Citizen Science Program Uses AI to Track Whales

The black-and-white patterns on the underside of a whale’s tail fins, or flukes, are unique. Now a citizen science program called Happy Whale uses artificial intelligence to quickly identify humpbacks from those patterns, APM reports.

Through photographs shared by whale watchers, the program has recorded thousands of whales that travel to and from Alaska.

“Like facial recognition, we can tell who it is,” said Ted Cheeseman, an expedition scientist who has studied whales all over the world, including in Antarctica. He co-founded Happy Whale as a way to track humpbacks, a species that’s known to travel thousands of miles.

The program has documented about 30,000 humpbacks in the North Pacific, which Cheeseman expects is about 70% of the population.

Whale watchers can share their fluke photos and locations to the online database, which has identified 68,000 humpbacks worldwide.