February 17, 2016 — WOODS HOLE — From 750 feet above Northeast ocean waters, right whale researchers can easily pick out “Ruffian” for his many scars or “Baldy” for her lack of rough skin patches. Other right whales, though, may take hours to identify.
A new “face recognition” algorithm for right whales, however, announced recently by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, could lead to development of time- and money-saving software and eventually to greater preservation of a species whose global population is 520, right whale experts say.
The new algorithm, created in an international competition sponsored by NOAA Fisheries and the Natick software developer MathWorks, can identify right whale “faces,” or tissue patterns on the top of their heads, with 87 percent accuracy, according to Christin Khan, a NOAA Fisheries biologist and right whale aerial surveyor. Khan, who works in Woods Hole, pursued the idea of facial recognition software for the right whales, and researched how to get the algorithm built, through an online competition that began in August and ended in January.
The winning team, out of 364 entries, was from the software company deepsense.io, with offices in the United States and Poland.
The new algorithm is a first step to developing software for day-to-day use, Khan said. The algorithm, in its initial form, is for aerial photos only, not for photos taken from a boat, Khan said. But the potential is great and part of the growing use of technology to protect whales, several right whale experts said.
“Right now we’re living in the golden age of whale research in terms of technology,” Dave Wiley, research coordinator for Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, said. “The things we’re doing now I couldn’t even have imagined 20 years ago. This Cape Cod area is probably at the forefront of all this stuff.”