Very High Resolution Digital Imaging of Whales

In the summer of 2002, the camera was mounted in a Twin Otter aircraft being used for visual aerial surveys of bowhead, narwhal and beluga in the Central Canadian Arctic.  The aircraft was flown at an altitude of 350 m (1100') altitude and a speed of 150 knots.

The image above was originally 4096 pixels and 450 m wide, and was a small fragment of a continuous image more than 200,000 lines or 30 km long.  The fragment has been decimated to 640 pixels for display here.  The small area in the yellow box is shown at full resolution below.

The image above shows a narwhal resting at the surface. The tusk becomes evident when the image is strongly enhanced (at right).

Semi-automatic counting software has been developed to speed up counting of animals in massive image files,  Software also provides basic statistics on ice amount and distribution.

   
Last update 12 marzo 2007
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