An extremely endangered hawksbill is swimming on the reef. It is believed that in the past two centuries, more than 9 million turtles died because of their turtles. The artificial tortoise shell made of resin has almost the same texture.
Photography: Greg Lecorps, National Geographic Photo Gallery.
Natasha ·DALY wrote it.
Tortoise shell is durable, and the translucent amber and brown layers form an amazing vortex, so it has been used in jewelry, combs, tableware and other items for centuries.
Brad Nasher, co-founder and president of turtle conservation organization S EE Turtles and national geographic explorer, said: "Before plastic was invented, it was plastic because it was very plastic."
Tortoise shell is not tortoise's. It comes almost entirely from the extremely endangered hawksbill. Data show that at least 9 million turtles were killed and sold during the period from 1884 to 1992. Today, there are less than 25,000 fertile female turtles in the world, and their international commercial trade is also prohibited.
Nasher's team is trying to use modern technology to combat the illegal trade of this ancient material. Most tortoises can be reproduced with resin, with high accuracy, and it is difficult to distinguish between true and false. SEE Turtles worked with partners in the Smithsonian's OCIO Data Science Laboratory to build an application to help.
The picture shows the tortoise shell jewelry of Nicaragua gift shop, which is made of the tortoise shell of an endangered tortoise shell. Tortoise shell products are still widely sold in tourist shops in more than 40 countries.
Source: halbrindley/travelforwildlife.com
This application called SEE Shell uses machine learning to identify photos with tortoise shell patterns and judge whether they are true or false, with an accuracy rate of 94%. Alexander Robillard, a doctoral student at the Smithsonian OCIO Data Science Laboratory, said that this is the first mobile application that uses computer vision recognition to combat illegal wildlife trade. Robillard has built a computer model for this plan, which will tell shoppers and law enforcement agencies who know about protection. (Apps can be downloaded from the Apple App Store and Google Play)
Nasher said that at least 40 countries have black market trade in tortoise shells, mainly in Central America and Southeast Asia. Tourists buy tortoise shell ornaments in gift shops and souvenir stalls, accounting for the vast majority of illegal sales.
The value of this application is that it can provide a wealth of information. All the pictures are uploaded to a private and centralized database, and each picture has GPS coordinates, so that the SEE turtle can identify the high-incidence places of illegal sales.
Nasher said: "Even if we only have hundreds of travelers actively using it to collect data and avoid buying real tortoiseshell, it is a good thing." SEE Turtles plans to promote this free application through social media activities and cooperation with other conservation organizations.
Emily Miller, a marine ecologist, was not involved in the development of the application, but she wrote a paper on the global trade of hawksbill in 20 19. She said that although many groups around the world are collecting data about hawksbill trade, "one of the main obstacles to answering research questions is to integrate and organize all the data." She said that having a larger central database "will be very helpful to understand the global trade pattern."
Train computers to help protect turtles.
Robillard cooperated with Nasher's team and collected 4000 pictures of genuine and fake hawksbill products. Robillard imported these images into his computer model, which analyzed the pixels in each image to understand the differences in shape and color between the real and fake hawksbill.
Nasher said that a key difference is that the pattern on the real tortoise shell is random. Man-made products usually have uniform edges, or different products sold together have the same spots. The semi-permeability of orange tone on artificial hawksbill is similar.
Nasher and Robillard are very good at distinguishing authenticity, but without this application, non-experts may need years of practice to identify them. When talking about this app, Robillard said: "I like to tell people that this app allows you to put Brad (Nasher) in their pockets!" He also said that machine learning and computer vision "can accomplish any visual recognition task that humans can accomplish, but they are more efficient and faster." I tested see shell-on two pairs of glasses with tortoise shell patterns-and it immediately recognized that it was fake. )
Bars and other products
Through this application, scientists have discovered hawksbill products that they didn't know existed before-such as hawksbill bartenders who make cocktails and cockfighting spurs.
This application is of great value to local environmental organizations. Before it was put into use, Fundación Tortugas del Mar, a turtle protection organization in Cartagena, Colombia, had successfully cooperated with local law enforcement agencies to combat illegal trade, which reduced the trade in the region by nearly 80%. However, Nasher said that the authorities will only check the illegal products when people from the protection organizations confirm them. Tortugas del Mar plans to train law enforcement officers to use the application so that they can work faster and more independently.
David Godfrey, executive director of the Turtle Protection Association, is committed to protecting the turtles in Panama, because Panama is a hot spot for trade. He said that if tourists use SEE Shell, it would be like equipping "an army of protectionists to make life difficult for those who secretly sell tortoise shells". He said that now people can immediately identify the true and false, and suppliers may think twice before acting.
With the help of the World Wildlife Fund, SEE Turtles is also committed to introducing this technology into the online platform. In recent years, illegal wildlife trade on online platforms has surged. Facebook, Yi Bei and other platforms filter illegal products by detecting banned keywords, but this filtering can be easily bypassed. Nasher said: "As far as we know, on the surface, these people have done nothing."
This visual learning technique may be applicable to other wildlife materials, such as distinguishing true bone from false bone. Robillard pointed out that the ability to instantly identify real ivory will be particularly valuable, but ivory is more difficult than tortoise shell, because a key indicator of authentic ivory is its internal cross-hatching, which is invisible in photos.
Nevertheless, he said, "it is possible to apply machine learning to animal protection."
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