Whales keep dying in San Francisco Bay. Can AI save them?

Gray whale deaths in San Francisco Bay have increased, prompting marine scientists to investigate the cause. Whale bones on Angel Island reflect repeated efforts to study fatalities. A new monitoring system was launched on Angel Island to protect whales by detecting them in the bay and alerting nearby vessels quickly. The system uses AI to identify gray whales based on heat signatures and exhaled breath. It combines a thermal camera at a U.S. Coast Guard communication site with a second camera on a Bay Ferry passenger boat. WhaleSpotter technology supports the detection network, and specialists from marine research organizations and the Marine Mammal Center tailor the system for local conditions and vessel traffic.

"The new system uses AI to detect gray whales swimming in the bay and then quickly alerts boat captains so they can slow down and change course. The detection network also includes a thermal camera recently installed at the U.S. Coast Guard communication site on Angel Island and a second fastened aboard a San Francisco Bay Ferry passenger boat. The ferry's camera turned on for the route between Vallejo and San Francisco this week."

"The group wasn't there to mourn the sea giants but rather to debut a new way to keep them safe: artificial intelligence. "We can come together as a community and do something today, which is to ensure that more of the whales that come into the bay make it back out and are not struck and killed by ships," Douglas McCauley, the director of UC Santa Barbara's Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory, said during Tuesday's launch of the new monitoring system on Angel Island."

"Experts from Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory and the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito collaborated with WhaleSpotter and the U.S. Coast Guard's vessel traffic service to tailor the project for San Francisco Bay. The system tracks whales by their heat signatures and exhaled breath using AI-powered technology from WhaleSpotter, a global company that emerged from a decade of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute research."

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