Led by Kostas Papafitsoros from school of Mathematical Sciences
Research
Dr Papafitsoros and his team are currently developing an AI driven interactive web-platform (https://zakynthosturtles.org) for more sustainable tourism that helps to protect the Loggerhead Sea turtles of Zakynthos Island, Greece. Previous research has shown that the large-scale tourism at this site can have detrimental effects on wild sea turtles. The increased demand among tourists to see these animals and capture photos can often result to large boat aggregations surrounding the animals. This disturbance can stress the turtles leading to changes in their behaviour, as well as injuries due to boat collisions, which can often be fatal. Kostas Papafitsoros' research includes the analysis of turtle imagery uploaded to social media and use that as a tool to measure the pressure of tourism on these turtles.
The web-platform developed by Papafitsoros’ recognizes the individual sea turtles in the photos that the tourists submit, based on their external morphological patterns of turtles (facial scales). These are unique to every individual like fingerprints in humans. After submitting their photos, tourists receive back in real time a customized email with the unique stories about the individuals they saw, as well as specific anthropogenic threats that these individuals are facing (e.g. high viewing pressure, previously sustained boat injuries). They also have the opportunity to comment of their turtle-viewing experience (Was it turtle friendly? Was the animal stressed?).
Impact
The overall impact the academic is trying to achieve is reducing the pressure of tourism on Loggerhead Sea turtles in the Zakynthos Islands (Greece). Through citizen-led research this project aims to change the behaviour of tourists and tour operators towards a more responsible tourism.
The researcher also works closely with the NGOs ARCHELON (Sea Turtle Protection Society of Greece) and MEDASSET (Mediterranean Association to Save the Sea Turtles) to use data collected through the website as well as the related social media research to influence local and national policy towards protecting sea turtles.
Funding allocation
Papafitsoros was successful in the Queen Mary Fund small stream. The fund is used to purchase equipment for high quality underwater photographs which is necessary for the training of the AI algorithms, the expansion of the sea turtle photo-database (currently more than 1600 individual turtles) as well as the creation of engaging multimedia material for the web-platform and associated social media advertising campaigns. Besides that, a developer was hired to design and develop the interactive web-platform. Finally, the fund covers Papafitsoros’ travel costs to Greece to engage with external stakeholder (NGOs and tour operators) and to organize a workshop at the 42nd International Sea Turtle Symposium (March 2024) to disseminate the results.