AI-Enhanced App Helps Monitor, Protect the World's Coral Reefs

An app that monitors the health of coral reefs under threat from climate change will add AI functionality to help conserve a connected network of climate-resilient reefs.

Mermaid uses the open-source database Postgres to collect and manage real-time data on coral reef health. The new AI functionality will enable it to quickly analyze vast amounts of data collected from reefs, identifying patterns and predicting potential bleaching events before they become critical.

According to National Marine Sanctuaries, an agency that oversees the conservation of protected U.S. marine zones, coral reefs are home to around 25% of marine life. Climate change warms sea water, which causes coral to expel the algae that live in it, turning it white.

Mermaid was launched in 2018 and has been used by more than 2,000 scientists across 40 countries who collaborate and share their data. Together, they have submitted more than 50,000 transects—thin sections taken for analysis—from 5,000 coral reef sites around the world.

Having started life as a series of spreadsheets, Mermaid’s move to Postgres has improved efficiency by as much as five times, supporting scientists to empower local communities and government partners to protect coral reefs.

“There are two things that can help solve the global crisis for coral reefs: urgent policy action to halt climate change and leveraging underwater monitoring data to identify and conserve climate resilient coral reefs,” said Emily Darling, Mermaid co-founder and director of coral reef conservation at the Wildlife Conservation Society.

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“But collecting, managing and analyzing this critical data is time-consuming and complicated for coral reef scientists. That’s why we developed Mermaid and turned to Postgres.”  

Postgres data and AI company EnterpriseDB recently sponsored the Mermaid AI update in a bid to support the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which aims to conserve 30% of terrestrial, inland water, coastal and marine areas by 2030.

“The democratization of data across users, environments, and applications is paramount in the age of AI, and even more critical when our world’s oceans are at stake,” said EnterpriseDB CEO Kevin Dallas.

“With over 35 years of active development, Postgres is the most extensible and flexible database, trusted by millions of nonprofits, government agencies and commercial enterprises alike. What we’re seeing here is that Postgres also has a powerful role to play in the future of our planet.”