new study<\/a>, lead author UNSW PhD candidate Ben Jancovich showed how a neural network \u2013 a deep learning model that can recognise patterns in data through interconnected layers of artificial neurons \u2013 could detect blue whale songs with remarkable accuracy.<\/p>\nThe researchers\u2019 findings have implications for the field of ecology, paving a new way to analyse rare species across decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cMachine learning models traditionally need to be trained on thousands of recordings of the very whale song that they\u2019re trying to find,\u201d Jancovich says.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, this new model was trained on only one recording of a blue whale call.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because studies in ecology often require monitoring change across many years, he says, the tool could help scientists unlock decades of recordings.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we\u2019re studying marine mammals, that data is often acoustic recordings \u2013 and when you\u2019ve got really long recordings, finding all the individual animal calls is incredibly labour-intensive, slow and expensive,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Manually analysing datasets that span decades, he says, \u201cis just not possible for humans. And even with automation, it still might not be possible if we lack training data for the target species.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jancovich says these limitations have prevented a \u201cfull exploitation of these long-term datasets\u201d.<\/p>\n
He says to mine the wealth of information they contain, high-performance, cheap, accessible tools like the one he developed need to be made available and open-source.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A UNSW-led study demonstrates how a new tool can detect blue whale calls with almost 100% accuracy, despite…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,63,69596,2555,1325,129868,337,128,88733,69597,148822,101615,2261,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-626820","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-division-of-equity-diversity-inclusion","11":"tag-education","12":"tag-general","13":"tag-networks-and-partnerships","14":"tag-research","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-science-tech","17":"tag-sdg","18":"tag-sdg14","19":"tag-sdg15","20":"tag-sustainability","21":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}