Deep learning video analytics solutions for ocean surveillance systems

Moored data buoys are floating platforms at sea. These buoys serve as in-situ Weather, Ocean and Tsunami observatories. These buoys transmit real-time data through 3G/GSM/GPRS and satellite telemetry. Damage to the buoy systems by humans, boats, ships etc., intentional or otherwise, causes loss of data, and inhibits early warning systems. It also has financial implications due to the loss of the instruments, repair & reinstallation charges, and the time a ship spends to fix the buoy. Challenges arise while analyzing the video footage as they are unstable and shaky, due to the continuous movements of floating ocean buoy platforms caused by the state of the sea. This paper explores object detection algorithms for detecting eight different objects commonly found in the camera video footage transmitted by the buoy platforms at sea. The object detection training implementation gave us a best accuracy of 0.867MAP@0.5IOU. The object detection will help in solutions like Object Search, detection of floating marine plastic debris, understanding the direction of motion of ships, boats etc. In a broader perspective, it can help in Surveillance, Market Survey and Fish Detection in underwater cameras for fish abundance study.