Counting Whales From Space Project

Counting whales from space can you believe this statement. Yes, it is true, New England Aquarium, Boston and Draper company from Cambridge will combine efforts to count whales from space. Together both the organisations will collect 1 Million USD to develop a technology that will have the capability to monitor large animals at sea. This announcement came out in Ocean Conference in Oslo, Norway held on 24, October 2019.

This will impact a lot on whale conservation and whale movement & patterns. The new technology will also give governments a piece of better information on how to implement policies for conservation. A lot of questions about the whale’s behaviour and the effects of global warming will be possible to answer.

How will it happen? The pair will use multiple sources such as satellites, sonar and synthetic aperture radars to collect data. There is a predecessor to this project which came out on 12, February 2014 available on PLOSONE. Where they used satellite imagery to count whales from space at Golfo Nuevo, Argentina.

It is easier said than done but this project will have a lot of barriers to overcome. It is so difficult to take a picture of a fish in an aquarium. Here we are talking about satellites. Whales do not have boundaries and travel as they wish. I think this counting whales from space project is very much possible and have a lot of potential for all the community.

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