SFU researchers developing AI system to protect killer whales - SFU News - Simon Fraser University

The team is working with citizen scientists and the Orcasound project to provide several terabytes of whale call datasets, being collected by Steven Bergner, a computing science research associate at SFU's Big Data Hub. Bergner says the acoustic data will be used to'teach' the computer to recognize which call belongs to each type of cetacean. The project requires interdisciplinary expertise and brings together experts from fields such as biology, statistics and machine learning. "In the end, we are developing a system that will be a collaboration between human experts and algorithms," he says. Orcas or killer whales that are seen along the West Coast are divided into four distinct populations: the salmon-eating southern and northern residents, the transients, which prey on seals or other whales, and offshore, which mostly prey on sharks.