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Artificial intelligence, community-driven science, and seadragons
SeadragonSearch is a collaborative research project that seeks to expand understanding of wild seadragon populations through meaningful community involvement.
Seadragons are icons for marine biodiversity, but there are still many knowledge gaps for their conservation. SeadragonSearch will use data from underwater imagery to track these unique fish across their distribution for a decade, providing a window into their lives as well as the health of their habitats.
Find out more about our missionLearn about seadragons
Seadragons are elegant members of the family Syngnathidae, which also includes seahorses and pipefishes.
Wild seadragons are found only along the southern coast of Australia, and there are currently three known species: the weedy (or common) seadragon, the leafy seadragon, and the recently discovered ruby seadragon. The three species can be differentiated based on their appearances, their genetic relationships, and the ranges they occupy.
Learn about seadragons
How you can contribute to the research
Over the years, seadragon monitoring programs have collected photos from divers and used them to match individual seadragons from different encounter dates based on visual characteristics, such as face and body patterns or appendage shapes.
The SeadragonSearch initiative uses machine learning to automate this type of matching, so that we can track more seadragons through their lifespans and across their distributions, efficiently gathering large volumes of data from all Australian states where seadragons occur.
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