The secret lives of humpback whales, from their exact migration paths to their night-time activities, could be uncovered in a research project combining marine biology with artificial intelligence.
Google and Griffith University announced the meeting of science and technology on Tuesday, in a project designed to more accurately track the marine mammals and their behaviour.
Researchers from both organisations say the experiment would also help to identify changes in coastal environments, and could be expanded to follow more marine life in future.
The whale-tracking project, part of Google’s Australian Digital Future Initiative, will use a series of underwater microphones, known as hydrophones, to track whales by the sounds they make.
Current data on whale migration paths is based only on visual sightings, which could be incomplete, Griffith University research fellow Dr Olaf Meynecke said. .
“The Whales and Climate Program currently holds the largest whale-sighting database in Australia but this is sighting data captured during the daytime, which means there is no data spanning 24-hour periods,” he said.
“Hydrophones allow us to tune into marine soundscapes 24/7.”
Three underwater microphones have already been installed at sites on the Gold Coast in Queensland and in Sydney and Merimbula in NSW, and another three would be placed along the east coast in Gladstone, the Whitsundays and Cairns as part of the project.
Google Research data scientist Dr Lauren Harrell said the specially designed equipment would record whale sounds for extended periods.
“These microphones are attached to waterproof dive housing, pressure-rated with a recording unit inside and some batteries, so it can continuously listen for six months at a time,” she told AAP.
“You can deploy it a known (whale) location, securely anchored, and it will just sit there and listen to everything around it and capture all that data.”
Google’s AI model would then be used to identify whale calls from recordings, Dr Harrell said, along with recordings from temporary hydrophones placed in another five locations by citizen science groups.
More accurately tracking humpback whale movements, she said, could also help marine scientists to monitor their environments and the effects of climate change.
“If you continue to do this for a few years, you might be able to start seeing if there’s any changes happening, and understanding the relationship and how humpbacks are responding to climate change,” she said.
“It could allow scientists to focus on big-picture questions like what’s the relationship between environment and climate factors on whale populations.”
Curtin University’s Centre for Marine Science and Technology will also provide technical support to collect the recordings, and Dr Harrell said the AI model would be published on Kaggle and GitHub for use by other researchers and to potentially track other species in future.
Google's AI technology has also recently been deployed in the Mariana Islands, north of Guam, to identify eight whale species, including the mysterious Bryde’s whales.
