This conference program (https://www.aslo.org/osm2022/) works toward the goals of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. SusTunTech has presented its route optimization framework within the New Solutions for New Data: Machine Learning for in Situ Observations of Aquatic Life. The processes controlling the abundance and distribution of marine and limnic organisms are critically important for understanding ecosystem dynamics and health. Recently, rapid progress in techniques for in situ observation of aquatic life has revealed communities and food webs with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution and clarified links to biogeochemical and environmental factors. Next-generation techniques (e.g. optical and acoustic) will be deployed on observation platforms such as AUVs, Argo floats, moorings, and aerial drones. These advances have already begun producing data volumes inconceivable in the recent past, and time-intensive manual data analysis with as limited accuracy, objectivity and reproducibility is no longer feasible. Instead, we require automatic, accurate, flexible and where possible real-time analysis. Machine learning offers a flexible toolset for classification, segmentation and feature identification in large-scale observational data. This session focused on recent progress in this new class of methods: outstanding challenges, quality checks, harmonization with existing workflows, intercalibration of instruments & outputs, generalization tests, generation of benchmark datasets and incorporation of humans into analysis pipelines. Presentations on emerging technologies and technical advances like SusTunTech framework were selected for oral presentations. The session aimed for closer communications between marine/limnic and computer scientists to understand the needs, challenges, and possibilities of in situ observation technology and to enable status monitoring and sustainable management.

The citation for this conference is:

Granado, I. Hernando, L. Fernandes, J.A. (2021). Towards a framework for fishing route optimization decision support systems: Review of the state-of-the-art and challenges. The 3rd NOAA Workshop on Leveraging AI in Environmental Sciences. 13 – 17 September 2021, Virtual.