Fine-Grained Analysis of Coral Instance Segmentation using YOLOv8 Models

Abstract

Within the geographical boundaries of Indonesia, coral reefs flourish as intricate ecosystems bustling with a variety of marine creatures that play a crucial role, in preserving biodiversity. However this delicate harmony faces threats from climate change and human activities, leading to the risk of species loss. Despite growing awareness surrounding these challenges effectively and swiftly monitoring conditions remains a task. Existing methods for assessing corals often fall short due to requiring extensive specialist knowledge, lacking large-scale coverage, and being costly to implement. To tackle these obstacles this research suggests an approach for automated reef monitoring using instance segmentation with a YOLOv8 model. Leveraging YOLOv8 segmentation capabilities enables efficient analysis of corals. A systematic process is employed involving data collection, preparation (including techniques like Histogram Equalization), training the model on a reef dataset, model evaluation and enhancing the segmentation mask. The outcomes reveal the YOLOv8m Pp model with 96.7% precision 95.9% recall rate and a mean Average Precision (mAP50) score of 98.2%. This study demonstrates the potential of YOLOv8 to accurately segment instances for monitoring reefs in Indonesia, hence facilitating improved conservation strategies.