SensFish Environmental Intelligence for Seagrass and Coastal Restoration

Seagrass meadows are among the most carbon-dense ecosystems on Earth, sequestering carbon up to 35 times faster than tropical rainforests while supporting coastal fisheries and protecting shorelines from erosion. They are also among the fastest disappearing. In the UK alone, an estimated 92% of seagrass has been lost over the past century.

Conventional seagrass monitoring relies on dive-based surveys that are expensive, seasonally constrained, and impossible to scale. A single survey campaign covers a handful of sites over a few days and produces results that are already months old by the time they reach a decision-maker. For conservation programmes and blue-carbon initiatives that need to demonstrate recovery across entire estuarine systems, this approach simply does not keep pace.

To help address this challenge, SensFish Ltd, a UK marine intelligence SME, is developing proprietary environmental intelligence infrastructure for fisheries, coastal ecosystems, and marine restoration applications.

In this project, SensFish led the development of a scalable seagrass habitat intelligence capability integrating satellite Earth Observation, environmental data, and geospatial analytics, for a marine steward of Scotland.

Working alongside the SensFish internal technical and environmental intelligence team, Astro42 contributed to selected engineering and implementation components of the wider SensFish environmental intelligence platform, including aspects of geospatial interface development, dashboard functionality, environmental data integration, and operational reporting workflows.

The project aimed to support the development of a scalable seagrass habitat intelligence capability that could complement traditional physical surveys through continuous environmental monitoring, giving restoration stakeholders more operational, evidence-based visibility for coastal ecosystem assessment and reporting within complex coastal monitoring conditions.

The resulting technological component enables users to access continuous habitat observations, environmental trend visibility, site-level monitoring outputs, and reporting tools through a unified operational interface designed for restoration assessment and environmental decision support.

Particular focus was placed on supporting reliable environmental visibility across complex coastal and estuarine environments where monitoring conditions, satellite coverage, and oceanographic data availability can vary significantly. The SensFish platform therefore incorporates multiple environmental data layers and confidence-aware processing workflows to maintain transparency in how observations and outputs are presented.

Astro42's engineering contribution focused on the practical integration challenges of bringing satellite and oceanographic data into a coherent operational interface. This included building geospatial visualisation components for the dashboard, developing data ingestion and harmonisation workflows across multiple environmental data sources, and engineering the automated reporting pipeline that converts platform outputs into formats suitable for restoration funding submissions and stakeholder communications.

The solution also supports forward-looking environmental monitoring capabilities and automated reporting workflows designed to assist restoration stakeholders, environmental programmes, and operational monitoring activities.

In this project, Astro42 supported the continued expansion of SensFish Ltd's coastal habitat intelligence capabilities, enabling regional Scottish restoration stakeholders and environmental teams to access more continuous environmental visibility through a unified geospatial monitoring interface, while contributing to the foundations of a broader long-term coastal restoration and environmental monitoring initiative expected to evolve over the coming decade.

Together with the SensFish internal intelligence team, Astro42 contributed to engineering and platform development components supporting geospatial monitoring, environmental data integration, and operational reporting workflows within the wider SensFish environmental intelligence platform.

The resulting technological layer supports integrated habitat observations, environmental trend visibility, monitoring outputs, and reporting workflows designed to assist restoration assessment, stakeholder communication, and operational environmental monitoring activities across complex coastal and estuarine environments.

The project also contributed to the development of scalable technical workflows for integrating Earth Observation and environmental datasets within coastal ecosystem monitoring applications.