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Beluga whale research boosted by webcam, citizen science

Beluga whales are monitored by a web cam on a research vessel. The images are available to the public online. (explore.org)
Beluga whales are monitored by a web cam on a research vessel. The images are available to the public online. (explore.org)

MARINE SCIENCE -- Researchers are using a boat-mounted webcam to let the world in on monitoring of some 3,000 beluga whales during their annual congregation in western Hudson Bay.

The scientists are banking on the watchful eyes of thousands of viewers to help them study the little white whales of the Churchill River estuary by clicking when they see certain behavior while watching the Beluga Live Cams.

  • Join the researchers today, Aug. 15 at 2:15 p.m. PDT for the next Beluga Boat tour at explore.org. (others are scheduled).

Webcam creators – Bozeman, Montana-based Polar Bears International and Explore.org – have included a “snapshot” feature that allows viewers to take still shots of the feed. The researchers hope the result will be a trove of photographs of individual whales that will help them catalog the population as they try to answer questions about the animals’ behavior.

According to the Associated Press:

Explore.org and Polar Bears International have used similar crowdsourcing technology to monitor polar bears’ annual migration in Hudson Bay. Researchers hope years of viewers taking snapshots will provide them with images that can help assess the bears’ health and reproductive rates.

Other scientists are increasingly using crowdsourcing to raise money for research or perform tasks that would be too costly or time-consuming to be performed by a team of researchers. One of the most well-known projects is by the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, whose software has been downloaded by millions of users and allows researchers to use the data-processing power of those computers in the institute’s search for alien life in space.



Rich Landers
Rich Landers joined The Spokesman-Review in 1977. He is the Outdoors editor for the Sports Department writing and photographing stories about hiking, hunting, fishing, boating, conservation, nature and wildlife and related topics.

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