Monitoring Whales from Space will be a Boon to Research

Using satellites to track the location of whales might seen incongruous - the marine mammals are the largest living creatures on Earth, after all. But a team of scientists proposing to do just that contend that conventional whale-tracking methods are inaccurate and inefficient and that satellite data can be a boon for whale researchers.

Writing in the journal PLOS One, Peter Fretwell from British Antarctic Survey and his colleagues report that high-definition satellite images may be useful for identifying whales for conservation purposes.

"Whales populations have always been difficult to assess, traditional means of counting them are localized, expensive and lack accuracy," Fretwell said in a news release. "The ability to count whales automatically, over large areas in a cost effective way will be of great benefit to conservation efforts for this and potentially other whale species."

Satellites can be used to track just about anything, and deep-diving whales are apparently no exception.

For their research, Fretwell and his colleagues selected a large group of southern right whales known to breed off the coast of Argentina. This population was selected because it is known to congregate in large pods near the coast during breeding season.

An automated satellite scan of the whales from space resulted in data that was 90 percent accurate when compared to a manual population count of the same group of whales.

The researchers contend that the satellite system is just as accurate and more reliable than the traditional methods of counting whales from shore, on ships or by plane, which are all narrow in scope.

"Our study is a proof of principle," Fretwell told the BBC. "But as the resolution of the satellites increases and our image analysis improves, we should be able to monitor many more species and in other types of location. It should be possible to do total population counts and in the future track the trajectory of those populations."

The study utilized the WorldView2, one of the most accurate satellite imaging systems. The satellite could identify whales on the surface as well as at shallow depths below the water's surface.

"This is one of the first successful studies using satellite imagery to count whales, a method that could be applied to future surveys of other whale species, and other marine mammal populations," the researchers said in the statement.

Vicky Rowntree, a right whale specialist from the University of Utah, told the BBC that the satellite imaging would be a life-saving boon to whale research.

"The other dimension of it is that many marine mammal researchers have been killed flying in small planes while surveying whales So my great desire is to get us out of small planes circling over whales and to be able to do it remotely," she said. Satellite data is wonderful.