  Marine pollution is a growing worldwide concern, affecting health of marine
ecosystems, human health, climate change, and weather patterns. To reduce
underwater pollution, it is critical to have access to accurate information
about the extent of marine pollutants as otherwise appropriate countermeasures
and cleaning measures cannot be chosen. Currently such information is difficult
to acquire as existing monitoring solutions are highly laborious or costly,
limited to specific pollutants, and have limited spatial and temporal
resolution. In this article, we present a research vision of large-scale
autonomous marine pollution monitoring that uses coordinated groups of
autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV)s to monitor extent and characteristics of
marine pollutants. We highlight key requirements and reference technologies to
establish a research roadmap for realizing this vision. We also address the
feasibility of our vision, carrying out controlled experiments that address
classification of pollutants and collaborative underwater processing, two key
research challenges for our vision.
