About This Project

As a global consortium of SRW researchers, we rely on decades' worth of irreplaceable photo-identification datasets to assess conservation status. Unfortunately, current photo-ID processing systems rely on manual photo manipulation and matching. This leads to bottlenecks in photo processing and an inability to proceed with in-depth research projects. We therefore aim to develop an advanced fully automated AI-based photo-identification system specifically for SRWs.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Southern right whales were hunted from >100,000 individuals to a few hundred around 1920. Today, since their international protection from whaling, the species is recovering but remains at low levels. In some of the wintering areas, long-term photo-ID studies have been ongoing since the 1970s. While methodologies for these long-term studies vary, most involve annual aerial surveys that count and photo-identify SRWs in coastal waters based on overhead images of the callosity pattern on their head. These datasets have provided a wealth of information on behaviour, population abundance and trends over the past five decades. However, due to the large sizes, the currently existing semi-automated comparison processes are no longer viable, and an automated system is needed.

What is the significance of this project?

The ability to automatically identify southern right whales from photographs will have wide-ranging implications for research, conservation and whale-based tourism. From a research perspective, the automated identification of individuals will allow researchers to process ID images efficiently, work through bottlenecks of data, incorporate years of unprocessed data, and compile a global ID catalogue of the species. Such improved research outputs will have direct impacts on the conservation management of the species. Furthermore, the ability to instantly identify these whales from a tourism vessel using citizen science will allow for improved outreach and communication to tourists, increasing awareness of the wider community.

What are the goals of the project?

This project aims to develop a fully automated AI-based matching system for individual photo-identification of southern right whales. This will be a milestone in the SRW scientific community as this is a promising tool that has shown progress in the past decade for several whale and dolphin species, allowing us to steer away from non-user-friendly and labour-intensive photo-identification systems.