Broadscale reconnaissance of coral reefs from citizen science and deep learning

Coral reef managers require various forms of data. While monitoring is typically the preserve of scientists, there is an increasing need to collect larger scale, up-to-date data to prioritise limited conservation resources. Citizen science combined with novel technology may achieve data collection at the required scale, but the accuracy and feasibility of new tools must be assessed. Here, we show that a citizen science program that collects large field-of-view benthic images and analyses them using a combination of deep learning and online citizen scientists can produce accurate benthic cover estimates of key coral groups. The deep learning and citizen scientist analysis methods had different but complementary strengths depending on coral category. When the best performing analysis method was used for each category in all images, mean estimates from 8086 images of percent benthic cover of branching Acropora, plating Acropora, and massive-form coral were ~ 99% accurate compared to expert assessment, and > 95% accurate at all coral cover ranges tested. Site-level accuracy of 95% was attainable with 18-80 images. Power analyses showed that up to 114 images per site were needed to detect a 10% absolute difference in coral cover per category (power = 0.8). However, estimates of 'all other coral' as a single category achieved 95% accuracy at only 60% of sites and for images with 10-30% coral cover. Overall, emerging technology and citizen science present an attainable tool for collecting inexpensive, widespread data that can complement higher resolution survey programs or be an accessible tool for locations with limited scientific or conservation resources.