An Efficient Machine Learning Model for Identification of Seagrasses through Morphometrics

Seagrasses are marine flowering plants capable of completing their life cycle underwater. Globally, 72 species of seagrasses have been identified, including 15 species from India. Artificial intelligence/ Machine learning techniques are gaining wide use in many fields, and their applications in marine sciences are still in the initial stage. Considering this, a study is attempted to identify seagrass species through Artificial intelligence/ Machine learning techniques. Since the characteristics of seagrass vary depending on location and other environmental factors, identifying seagrass species is regarded as a difficult task. In the present study, a known seagrass species is taken as a reference and its leaf morphological features are considered for shape description and deep learning-based identification. Leaf morphometrics of seagrass species are drawn to develop the databases. Morphological feature extraction algorithm, descriptor generation algorithm, and deep learning-based identification are applied for species identification. Existing artificial intelligence/ machine learning models use image pixels as input to the deep learning model. However, this is the first attempt to recognize seagrasses through their morphological properties. Here, the leaf shape property is utilized for seagrass identification. The proposed machine learning model received 60% accuracy during testing. Additional investigation was possible with the same algorithm for future seagrass species identification. Utilizing Artificial intelligence/ Machine learning algorithms may lead to identifying new seagrass species.