Unmanned aerial vehicles and deep learning for assessment of anthropogenic marine debris on beaches on an island in a semi-enclosed sea in Japan

Abstract

The increasing prevalence of marine debris is a global problem, and urgent action for amelioration is needed. Identifying hotspots where marine debris accumulates will enable effective control; however, knowledge on the location of accumulation hotspots remains incomplete. In particular, marine debris accumulation on beaches is a concern. Surveys of beaches require intensive human effort, and survey methods are not standardized. If marine debris monitoring is conducted using a standardized method, data from different regions can be compared. With an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and deep learning computational methods, monitoring a wide area at a low cost in a standardized way may be possible. In this study, we aimed to identify marine debris on beaches through deep learning using high-resolution UAV images by conducting a survey on Narugashima Island in the Seto Inland Sea of Japan. The flight altitude relative to the ground was set to 5 m, and images of a 0.81-ha area were obtained. Flight was conducted twice: before and after the beach cleaning. The combination of UAVs equipped with a zoom lens and operation at a low altitude allows for the acquisition of high resolution images of 1.1 mm/pixel. The training dataset (2970 images) was annotated by using VoTT, categorizing them into two classes: ‘anthropogenic marine debris’ and ‘natural objects.’ Using RetinaNet, marine debris was identified with an average sensitivity of 51% and a precision of 76%. In addition, the abundance and area of marine debris coverage were estimated. In this study, it was revealed that the combination of UAVs and deep learning enables the effective identification of marine debris. The effects of cleanup activities by citizens were able to be quantified. This method can widely be used to evaluate the effectiveness of citizen efforts toward beach cleaning and low-cost long-term monitoring.