2025 Year in Review 🎁

Lilli Carlsen
Jan 7
2 min read

As we look back on 2025, the team at FathomVerse would like to take this moment to thank every single FathomNaut for playing FathomVerse and contributing to ocean science. The collective efforts of FathomVerse players around the world are enhancing the AI models that researchers rely on to deepen our understanding of marine ecosystems. Together, we can speed up breakthroughs in science and discover all life in the ocean.

Putting the community in community science

When you pick up your phone to play FathomVerse, you've replaced scrolling with community science, diving below the surface to help scientists understand our planet's most mysterious ecosystem.

Last year, FathomNauts played a total of 16,573 hours, resulting in 3,011,694 classification labels (teaching the AI what’s in the image) and 1,025,803 localizations (teaching AI where is the object in the image). A total of 286 players achieved the title of Denizen of the Deep, the highest level in FathomVerse, demonstrating their deep commitment to the game. If you are a Denizen of the Deep, you are among the top 0.8% of FathomNauts.

2025 was a big year for FathomVerse! Here are the major highlights showing that every action you take in FathomVerse is contributing to ocean science.

FathomNauts are moving up the ranks. An elite group of 286 player have reached level 15, Denizen of the Deep.

Putting the science in community science

We want to express our deep gratitude to the institutions and individuals who shared videos and photos from their ocean research. Their contributions enabled FathomNauts to assist in labeling and generating training data to enhance our AI models. Through teamwork, we reached a consensus on labeling 194,217 images. Thanks to the efforts of the FathomVerse community, we have successfully exported 108,384 labeled images to the FathomNet Database for use in machine learning training.

FathomVerse was made richer by video and image contributions from NOAA Ocean Exploration, Schmidt Ocean Exploration, MBARI, Joost Daniels, Dawn Wright (Esri), and Ocean Networks Canada.

We ♥️ cephalopods

In 2025, we learned just how much you all love cephalopods! All of the top 5 most popular FathomVerse favorites were octopuses and squids. Which one is your favorite?

FathomNauts added a heart to many different animals across the FathomVerse. These images of octopuses, one squid, and a bloodybelly comb jelly were the most popular.

A year’s worth of badges

FathomNauts earned a total of 29,711 badges, and an exceptional 9 players earned a badge for playing 100 days in a row!

In 2025 we introduced streak badges that reward FathomNauts for playing consecutive days.

Let’s continue the cephalo-party in the new year! We look forward to exploring new depths with you as we add more missions, more expeditions, and welcome more FathomNauts in 2026. From the entire FathomVerse team, thank you for joining us on our mission to discover all life in the ocean.

Onwards and downwards,

The FathomVerse Team