On the 20th of May 2022, Jay Shapiro the CEO of Usiku Games announced that they had just created a prototype science research game for Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI). The idea of the innovation is to gather species identification data from human players to train their AI models to analyse images captured by their under-sea autonomous rovers.

He added, “ We want to test to see if gaming is an effective way to do this. We’re running a 24 hour data sprint, so if it is possible, please try out the game, play it a couple of times and then fill in the survey about your experience at the end. Thank you so much for helping with this important science project showing that gamification can be  a powerful research tool!”

MBARI is located in Moss Landing, California and its mission is to achieve and maintain  position as a world centre for advanced research and education in ocean science and technology. The institute intends to do so through the development of better instrument systems, and methods for scientific research in the deep waters of the ocean.

Internet of Elephants, Fathomnet and Ocean Vision AI are some other notable organizations that are associated with this project.