[Earth Day] Coral in Focus: Samsung Marks One Year of Marine Ecosystem Restoration With Galaxy Technology

Samsung Electronics is celebrating the one-year anniversary of its collaboration with Seatrees, an organization that has leveraged the Galaxy camera in its efforts to restore damaged marine ecosystems. Samsung is committed to reducing its impact on the environment. For example, beginning with the Galaxy S22 series, the company started recycling discarded fishing nets and incorporating the material into its smartphones. This practice has since expanded across the Galaxy ecosystem — including tablets, laptops and wearable devices. Building on these efforts Samsung is now supporting coral reef restoration through technological innovation. Samsung Newsroom highlights how this initiative is part of the company’s broader commitment to the world’s oceans.

Supporting Marine Ecosystem Research Through Global Collaboration

Introduced at Galaxy Unpacked in January 2025, Coral in Focus is an initiative launched last year that supports local communities, including those in Fiji, Indonesia and the United States, to work to restore coastal ecosystems.

Samsung has partnered with Seatrees, a nonprofit organization dedicated to restoring marine ecosystems, to explore, new, innovative solutions for coral reef restoration. The company has introduced Ocean Mode[1] on the Galaxy S24 Ultra, an exclusive camera feature that enables vivid image capture underwater. These images provide accurate visual data for marine researchers who create 3D photogrammetry models to continuously monitor and analyze coral reefs. Local partner organizations then use these findings to guide their on-site coral restoration efforts.

Ocean Mode: How Galaxy Camera Innovation Is Helping with Coral Reef Restoration Work

Partners and local field teams use Ocean Mode to reduce the excessive blue tones common in underwater photography, allowing for a more accurate representation of coral colors. The feature also helps minimize motion blur through optimized shutter speed and multi-frame image processing. Additionally, the interval shooting function enables thousands of high-resolution coral images to be captured in a single session — improving both efficiency and image clarity.

With these coral restoration initiatives, photos taken with Ocean Mode have been used to produce 17 3D models of coral reefs to analyze the health and growth of reefs.

In total, Seatrees has planted approximately 11,046 coral fragments to restore 10,705 square meters of coral reef habitat — roughly the size of 25 basketball courts.

Since unveiling its “Galaxy for the Planet” environmental vision in 2021, Samsung has continued its efforts toward a more sustainable future — not only by incorporating ocean-bound plastics from discarded fishing nets into its products but also by expanding into marine ecosystem restoration research. These actions reflect the company’s ongoing commitment to reducing its environmental impact across the entire product life cycle and beyond.

[1] Ocean Mode was exclusively developed for this project and is only available to participating partners.