Application of photogrammetric methods for locating and tracking cetacean movements at sea

Abstract

Accurate measurements of the locations of surfacing cetaceans are important data for behavioural studies and sightings surveys. A system for tracking cetacean movements based on photogrammetric analysis of digital images has been developed and tested at sea. Radial distances from the ship to surfacing whales were calculated from video images by measuring the angle of dip between the whale and the horizon. Bearings were either measured from still images of reference points on the ship, from a magnetic bearing compass or from the bearing ring of stand-mounted binoculars. The system uses readily available equipment and can be operated by one person. Calibration tests were conducted to assess the accuracy of the system. Errors in distance measurement increased approximately linearly with distance. Under typical survey conditions, from a large vessel with an eye height of 18m, distances to whales could be measured with a root mean square error of 3.5%. A model was developed to enable corrections to be made for atmospheric refraction. This has implications for other studies using reticle binoculars. If refraction is not corrected then distance estimates will be negatively biased. Field trials of the system were conducted from several different types and sizes of vessel during studies of a number of different species. Results of these trials demonstrated that the system is a practical tool for fine-scale tracking of cetacean movements and could also be used on line transect surveys. The limitations of the system are the need for a clear horizon and difficulties, for some species, in obtaining suitable quality images of all surfacings. There is also a moderate overhead in increased analysis time. Advances in digital imaging technology are likely to solve many of the image quality problems in the future.