Artificial intelligence makes a splash in efforts to protect Alaska's ice seals and beluga whales - Stories

Moreland's project combines AI technology with improved cameras on a NOAA turboprop airplane that will fly over the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska this April and May, scanning and classifying the imagery to produce a population count of ice seals and polar bears that will be ready in hours instead of months. Her colleague Manuel Castellote, a NOAA affiliate scientist, will apply a similar algorithm to the recordings he'll pick up from equipment scattered across the bottom of Alaska's Cook Inlet, helping him quickly decipher how the shrinking population of endangered belugas spent its winter.