Marine monitoring project “Nosoko Umishobu Seagrass Colony (Nationally Certified Sustainably Managed Natural Site), Ishigaki Island” and related educational activities for students of local elementary school

Nosokozaki, a headland on Ishigaki Island, is home to a rare eelgrass meadow where some 10 species of eelgrass have been observed. In particular, umishobu seagrass (Enhalus acoroides) occupies the northernmost part of the distribution area and is a rare species classified as Category II (Vulnerable) in both the Red List of Threatened Species compiled by Japan’s Ministry of the Environment and Okinawa Prefecture. In recent years, overgrazing by green sea turtles has brought the seagrass to the verge of extinction, and local residents have been leading conservation efforts to install conservation fencing to prevent feeding damage by turtles.
Private companies including Okinawa Cellular and Tokio Marine Asset Management have now joined the project to build a new conservation fence, cultivate umishobu plants on land, and transplant them into the conservation area. Fujitsu for its part has been using an underwater drone to monitor the marine environment and assess seagrass growth in the conservation area. The local community has offered its cooperation too, with local residents and children from a local elementary school participating in the monitoring program and other conservation activities.
In addition to expanding the conservation area, the project will measure the amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) stored by the propagated umishobu and apply for J Blue Credit® (*1). By integrating the results of our decarbonization and biodiversity conservation initiatives into our corporate activities, we at Fujitsu aim to make this initiative more sustainable in its own right.

The Ministry of the Environment designated this conservation area a Nationally Certified Sustainably Managed Natural Site in early 2024.

Fujitsu aims to create an ocean digital twin (*2) to facilitate early verification of the efficacy of carbon neutrality and biodiversity conservation measures in the ocean. To achieve this, Fujitsu is conducting research and development of technologies for high-precision digitization of the marine environment, integrating the vast amount of data obtained from a variety of sensors mounted on underwater and aerial drones, satellites, etc, with oceanographic knowledge and AI technologies.
As part of its efforts to implement the digital twin, Fujitsu conducted a survey in the umishobu conservation area, deploying an underwater drone to capture image data. The survey confirmed that umishobu seagrass was thriving inside the conservation fence, but almost nonexistent outside the fence due to feeding damage. Moreover, it was found that vegetation other than umishobu was also growing inside the fence. The intention is to use these data as training data for AI-driven analysis to calculate the umishobu cover ratio (the ratio of plants covering the seabed), and to use this in conjunction with marine ecology to build AI models of seaweed meadows.