Joint observatories following a single male Cachalot during 12 weeks —The Yukusam story

From 11 February to 31 March 2018, a lone male sperm whale visited coastal waters from the northeast to southern ends of Vancouver Island. This whale, named "Yukusam" after the Namgis First Nation word for Hanson Island, near where the whale was first observed and recorded, is the first sperm whale recorded acoustically in the area since 1984 and is the only sperm whale ever observed in coastal waters between Vancouver Island and continental North America. The Yukusam tracking story is a showcase for the potential of acoustic observatory collaborations. Tracking a single animal over such time and distance is remarkable. It obviously helped that Yukusam was the only sperm whale in the area, but still, the experience hints at the potential for using diverse independent observatories collaboratively. We then aim to see all the observatories running automated detection classification and location software and having all the data tied in to a public database for a total of almost 500 Gb of recordings, with lab...