New Filter Mini-game in FathomVerse 3.0 Update

Lilli Carlsen
Jun 3
2 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

A person seated in a blue armchair plays a mini-game in the FathomVerse app on her iPhone. She is wearing a gray sweater and blue jeans. On her phone screen is a grid of six photos on a blue background with app icons. She is tapping one of the photos to add a red box. In the background is gray carpet. — The new version of FathomVerse empowers dedicated FathomNauts to work alongside taxonomy experts to quickly put images labeled and localized by the FathomVerse community into the hands of scientists. Image: Calista Kerba © 2026 MBARI

Today, FathomVerse is releasing a suite of new features to expedite community-driven analysis of underwater imagery and accelerate ocean discovery. With a new mini-game and more educational content, FathomVerse 3.0 expands the app’s offerings and lets users participate in the entire image annotation process from start to finish.

New Features in FathomVerse 3.0

Filter Mini-game: Sort and match images for focused, faster labeling
Denizen Mode: Experienced FathomNauts can verify community consensus labels to help our experts confirm consensus and share more data to the FathomNet Database
Training Mode: Training for new mission certification is now available in Identify and Illuminate mini-games
Skip in Bound: Choose the skip button in Bound to move onto the next image
Expanded mission briefings: View more example images in the mission briefings

Since the app’s release, more than 55,000 FathomVerse users have generated 28 million annotations, resulting in more than 100,000 annotated images shared via the FathomNet Database.

First released in 2024, FathomVerse engages a global community of ocean enthusiasts—called FathomNauts—to identify animals in real underwater images, adding to a library of labeled images that can help scientists catalog and understand marine life. In 2025, a new mini-game, Bound, introduced a new activity, adding bounding boxes to images. With FathomVerse 2.0, FathomNauts could complete the first two steps of image annotation: localization to identify where an object is in an image and classification to add a name to the localization.

The latest update to FathomVerse introduces a new mini-game that allows FathomNauts to annotate images faster and help taxonomy experts with verification.

In the new Filter mini-game, FathomNauts can quickly review a set of images and remove all the images that don’t match their mission, filtering out what doesn’t belong. Denizen Mode within Filter will relieve bottlenecks slowing down the FathomVerse annotation pipeline by enlisting the most experienced FathomNauts to verify community annotations.

Previously, our small but mighty team of FathomVerse staff had to review a subset of the annotations made by the FathomVerse community for quality control. With FathomVerse 3.0, Denizens of the Deep—FathomNauts who have reached the highest level of the app—can review the labels and boxes created by other users, filtering out incorrect annotations. By engaging our most dedicated FathomNauts to help with verification, we can process imagery in FathomVerse faster.

The new version of FathomVerse empowers FathomNauts to work alongside experts and quickly put annotated images into the hands of scientists. Every image localized, classified, and verified in FathomVerse helps to build a library of life in the ocean. Knowing what lives in the ocean, from sunlit coastal shallows to unexplored depths, is the first step in protecting it. FathomVerse makes that possible, one dive at a time.

About FathomVerse

FathomVerse is a free app that invites everyone to take part in ocean exploration and discovery. Developed by MBARI and partners in the FathomNet Program, FathomVerse engages a global community of ocean enthusiasts to help improve the artificial intelligence tools that researchers use to study the ocean.