AI Marine Monitoring for Clean Energy (AIMM for Clean Energy)

Ocean Science Consulting (OSC) is a Scottish marine consultancy that has provided environmental monitoring services to the offshore industry for nearly two decades. Our clients include the offshore energy (oil and gas, renewables, etc.), construction, fisheries, government, and defence sectors. At our core, we are a research organisation, and most of our commercial work is centred around helping our clients to comply with environmental regulations designed to protect the marine environment. In this way, we play a role in helping the UK to move towards net-zero carbon and minimise environmental impacts in the process.

A core component of our services is the use of Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROV) to inspect underwater manmade structures, such as, oil rigs, wind turbines or tidal energy converters, to better understand their impact on the marine environment. In this project, we aim to advance both the quality and capacity of this service by applying artificial intelligence methods to the task of identify marine organisms in this type of data.

Our goal in doing so is to better support the various offshore stakeholders in their efforts to remain environmentally compliant. This includes the offshore renewable energy sector, which, while serving the environment in terms of sustainability, must also monitor the impact of offshore sites on the local marine environment if it is to remain truly above reproach. We hope that our work will inspire future interest from academia and industry in applying technologically innovative solutions to environmental problems.