Can artificial intelligence stop shark attacks?

Source: Andrew Thirlwell / Getty

Surveillance of sharks instead of destruction as a solution to the problem of the safety of beaches.

Australia is probably one of the few places on earth where scientific broadcasts of great white sharks regularly cause fierce political debates, and it is not surprising that the country traditionally ranks first on the planet in the ranking of fatal random attacks in which these underwater predators participated. Over the past ten years, this figure is an average of 2.1 deaths per year . It seems that the risk is not so great, but the Australians, who mostly live near or on the coast and are extremely fond of spending time at sea, are reasonably worried; and such anxiety translates into what is commonly called “excessive measures”, such as shark nets or trap lines with baits set up for the sole purpose of killing sharks.

As a result, with the filing of official authorities and environmentalists, this led to the emergence of surveillance systems that use elements of artificial intelligence for the automated identification of sharks in the water. The technology is still in its infancy, and there are a lot of difficulties with it, but supporters of the “follow the sharks using AI” method believe that this can create some kind of “neutral territory” for various political factions of Australia that constantly conflict on the basis of “destroy or not” to the question "what to do with sharks". And while startups are looking for an opportunity to push through their innovations where the problem is acute - and this is not just Australia, there are many such places, from Cape Town to California - those who struggle to preserve the environment hope that one day people will coexist with sharks more peacefully. .

“Without a doubt, the use of technologies that reduce the risk of attack will improve both the rest in general and the mood of visitors to the beaches, but at the same time, we should not disturb the rest of the marine life,” said Nabin Sharma, a teacher at the Sydney University of Technology. will benefit both sharks and people. "

For example, one option looks like hourly patrols by drones at about forty beaches in New South Wales and eight beaches in Queensland, on the east coast of Australia. The devices can be kept in the air for up to twenty-eight minutes in total, while the rest of the time is in standby mode. With their help, they were looking for endangered currents that pose a threat to swimmers, but now a dozen drones were supplemented with the Shark Spotter AI algorithm, Shark Finder, which allows us to distinguish swimmers, surfers, boats, dolphins, skates and sharks from each other.

An algorithm financed by Westpac, an Australian development bank for The Ripper Group , was trained in recognition based on real material shot by dron cameras on patrol flights. “Of course, we don’t expect that everything will work right away, as events can unfold in different ways,” Sharma shares his work, which he does in the field of AI, Michael Blumenstein and other researchers at the Sydney University of Technology. “But with each tweaking the result is getting better. ”

Another system called Clever Buoy, “Smart Buoy,” from Smart Marine Systems (SMS) from Perth, relies on underwater sonar arrays. An active sonar can track any sufficiently large sea animal at a certain distance, unlike passive devices that many scientists use to detect specific individuals marked with transmitters. “We are now addressing the pattern recognition problem,” explains Craig Anderson, co-founder and executive director of SMS, “Every creature floats in the ocean in a special way, which gives us a unique“ portrait ”on a sonar, which in the future can even determine the subspecies ".
If the movement pattern characteristic of a large shark, and not a dolphin or a ramp, is detected, Clever Buoy sends a warning message to the rescuers, after which you can get additional information about the approximate threat size and track the movement of buoys through a special mobile application.

In 2015, the administration of New South Wales set the task to equip Clever Buoy with all the beaches on the east coast for five years. Installations range from Bondi Beach, the legendary beach near Sydney, to City Beach, Perth’s main beach on the west coast. In addition, the system was temporarily deployed in the areas of the World Surfing Championships in Australia and South Africa.

Of course, any method has its drawbacks. After all, Clever Buoy and Shark Spotter cannot yet accurately determine the type of shark - which is an important factor in assessing likely harm. “At the next stage, we will definitely learn how to single out a specific view,” Anderson promises. “There is no need to close the beach and drive the rest out of the water just because the marten shark decided to make a friendly visit there.”

Yes, of course this is an important point. Despite the fact that there are about 400 known species of sharks, only 30 registered unprovoked attacks. Unfortunately, 22 of these 30 are found in Australian waters, in addition, there are all three species, whose share is the largest number of attacks - tiger , high- nosed, and great white sharks .

Alas, the fierce political and media controversy over each such case does not correspond at all to the low, in fact, probability of becoming a dinner for a shark. In 2017, there were only 88 spontaneous attacks around the world, including 5 fatal, according to the International Register of Shark Attacks , which is conducted at the Florida Museum of Natural History, Gainesville. For comparison, about 3,500 Americans die each year from drowning . At the same time, people kill about 100 million sharks every year. Even the great white shark, made popular by films like Jaws, is relegated from one of the greatest ocean predators to easy prey for a horde of fishing boats prowling the sea in search of a trophy.

A lot of incomprehensible remains both in the behavior and fluctuations of the shark population so that the question of why the total number of incidents has been growing slowly in recent years can be answered. For example, there is no strong evidence that the recovery of shark species protected by law increases the risk to humans. On the contrary, experts argue that an increase in the number of bathers and surfers has a much greater effect on statistics.

“Let's say California has collected statistics for the last 20-25 years, showing a natural increase in the number of bites / people, with an increase in the number of people climbing into the water,” says Christopher Low, a marine biologist and director of the Laboratory for the Study of Sharks in California State University, Long Beach. - “But per capita figures are falling, even with the addition of the number of predators.”

But the influence of sharks is not limited to the fact that someone dies or loses a limb, severe cases are in fact very rare. Nevertheless, even a lone shark can scare away a whole beach and thus harm a business tied to local visitors and tourists. The chain of visits can cause everyone to feel that the sea is just teeming with sharks.

“If you talk to someone at risk after one or two tragic incidents, you’ll probably hear what an incredible nightmare and tragedy it is,” says Sarah Ueris, project manager at Shark Spotters in Cape Town, South Africa - “But this is no comparison with the instinctive, animal horror that comes out after a series of attacks, when a sudden surge of such events tells people, you can feel more secure.”

In Cape Town, they know what they are talking about - in 2004 there already experienced a panic caused by a massive influx of sharks. After that, local businessmen and surfers created a voluntary organization that brought together rescue workers and security guards at parking lots near the beaches, who were instructed to use the binoculars to observe the sea from the high hills near Falls Bay. If an observer on the hill found the trail of a shark, he radioed the rescuer on the beach to activate the warning system in the form of signal flags and a siren calling people to go ashore.

Funding from the Cape Town Municipal Budget and Save Our Seas, Save Our Seas, helped the initiative move into the official category, after which it was named Shark Spotters, Shark Detectors (not to be confused with the Australian algorithm for drones). And now, for 14 years, the program has been successfully proving that even a country with a low level of technology can fairly reduce the risk of a successful shark attack on people.

As in Australia, the Shark Spotters in South Africa also tried using drones. However, their effectiveness was insufficient for continuous observation, due to the short flight time and the strong winds typical of this area. Far more useful brought drone departures to determine the specific type of shark after it was discovered by an observer-man.

In the future, it is planned to replace people with cameras installed on towers or high pillars. Shark Spotters for this requested assistance from PatternLab, a company from the Swiss Lausanne, to develop suitable recognition software there. But alas, while Africans can spend on this much less resources than the Australians.

In turn, researchers in America are also eyeing the most advanced observation technologies, but with caution, mainly because of the inability of the technology to distinguish between sharks of different species. “Big white is completely different than black-crested , found in Volusy district,” recalls Gavin Naylor, director of the shark research program running at the Florida Museum of Natural History, “They are as different as people are different from dogs.”

“In addition, the environment greatly affects the operation of machines,” echoes Gregory Skomal, a marine biologist in the service of the Massachusetts fishery unit, and then curses the high cost of solutions and lack of funds for pre-testing devices in the local environment. “All these things are strongly tied to the area in which you are going to use them,” explains Scomal, “What is created for the clean Australian sea is not suitable for the murky waters at Cape Cod.”

In general, if Australia with the use of technology can improve the balance between the interests of people and the preservation of marine fauna, then there will definitely be much less blood in the water - and the demand for protective devices will inevitably creep up. But whatever the circumstances, as long as the Australian start-ups do not lose their enthusiasm and are eager to expand the market, despite the high development costs. Production Director Ben Trollop of The Ripper Group, for example, claims that they have already signed agreements with several international organizations to implement their surveillance drone system in other countries.

Craig Anderson and Smart Marine System launched a crowdfunding company for $ 25,000 to install Clever Buoy on Corona del Mar Beach in New Beach, California, near which in 2016 a shark attacked a triathlete .

“I think that Florida and Massachusetts will soon follow our example,” Anderson said. “But this is only the beginning, and a lot of work lies ahead.”