Incredible title.

Related:

NOAA: Track Whale Detections With This Interactive Map - https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/track-whale-det...

NOAA: Passive Acoustic Cetacean Map - https://apps-nefsc.fisheries.noaa.gov/pacm/#/

WhaleMap - https://whalemap.org/WhaleMap/

I'm kinda surprised the article doesn't mention (and I have no idea the feasibility of) a system that works in the opposite direction as well: somehow communicating via sound waves the speed, heading, and distance (maybe possible through some kind of doppler effect?) of a boat in such a way that whales will perceive and make themselves safe from collision.

Seems at least worth researching.

> Zitterbart’s aim is for ship captains to receive zero false alerts, so that every ping truly requires their attention. Removing human oversight risks flooding ship captains with false reports

This sounds great, as long as we're still on track for the whole "A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision."

I don't want to be the one to explain to the whales, "No, look, it's not our fault that we killed your singing partner - the AI told us this was the correct route. See?"

2018: crypto system alerts ships of whales.

2012: cloud system alerts ships of whales.

2006: social media alerts ships of whales.

1998: internet alerts ships of whales.

1978: computer alerts ships of whales.

1938: sonar alerts ships of whales.

I think this such an awesome innovation but does anyone understand what incentivizes a ship’s captain to take the warnings seriously? Is this just reliant on people being good people? I haven’t worked with sailors but I did a lot of blue collar work when I was younger and there’s a pessimistic side to me that struggles to see many of those guys caring. I do hope I’m wrong.

Hey this is cool!

I met people here in Australia doing similar work to spot whales during offshore gas exploration. It was basically a revolving IR camera looking for whale spouts

My first thought about reading this was how the Chinese whaling fleets would use this to their advantage. Not something I would be cool with and with any "good" technology, you have nefarious parties always looking to exploit it for their own ends.

Short summary is that this isn't going to work. I was involved with a company doing some development on whale detection AI. The vast majority of the time you just don't see enough of the animal to make reliable detections. And that is in a best case scenario, add in movement of the boat/camera, waves, sunlight reflections, and having to ignore a vast majority of potential things on/in the water that can look kind of like whales, but are not whales. Dolphins in particular.

This isn't a problem for AI/machine vision, IMO.