Automated detection, tracking, and counting of gray whales

Gray whales in the eastern North Pacific migrate annually between summer feeding areas in the Arctic to wintering areas off Baja California, Mexico. The abundance of this whale population has been documented by shore-based counts in central California conducted by human observers searching for and recording whale sightings during the southbound migration. Here, we describe a new semi-automated system for conducting gray whale counts, and compare such to the human observer based system. This new system consists of infrared cameras which continuously monitor a fixed field of view of the ocean, automated detection software for detecting whale blows, whale-blow verification software, and counting software which estimates the number of whales that have passed by the observation station. This technology is currently being considered to support naval, oil and gas, and merchant marine operations involving marine mammals.