UEA technology to detect endangered right whales

摘要

Researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have developed machine learning technology to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales from threats posed by human marine activity.The machine learning techniques can be used to detect the whales' presence by listening to their submarine sounds. By locating the whales before they approach potentially harmful situations, the technology aims to protect the animals and avoid costly shutdowns at offshore operations.Lead researcher Dr Ben Milner explained that the technique utilises a deep convolutional neural network (CNN). "To train the CNN, we begin by taking around 2,000 examples of right whale upcall and gunshot sounds and a further 1,000 examples of just background noise, all collected through passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) devices," he said.