Utility of Spectral Filtering to Improve the Reliability of Marine Fauna Detections from Drone-Based Monitoring

Andrew Colefax; Andrew Walsh; Cormac Purcell; Paul Butcher

doi:10.3390/s23229193

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Utility of Spectral Filtering to Improve the Reliability of Marine Fauna Detections from Drone-Based Monitoring

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Utility of Spectral Filtering to Improve the Reliability of Marine Fauna Detections from Drone-Based Monitoring

Andrew Colefax, Andrew Walsh, Cormac Purcell and Paul Butcher

Sensors (Basel, Switzerland), Vol.23(22), 9193

15/11/2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/s23229193

Appears in Recent Faculty of Science and Engineering Publications

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Abstract

drone-based monitoring

marine fauna detection

spectral filtering

machine learning analysis

Monitoring marine fauna is essential for mitigating the effects of disturbances in the marine environment, as well as reducing the risk of negative interactions between humans and marine life. Drone-based aerial surveys have become popular for detecting and estimating the abundance of large marine fauna. However, sightability errors, which affect detection reliability, are still apparent. This study tested the utility of spectral filtering for improving the reliability of marine fauna detections from drone-based monitoring. A series of drone-based survey flights were conducted using three identical RGB (red-green-blue channel) cameras with treatments: (i) control (RGB), (ii) spectrally filtered with a narrow ‘green’ bandpass filter (transmission between 525 and 550 nm), and, (iii) spectrally filtered with a polarising filter. Video data from nine flights comprising dolphin groups were analysed using a machine learning approach, whereby ground-truth detections were manually created and compared to AI-generated detections. The results showed that spectral filtering decreased the reliability of detecting submerged fauna compared to standard unfiltered RGB cameras. Although the majority of visible contrast between a submerged marine animal and surrounding seawater (in our study, sites along coastal beaches in eastern Australia) is known to occur between 515–554 nm, isolating the colour input to an RGB sensor does not improve detection reliability due to a decrease in the signal to noise ratio, which affects the reliability of detections.

Details

Title: Utility of Spectral Filtering to Improve the Reliability of Marine Fauna Detections from Drone-Based Monitoring
Creators: Andrew Colefax - Sci-eye ( Goonellabah, Australia)
Andrew Walsh - Sci-eye ( Goonellabah, Australia)
Cormac Purcell - UNSW Sydney
Paul Butcher - Southern Cross University
Publication Details: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland), Vol.23(22), 9193
Publisher: MDPI AG
Identifiers: 991013152713802368
Copyright: © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.
Academic Unit: Faculty of Science and Engineering
Language: English
Resource Type: Journal article

Utility of Spectral Filtering to Improve the Reliability of Marine Fauna Detections from Drone-Based Monitoring

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