Seatrees Partners with University Scientists and Technology Leader Samsung to Support Coral Reef Restoration

Seatrees and Samsung collaborate with local community partners and university scientists to directly support coral reef restoration efforts, and deliver innovative mobile-based technology to help scale coral restoration projects worldwide

MANHATTAN BEACH, CA – February 6, 2025 – Seatrees, a leading non-profit dedicated to protecting and restoring ocean ecosystems, today announced a new collaboration with Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., and University of California researchers to help accelerate the scaling of coral reef restoration projects around the world. This collaboration aims to bring mobile technology to international researchers and local communities dedicated to protecting and preserving their beloved coral reefs.

Coral reefs across the globe face many man-made threats, including coastal development and overfishing. Increasingly, they are also impacted by climate change, which leads to warm water bleaching events, ocean acidification, and larger, more destructive storms. Without immediate actions, the majority of these vital underwater ecosystems are on track to be decimated by 2050 and could even cease to exist by the end of this century. To prevent the extinction of coral reefs, two simultaneous actions must happen: global carbon emissions must drop, and coral reef restoration and protection efforts must be scaled up, including the regrowing of more thermally tolerant corals where possible to help rebuild these damaged ecosystems.

In the first year of this partnership with Samsung, Seatrees focused on supporting three key coral reef restoration projects in Indonesia, Fiji, and Florida. The collaboration with local restoration partners and marine scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego tests applications of mobile technology for underwater large-area imaging. By evaluating performance across levels of visibility, light, and depth, the team provides valuable feedback to enhance underwater imaging for more effective coral restoration documentation.

In Bali, Seatrees is partnered with Ocean Gardener to plant 5,000 hard and soft corals in deeper, cooler waters over 10 meters deep to shield them from the worst effects of coral bleaching. This project in Nusa Penida uses an innovative approach by growing baby corals directly on a degraded reef in square-shaped “community clusters.” Arranged in a checkerboard pattern to improve their survival rates as a group, Ocean Gardener conducts regular maintenance protecting the young corals from predatory sea snails, algae overgrowth, sedimentation, and other marine threats that could hinder their growth.

In Fiji, Seatrees is working with Reef Explorer in Viti Levu to plant 6,000 hard-branching corals in shallow waters. Reef Explorer focuses restoration efforts in a healthy reef within a locally managed marine area. This practice helps to ensure coral survivability and utilizes the ecosystem services of resident herbivorous fish that provide much needed maintenance of the coral. The corals are grown in nurseries for one year and then transplanted in organic-shaped clusters that fit the natural contours of reef channels. In addition, the group conducts predator removal of the coral-eating Crown of Thorns starfish that are in an overabundance in the area. Reef Explorer focuses on thermally tolerant corals that have survived past bleaching events in Fiji to ensure the restored reefs are more resilient to rising ocean temperatures.

In the Florida Keys, Seatrees is working with pioneering scientist and founder of Plant A Million Corals, Dr. David Vaughan, to grow 3,000 baby Mound (or Boulder) corals using an innovative method called micro-fragmentation. Invented by Dr. David Vaughan, this technique involves cutting small pieces of slow-growing corals and placing them close together on coral plugs to speed up the growth as the fragments naturally fuse back together. These corals are raised on land in controlled saltwater tanks, ensuring they are protected from bleaching and pests. After one year the corals are replanted on a degraded reef.

Each of these projects utilizes a variety of reef types to identify scalable and effective restoration techniques that can be adapted to protect reefs worldwide. Seatrees and its local community partners are leveraging technology from Samsung and the expertise of scientists from UCSD and Scripps to generate 3D models of restoration sites, which will provide a means to document and visually demonstrate the outcomes of groundbreaking methods in reef restoration.

“At Seatrees, we’re committed to scaling coral reef restoration in partnership with local communities. This collaboration with Samsung and researchers from University of California San Diego presents an exciting opportunity to enhance the work of our restoration partners by revolutionizing how we track, measure, and showcase the impact of these efforts” said Michael Stewart, Co-Founder and Director of Seatrees. “The widespread availability of mobile phones worldwide, and their ease of use underwater make them a powerful tool for capturing coral reef imagery, playing a vital role in community-led restoration efforts globally.”

Data collection underwater is difficult, and generally, requires specialized and expensive photographic equipment to obtain high-quality scientific results. Researchers at Scripps Oceanography and the Center for Health Design at UC San Diego, are developing a large-area imaging workflow grounded in accessible mobile technology for coral reef restoration projects. The aim is for this technology to make it easy for local communities to monitor the health of their reefs by sharing the visual data with and convey their results to the greater scientific community.

Samsung is providing Galaxy devices to Seatrees coral restoration project partners along with engineering resources to support the use of advanced capabilities of a mobile device. This includes optimizing camera operation underwater, with a custom “Ocean Mode ” on the native Galaxy camera app that implements image capture protocols which meet underwater large-area imaging needs. Ocean Mode helps to reduce motion blur and optimizes the camera’s white balance to enhance underwater operation, ensuring accurate photos can be captured. 

As part of a multi-year collaboration between Seatrees and UC San Diego scientists, Dr. Stuart Sandin, Director of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at Scripps, has pioneered advanced methods to image coral reefs using photogrammetry to produce high-resolution 3D models of reefs for detailed analysis of ecosystem change. The goal is to make underwater large-area imaging more accessible to community-led restoration projects on a mobile device, using the Oasis app developed by Dr. Eliah Aronoff-Spencer at the Center for Health Design at UC San Diego.

"Coral restoration is fairly new and the technologies for photogrammetry were always out of reach of the coral practitioners and previously only available to universities and government agencies. Also, it took months to get them scheduled and months to get the results. Now smartphones like the Galaxy can have the groundbreaking advancements of making this technology affordable and fast and with simple tools and expertise at the user level,” said Dr. David E. Vaughan President, CEO, and Founder of Plant A Million Corals. “We hope to expand the use of photogrammetry from occasional usage to regular monitoring of corals planted each month and for long term monitoring into the future. We also hope to be the first to show the expanded usage in our land-based nursery where we can track and monitor our numerous tanks and thousands of corals without diving but using our waterproof covers in and above the tanks. Finally, a way to track and store important data in photos of multiple corals over time and even time sequenced growth documentation and measurements."

All Seatrees coral reef restoration efforts have a different focus, creating a broad mosaic of projects worldwide. This diverse set of projects gives Seatrees and its partners the ability to test Samsung Galaxy devices  in a wide range of environments and showcase how valuable this technology can be to help make coastal restoration more visible.

In support of this new collaboration and technology, Samsung will be releasing a documentary this year. This documentary film, titled, Coral in Focus, will showcase how valuable this new imaging technology is to underwater photography and coral reef restoration. The trailer for this documentary is available now on the Seatrees’ YouTube page and can be viewed above.

 About Seatrees
Seatrees is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that restores and protects coastal ecosystems around the world to reverse climate change, restore biodiversity, and support local communities. Seatrees uses a science-based approach to regenerate coral reefs, kelp forests, mangrove forests, seagrass meadows, shellfish reefs and coastal watersheds. Seatrees projects support local community restoration efforts and provide tangible ways for individuals and brands to create a more resilient planet for future generations. To learn more about Seatrees, visit seatrees.org.

About Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Samsung inspires the world and shapes the future with transformative ideas and technologies. The company is redefining the worlds of TVs, smartphones, wearable devices, tablets, home appliances, network systems, and memory, system LSI, foundry and LED solutions, and delivering a seamless connected experience through its SmartThings ecosystem and open collaboration with partners. For the latest news, please visit the Samsung Newsroom at news.samsung.com.