Techniques for determining marine mammal densities

Abstract

Determining marine mammal densities is a complex problem that has been ongoing for many decades. Modern approaches use a combination of sophisticated acoustic monitoring and highly trained visual observers from both ships and aircraft. New camera systems with automatic detection algorithms offer the option to do quantitative airborne surveys safely and quickly. This paper presents a discussion on the various methods of calculating marine mammal densities and demonstrates how all these methods can work together to present quantitative density measurements.

A modular, multi-channel imaging system for marine mammal, target detection

“…One of the applications, marine mammal detection and tracking, has been performed over the last few years in Hawaii, California, and over the eastern coastline of Canada. 1 The detection of submerged targets, such as whales, ultimately can require just two narrow spectral bands that are used to subtract off the light (clutter) reflecting from the sea surface. The result is not only clear images of subsurface targets, but also contrast-enhanced targets that can be detected automatically (see Figure 1).…”