Partner with us
We measure marine habitats and biodiversity — in the deep sea and on the coast — and turn those measurements into outputs that hold up under scrutiny, whether the scrutiny comes from a verifier, a procurement officer, a regulator or a peer reviewer. If you have a site or a region that needs quantifying, an image archive nobody has been able to analyse, or an obligation you cannot currently evidence, we would like to hear from you.
We are a young lab and would rather say so than oversell. What we bring is not a long client list but a set of peer-reviewed methods, published in Nature Portfolio journals and already running at scale over hundreds of thousands of images.
Blue carbon stock assessment
Above- and below-ground carbon across mangrove extents, from Sentinel-2 optical imagery, NASA GEDI spaceborne LiDAR and field allometry. Delivered as maps with stated uncertainty rather than a single headline number, and structured against Verra VM0033 so the output can support a carbon project baseline or a re-measurement.
Currently running across 2,890 hectares at Mwache Creek, Mombasa — see Research.
Biodiversity integrity assessment
The Blue Biodiversity Integrity Index: a measure of ecological condition derived from below-water stereo-video transects, analysed with computer vision rather than by hand. Designed to sit alongside carbon figures in TNFD and GRI Biodiversity Standard reporting, where marine and coastal exposure is typically the hardest thing to evidence — most biodiversity frameworks were built for terrestrial ecosystems and leave you with little to report against.
Automated analysis of large image archives
Our published pipelines classify seafloor imagery and detect and count fauna without anyone annotating every frame. If you hold a video or image archive that has never been analysed because analysing it was not feasible, that is the specific problem we have spent years on. See Software.
Regional data compilation and area-based management support
For a region rather than a single site: compiling the available environmental and biodiversity data into one consistent, documented layer; classifying habitats across it; testing how well existing protected or managed areas represent what is there; identifying the gaps; and setting out candidate areas where an area-based management tool would add the most. Delivered as maps, a written method and the underlying data, with provenance recorded throughout so that a body adopting the output can defend how it was produced.
This is the service chain behind the deep-sea work — regional environmental management planning is what seafloor habitat classification and megafauna distribution mapping were built to inform — and it applies equally to a coastal or nearshore region.
Method development and training
Where you would rather hold the capability in-house, we build the pipeline with your team instead of for them, and hand over the code and the documentation to run it.
Who we work with
- Carbon project developers needing credible MRV for blue carbon projects
- Conservation organisations and marine park authorities with sites but no measurement capacity
- Companies with EU-linked or voluntary reporting commitments — CSRD, TNFD — that touch marine and coastal systems
- Research consortia looking for a Western Indian Ocean partner on a proposal
- Intergovernmental and regional bodies — seabed and ocean governance, regional seas conventions, fisheries and marine protected area agencies — procuring technical input on habitat mapping, representativeness analysis and area-based management
- Development finance institutions and UN agencies needing marine and coastal measurement to sit behind a biodiversity finance instrument or a lending condition
How an engagement works
- A conversation. Tell us the site and the question. We will say early if we think Earth observation is the wrong tool for it — sometimes it is, and finding that out cheaply is worth more than a report that hedges.
- Feasibility. What the available data can and cannot support, what fieldwork would be needed, and what the uncertainty will realistically look like.
- Delivery. Maps, indices and a written method, in formats your verifier or auditor can work with.
- Handover. Data, code and documentation, so the work is reproducible and does not depend on us.
On standards, plainly
We design our outputs to meet the requirements of Verra VM0033, TNFD, CSRD and the GRI Biodiversity Standard. To be precise about what that means: we are a research group, not an accredited validation or verification body. We produce the measurements and documentation that go into those processes; the certification itself sits with the accredited bodies.
We are equally precise about what drives demand. Neither CSRD nor TNFD is a legal mandate in Kenya, and we do not suggest otherwise. What is real here and now is development finance conditionality, the requirements of voluntary carbon and biodiversity markets, and the reporting obligations of counterparties domiciled elsewhere.
Data and publication
Your data stays confidential. We publish methods, not client data, and we will agree what is publishable before any work starts.
Start a conversation
Email info@sieal.org with the site or the question you have in mind. Concrete enquiries get a more useful answer than general ones.