Field Research

Our field programme is deliberately non-invasive. We identify individuals from photographs of the dorsal fin and saddle patch, record vocalisations on moored and towed hydrophones, and collect floating scat for hormone and diet analysis. Nothing we do requires touching an animal.

The field season is short and weather-dependent. Most of the year is spent processing: matching photographs against the catalogue, annotating thousands of hours of audio, and running lab work on samples collected over a handful of good days.

Everything we collect goes into shared regional datasets. A population this small cannot be studied by one organisation, and data hoarding costs whales.