This partnership brings together the Blue Nature Alliance’s global leadership in advancing large-scale ocean conservation with ODL’s efforts to democratize access to deep-sea exploration through low-cost, scalable tools.

This episode of the BBC Podcast The Conversation, hosted by Ella Al-Shamahi, features Katy Croff Bell and Zoleka Filander discussing all things deep ocean exploration and challenges and wonders of working at sea.

ODL’s Chief Scientist, Dr. Brian Kennedy's opinion piece about why the Pacific Remote Islands need protection. He emphasizes the importance of sanctuary protections to exclude destructive activities and enable ongoing scientific research.

Katy Croff Bell was interviewed for the December 2020 issue of National Geographic Magazine about why diversity is so important for science and exploration. “If we’re actually going to explore the entire ocean...we need new communities of people to be involved.” 

Female scientists have weathered bias, lack of support, and unsafe work environments since the dawn of oceanography. Could recent initiatives, technology, and awareness chart the way to safer waters?

The "My Deep Sea, My Backyard" project aims to allow previously marginalized communities to step into the deep sea conversation by giving them the capability to explore, understand, and manage their deep sea backyard.

Be inspired by female STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) superstars in leading fields including social media, entertainment, animals, design, and the internet.

ODL has received a $1.2 million ocean technology transition grant from NOAA and the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) for the development of its next-generation deep ocean sensor and camera system.

The partnership is a natural extension of Slack for Good’s mission to increase the number of historically underrepresented individuals in tech, and it ties into Slack’s broader sustainability effort. 

Ocean Discovery League recently participated in the fourth Young Explorers Program with OceanX aboard OceanXplorer providing hands-on research and mentorship opportunities to 15 university students in the fields of storytelling, marine biology, and ocean exploration.

The current expense of studying the deep seas stymies many research initiatives, so scientists have developed a low-cost imaging and sensor device to make access to the deep sea more equal. Katy explains the how the idea was developed and what the future of Maka Niu looks like. 

ODL is part of a multi-disciplinary team recently awarded a $5M NSF Convergence Accelerator Grant to develop Ocean Vision AI (OVAI). OVAI uses the power of artificial intelligence to process ocean imagery.

The new paper in Nature Scientific Reports, "FathomNet: A global image database for enabling artificial intelligence in the ocean," documents our work on FathomNet, the open image database for training machine learning algorithms to help analyze ocean images and video. 

In this paper, we detail and provide open source access to the mechanical, electrical, and digital control design for the Maka Niu system, including the internal 3D-printed dry chassis; the battery management and sealed inductive charging system; and the Raspberry Pi camera and control subsystems.

In partnership with Sharks Pacific, ODL is currently co-hosting a workshop for Cook Islanders ages 16-24 in ocean exploration, technology, and research using our Maka Niu camera and other technology.

Hakai Magazine profiles Ocean Discovery League's work on Maka Niu and other low-cost, deep ocean sensors to broaden access to deep-sea exploration by removing the barrier of affordability.

The 2022 Global Deep-Sea Capacity Assessment includes online survey and manual research data for 186 geographical areas divided into six global regions: Europe, Asia, Northern America, Africa, Oceania, and Latin America & the Caribbean.