Dear FathomNet community,

Winter has been a transformative time for the FathomNet Program. In February, a video by climate communicator Jacob Simon inspired over 2,800 new FathomNauts to download and play FathomVerse in one single day!

In the meantime, we have been working hard behind the scenes to improve and expand FathomVerse. Our team gathered feedback through surveys, Discord discussions, and reviews to ensure we provide the best possible experience in our community science game, and we will release FathomVerse 2.0 at the end of March. We are thrilled to share all the new features and improvements with you in just a few weeks! 

The Database team also just launched our third FathomNet Kaggle Competition! We are so grateful for the support from the CVPR-FGVC Workshop for making this possible. Join us for our next online FathomNet Workshop on April 9th to learn more about these and other exciting program updates.

Thank you for being part of the FathomNet community! Read below for more updates, upcoming events, and opportunities to connect with us. 

Onwards and downwards, 
Kakani Katija, PhD
Bioengineer, MBARI
Principal Investigator, FathomNet

Are you ready for a challenge? 

Calling all data scientists and machine learning engineers! Join the FathomNet Kaggle Competition with CVPR-FGVC Workshop to show us how you would develop a model that can accurately classify varying taxonomic ranks. Developing these solutions for ocean research will enable scientists to process and explore ocean data more efficiently.

Save the Date for the 4th Annual FathomNet Workshop

Join us on Wednesday, April 9, 2025. We will host two sessions to accommodate different time zones: 8 AM - 10 AM PT and 4 PM - 6 PM PT. We'll share the latest updates from FathomNet, including our Database, Portal, and FathomVerse, along with small group discussions on how to get more involved. Don’t miss this chance to connect and collaborate with our community! 

Class is in Session

FathomVerse is collaborating with classrooms, camps, and educator networks to introduce ocean science to students! Check out our new resources and player dashboard feature for educators.

Meet the Portal

In September we launched the FathomNet Portal, an online, collaborative tool for end-to-end AI-assisted processing of ocean imagery! The recorded “Meet the Portal” workshop is available to watch on YouTube and the feature walkthrough can also be referenced in this PDF. If you’re interested in using the Portal, please fill out the expression of interest form.

Celebrate Citizen Science Month with FathomVerse

We’ve partnered with SciStarter and hundreds of other #CitizenScience projects to encourage our community to join a global effort to log #OneMillionActsofScience this April! Don’t miss out! Learn about FathomVerse and how you can host a FathomVerse group event. 

Katy Croff Bell Named to Explorers Club 50

FathomNet Executive Committee member and Ocean Discovery League President and Founder Katy Croff Bell has been named to the 2025 class of The Explorers Club 50: Fifty People Changing the World that the World Needs to Know About. The fellow honorees are exploring, inspiring, and creating the future—the future of the planet, life upon it, and the boundless possibilities that await us all. 

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