Leveraging the Power of AI for Sustainable Oceans

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the leading-edge technology for making intelligent machines. Different sectors are leveraging the benefits of AI. Plastic pollution is a major environmental threat that has severely affected oceans. Natural habitats of marine animals were demolished. Millions of species succumbed to death after consuming plastic or getting tangled on it. Plastic waste materials are the possible carriers of pathogens that increase waterborne diseases such as cholera and malaria. When plastic enters the ocean, there is no limit—waves can transmit plastic to the farthermost extreme of the ocean. Plastic then accumulates in marine ecosystem. After several years, it becomes impossible to retrieve plastic from water bodies when they turn into smaller pieces. Plastic is nonbiodegradable. Urbanization has increased the utilization of plastic in our daily lives including furniture, grocery, and vehicular equipment. Plastic that is thrown to landfills pollutes the soil with deleterious chemicals. More than 70% of Earth is covered with water. Location of specific species can be identified through AI and based on the ecosystem, appropriate solutions could be executed to protect them. Overfishing can be brought under control by analyzing the patterns of fish migration. AI drones are designed in such a way that they identify plastic debris in oceans and assist scientists in cleaning up process. Machine learning (ML) models for predicting the distribution of marine lives based on environmental requirement can be built. AI can work on efficiently identifying plastics inside the oceans, thus bringing down plastic pollution. Open water and color of coastal are few parameters that can be considered for determining ocean health through ML techniques. Machine learning has become the foundation of many AI novel solutions. In this chapter, we will go through introduction to AI and ML understanding the problem of plastic waste for marine lives, background work done by researchers so far, application of AI to monitor ocean health, ocean pollution degrading human well-being, case studies of AI for ocean conservation, ML practical implementation, shortcoming of AI adoptability, conclusion, and future scope.