TL;DR: Modern marine science runs on satellite + acoustic + drone data fused through GIS and ML. Conservation is now a data engineering problem.
The data layers
- Sentinel-2 multispectral satellite imagery
- AIS vessel-tracking feeds
- Underwater acoustic sensors
- Drone bathymetry surveys
Where AI changes the game
Computer vision flags illegal trawling within minutes. Coral bleaching is detected weeks earlier than human surveys. Fish stock estimates become continuous instead of annual.