The blue economy and energy transition are driving industries, authorities, and conservation organizations to examine their impact on marine biodiversity. With global biodiversity decline due to human activities, there’s an urgent need for monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) solutions that are faster, standardized, and scalable. Traditional marine habitat monitoring faces a trade-off between spatial coverage and data resolution. In-situ campaigns provide high-quality ground-truth data but are labor-intensive and limited in area. Remote sensing offers broader coverage but lower resolution.
PlanBlue has overcome this challenge with advanced monitoring technology for benthic ecosystems. By integrating a high-resolution RGB camera, hyperspectral imaging, underwater navigation, and artificial intelligence, PlanBlue has developed fully automated pipelines for data storage, visualization, and analysis. This technology produces highly detailed, geo-referenced seafloor maps, providing concurrent data on biomass, carbon sequestration, biodiversity, health, pollution, and human-made materials. The analysis delivers insights into seafloor health (e.g., pigment spectral analysis to assess seagrass photosystems), biodiversity (e.g., habitat assessments, pollution, invasive species), and materials (e.g., plastic waste).
PlanBlue’s datasets also enable the upscaling of close-to-seafloor imaging and ground-truthing remote sensing data. Field-tested globally in collaboration with local experts and research institutes, the automated data processing pipelines reduce time-to-data from months to hours.
Reliable seafloor imaging is crucial for assessing ecosystem services of benthic marine ecosystems, thereby enhancing marine policies. Technologies like PlanBlue’s will improve the credibility of projects aiming for a net positive impact on biodiversity and blue carbon sequestration, fostering a more sustainable, climate- and biodiversity-friendly society.
