How Satellites And Machine Learning Are Being Used To Detect Plastic In The Ocean

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While we know plastic is terrible for marine life, detecting plastic pollution in the ocean is notoriously challenging. Plastics come in many colors, break down to microscopic sizes, and are made of a variety of chemicals. Adding to the problem is the vast size of the ocean, to which millions of tons of plastic are added each year.

It is essential to identify which parts of the ocean collect the most plastic to effectively target cleanup and pollution prevention efforts. Might satellites bolstered with machine learning be up for the oceanic task of tracking plastic pollution? According to research recently published in Nature Communications, yes.

A team of scientists at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the United Kingdom tested whether data from two satellites operated by the European Space Agency could be analyzed using a machine-learning algorithm trained to detect plastic. The two Sentinel-2 satellites used in this research are each equipped with 12-band Multi-Spectral instrument (MSI) sensors that allow for 10-meter resolution in the data they collect...