Underwater Vessel Noise Challenge by the French Embassy in South Africa
Underwater Vessel Noise Challenge by the French Embassy in South Africa supports machine-learning participants developing models and research to help marine scientists detect and understand coastal vessel noise.
Funder: Zindi
Due Dates: December 13, 2026 (Submission close) | December 13, 2026 (Submission selection close) | January 29, 2027 (Reveal)
Funding Amounts: $5,000 USD in cash prizes, plus a first-place summit invitation valued at $2,500 USD
Summary: A machine-learning prize competition supporting detection and understanding of vessel-related underwater noise along South Africa’s coast.
Key Information: The top three leaderboard winners must assign worldwide copyright in their winning solution code to Zindi.
Description
Hosted on Zindi, this challenge is primarily sponsored by the French Embassy in South Africa, Lesotho and Malawi through Le Shift Lab. It rewards machine-learning models and research write-ups that help marine scientists distinguish ship and boat sounds from wind, waves and marine life. Participants work with real underwater acoustic measurements supplied by SAEON, SANBI and the South African Underwater Radiated Noise Consortium.
The challenge combines a predictive leaderboard with separate research write-up prizes. Because South African observations lack verified vessel-noise labels, scored tests use controlled vessel-sound additions. Research submissions must demonstrate performance on real measurements and produce supported maps of acoustic activity across monitoring sites and time. Priorities include reproducible evidence, uncertainty, interpretability and useful monitoring results rather than unsupported claims based solely on synthetic test performance.
