Australia's rich marine biodiversity is about to become more visible, thanks to a groundbreaking new tool unveiled today.
Developed through a partnership between the Albanese Government through Parks Australia, and the Minderoo Foundation, the new OceanOmics eDNA Dashboard combines artificial intelligence with environmental DNA (eDNA) to unlock unprecedented insight into life in our marine parks.
The $11.8 million project - supported by $3.4 million from the Albanese Government through Parks Australia's Ocean Discovery and Restoration program and $8.4 million from the Minderoo Foundation - has delivered one of the largest marine eDNA datasets ever assembled from tropical reefs to samples taken at 6,000m depth.
eDNA involves filtering seawater to collect the 'genetic breadcrumbs' (or barcodes) that all species leave behind when they swim through the area. Minderoo's funding enabled the collection and analysis of over 6,000 samples from remote and hard-to-reach marine parks.
Minister for the Environment and Water, Murray Watt, welcomed the innovation, describing it as "a game-changer for marine conservation".
"This innovative dashboard is a game-changer for marine conservation as we can now 'visualise' the ocean in an entirely new way - from threatened handfish to whale sharks, we're gaining insights that were unimaginable just a few years ago," he said.
"By co-investing in world-leading science like this, we're better equipped to protect the incredible biodiversity in our marine parks and make evidence-based decisions for the future."
In the Minderoo OceanOmics Centre at The University of Western Australia, over 1.2 billion DNA sequence reads were recovered - each two litre eDNA seawater sample averaging 62 different marine species detections. In total, over 257,497 marine vertebrate eDNA observations were made spanning 2,019 bony fish species and 95 cartilaginous fish (sharks, rays and chimaeras) species.
"This is a lot of data," Dr Philipp Bayer, Principal of Computational Biology at Minderoo Foundation, said. "To make sense of it all, and enable people to interact with the data, we co-developed a dashboard that allows users to explore the living fabric of our oceans at scale."
The Dashboard focuses on making complex science accessible.
"While we can't see DNA, we can read it - and now we can visualise the output too," Dr Bayer said.
"One new feature we are excited about is interweaving a new AI tool to interface with eDNA data - this hasn't been done before."
Users can search, visualise and interrogate the data using AI - whether you're a marine scientist, park manager or a student working on a school project.
"In one example, we asked the AI tool to search for a list of threatened whale species (Blue, Sperm and Finn Whales were detected). In another example, the tool identified unknown DNA signatures near a sea mount - revealing new biodiversity hotspots that need further exploration and protection," Dr Bayer added.
Future iterations will allow users to receive alerts when species of interest are detected, enhancing conservation, education and research efforts nationwide.
