Twenty-one dead gray whales surfaced in San Francisco Bay last year, nearly half struck by ships. Marine scientists and community leaders sought a new way to prevent further collisions. A new AI-powered camera installed on Angel Island’s Point Blunt uses thermal imaging to detect warm-blooded mammals by finding heat signatures in cold water. The system identifies whale breathing and movement patterns with greater resolution and accuracy than earlier methods. WhaleSafe updates in real time to give boats advance notice of whale traffic, aiming to help vessels adjust routes and avoid areas where whales feed and travel. The goal is to reduce harm as whale activity increases in busy shipping waters.
"After 21 dead gray whales surfaced in the bay last year, nearly half of which were struck by ship or freighter, scientists and community leaders put their hopes in a new AI-powered tool."
"A new AI-powered camera, however, installed on the island's Point Blunt, seeks to shine a light on the increased whale activity in the Bay, "with so much greater resolution and accuracy" than before. The camera, produced by Whalespotter, a Massachusetts-based company, searches for heat signatures of warm-blooded mammals - "a whale that's breathing out in a cold bay," McCauley said."
"To the thermal camera's artificial intelligence, "that red hot heat from a warm whale is what stands out, kind of like a hot needle in a cold haystack." Gray whales make one of the longest migrations of any animal on Earth, from their feeding grounds in the Arctic to lagoons in Baja California, where they hav"
"WhaleSafe updates in real time to give boats advance notice of whale traffic."
#ai-powered-wildlife-monitoring #gray-whale-conservation #ship-strike-prevention #thermal-imaging #san-francisco-bay
Read at Kqed
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]