The targets: loggerhead turtles, silky sharks and sailfish. The mission: figure out how many of them are left.

The United Kingdom announced Saturday it would launch a worldwide effort to monitor wildlife in the open oceans, hoping to fill a blue hole of scientific knowledge and get a clearer sense of which aquatic populations are under threat.

The project, akin to an underwater spy network, will fund a fleet of small action cameras, complete with bait, to be deployed about 30 feet beneath the oceans surface. Researchers will place a camera in the water where they hope to gather data, and it will record anything that swims near within a given window of time. The plan is for the project to span the globe, covering four oceans and the Caribbean in waters near 10 of the U.K.s overseas territories.

Jessica Meeuwig, a professor at the University of Western Australia and a leader of the project, said that international focus on ocean health usually centers on iconic landmarks like the Great Barrier Reef. But many of the worlds international waters, hundreds of miles offshore, are still not well understood.

Most people assume its fine because its out of sight, out of mind, Meeuwig said, adding that many people rarely look beyond the blue curtain of the oceans surface. People dont actually know what wildlife exists.

Only 7.65% of the worlds oceans are currently designated as marine protected areas , or MPAs, and just over 1% of that area lies within the high seas, the oceanic regions far from land that dont fall under any one countrys jurisdiction.