Team GAIASAVERS
This is the repository for our plankton classification challenge.
It is now common knowledge that a lot of species are endangered if not simply disappearing. As we, humans, are the ones responsible for the actual situation, it is our duty to help protect what can still be protected and save what can still be saved.
About 70% of the surface of our planet is covered by water, which means that a great part of the biodiversity that can be found on Earth will be located underwater. In order to protect the various life forms living there, being able to quickly identify the places where the biodiversity is particularly endangered is a good start and what we will be doing here.
Planktons represent a very diverse group of life forms, some of which are unicellulars and are unable to swim against a current. They are found in every ocean and sea around the globe, more precisely in the pelargic zone of these waters. This zone is neither near the coasts nor the abyssal plain. Planktons can include bacteria, algae, larvae, gametes, or even jellyfish. They are at the very basis of the ocean food chain and are a good indicator of the biodiversity. As a consequence, studying planktons and being able to determine the variety of species found in a certain location is a good way to find out whether or not this place still already endangered or not.
In this challenge, we classify images of different categories of plankton. Go to https://codalab.lri.fr/competitions/623 for more details.