Quiet Sound, a program of the non-profit Washington Maritime Blue, has installed an AI-powered thermal camera at Point Wilson in Port Townsend that monitors the shipping lanes at the entrance to Puget Sound at Admiralty Inlet. The camera’s AI has been trained with tens of thousands of ‘thermal signatures’ of whales. If it sees one that looks familiar, it alerts a human researcher, who verifies the report before relaying it to others. So far, the system has detected several dozen whales, including minke whales, humpback whales, and the critically endangered southern resident orcas.
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