The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest coral reef system, made up of more than 600 species of coral and home to rich and diverse marine life. It faces a number of rising threats including outbreaks of the crown-of-thorns starfish, which feeds on living coral. Outbreaks have occurred due to fertiliser runoff feeding more spawn and the overfishing of the natural predator.

To help divers contain outbreaks, we teamed up with the CSIRO and the Kaggle data science community to build an AI model that can accurately detect and map starfish, via a live camera feed. This project is part of our Digital Future Initiative - a $1billion investment in Australian infrastructure, research and partnerships.