Whales from space: Four mysticete species described using new VHR satellite imagery
By H. Cubaynes, Peter T. Fretwell, Connor C. G. Bamford, L. Gerrish, J. Jackson. Marine mammal science, 2018
108 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Large-bodied animals such as baleen whales can now be detected with very high resolution (VHR) satellite imagery, allowing for scientific studies of whales in remote and inaccessible areas where traditional survey methods are limited or impractical. Here we present the first study of baleen whales using the WorldView-3 satellite, which has a maximum spatial resolution of 31 cm in the panchromatic band, the highest currently available to nonmilitary professionals. We manually detected, described, and counted four different mysticete species: fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus) in the Ligurian Sea, humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) off Hawaii, southern right whales (Eubalaena australis) off Peninsula Valdes, and gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) in Laguna San Ignacio. Visual and spectral analyses were conducted for each species, their surrounding waters, and nonwhale objects (e.g., boats). We found that behavioral and morphological differences made some species more distinguishable than others. Fin and gray whales were the easiest to discern due to their contrasting body coloration with surrounding water, and their prone body position, which is proximal to the sea surface (i.e., body parallel to the sea surface). These results demonstrate the feasibility of using VHR satellite technology for monitoring the great whales.
Subfields: Ecology, Oceanography
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0ef10ed5c8cff57d656937eb56c7103a156e4fe0
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In Ecology
- Mariana M. P. B. Fuentes
- S. Maxwell
- K. Laidre
- C. Weir
- I. C. Avila
- J. Arnould
- Daniel M. Palacios
- Graham J. Pierce
In Oceanography
Citations in the corpus
- Marine mammal conservation: over the horizon (2021, methodology): “…imagery has been used to study distributions of Weddell seals Leptonychotes weddellii (LaRue et al. 2011) and polar bears (LaRue & Stapleton 2018), and to detect and count mysticete whales in several locations around the world (Fretwell et al. 2014, Cubaynes et al. 2019, Bamford et al. 2020).”