MonitorMyOcean.com

The Project

Underwater noise is an acoustic pollutant. It overlaps with frequencies used by marine mammals to communicate and navigate. My open-source web App that uses Python functions provides updated information on underwater ocean noise caused by human activities such as marine shipping and ocean tourism in global oceans so that policymakers can formulate "Quieter Ocean" policies.

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Team Comments

I am interested in using technology for the public good and 2021-30 is the UN Decade for Ocean Sciences. Many whale species are becoming endangered due to the increase in ship -whales collisions. I used my tech skills to analyze hydrophone data so that we can prevent marine biodiversity loss.

Lack of open datasets and standardized algorithms to analyse underwater anthropogenic noise were the biggest hindrance. I wrote to 30+ researchers to get enough data for the project to cover global oceans. I have published my algorithm as open-source so that other youths do not face the same issue.

I would have created an algorithm to automatically extract the sounds made by marine mammals in the 20 years of data I analyzed from the Arctic, Atlantic, Pacific, and the Meditteranean Sea. It could have led to a newer project: Automated Marine Mammals Census.