Carbon Management

AI for remote monitoring of seaweed blue carbon

THE PROBLEM

Seaweed is one of the best carbon sequestering ecosystems, and BC has immense area for seaweed restoration and carbon sequestration. Unlocking this requires precisely measuring both where seaweed is, and how much of it is there (its biomass). Unfortunately, measuring in the ocean is expensive, time consuming, and difficult. Often the "state of the art" is sending divers to manually count and record what they see. This doesn't scale to BC’s 26,000 km of coastline.

THE SOLUTION

Coastal Carbon is building AI models to see underwater from space (satellites), enabling scalable cost-effective monitoring of seaweeds and other ocean ecosystems. This provides the measurements necessary for better management and protection of those ecosystems, and to measure the carbon they store.

Supported by CICE, Coastal Carbon has partnered with Coastal First Nations Great Bear Initiative and Ocean Wise to develop and pilot a remote seaweed biomass monitoring solution critical to the restoration and expansion of seaweed carbon sequestration projects along British Columbia’s coastline. AI and remote satellite data will be used to measure seaweed biomass for ecosystem health as well as carbon offset verification.

PROJECT STATUS
Active
PROJECT CATEGORY
Carbon Management
FUNDING RECIPIENT
Coastal Carbon
CICE FUNDING AMOUNT
$856,000
PROJECT VALUE
$3,006,930
  • “This project is the first step in enabling Canada’s coastline, which happens to be the world's largest, as a nature positive carbon sink - helping offset our emissions and restore our natural coastal ecosystems. Effective, scalable, remote monitoring is key to enabling carbon financing for this restoration. CICE is helping us take the very first step in BC, enabling us to build and expand our technology in one of the most productive and diverse coastlines in Canada."
    Thomas Storwick, Co-Founder and CEO of Coastal Carbon LEARN MORE ABOUT COASTAL CARBON