OrcaCNN: Detecting and Classifying Killer Whales from Acoustic Data

Passive acoustic observation of whales is an increasingly important tool for whale research. Accurately detecting whale sounds and correctly classifying them into corresponding whale pods are essential tasks, especially in the case when two or more species of whales vocalize in the same observed area. Most of the current tasks of whale sound detection and classification still need to be implemented manually.

We aim to develop two deep learning models for the detection and pod-classification of orca, or killer whale, calls in unknown long audio samples. These deep neural networks will help identify and verify killer whale calls so that researchers, grad students, and shipping vessels don't have to. The end-user interface can be made as a web-app which can easily be used by scientists in their research.