna run out of money,
• 1:16:25
  there's no tourists here,
• 1:16:27
  how are you gonna make it work.
• 1:16:27
  But actually, I think I saw I did put
• 1:16:31
  probably a week's worth of work into
• 1:16:32
  trying to work out how to do that. And
• 1:16:34
  you know, you start to work out you're
• 1:16:35
  paying people too often, or service, it's
• 1:16:38
  really crappy kind of experience.
• 1:16:41
  And I think about a week into this, it's
• 1:16:43
  like, why are we doing this? Like, what,
• 1:16:45
  what, what, we just given up, right? And,
• 1:16:49
  and then you start to know, not really,
• 1:16:52
  but also, I think, I think is
• 1:16:53
  a state of mind as well. Yeah.
• 1:16:54
  Sometimes these things like with for us,
• 1:16:58
  for as terrible as it was, if you're in
• 1:17:00
  Melbourne, in, in cans, we didn't really,
• 1:17:02
  we had like six weeks of lockdown, right?
• 1:17:05
  Like hardly anything. Gotcha.
• 1:17:06
  And even then you still got a dog, you
• 1:17:08
  know, yeah. And other big cities, but
• 1:17:11
  we're what we because we can essentially
• 1:17:14
  a really remote city, right? You know,
• 1:17:17
  the nearest next out like Papua New, Port
• 1:17:19
  Moresby and Papua New Guinea is the
• 1:17:20
  nearest capital city to
• 1:17:21
  us, not Canberra or yet.
• 1:17:22
  Right. So, so in a way, we just kind of
• 1:17:26
  lent into it and went, right, well, all
• 1:17:29
  these boats are here, all these people
• 1:17:30
  are here, people want something to do.
• 1:17:32
  And so we, we ran the first
• 1:17:33
  year and it kind of worked.
• 1:17:35
  And it set a tone of, of everyone working
• 1:17:39
  together and collaboration and trying to
• 1:17:41
  help each other out. And I get no one was
• 1:17:44
  competing with each other at the time,
• 1:17:45
  because there's no kind of operators
• 1:17:47
  competing with each other
• 1:17:48
  because there was no tourists.
• 1:17:49
  Right. So hard in a weird sort of way,
• 1:17:53
  very opportunistic, maybe it really
• 1:17:55
  helped. And it proved you can do it. And
• 1:17:58
  often I think with anything that you do
• 1:18:00
  in life, if it's news, half the issues is
• 1:18:04
  dealing with the
• 1:18:05
  skepticism of it won't work.
• 1:18:08
  Right. So, so, you know, it actually gave
• 1:18:10
  us a bit of a bit of an opportunity. And,
• 1:18:13
  and, yeah, it was quite, I think it came
• 1:18:16
  almost as relief because
• 1:18:17
  everyone had a bit of a mission.
• 1:18:19
  Yeah, and they had time.
• 1:18:22
  They can spend a lot of time. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:18:24
  So you'd have people working in the dive
• 1:18:26
  industry who normally if they're going to
• 1:18:27
  dive boat, they're like chock is all day.
• 1:18:30
  I mean, you've been on dive boats, for
• 1:18:31
  sure. Right. So, you know, it's a 12 hour
• 1:18:33
  day, they're exhausted, they don't really
• 1:18:35
  have that much. It's like, you know, so
• 1:18:38
  you suddenly had all these people with
• 1:18:39
  all this experience, being able to spend
• 1:18:40
  hours in the water doing stuff and like,
• 1:18:43
  and essentially get paid for it.
• 1:18:44
  You know, in a weird, in a weird way,
• 1:18:47
  Andrew, it's like what the world should
• 1:18:49
  be like, like people being able to have
• 1:18:51
  people spending time, really couldn't do,
• 1:18:55
  you know, putting doing doing kind of
• 1:18:57
  cool stuff. That's what in a perfect
• 1:18:59
  world. That's what we'd be doing. Right.
• 1:19:00
  Yeah, it's almost like taking and giving
• 1:19:02
  back, right? Like you're taking, you
• 1:19:04
  know, you're making money off the ocean,
• 1:19:05
  but you got to give back in the ocean.
• 1:19:06
  And obviously, this is nothing this is
• 1:19:08
  nothing against like eco tourism and
• 1:19:09
  tourism that the people the outfits that
• 1:19:12
  do it properly and take care of the reef
• 1:19:13
  while they're out there. But, you know,
• 1:19:15
  it's almost like they would if they had
• 1:19:16
  the time to do that, it'd be ideal.
• 1:19:19
  Right? Because they can spend a lot of
• 1:19:21
  their time to take care of the reef just
• 1:19:23
  as much as they as they use it. You know,
• 1:19:25
  I guess we were talking a bit about,
• 1:19:27
  we're talking about this before we kind of press the record. But I think it's a good idea.
• 1:19:30
  But it's this thing of kind of our world
• 1:19:34
  is pretty mixed up at the moment where
• 1:19:35
  the first thing, whereas we go through
• 1:19:37
  into these crazy times that we're in at
• 1:19:38
  the moment, the first thing to drop off
• 1:19:40
  is basically environment conservation,
• 1:19:43
  like the money just drops
• 1:19:44
  away almost immediately.
• 1:19:45
  And, and yet, it's the place that we live
• 1:19:47
  and it's, there's a level of insanity to
• 1:19:51
  the fact that we're not investing the
• 1:19:53
  time and effort. And, you know, even the
• 1:19:56
  social capital into into looking after
• 1:19:58
  the place that we live, but it is, yeah,
• 1:20:00
  we live at the moment,
• 1:20:01
  it's pretty weird, but
• 1:20:03
  we're so disconnected, right? We're so
• 1:20:05
  disconnected from like a lot of us are
• 1:20:07
  disconnected from from the ocean, just by
• 1:20:09
  geography. But it's also, you know, in
• 1:20:11
  terms of thought process, I, I, I
• 1:20:14
  recorded and published an episode about a
• 1:20:16
  month ago about how we need to talk about
• 1:20:18
  the ocean more just in
• 1:20:19
  our regular conversations.
• 1:20:19
  So that we're not necessarily just a kind
• 1:20:21
  of way, but in a way that, Hey, you know
• 1:20:23
  what, I'd like to use the ocean or I like
• 1:20:24
  to be out on the ocean. The last time I
• 1:20:26
  was there, or, you know, I'm there, if
• 1:20:27
  you're there every day, like you said,
• 1:20:28
  you're a few kilometers away.
• 1:20:29
  And I'm sure you're in the ocean quite a
• 1:20:30
  bit. You know, you just have to talk
• 1:20:32
  about that, that fun time. People on the
• 1:20:34
  coast, maybe, maybe take it for granted.
• 1:20:36
  They get to talk about it all the time.
• 1:20:38
  But, you know, people like myself who
• 1:20:39
  live in central Canada and you don't get,
• 1:20:42
  you get to see the Great Lakes, but you
• 1:20:43
  don't get to see the ocean.
• 1:20:44
  We need to talk about more, even if it's
• 1:20:46
  a river or a lake or something, you know,
• 1:20:47
  talk about the health talk, you know, in
• 1:20:49
  an optimistic kind of way. And then I
• 1:20:51
  feel like we get more connected, more top
• 1:20:53
  of mind in terms of regular decisions
• 1:20:56
  that we use in terms of like, you know,
• 1:20:58
  we always go over convenience over
• 1:20:59
  environment, I feel like, and we need to
• 1:21:01
  sort of get away from that.
• 1:21:04
  When we started to when we started this
• 1:21:07
  project, Great Recenter Project, one of
• 1:21:08
  the things around it was, again, you
• 1:21:12
  often come back to this thing of how much
• 1:21:14
  funding is that and it's never enough,
• 1:21:15
  right? And so you started to go, okay,
• 1:21:19
  well, what assets do we have that we
• 1:21:20
  don't have to pay for?
• 1:21:21
  So I've been talking about this kind of
• 1:21:23
  motley flotilla, which was all the
• 1:21:24
  tourism boats and all this, you know, the
• 1:21:26
  tugs going out to service more in lines
• 1:21:28
  and stuff like that. But there's also
• 1:21:30
  this asset of people, just
• 1:21:32
  general virtual volunteers.
• 1:21:35
  And one of the things that covered really
• 1:21:36
  kind of accelerated was virtual voluntary
• 1:21:40
  because everyone was stuck at home and
• 1:21:41
  they're still trying to get some sort of
• 1:21:42
  sense of connection.
• 1:21:43
  And so, you know, we were trying to get a
• 1:21:44
  sense of connection with them. Yeah, but
• 1:21:45
  which was, again, fortuitous for what
• 1:21:48
  we're trying to do, because suddenly we
• 1:21:49
  had a kind of workforce available.
• 1:21:52
  But it is also slightly like it's
• 1:21:56
  something that's slightly not sort of
• 1:21:58
  irritates me a bit, but is that there is
• 1:22:00
  a default often I think in conservation
• 1:22:02
  and research to remove people and lean on
• 1:22:05
  technology or lead and and it whether
• 1:22:09
  you're talking about going out on the
• 1:22:10
  reef, there's a bit of a rice a passage
• 1:22:12
  to for a lot of people who are
• 1:22:13
  living in the communities here,
• 1:22:14
  particularly traditional owners actually,
• 1:22:16
  of spending time on sea country being in
• 1:22:19
  the water and like living and breathing
• 1:22:21
  it. It's an amazing thing to
• 1:22:23
  have in your life to your point.
• 1:22:26
  For sure. But even with the virtual
• 1:22:27
  volunteering, it's like I think one of
• 1:22:29
  the rules that we had at the beginning
• 1:22:30
  when we're trying to set this thing up
• 1:22:32
  was, okay, how do you not engineer people
• 1:22:36
  out of this? How do you actually engineer
• 1:22:38
  them in and do that?
• 1:22:39
  And if can you do that in a meaningful
• 1:22:41
  way, can you do that in a way that isn't
• 1:22:43
  just kind of tokenistic or marking and
• 1:22:48
  I'm not I don't mean
• 1:22:50
  that in a critical way.
• 1:22:51
  I just mean, can you go to the next
• 1:22:52
  level, really? And so that's one of the
• 1:22:54
  things with the project
• 1:22:55
  with the census project.
• 1:22:56
  We're going, okay, if we were able to
• 1:22:58
  capture images from hundreds or even
• 1:23:00
  thousands of reefs across the Great
• 1:23:02
  Barrier Reef or across the world, what is
• 1:23:04
  the role of people in this?
• 1:23:04
  And that actually came to us as a kind of
• 1:23:08
  bit of a we had a bit of a crisis because
• 1:23:10
  the census project
• 1:23:11
  started to work really well.
• 1:23:13
  And instead of but the first year we got
• 1:23:14
  like 14,000 images from about 140 reefs
• 1:23:17
  or something. The second year we got to
• 1:23:19
  300 reefs and we had tens of thousands of
• 1:23:23
  images and we were leading we know
• 1:23:25
  experts were doing the
• 1:23:26
  analysis, but they were.
• 1:23:27
  It was super boring job. So they got kind
• 1:23:31
  of a board and didn't want to do it. And
• 1:23:34
  then you have to pay and we didn't have
• 1:23:36
  enough money. So there's a bit of a theme
• 1:23:38
  there. You notice Andrew. Yeah.
• 1:23:40
  So so we started we work with Dell, you
• 1:23:44
  know, the tech company and we were sort
• 1:23:46
  of looking at how do we can we
• 1:23:47
  build? Can we do this with AI?
• 1:23:49
  And on one hand, you need to go, maybe I
• 1:23:52
  can do all the analysis of these images
• 1:23:54
  in the image. You're basically looking
• 1:23:55
  for how much plate coral, boulder coral
• 1:23:57
  and branching cola is. And if it's got a
• 1:23:59
  lot, then you might have a key source
• 1:24:01
  free for a mother reef as the T.O.
• 1:24:03
  Traditional owners call it. And so I was
• 1:24:05
  kind of looking for these these most
• 1:24:06
  important of all the reefs within the
• 1:24:08
  system. But we we tried a I we got it to
• 1:24:12
  around 70 percent as accurate as an
• 1:24:14
  expert, which is
• 1:24:15
  good, but not good enough.
• 1:24:15
  Yeah. So then we sort of went for our can
• 1:24:19
  we add the AI with the human eye and we
• 1:24:22
  built this hybrid system of both. And
• 1:24:24
  that's now like it takes about just under
• 1:24:26
  a minute to analyze an image. And it's as
• 1:24:29
  accurate as an expert within percent, like one or two percentage points.
• 1:24:31
  So how does it work now? So now you have
• 1:24:35
  like you have a system that's 70%
• 1:24:36
  accurate just on its own. And then you
• 1:24:38
  have a person, you know, that has a bit
• 1:24:41
  of an expertise or, you know, knowledge
• 1:24:43
  of corals. How does it work
• 1:24:45
  to make it even more accurate?
• 1:24:48
  Yeah, so so we had this imaginary person
• 1:24:50
  in our heads who was commuting to work in
• 1:24:53
  Jakarta, totally person. Yeah. And
• 1:24:56
  therefore had a lot of commute time like
• 1:24:58
  four hours a day. And had a mobile phone. And then we had a mobile phone. And then we had a mobile phone.
• 1:25:02
  And smartphone. And therefore we want we
• 1:25:05
  wanted to be able to go could this person
• 1:25:06
  community in Jakarta every day, analyze
• 1:25:09
  an image in two minutes on their phone
• 1:25:11
  and do that once a day for five minutes.
• 1:25:14
  Almost like stop the doom scrolling, do
• 1:25:17
  that for five hours. Right. So sounds
• 1:25:18
  kind of our imaginary imaginary person.
• 1:25:21
  And so pretty much is kind of what we
• 1:25:22
  built, we built, we wanted it to be able
• 1:25:24
  to be used by somebody who's never been
• 1:25:26
  to the Great Barrier Reef or a reef.
• 1:25:28
  That needs to be really simple. And we
• 1:25:30
  were looking for really simple stuff.
• 1:25:31
  When we first started the platform, we
• 1:25:33
  had like 164 options. And it was kind of
• 1:25:37
  ridiculous. That was our scientists
• 1:25:38
  wanted, oh, we need 164 categories. And
• 1:25:40
  of course, of course, it
• 1:25:41
  didn't really work. Right.
• 1:25:43
  So so now we were okay, actually, what we
• 1:25:45
  really want to know was how much plate
• 1:25:47
  coral, boulder coral and branching color
• 1:25:49
  is there? And what else is in there?
• 1:25:52
  Yeah, exactly. So so that's what we
• 1:25:55
  built. And, and we sort of think about,
• 1:25:57
  well, so the AI will draw a shape.
• 1:26:00
  You can look at this on gravy senses that
• 1:26:02
  all but the AI will draw a shape around
• 1:26:03
  and we'll draw a line around a shape.
• 1:26:05
  That's pretty good at picking out, like,
• 1:26:09
  boulder coral or branching or and then
• 1:26:11
  that image you'll get asked if you go
• 1:26:13
  onto the site, you'll get
• 1:26:14
  asked, okay, what do you see?
• 1:26:15
  What's that boundary drawn around? What
• 1:26:18
  is it? Is it play call, Boulder coral or
• 1:26:20
  branching? You got a little tutorial
• 1:26:22
  first, but it's like super easy. But we
• 1:26:24
  want to design the whole system so that
• 1:26:26
  you need to you basically had
• 1:26:27
  to have no knowledge at all.
• 1:26:29
  Never been to the Great Barrier Reef, you
• 1:26:32
  don't need to know about coral, it's
• 1:26:34
  really, really simple. And so then every
• 1:26:37
  image gets analyzed by five different
• 1:26:39
  people. And it's the power of the crowd.
• 1:26:40
  So if five people are basically saying
• 1:26:42
  the same thing, you know that
• 1:26:44
  it's good chances play call.
• 1:26:45
  So there's a whole paper on this, which
• 1:26:48
  came out of University of Queensland,
• 1:26:51
  just looking at how accurate the data is
• 1:26:53
  because people are incredibly skeptical
• 1:26:54
  about science in the beginning. But
• 1:26:57
  actually, I think we're, I think it's
• 1:26:59
  actually the mass
• 1:27:00
  disruption to conservation.
• 1:27:02
  And I think that's, I think both
• 1:27:04
  required, but also is going to be is
• 1:27:07
  probably going to be facilitated by AI,
• 1:27:10
  the reality that you can make a citizen
• 1:27:12
  anywhere valuable in a conservation role
• 1:27:15
  is quite a big
• 1:27:16
  breakthrough if we embrace it.
• 1:27:20
  So I'm looking at the website now, so I
• 1:27:21
  keep looking over to the right, by the
• 1:27:22
  way, and I'm looking at the video that
• 1:27:25
  you have, it's almost like a how to
• 1:27:26
  guide, or just initial guide in terms of
• 1:27:29
  like explaining how it's working. I don't
• 1:27:31
  have the sound on, of course, but I'm
• 1:27:32
  looking at you see that boulder branches,
• 1:27:34
  you know, kind of plate,
• 1:27:37
  and you just have to all you have to do,
• 1:27:39
  I guess, is just click and agree. And
• 1:27:41
  like, this is this is how you do it.
• 1:27:43
  Yeah, it basically you'll have a few
• 1:27:45
  options down the left hand side and just
• 1:27:46
  go, so yeah, let's play. And even if you
• 1:27:48
  get it wrong, somebody else will get it
• 1:27:50
  right. Yeah, you have five basically the
• 1:27:52
  power of numbers, right?
• 1:27:53
  Just be like, No, no, actually, that's I
• 1:27:55
  would consider that this Yeah, I love
• 1:27:57
  this aspect. Have you gamified this a
• 1:28:01
  little bit to make it
• 1:28:02
  more enticing for people?
• 1:28:03
  Yeah, no, but so what we found was that.
• 1:28:08
  But firstly, I say this that school kids,
• 1:28:10
  sort of nine to 16 are incredibly good at
• 1:28:14
  this, but they're like, I'm like an old,
• 1:28:18
  annoying, you know, slow.
• 1:28:24
  Yeah, compared to like an 11 year old who
• 1:28:27
  just be like, you know, just firing
• 1:28:29
  through the stuff is so quick. It's
• 1:28:31
  amazing. So, and but I reckon we look at
• 1:28:34
  who's doing this is basically about 30
• 1:28:36
  school kids currently, a third is
• 1:28:38
  corporate volunteers that are companies
• 1:28:40
  and a third is just general public.
• 1:28:42
  So you've got it basically works with a
• 1:28:45
  lot of different people with gamified as
• 1:28:47
  extent of life, for example, at the
• 1:28:48
  moment, if you go on there, I think it's
• 1:28:50
  only in Australia, but I think we have an
• 1:28:51
  international one coming out.
• 1:28:52
  You know, if you every time you do five
• 1:28:54
  images, you win a ticket to basically a
• 1:28:59
  draw to come to the Great Barrier Reef
• 1:29:01
  and come out and look at some of the
• 1:29:02
  restoration sites we have out of the reef
• 1:29:03
  and stuff like that.
• 1:29:05
  But what you could I mean, there is so
• 1:29:06
  much you could do to this in terms of
• 1:29:08
  gamification. I think it's still it's
• 1:29:10
  pretty cool platform, but it's still
• 1:29:12
  pretty rudimentary in
• 1:29:13
  comparison to what you could do to it.
• 1:29:14
  Yeah, oh, 100%. Like, this is yeah,
• 1:29:17
  right. So it's like Mark one, right? So
• 1:29:20
  yeah, so and I think the other part to
• 1:29:22
  that is at the moment, we're just looking
• 1:29:23
  for those three types of coral, but
• 1:29:24
  actually, we need to work with with Mars
• 1:29:28
  have a big restoration program,
• 1:29:29
  we'll read stars and we've been what they
• 1:29:33
  look for is fields of rubble next to
• 1:29:35
  healthy coral and you can put these kind
• 1:29:37
  of they're called Mars, very stars that
• 1:29:39
  basically stabilize the reef and you can
• 1:29:41
  put coral fragments on them and you can
• 1:29:42
  actually rebuild small
• 1:29:43
  areas of reef doing that.
• 1:29:45
  It's very effective kind of restoration
• 1:29:46
  on small scale. But we are now using the
• 1:29:49
  data that we're capturing from all these
• 1:29:51
  photographs that coming in from across
• 1:29:52
  the Great Barrier Reef and other places
• 1:29:53
  to have to find those areas.
• 1:29:55
  So you can start to see, okay, well, step
• 1:29:58
  one was find these three types of
• 1:29:59
  hardcore step two could be, you know,
• 1:30:02
  fields of rubble and hardcore and you
• 1:30:04
  know, you can just keep doing more and
• 1:30:06
  more and more with this.
• 1:30:07
  I think the big challenge for us is not
• 1:30:08
  to design people out of it. I think it's
• 1:30:11
  a really critical. Yeah, you got to keep
• 1:30:12
  involved of conservation. Yeah.
• 1:30:15
  Well, it's a great way to connect them to
• 1:30:16
  to the Great Barrier Reef like people all
• 1:30:18
  over the world. Like you said in Jakarta
• 1:30:19
  and here in Burlington, Ontario, where I
• 1:30:22
  live or in the Arctic, even if they just
• 1:30:24
  have an app or they go on the website and
• 1:30:26
  they just like boom, boom, boom, boom,
• 1:30:28
  you do it and you're like,
• 1:30:29
  this is what corals look like.
• 1:30:30
  This is what branching corals like we
• 1:30:32
  hear it all the time. You know, it used
• 1:30:34
  to be a marine aquarium hobbyist and I
• 1:30:35
  was like, this is really cool. I want to
• 1:30:37
  see these branching corals. I want to see
• 1:30:38
  what they look like in the wild. Yeah, I
• 1:30:40
  want to see what it's what a reef is
• 1:30:41
  supposed to look like.
• 1:30:42
  I mean, you don't always see that you may
• 1:30:43
  see it in documentaries and so but you're
• 1:30:45
  not really focused on that here. It's
• 1:30:47
  like something that's specifically
• 1:30:48
  focused on there and also like it's a
• 1:30:51
  great opportunity for an education tool.
• 1:30:53
  You know what I mean to like not only get
• 1:30:54
  through this stuff, but maybe like after
• 1:30:56
  like, you know, you do five or six, you
• 1:30:58
  get like a tidbit of information of like
• 1:31:00
  this is what branching corals are
• 1:31:01
  important for like
• 1:31:02
  there's such an opportunity.
• 1:31:03
  So many hours you mentioned this is the
• 1:31:05
  first this is the first iteration and
• 1:31:07
  you're just like, okay, like there's a
• 1:31:09
  there's a lot of opportunity here with
• 1:31:11
  how you can build this out and but the
• 1:31:13
  fact that you're getting people engaged
• 1:31:15
  like how many people have been a part of
• 1:31:17
  this so far have you have you been able
• 1:31:18
  to figure out the count of like how many
• 1:31:20
  people have actually started?
• 1:31:21
  Yes, it's still it's still relatively
• 1:31:24
  new. I think we have about 12,000. So
• 1:31:28
  what we call super users that's people
• 1:31:30
  have done like a lot. Yeah, yeah. And so
• 1:31:35
  it's still relatively, actually
• 1:31:37
  relatively small. But what we at the
• 1:31:40
  moment, we're trying to build our
• 1:31:41
  workforce up to our virtual volunteering
• 1:31:43
  workforce up to about 60,000.
• 1:31:46
  If we had 60,000 people spending kind of
• 1:31:48
  five minutes of their time doing this, we
• 1:31:51
  could basically do all the analysis, the
• 1:31:54
  Great Barrier Reef in just a few hours.
• 1:31:56
  Yeah. So I think think about that. That's
• 1:32:00
  crazy. Right? We've got 12, I think we've
• 1:32:02
  got 12,000 something at the moment,
• 1:32:03
  right? Yeah, but it's 60,000. If everyone
• 1:32:06
  just gave five minutes. So at the moment,
• 1:32:08
  we're concentrating on Great Barrier
• 1:32:10
  Reef. But in in they've started to
• 1:32:12
  collect data in Hawaiian
• 1:32:13
  Islands. So there'll be a.
• 1:32:14
  A version of this will be launched around
• 1:32:16
  World Ocean's Day in in Hawaii, and we're
• 1:32:19
  doing the same in the Red Sea, we're
• 1:32:20
  doing same in the Coral Triangle. So you
• 1:32:22
  start to look at this. Where this gets
• 1:32:24
  really interesting, and I think quite
• 1:32:26
  exciting is this idea of going, okay, we
• 1:32:30
  are the Great Barrier Reef, we've got
• 1:32:31
  lots of experience
• 1:32:32
  that we've learned here.
• 1:32:32
  But there is experience all over the
• 1:32:35
  world, often disconnected. There's basic
• 1:32:38
  stuff that we all need to understand and
• 1:32:40
  know whether that be, you know, what's
• 1:32:42
  going on between the different reef,
• 1:32:44
  essentially, reef connectivity, where if
• 1:32:46
  you've got limited resources, you're
• 1:32:47
  going to spend that resource, whether it
• 1:32:49
  be money or whether it be
• 1:32:50
  time or boat time or whatever.
• 1:32:52
  And what would you do on those reefs? And
• 1:32:55
  then what's working and what's not?
• 1:32:57
  Because that's one of the other big
• 1:32:58
  things in conservation is you'll find
• 1:33:00
  there are mimicking projects everywhere
• 1:33:01
  in your find the be
• 1:33:02
  mimicking projects of ours, right?
• 1:33:04
  How do you get to a situation where you
• 1:33:06
  got, okay, let's try to pull this. How do
• 1:33:08
  we open source all of
• 1:33:09
  this? Yeah, and go right.
• 1:33:11
  Everyone's got it. You know, there is a
• 1:33:13
  there's essentially citizens, you got
• 1:33:15
  rights and responsibilities. So you can
• 1:33:18
  use all of this stuff, but your
• 1:33:20
  responsibilities then to
• 1:33:21
  feedback what you learn. Yeah.
• 1:33:24
  And where you get a restoration
• 1:33:25
  technique, for example, or stewardship
• 1:33:27
  sort of technique that's working really
• 1:33:29
  well, we want to know where it's not
• 1:33:30
  working really well, we also want to know
• 1:33:32
  so we don't so we don't do it.
• 1:33:34
  Well, it's a constant, it's a constant
• 1:33:36
  improvement, right? You're trying to
• 1:33:37
  improve the algorithms, you're trying to
• 1:33:39
  improve the AI, you're trying to improve
• 1:33:40
  people's interpretation of what they're
• 1:33:42
  seeing and then and then maybe even build
• 1:33:44
  on that if you can,
• 1:33:45
  you know, down the road.
• 1:33:47
  Yeah, so you're the science is always
• 1:33:48
  going to be there. It's going to have to
• 1:33:50
  be there, right to make sure that that
• 1:33:52
  everything is
• 1:33:52
  accurate and whatnot. Right?
• 1:33:53
  And I think I think as I said before, you
• 1:33:56
  know, one of the great challenges in
• 1:33:57
  citizen science is because of where it's
• 1:33:59
  come from. It's still like a really
• 1:34:00
  early, you know, sort of a quite new
• 1:34:03
  topic almost for sure.
• 1:34:05
  In a way, it is, although you could sort
• 1:34:06
  of go back in history and go, well,
• 1:34:07
  actually, farmers have been scientists or
• 1:34:09
  their own land for
• 1:34:09
  years, years or, you know, so.
• 1:34:10
  Yeah, but but but it's definitely looked
• 1:34:13
  down on by the research community and for
• 1:34:17
  some in some cases for
• 1:34:19
  good reason, I think.
• 1:34:20
  But I think we're going into a very
• 1:34:21
  different age where it's it can become an
• 1:34:23
  incredibly useful tool to get massive
• 1:34:26
  scale up into places. So we don't have to
• 1:34:28
  fly people all over the world to do stuff
• 1:34:30
  you can actually do, you know, real
• 1:34:31
  locally based conservation.
• 1:34:33
  You start to see those people as, you
• 1:34:37
  know, much more around the expertise can
• 1:34:40
  be transferred in a different way. Yeah.
• 1:34:44
  But so can the expertise on the recent
• 1:34:45
  cells come back and help
• 1:34:46
  other people all over the world.
• 1:34:47
  So I, you know, in a perfect world, I,
• 1:34:50
  you know, I sort of feel like there are
• 1:34:52
  massive opportunities here to really
• 1:34:56
  rethink in the same way that maybe
• 1:34:58
  Spotify changed the record industry, how
• 1:35:00
  you think about changing the conservation
• 1:35:03
  world and just bringing
• 1:35:05
  far more resource to it.
• 1:35:06
  That resource is not being used at the
• 1:35:08
  moment. Agree. We sort of look at screen
• 1:35:11
  time as a resource, right? So attention
• 1:35:12
  is almost like a currency. Yes, it is.
• 1:35:15
  And one of the great things about
• 1:35:17
  podcasts is one of those rare times where
• 1:35:19
  people actually will sit down. They
• 1:35:20
  probably would have done with me
• 1:35:21
  nattering on but they listen to to to a
• 1:35:27
  long form kind of type conversation. But
• 1:35:29
  we have this thing in Australia, I think
• 1:35:30
  average Australia spends three hours and
• 1:35:34
  15 minutes scrolling on their phone every
• 1:35:37
  day, like, you know, and I'm guilty that
• 1:35:39
  my kids are definitely guilty that even
• 1:35:41
  more than me. Yeah. But, you know, that's
• 1:35:44
  time that could be utilized. So we've got
• 1:35:45
  this kind of idea at the moment, which
• 1:35:47
  we're working on. And let's just like,
• 1:35:48
  you know, cap me, cap me, save the reef
• 1:35:50
  for five minutes and cap me. Does that
• 1:35:52
  kind of whole idea of like, how do you
• 1:35:54
  like take a break from doing it? Yeah,
• 1:35:57
  yeah, yeah. Do
• 1:35:57
  something good. You know, yeah.
• 1:35:58
  Yeah, stop do scrolling. There's plenty
• 1:36:00
  of political reasons to stop do scrolling
• 1:36:02
  at the moment. So, you know, yeah, for
• 1:36:04
  sure. Well, your mental everybody's
• 1:36:05
  mental health needs a little break, I
• 1:36:06
  think, you know, to be able to stare at
• 1:36:09
  at reef, you know, like, like a beautiful
• 1:36:12
  reef, you know, and maybe sometimes it's
• 1:36:13
  good. Sometimes it's bad. Sometimes it's
• 1:36:15
  not. Yeah, yeah. Sometimes you revisit it
• 1:36:17
  and see how it's doing. And has it
• 1:36:19
  recovered from a bleaching event? Or is
• 1:36:21
  it going through a bleaching event? Or
• 1:36:22
  sometimes you never know how are the how
• 1:36:25
  the photographs taken?
• 1:36:25
  It's really simple. So you if you take an
• 1:36:31
  average reef, you're trying to get all
• 1:36:32
  four sides of a reef. So the wild side,
• 1:36:36
  which normally in this case, places to
• 1:36:38
  the east, the, the lagoon side, which is
• 1:36:43
  the west side, and then the pressure
• 1:36:44
  points on either end, because it's a
• 1:36:46
  barrier reef. So that's kind of they're
• 1:36:47
  not so many fringing reefs here. Gotcha.
• 1:36:51
  And then, and the pressure points, you
• 1:36:52
  know, where you get the big animals on
• 1:36:54
  either end normally. Yeah.
• 1:36:55
  So you have a lot of fish up here. And
• 1:36:57
  you take a you have two people in the
• 1:37:00
  water minimum two people in the water, 40
• 1:37:02
  photographs in a GoPro about two to three
• 1:37:05
  meters away from the side of the reef.
• 1:37:08
  And you take a photograph every five
• 1:37:11
  kicks of your fins, you take 40
• 1:37:13
  photographs, so you get 80
• 1:37:15
  photographs across a survey.
• 1:37:19
  And you take a picture of the system. And
• 1:37:20
  this is like a very easy, easy system
• 1:37:21
  where one of the first challenges we had
• 1:37:23
  when we started this was actually wasn't
• 1:37:26
  that hard getting people to go out and
• 1:37:27
  take photographs. What was hard was
• 1:37:29
  getting the photographs off the GoPros.
• 1:37:31
  We built this whole system that made
• 1:37:33
  right basically in Australia, what
• 1:37:34
  happens is you go out on the reef and
• 1:37:36
  then you come back and go to the pub and
• 1:37:37
  or maybe you go back to your family or
• 1:37:39
  something but often pub in this case.
• 1:37:42
  And then you start thinking, well, how do
• 1:37:43
  you get that? So we built the system and
• 1:37:45
  you basically come out of the water, you
• 1:37:46
  go prone immediately uploads. But like
• 1:37:49
  you put in a car somewhere and it uploads
• 1:37:51
  like from a computer basically Bluetooth
• 1:37:53
  it. It's really easy. Yes, super easy.
• 1:37:56
  Yeah. So essentially, the way the system
• 1:37:59
  works, I interrupt, but the way the
• 1:38:00
  system works is you have all these boats
• 1:38:02
  in the water from tourists, like tourist
• 1:38:04
  operations and so forth. They go in the
• 1:38:06
  water. They're in the water anyway, they
• 1:38:07
  have the GoPro. They're just there not
• 1:38:09
  only to make sure the tourists are having
• 1:38:10
  a good time, but also to make sure like to take a picture of the water.
• 1:38:11
  And also to make sure like to take these
• 1:38:13
  pictures every five kicks, you could even
• 1:38:15
  also include like the odd tourists to be
• 1:38:18
  able to do it too, because they might
• 1:38:19
  feel like this is a great way to look at
• 1:38:20
  the reef and wait to help if you need to.
• 1:38:22
  But you have people in the water doing it
• 1:38:24
  with all these boats on the water and
• 1:38:26
  then they come once they're done their
• 1:38:27
  trip or their day, they come in that a
• 1:38:29
  series of photos, probably hundreds at
• 1:38:32
  that point, you know, for an entire day
• 1:38:34
  out on the water gets uploaded to the
• 1:38:36
  system and the system, you know, to
• 1:38:38
  basically distribute it out
• 1:38:39
  to the users to be able to.
• 1:38:41
  Make those go through the analysis,
• 1:38:43
  right? That's pretty much exactly that.
• 1:38:45
  Yeah. How long did it take you to get to
• 1:38:47
  that point, like where
• 1:38:48
  it's almost streamlined?
• 1:38:50
  I mean, I think we can we still
• 1:38:52
  streamlining. I think we're constantly
• 1:38:54
  streamlining actually. But it's been
• 1:38:58
  iterative. Yeah, it's been four or five
• 1:39:00
  years working on this. The first version
• 1:39:02
  was actually the first version.
• 1:39:06
  Again, we were doing a lot of skepticism
• 1:39:08
  around just even the approach. Yeah, it
• 1:39:11
  was kind of interesting to deal with you
• 1:39:12
  because you have to deal with a lot of
• 1:39:13
  negativity, of course, but but now I feel
• 1:39:16
  like we've gone quite
• 1:39:17
  a long way past that.
• 1:39:18
  And I think the results in the scientific
• 1:39:20
  papers are out from University of
• 1:39:21
  Queensland, all this kind of stuff. So it
• 1:39:22
  makes a big difference. But it is a very
• 1:39:25
  different way of thinking
• 1:39:26
  about how you get scale.
• 1:39:28
  And and the idea that you can get scale,
• 1:39:32
  which is challenging, you know, without
• 1:39:34
  having, you know, a billion dollars.
• 1:39:36
  Yeah. And so so it has been iterative,
• 1:39:40
  but it accelerates every time you bring
• 1:39:42
  more talent into it,
• 1:39:43
  it basically helps it.
• 1:39:44
  And one of the interesting things, even
• 1:39:47
  the person who did the AI, the original
• 1:39:48
  set of AI, and I'm sorry, she currently
• 1:39:51
  works in Texas, but she was working in
• 1:39:54
  Sydney, and she'd never she was
• 1:39:56
  originally from India, and moved to
• 1:39:58
  Castle Hill in Sydney had
• 1:39:59
  never been in the ocean.
• 1:40:00
  And yet she led the team that did the AI,
• 1:40:03
  which was, I think, pretty
• 1:40:04
  groundbreaking. I think no one had done
• 1:40:06
  it before. And, yeah, so we actually took
• 1:40:09
  her and there was a kind of cool though,
• 1:40:11
  we took her in the water for the fish had
• 1:40:12
  never been in the ocean.
• 1:40:13
  And one of my team, Yaz took her into
• 1:40:16
  into the ocean for the first time. And we
• 1:40:19
  were doing a doco for a streaming
• 1:40:20
  platform here in Australia. And they
• 1:40:23
  filmed it. It's just like one of the
• 1:40:25
  coolest bits that has been in the film.
• 1:40:27
  Yeah, her face just lights up because
• 1:40:29
  she's got a really, really amazing reef
• 1:40:31
  called Flynn reef, which is off cans and
• 1:40:33
  okay with them. Yeah, and it was, yeah,
• 1:40:36
  it's kind of all those life changing.
• 1:40:38
  Yeah, I mean, honestly, you see someone's
• 1:40:41
  eye like, you know, it's a bit of a, it's
• 1:40:43
  an amazing thing to go on the roof. You
• 1:40:45
  know, you see people's eyes like light up
• 1:40:47
  in a way that, you know, you'd only see
• 1:40:49
  in the Serengeti or someone
• 1:40:50
  like that, you know, for sure.
• 1:40:51
  Very simple. I love it. I this is such a
• 1:40:55
  cool thing to do. And then now when you
• 1:40:58
  get all that data, I mean, obviously,
• 1:40:59
  that's been your focus is like, okay,
• 1:41:01
  let's get the data. Let's let's try and
• 1:41:03
  figure out let's get this analysis done.
• 1:41:05
  What's what do you do with the data after
• 1:41:07
  that? Like, do you have some house that
• 1:41:09
  that analyze it and look at coverage
• 1:41:11
  makeup maps like in a GIS or something?
• 1:41:13
  Or do you hand it over to the Great
• 1:41:16
  Barrier Reef Marine Park?
• 1:41:16
  Yeah, great. It's a lot of data. It's a
• 1:41:20
  lot of data. It's a lot of data. And it's
• 1:41:22
  a new it's a new type of data because
• 1:41:23
  it's broad scale reconnaissance. It's not
• 1:41:25
  sort of hyper like accurate quadrant kind
• 1:41:28
  of, you know, what's happening in the
• 1:41:29
  square meter. It's more like seascape.
• 1:41:32
  But but that was kind of what was asked
• 1:41:35
  for in the beginning. So the data goes
• 1:41:37
  into this project, a partnership with
• 1:41:39
  University of Queensland, the Marine
• 1:41:41
  Spatial Ecology Lab, a guy, a guy they
• 1:41:44
  call Pete, Pete Mumbi, Professor Pete Mumbi.
• 1:41:46
  Not well known, I guess. I'm sorry. Guys
• 1:41:50
  like we're renowned. Yeah, yeah, he is a
• 1:41:53
  he unusually he was a bit at bigger
• 1:41:57
  advocate for this from the beginning has
• 1:41:59
  been kind of what I helped started
• 1:42:01
  basically. So it goes into his lab. And
• 1:42:03
  we have. And then that
• 1:42:05
  data is used for the modeling.
• 1:42:06
  I think it's providing about 50% of the
• 1:42:09
  modeling data that then goes back to the
• 1:42:12
  Marine Park Authority, particularly to
• 1:42:14
  guide their crown of thorns starfish
• 1:42:16
  culling boats. Yeah, we have a an animal
• 1:42:19
  that's on the Great Barrier Reef. I'm
• 1:42:20
  sure you know, it's hundred by which for
• 1:42:22
  crown of thorns starfish. Yeah, it's an
• 1:42:24
  incredibly efficient eater of coral. Yes.
• 1:42:28
  And and I think is responsible currently
• 1:42:30
  for about 50% of the coral
• 1:42:32
  loss on the Great Barrier Reef.
• 1:42:32
  Yeah, soon to be and already probably
• 1:42:36
  superseded by climate change, but so they
• 1:42:40
  have a I think six boats to go up and
• 1:42:42
  down the Great Barrier Reef culling
• 1:42:44
  swarms of crown of thorns starfish. The
• 1:42:47
  pro how do you product how do you, you
• 1:42:49
  know, find which reefs to go to to go
• 1:42:52
  looking for those crown of thorns
• 1:42:53
  starfish, particularly looking for where
• 1:42:55
  is there a high amount of food source for
• 1:42:57
  crown of thorns starfish rather than
• 1:42:59
  looking for the crown of thorns itself.
• 1:42:59
  That data that we're collecting for
• 1:43:02
  census is going into that program at the
• 1:43:04
  marine parks. And I think it's getting
• 1:43:06
  better and better and better and more
• 1:43:08
  useful. But we're also now using it. So I
• 1:43:11
  said before, I think it's like we've
• 1:43:13
  tried to design essentially a targeting
• 1:43:14
  system to go right if you've if you're
• 1:43:17
  going to intervene in some way could be
• 1:43:19
  better stewardship could be restoration
• 1:43:21
  could be anything in between. How do you
• 1:43:23
  pick your places? And that's what the
• 1:43:25
  data? That's what we're really interested
• 1:43:27
  in is how do you create a future?
• 1:43:29
  And I think that's a far more efficient
• 1:43:30
  way of helping a community choose where
• 1:43:32
  it's going to put its limited resources
• 1:43:34
  to help conserve and protect reefs in
• 1:43:39
  their own backyard. And does that mean
• 1:43:42
  the start in a row? Does that mean the
• 1:43:43
  data that you're providing has to be more
• 1:43:48
  accurate? Because right now you're at
• 1:43:49
  like you said, you're at a broad scale.
• 1:43:51
  You're looking at boulder, you know,
• 1:43:53
  rubble, branching corals, plate corals,
• 1:43:57
  which is good to identify,
• 1:43:58
  you know, obviously, yeah,
• 1:43:58
  does that mean like to get those types of
• 1:44:02
  spaces? Does that mean in certain areas,
• 1:44:04
  you're going to spend more time and to be
• 1:44:07
  a little bit more accurate to identify to
• 1:44:09
  genus or species and some
• 1:44:10
  if that's even possible?
• 1:44:13
  Not not at the moment, though. I know
• 1:44:15
  that we're working on sort of quite hard
• 1:44:18
  challenge of trying to start to identify
• 1:44:20
  soft coral as well as much harder.
• 1:44:22
  Interesting to identify using AI, etc.
• 1:44:26
  And even human eye, it's much harder. Right.
• 1:44:26
  We're still working on that moment with
• 1:44:30
  different color treatments and different
• 1:44:32
  sort of approaches. But the first
• 1:44:36
  iteration is was let's find these key
• 1:44:39
  source reefs and start to use that to
• 1:44:40
  help with reef connectivity mapping and all this kind of stuff that's Pete's work.
• 1:44:41
  But I was just talking about this example
• 1:44:46
  of the Mars reef stars. So this is
• 1:44:49
  basically rebuilding architecture on
• 1:44:50
  reefs that have been hammered by cyclones
• 1:44:52
  or very severe bleaching. And then what
• 1:44:55
  they're looking for is rubble fields next
• 1:44:57
  to good coral. Good, you know, right. So
• 1:45:00
  you need both good rubble field, good
• 1:45:02
  high corals, because that's where your
• 1:45:03
  fragments going to come from to help
• 1:45:05
  rebuild that. So using the data to start
• 1:45:08
  to be more specific. Okay, well, can we find rubble fields in this area?
• 1:45:08
  Information. And then can we map that
• 1:45:14
  against the good coral so that you start
• 1:45:16
  to see how we still quite early versions
• 1:45:19
  of this. But what you start to do is
• 1:45:22
  build up much better pictures of what's
• 1:45:23
  going on in a much, much bigger area.
• 1:45:26
  Yeah. And also, if you think about
• 1:45:27
  someone like great barrier reef, you
• 1:45:29
  could have restoration programs, but they normally need a lot of logistics and resources.
• 1:45:30
  How do you change that and think about
• 1:45:36
  how can you do that at a much, much lower
• 1:45:38
  cost? Yeah, and at a very an all being
• 1:45:41
  done by locals. No one's flying in no
• 1:45:44
  one, you know, thinking about how you
• 1:45:45
  build a system that can do that and share
• 1:45:47
  those insights from like top scientists
• 1:45:49
  like Pete with a community in the
• 1:45:52
  Philippines that normally wouldn't get access to those insights, but also vice versa, sharing what they're learning on their recent they fish on and they're like, oh, I'm not going to do that.
• 1:46:07
  Yeah, it is a, it's, as I said, it's kind
• 1:46:12
  of thinking about everything almost much more like a shared economy. Yeah, like everyone's in. Everyone has a part to play, whether you're a world's top research on to store, you know, looking for a place to be.
• 1:46:23
  Fishy village in the Philippines, you're
• 1:46:26
  all important. Absolutely. And if and
• 1:46:28
  that's the great part of it, you just get
• 1:46:30
  you feel so good for, for like maybe five
• 1:46:32
  minutes of work a day, if you really
• 1:46:34
  think about it, you know, it's insane to
• 1:46:36
  know and to understand how impactful it is.
• 1:46:37
  insane to know and to understand how
• 1:46:40
  impactful it is from a
• 1:46:46
  project point of view.
• 1:46:47
  The amount of data that you're producing
• 1:46:48
  to go into a lab like
• 1:46:51
  Peter Mumbi's lab and to
• 1:46:53
  be able to output the resource that it's
• 1:46:54
  outputting, this is a huge game changer
• 1:46:57
  in terms of managing
• 1:46:58
  the Great Barrier Reef.
• 1:46:59
  I'm not saying it's going to improve the
• 1:47:01
  Great Barrier Reef like
• 1:47:02
  that, but it's going to
• 1:47:03
  allow, like you said, to identify points
• 1:47:05
  that may need a little
• 1:47:06
  bit more help or maybe more
• 1:47:07
  analysis to say, "How
• 1:47:09
  can we help these areas?
• 1:47:10
  Are these the most vulnerable areas?
• 1:47:12
  Are they not?"
• 1:47:13
  There's so many applications to this and
• 1:47:15
  it seems like you're
• 1:47:16
  just getting started in
• 1:47:17
  this type of work.
• 1:47:20
  I think, I mean, really good points.
• 1:47:22
  I think the thing as well is like we've
• 1:47:24
  had, it's been a very,
• 1:47:25
  everyone will know this,
• 1:47:26
  it's been a really tough start to the
• 1:47:28
  year with USAID being
• 1:47:29
  pulled and all this kind
• 1:47:30
  of stuff.
• 1:47:31
  And so instead of there being more funds
• 1:47:33
  and resources for
• 1:47:34
  conservation, there's definitely
• 1:47:36
  seeing like billions of dollars less
• 1:47:38
  basically what feels like 100%.
• 1:47:41
  And I just sort of, I think we all feel
• 1:47:44
  like we can't just, you
• 1:47:47
  know, we've got to come
• 1:47:48
  up with a way of being
• 1:47:49
  able to bypass that problem.
• 1:47:52
  Yeah.
• 1:47:53
  You know, and not just because we all
• 1:47:55
  love reefs and we care
• 1:47:56
  about what happens to them,
• 1:47:57
  but there are ways of doing it.
• 1:48:01
  And I think that's kind of weird sort of
• 1:48:05
  weirdly, we did design
• 1:48:06
  this knowing obviously
• 1:48:07
  that this was going to happen, the USAID
• 1:48:08
  stuff and this massive drop in income.
• 1:48:11
  Yeah.
• 1:48:11
  But I think, you know, it's, I had a boss
• 1:48:15
  once who said that
• 1:48:15
  luck was opportunity meets
• 1:48:17
  preparation.
• 1:48:19
  And in a weird sort of way, I feel like
• 1:48:21
  we've kind of done that by accident.
• 1:48:23
  Yeah.
• 1:48:23
  It is a system that we've tried to build
• 1:48:25
  that can be scaled to
• 1:48:27
  anywhere in the world.
• 1:48:28
  And we know that our tropical reefs, you
• 1:48:33
  know, as a billion people rely on them
• 1:48:34
  for their livelihoods, you know,
• 1:48:36
  25% of the world's species marine species
• 1:48:38
  will spend some time on tropical reefs.
• 1:48:39
  There's all these kind of massive stats
• 1:48:41
  statistics that go, should we really need
• 1:48:43
  to look after these places?
• 1:48:45
  Yeah.
• 1:48:45
  And so how are we going to do that
• 1:48:46
  without, you know, in this
• 1:48:49
  new paradigm that we live in?
• 1:48:52
  We've got to think differently.
• 1:48:54
  Agreed. I completely agree.
• 1:48:55
  We were talking a little bit about, you
• 1:48:57
  know, before we started recording, we
• 1:48:58
  talked about how basically how to how to
• 1:49:00
  solve the world for conservation.
• 1:49:01
  Yeah.
• 1:49:02
  In terms of conservation funding.
• 1:49:03
  We did, by the way.
• 1:49:04
  We fixed it.
• 1:49:05
  It's all good. We'll do
• 1:49:06
  that for another episode.
• 1:49:08
  We'll let you know about it.
• 1:49:10
  But it's true.
• 1:49:10
  I mean, like there's definitely, you
• 1:49:12
  know, we can't rely on necessarily on
• 1:49:14
  certain on certain governments.
• 1:49:15
  We've learned that from the share, even
• 1:49:16
  their own where our own government
• 1:49:18
  sometimes, you know,
• 1:49:19
  we'll switch their priorities.
• 1:49:21
  Conservation has to be
• 1:49:22
  monetized in a certain way.
• 1:49:23
  How that's going to happen.
• 1:49:25
  There's a lot of different models out
• 1:49:26
  there that may or may not work.
• 1:49:28
  It's going to be tested.
• 1:49:29
  But I think, you know, as you mentioned,
• 1:49:31
  too, before we record, it's very
• 1:49:33
  difficult because you have to dedicate
• 1:49:35
  like 60 to 70 percent of your time to
• 1:49:37
  fundraise, to come up with some sort of
• 1:49:39
  way to be able to get this going and get
• 1:49:42
  this moving so that you can do the work
• 1:49:44
  that you really want to do,
• 1:49:45
  which could be quite impactful.
• 1:49:46
  It just, you know, just need a bit of
• 1:49:48
  funding to go through and and pay the
• 1:49:51
  people that deserve to be paid and, you
• 1:49:54
  know, monetize it in certain ways that
• 1:49:55
  it's just being funded.
• 1:49:57
  And I think it's so funny because like
• 1:49:59
  you look at certain people in the world
• 1:50:00
  who are billionaires and then you have
• 1:50:03
  others who are and they're and they're
• 1:50:05
  making money after money
• 1:50:06
  after money on on fearless things.
• 1:50:08
  And then you look at what you what we're
• 1:50:09
  trying to do here in the nonprofit world,
• 1:50:11
  the conservation world to say, we just
• 1:50:13
  want to we just want to bring this back
• 1:50:15
  or we just want to protect what we have.
• 1:50:17
  And we're not looking to make, you know,
• 1:50:19
  millions and millions of dollars. We're
• 1:50:20
  just trying to protect like our mission
• 1:50:21
  is to protect if we can do that with the
• 1:50:24
  right amount of money.
• 1:50:25
  Here's what it requires. You can do a lot
• 1:50:27
  of great things. And I think I think it's
• 1:50:30
  really we're going to have to see a
• 1:50:32
  change in the funding models in the
• 1:50:34
  monetization models of this type of work
• 1:50:37
  so that we can be more impactful and not
• 1:50:39
  rely on the billionaires and the big
• 1:50:41
  foundations as much as we as we did
• 1:50:44
  because there are more people trying to
• 1:50:45
  get into this game and trying to do that.
• 1:50:46
  And so I think it's really important to
• 1:50:46
  do some work, some great work, but it's
• 1:50:49
  harder to get funding. So that's that's
• 1:50:50
  always definitely tough. And with that
• 1:50:53
  said, there is a donate button on the
• 1:50:55
  website. So we're going to link to that.
• 1:50:56
  So people want to donate. They get
• 1:50:57
  inspired by this podcast and what you're
• 1:50:59
  saying. And the fact that you can
• 1:51:01
  actually do quite a bit.
• 1:51:01
  You know, please go donate. We'll put
• 1:51:03
  that in the show notes. So, you know,
• 1:51:05
  feel free to do that. But, you know,
• 1:51:07
  Andy, this has been great. I know you and
• 1:51:09
  I could probably talk for hours and hours
• 1:51:10
  on end. But I'd love to invite you back
• 1:51:12
  on to talk more about the projects, you
• 1:51:14
  know, at Citizen of the Reef and to be
• 1:51:16
  able to, you know, this was kind of a it
• 1:51:19
  was kind of fun because it was like not
• 1:51:20
  only getting to know you, but a bit of a
• 1:51:21
  workshopping type of episode. And I think
• 1:51:23
  people got to listen in on this, which I
• 1:51:25
  think is a really, really fun episode to
• 1:51:27
  do. But I'd love to invite you back on or
• 1:51:29
  even there's a fun to talk about your the work that you're doing.
• 1:51:30
  But you're the work that you guys are
• 1:51:32
  doing and how helpful it is and all the
• 1:51:34
  the improvements that you're able to make
• 1:51:36
  and to these systems and to the reef. So
• 1:51:39
  thank you so much for coming on the show.
• 1:51:41
  Hey, thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks for
• 1:51:42
  getting us on and yes, cool cool podcast.
• 1:51:45
  So, you know, Andrew. Yeah, thanks, man.
• 1:51:48
  You love to come back on or get someone
• 1:51:50
  more interesting from a team to come on,
• 1:51:51
  but it's been a pleasure. You've been you
• 1:51:55
  notice like to give them extremely long
• 1:51:57
  answers to all the questions. Sorry about
• 1:51:58
  this, is what a podcast is for.
• 1:51:59
  four. I talk a lot. That's why I started
• 1:52:02
  the podcast. I'm in my
• 1:52:04
  office by myself talking
• 1:52:05
  to you, which is great. All right. Well,
• 1:52:07
  thanks a lot, Andy. We
• 1:52:08
  really appreciate it.
• 1:52:09
  Yes, thanks, Matt. Thank you, Andy, for
• 1:52:11
  joining us on this episode
• 1:52:13
  of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
• 1:52:14
  It was great to have
• 1:52:15
  you on, and I mean that.
• 1:52:18
  I often get inspired by the guests that I
• 1:52:20
  have on, hence why I
• 1:52:20
  have them on. This was
• 1:52:22
  one of those episodes. I get completely
• 1:52:24
  inspired in the impact that
• 1:52:26
  this has been able to have.
• 1:52:28
  Andy talks about how the data goes to
• 1:52:30
  Pete Mumbi's lab at
• 1:52:32
  University of Queensland, and
• 1:52:33
  it goes into their spatial ecology lab.
• 1:52:35
  They run models. It's
• 1:52:37
  continuing to increase in
• 1:52:38
  the percentage. I think it's 50%. He said
• 1:52:40
  during the interview of
• 1:52:41
  how much it contributes
• 1:52:42
  to the models that they run, looking at
• 1:52:44
  the broad scale shape
• 1:52:47
  and size of the reef and
• 1:52:49
  what's healthy, what's not. It's really
• 1:52:51
  cool to see. I think
• 1:52:52
  it's phenomenal, and I want
• 1:52:54
  to see more of this. I'm so happy that I
• 1:52:57
  got to speak to Andy today and to be able
• 1:52:58
  to say, "Hey, you know what? This is an
• 1:53:00
  impactful reef." What I
• 1:53:01
  love about this is I have this
• 1:53:03
  podcast. I have this platform, and Andy's
• 1:53:05
  team reached out.
• 1:53:06
  Actually, Andy reached out.
• 1:53:07
  He's like, "Hey, I'd love to be on your
• 1:53:08
  podcast." He was a
• 1:53:08
  communications person. I'm just like,
• 1:53:10
  "Yeah, this is awesome. Let's do this." I
• 1:53:12
  never would have known. This is the thing
• 1:53:13
  that I love about this area of podcasting
• 1:53:19
  and social media is
• 1:53:20
  that as I put out more
• 1:53:21
  episodes, people hear it. Andy said he's
• 1:53:23
  been listening to us
• 1:53:24
  for a while. People hear
• 1:53:26
  it. He's like, "Yeah, I want to share my
• 1:53:27
  story." They contact me.
• 1:53:28
  We connect, and we share
• 1:53:29
  the story, and then you get to listen to
• 1:53:32
  it, and it gets to go
• 1:53:32
  out worldwide, and I just
• 1:53:34
  love it. GreatReefCensus.org.
• 1:53:37
  GreatReefCensus.org is the website. I
• 1:53:40
  want you to go visit it.
• 1:53:41
  I want you to be one of the, right now,
• 1:53:43
  12,000 people. He wants
• 1:53:44
  to get 60,000 people to be
• 1:53:46
  able to pick Reef's and be able to
• 1:53:48
  categorize it. It's a great way to train
• 1:53:51
  yourself into understanding
• 1:53:52
  Reef's for all you early career
• 1:53:53
  scientists that want to work on Reef's.
• 1:53:55
  It's a great way to contribute
• 1:53:56
  to conservation for all those people who
• 1:53:57
  want to contribute to
• 1:53:58
  conservation, and it's going to be
• 1:54:00
  a lot of fun to go through it and to see
• 1:54:02
  this evolution of this
• 1:54:04
  program and where it's going
• 1:54:05
  to go. He's talking about going to other
• 1:54:06
  Reef's around the world.
• 1:54:08
  It's all needed. We need the
• 1:54:10
  help. We need the people. We need you as
• 1:54:11
  citizen scientists, and you
• 1:54:12
  can become a citizen scientist
• 1:54:14
  for free. Isn't that wonderful? For free.
• 1:54:16
  So let's get on that. I'd
• 1:54:18
  love to hear your experience.
• 1:54:19
  So hit me up on Instagram at How to
• 1:54:22
  Protect the Ocean. If you've signed up or
• 1:54:24
  you've been signed up for a long time,
• 1:54:25
  let me know. But also let me know in the
• 1:54:28
  comments if you're watching this on
• 1:54:29
  YouTube. Just let me know
• 1:54:30
  what you think of this program.
• 1:54:31
  If you've signed up or you've been a part
• 1:54:33
  of it, I'd love to hear your thoughts on
• 1:54:35
  this. Thank you so much
• 1:54:36
  to Andy for joining us.
• 1:54:37
  Thank you for his team for the work that
• 1:54:38
  he does and the work he and his team do,
• 1:54:41
  and we want to thank you for listening to
• 1:54:42
  this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
• 1:54:44
  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin from the true
• 1:54:46
  north strong and free and soon to be
• 1:54:48
  citizen scientists looking at
• 1:54:50
  Reef's on a very daily basis.
• 1:54:53
  I can't wait to do that. But thank you so
• 1:54:54
  much for joining us on today's episode of
• 1:54:56
  the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
• 1:54:57
  Have a great day. We'll talk to you next
• 1:54:59
  time and happy conservation.