| Abstract | EUROPHLUKES is essentially a large database of photos of cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises). Cetaceans are extremely difficult to study in their natural environment. Photo-identification is a technique to recognise individual animals from photographs. It is very effective for providing much of the information needed for managing cetacean populations as a part of a sustainable marine ecosystem.
Within the project a large database of photo-material has been produced. Together with feature based retrieval, this will be a valuable element in the research infrastructure for marine biology and will contribute to the understanding of the populations and movements of cetaceans.
EUROPHLUKES makes it possible to answer the question if any individual cetacean has ever before been photographed in European waters, and if so, where and when and by whom.
Among the products developed within the project are the following:
- A best practice for collection of data with the images
- A Visual Basic data-input tool for local use
- Mathematical software for extracting images and comparing to other images
- Internet database and infrastructure for supply of data in the future
- Alphanumerical and geografical search interface to search the database via the internet.
These products in total provide necessary and usefull tools for researchers using photo-id.
Partners include:
- Centre of Environmental Science (CML) Leiden University, Netherlands
- Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica (CWI), Netherlands
- Marine Information Service MARIS B.V., Netherlands
- Sea Watch Foundation, United Kingdom
- Asociación Cultural Proyecto Alnitak (ALNITAK), Spain
- Tethys Research Institute (Tethys), Italy
- University College Cork, National University of Ireland (UCC), Ireland
- Wild Idea, Similä Consulting, Norway
- Ecologic, United Kingdom
- Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, Greenland
- Marine Mammal Research Laboratory (Océanopolis), France
- Groupe de recherche sur les Cetaces (GREC), France
- Whale Watch Azores (WWA), United Kingdom
- Sociedad para el Estudio de los Cetáceos en el Archipiélago Canario (SECAC), Spain
- Asociación para la Conservación, Información y Estudio de los Cetáceos (CIRCé),Spain
- Sociedad Andaluza para la conservación y estudio de los cetaceos (ESPARTE), Spain
- Coordinador parao Estudio dos Mamíferos mariños (CEMMA), Spain
- Camara Municipal de Machico, Museu de Baleia, Portugal
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