Victoria Team Builds SAR Tool Powered by AI at Ocean Hackathon in France

This month, 10 national teams from around the world competed at the Ateliers des Capucins in Brest, France.

The competition was the Grand Finale of the ninth annual Ocean Hackathon, organized by Campus Mondial de la Mer.

The Ocean Hackathon brings together winning teams from local hackathon events held worldwide.

These groups, including a Victoria-based Team Canada, pitched prototypes leveraging marine data for ocean science, sustainability, and management.

“Competitions like these give early-stage teams a platform to experiment and test ideas on their path from concept to commercialization,” says COAST Executive Director Jason Goldsworthy, “and it gives new, important purpose to the vast ocean data resources we have here in B.C. and in Canada.”

Behind the team from Malaysia, the Canadian team won second place in the annual event, earning 3,000 euros.

The B.C.-based group, comprised of five post-secondary students, worked on a project called the “Bikini Bottom Current Classifier,” known more formally as Ocean Drift.

The SpongeBob-inspired technology utilizes deep learning to analyze complex ocean currents in the Strait of Georgia.

This tool could be used to optimize search and rescue operations, according to its creators, Yi Zhen, Noel John, Udbhav Kansal, Dom Torres, and Polina Erofeeva.

The students hail from a range of schools, including the University of British Columbia, the University of Victoria, and the BC Institute of Technology.

They represented the first B.C. team to compete in the global Ocean Hackathon after topping a regional event in Victoria in October.

Camille Ruest, Operations Coordinator at Canada’s Centre for Ocean Applied Sustainable Technology, led production of the Victoria competition and was then also a part of the judging panel in France.

“It was an honour to host the first Ocean Hackathon competition ever to be held in British
Columbia, and then to watch the Victoria team take their place among the top teams in the world,” stated Ruest.

“We know B.C. has the talent and collaborative energy to create solutions with global relevance,” Ruest continued, “and this competition provided the perfect opportunity to showcase it.”