Can Artificial Intelligence Save Us From Shark Attacks?

But new technology seeks to help prevent attacks by using artificial intelligence-powered drones. The project, called SharkEye, comes from marine biologists, software engineers, and FAA-certified drone pilots at UC Santa Barbara's Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory. And by monitoring shark aggregations from the air, and utilizing their AI tech, they’re able to track the patterns of these sharks, and hopefully make predictions towards when to surf, and when to stay away.

“We have forecasts that tell us what weather is coming our way,” said Douglas McCauley, a professor of marine science at UC Santa Barbara. “We want to forecast what kind of sharks might be coming our way to share the waves and the beach. We also get data on any given day of how many sharks are out there. We text that information to folks in the community, who can make good, safe decisions about how to share the waves with the sharks.”

So, how’s it work? According to SharkEye:

“We fly drones on standardized survey flights to capture video footage of nearshore waters where sharks may be present. We use machine learning models to scan the video to automatically detect great white sharks in the footage. We share information on shark detections with local public safety officials and communities. This information builds a database for marine scientists to better predict when and where heightened great white shark activity will occur and to inform conservation efforts.”

The shark surveillance program is currently underway only at Padaro Beach in Carpinteria, California. However, similar projects are also underway across the globe. Could artificial intelligence one day be the ultimate solution for shark attacks? We’ll have to wait and see.