Humpback Whale Abundance and Migratory Patterns in the North Pacific Ocean Assessed by means of Automated Photo-identification

Following the end of commercial whaling in 1976, North Pacific humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) populations showed prolonged recovery over 40 years. To better understand whale populations, this study began with development of a fully automated machine learning AI-based image recognition algorithm for matching individual identification photographs of whale flukes, reducing matching time by 98% and error rates from 6-9% to 1-3%.