Attend the Ocean Hackathon® #7 Grand Finale (February 9th 2023, Les Capucins, Brest and in remote)

The teams come from Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Boulogne-sur-mer (France), Brest (France), Cape Town (South Africa), Klaipeda (Lithuania), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), La Rochelle (France), Mexico City (Mexico), Noumea (French Polynesia, France), San Francisco-Sausalito (USA), Santiago (Chile) and Toulon (France).

The topics are varied, with marine data and ocean preservation as a common thread: aquaculture, coastal risks and management, illegal fishing, oceanography, pollution, shipwrecks conservation, species and ecosystem monitoring and underwater diving

And also a keynote speaker: Linwood Pendleton, Environmental economist and Executive Director of the Ocean Knowledge Action Network (KAN)

Linwood Pendleton

Building Diverse Teams for Ocean Sustainability
Creating new tools for ocean challenges requires a transdisciplinary approach - one that merges a variety of disciplines, genders, approaches, and ideally end-users in the co-design and co-production of the tool. While the Ocean Hackathon provides only limited scope to include all of the people and disciplines necessary to build a truly transdisciplinary team, those OH participants that are able to put together transdisciplinary teams often create the most innovative and useful tools. But doing so is not easy and in some cases even requires teams to work across linguistic divides. In this keynote, I will explore some of the challenges of creating transdisciplinary teams and networks and how the Ocean Knowledge Action Network is addressing these challenges to create global, transdisciplinary teams for the co-design of ocean science and knowledge.

A free event open to all those interested in innovation and the sea, internationally!

12 projects

Abidjan (Ivory Coast)
Intelligent Mangrove Forest Detection System based on satellite imagery and recognition data for identification and monitoring of mangrove health

Brest (France)
Seascape game: think of your strategy!
Consultation game on the problems of erosion and marine submersion.  Local elected officials, associations and residents of coastal municipalities can be made aware of coastal risks in a fun way.

Boulogne-sur-mer (France)
Fish Farm Simulator
Make your aquaculture farm prosper. This aquaculture farm management simulator, designed as a serious game, has two levels, the first to familiarise yourself with the profession and the second to study scenarios according to different parameters (number of employees, species raised, water quality, etc.).

Cape Town (South Africa)
Radar at sea: Using land-based high-frequency radar systems to monitor risks of IUU fishing
A prototype of Machine Learning application that uses high-frequency (HF) radar systems data to detect ships at sea and hence risks of IUU (Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated) fishing should the detected ship not be sharing its AIS signal. With 1,535,538 km² of marine space, protecting South Africa from IUU fishing is challenging for fisheries control authorities. Due to other countries running out of fish and starting to move south to catch more fish, South Africa has seen IUU Fishing on the rise, costing the economy around R6 billion each year.

Klaipeda (Lituania)
Real-time platform to monitor inflow of salty water
A real-time monitoring model of salt water inflow (from the Baltic Sea) into the Vilhelm Canal (Klaipeda) coupled with an alert system. This monitoring platform for the water management company will make it possible to optimise the quality of the water taken for part of the inhabitants of Klaipeda.

Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia)
development of a prediction model for the jellyfish distribution & appearance in Penang Island
Predicting jellyfish blooms in the coastal area of Penang (Malaysia) is one of the solutions to limit the negative impact of these marine organisms on tourism in Malaysia. The model is based on scientific data but also on citizen science. An associated app provides information on jellyfish-infested areas and assistance in case of stings.

La Rochelle (France)
Silence in the ocean
"DeSEAbel” is a web app (open source/open access) that simulates noise pollution for decision support and awareness raising. The application references layers of marine ecosystem habitats (fish, marine mammals, etc.). The user can add a human activity (e.g. boat with different speeds) and the application calculates the impact of the noise pollution generated on marine ecosystems.

Mexico (Mexico)
Challenges in the protection and conservation of historic shipwrecks in Mexico´s Alacranes Reef
A video game to raise awareness, strengthen and inform the public about the problems faced by the conservation of underwater heritage in a scenario of climate change, increased economic activities such as fishing and tourism.

Noumea (French Polynesia, France)
Clean up wrecks
A web cartography showing wrecks that are full of hydrocarbure and used data to prioritize those one that should be solved and treated before giant oil spills around the SPREP region.

Santiago (Chile)
Satellite monitoring of kelp forests: efforts for a new spatio-temporal scope
Evaluation of the accuracy of kelps recognition with Sentinel-2 imagery and determination of the relationship between the "El Niño/La Niña" and the interannual variability. The project is based on the treatment of data (such as drone and satellite images, kelp ecology-related data, El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Index, etc), and the development of a Python Colab Notebook and a prototype of web/app visualization.

Sausalito – San Francisco (USA)
Ocean Regulation and Monitoring in Coastal Cities
An application to track in real time the uses of the 32km of coastline around Cascais (Lisbon metropolitan area, Portugal). The aim is for the local authorities to better manage activities at sea in Cascais: enforcement of regulations, management of conflicts between users, fight against illegal fishing, management of the marine protected area, etc.

Toulon (France)
Sea Tizen
A divebook using AI. The aim is to recognise the species encountered during a dive and to map invasive species in coastal waters.

The jury and prizes

The jury is composed of the Ocean Hackathon® Ambassadors and a representative from each local edition. The first 3 teams will be rewarded by the Ocean Hackathon® 2022 Ambassadors: 1^st place: €5,000, 2^nd place: €3,500 and 3^rd place: €2,000.