EnterpriseDB (EDB), the Postgres data and AI company, has announced a commitment to support MERMAID, an initiative of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), by leveraging Postgres and AI to support the conservation of the planet’s coral reefs amidst the challenges posed by climate change.

As an official sponsor of MERMAID, EDB’s support aligns with the 30×30 target of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which sets “an ambitious goal to conserve 30% of terrestrial, inland water, coastal, and marine areas by 2030.”

MERMAID is a cutting-edge open source application for collecting and managing coral reef ecosystem data in real time. Postgres, the world’s most advanced open source database, is driving innovation for organizations across the globe. EDB’s sponsorship will help enable MERMAID to harness the full power of Postgres to improve the accuracy and speed of coral reef identification and monitoring. Additionally, MERMAID will soon incorporate AI algorithms that can analyze vast amounts of data collected from reefs, identifying patterns and predicting potential bleaching events before they become critical.

Coral reefs are home to approximately 25% of marine life. As climate change has increased, coral reef bleaching has devastated millions of reef areas globally. In the last year, about 54% of all reefs have experienced bleaching-level heat stress that can lead to the mass extinction of hundreds of species. The implications of these trends threaten the livelihoods of at least a billion coastal inhabitants who rely on coral reefs for food, medicine, and tourism revenue.

“There are two things that can help solve the global crisis for coral reefs: urgent policy action on climate change and leveraging underwater monitoring data to identify and conserve climate-resilient coral reefs,” said Dr. Emily Darling, director of Coral Reef Conservation at WCS and cofounder of MERMAID. “But collecting, managing, and analyzing this critical data is time-consuming and complicated for coral reef scientists. That’s why we developed MERMAID and turned to Postgres.”

“The democratization of data across users, environments, and applications is paramount in the age of AI, and even more critical when our world’s oceans are at stake,” said Kevin Dallas, CEO, EDB. “With over 35 years of active development, Postgres is the most extensible and flexible database, trusted by millions of nonprofits, government agencies, and commercial enterprises alike. What we’re seeing here is that Postgres also has a powerful role to play in the future of our planet.”