Researchers aim to use artificial intelligence to save endangered whales in B.C.

Researchers are aiming to "teach'' a computer torecognize the sounds of resident killer whales in order to develop a warning system for preventing ships from fatally striking endangeredorcas off British Columbia's coast.

Steven Bergner, a computing science research associate at SimonFraser University's Big Data Hub, said he is collecting and managinga database of sounds picked up 24 hours a day by a network ofhydrophones in the Salish Sea.

Marine biologists will identify the sounds of different speciesof whales, including humpbacks and transients, anddifferentiate theacoustics from other noise such as waves and boats, he said. Machinelearning or artificial intelligence would help detect the presenceof orcas through patterns in the data.

"That (information) goes through another system that thendecides whether there should be a warning that ultimately reachesthe vessel pilots,'' Bergner said.

The goal is to detect whale calls automatically and sendreal-time alerts to ships to slow down or change course hours beforeorcas may be in their path and before boaters might observe themheading for trouble, he said.

Orcas along the West Coast are categorized into three familiesknown as the J, K and L pods, each of which has its own dialect andcalls that differ from the others.

Bergner is collaborating with colleagues from DalhousieUniversity in Halifax and at Carleton University in Ottawa todevelop the machine-learning tools. Citizen scientists and theOrcasound project are also contributing research.

The project has received $568,000 in funding from Fisheries andOceans Canada.

The program builds on work already underway by Ruth Joy, astatistical ecologist at Simon Fraser University's School ofEnvironmental Science who is leading two orca projects expected tobe completed by March 2022.

Joy said the hydrophone nodes located adjacent to shipping lanesin the Salish Sea would collect information to help predict thedirection orcas are most likely to travel based on their typicalpatterns.

"This will give sort of a projection for up to three or fourhours,'' she said of the advance warning to ship pilots to stayclear of the orcas.

"Even losing a single whale is really unconscionable. At thispoint, we've only got 74 of them left.'' she said. "Certainly wedon't want the shipping lanes to become a place where killer whalesare at risk.''

It's hard to know how many orcas have been struck by vessels, Joysaid, recounting the death of one of the cetaceans that washed up onthe shores of the Sunshine Coast in 2017.

"The necropsy suggested it had died from blunt force trauma,''she said. "We don't know what hit it, whether it was a high-speedrecreational boat or a ferry or a commercial vessel or somethingelse.

'Kind of disappear'

"You don't necessarily find them when they're hit, they justkind of disappear. With only a small fraction of them do you everget the carcass to confirm what actually caused the death.''

The project's findings will be shared with the research communityto potentially save different populations of whales elsewhere, Joysaid of the artificial intelligence tools being developed.

Her research led the Port of Vancouver's Enhancing CetaceanHabitat and Observation program to start an initiative in 2016 toreduce underwater noise in key feeding areas for southern residentkiller whales.

Between June and October, tugboat operators have been asked toslow down once southern resident killer whales are confirmed to bepresent as part of a collaborative effort with the commercialshipping industry.

Joy said that while orcas typically head south for the winter,members of the J and K pods were spotted in the Salish Sea in B.C.earlier this month before they travelled to the Puget Sound area ofSeattle.