About

“Advancement of Technologies for Utilizing Big Data of Marine Life” is a commissioned project carried out as part of MEXT's Program for Marine Resource Use Promotion Technology Development. From three perspectives — map, animal, and micro — it acquires and integrates big data on marine life and the environment, turning ocean data into knowledge of real value for society's decisions.

Objectives

The ocean holds vast data across widely different scales — from the distribution of species to the behavior of individual animals to the dynamics of microscopic particles. By capturing these through distinct observation approaches and integrating them on a shared foundation, the project advances applications with direct real-world impact, including the sustainable use of fishery resources, the design of marine protected areas, and higher-precision disaster prevention and forecasting.

Three R&D Themes

The project runs three observation approaches at different scales in parallel.

• Theme 01 · The Micro Perspective: generating big data on marine particles using event-based vision sensors (EVS). Led by Susumu Takatsuka (Sony CSL).
• Theme 02 · The Animal Perspective: a sustainable society where marine life and people coexist, realized through biologging. Led by Katsufumi Sato (Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, The University of Tokyo).
• Theme 03 · The Map Perspective: developing foundational technologies to generalize marine biodiversity big data, and applied technologies to safeguard the richness of the ocean. Led by Yasuhiro Kubota (University of the Ryukyus) — a theme carried through the first phase of the program.

Shared Data Foundation

The observation data from the three themes is shared, analyzed, and distributed under a common schema and format. By connecting data at different resolutions — point, line, and surface — on a single foundation, the project reveals the dynamics of the ocean in high resolution, in ways no single observation could show.

Organization

The project is led by Program Director Tomonari Akamatsu (Professor, Waseda University), with research institutions from industry and academia working in partnership. It is commissioned by the Ocean and Earth Division, Research and Development Bureau, MEXT.

International Context

In November 2025, the project was endorsed as a Decade Action of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (the Ocean Decade). It will advance marine big-data technologies within this international framework and contribute to ocean science worldwide.