Christin Brangwynne Khan

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | NOAA · Protected Species Branch

Monitoring marine mammals is of broad interest to governments and individuals around the globe. Very high-resolution (VHR) satellites hold the promise of reaching remote and challenging locations to fill gaps in our knowledge of marine mammal distribution. The time has come to create an operational platform that leverages the increased resolution o...

The use of very high-resolution (VHR) optical satellites is gaining momentum in the field of wildlife monitoring, particularly for whales, as this technology is showing potential for monitoring the less studied regions. However, surveying large areas using VHR optical satellite imagery requires the development of automated systems to detect targets...

Photo identification is an important tool in the conservation management of endangered species, and recent developments in artificial intelligence are revolutionizing existing workflows to identify individual animals. In 2015, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration hosted a Kaggle data science competition to automate the identification...

Determining which species are at greatest risk, where they are most vulnerable, and what are the trajectories of their communities and populations is critical for conservation and management. Globally distributed, wide-ranging whales and dolphins present a particular challenge in data collection because no single research team can record data over...

Offshore wind energy development is growing quickly around the world. In southern New England, USA, one of the largest commercial offshore wind energy farms in the USA will be established in the waters off Massachusetts and Rhode Island, an area used by the Critically Endangered North Atlantic right whale Eubalaena glacialis. Prior to 2011, little...

Photo identification is an important tool used in the field of conservation biology to estimate population abundance and monitor trends over time. However, manually matching photographs to known individuals is time‐consuming. Motivated by recent developments in image recognition, we hosted a data science challenge on the crowdsourcing platform Kagg...

Cetaceans are protected worldwide but vulnerable to incidental harm from an expanding array of human activities at sea. Managing potential hazards to these highly-mobile populations increasingly requires a detailed understanding of their seasonal distributions and habitats. Pursuant to the urgent need for this knowledge for the U.S. Atlantic and Gu...

Baleen whales lack the strong and stable long-term bonds characteristic of odontocetes such as killer whales and sperm whales, and therefore, the social structure of baleen whales has received comparatively little attention. However, recent findings of long-term associations in both right whales and humpback whales have challenged the notion that b...

North Atlantic right whales still number in the hundreds, not thousands. Vessel strike is one of the leading causes of preventable mortality. Vessel strike accounts for 18% of right whale mortalities in which the cause of death was determined, and 15% of the population carries visible scars from a vessel strike. NOAA is mandated to protect endanger...

Conducted 63 surveys from November 2013 – July 2014 (no surveys in Aug-Oct 2013 or Feb-Mar 2014) Surveyed 14,090 nautical miles of trackline Observed right whales on 23 surveys (28 including off watch sightings) Sighted 269 right whales (including repeats of individuals) Documented maximum aggregation size of 33

North Atlantic Right Whale Sighting Survey (NARWSS) The North Atlantic Right Whale Sighting Survey (NARWSS) is a NOAA Fisheries program which locates and records the seasonal distribution of North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) off the northeastern coast of the United States. NARWSS flights conducted in 2011 followed systematic track...

The goal of this research was to determine when harbor seal pup vocalizations become sufficiently distinctive to allow individual recognition. A total of 4593 calls were analyzed from 15 captive pups. Nineteen were harsh, broadband, staccato calls used in an aggressive context. The rest were tonal "mother attraction calls," having an inverted "v"-...

The goal of this research was to determine when harbor seal pup (Phoca vitulina) vocalizations become sufficiently distinctive to allow individual recognition. A total of 4593 calls were analyzed from 15 captive pups. Nineteen were harsh, broadband, staccato calls used in an aggressive context. The rest were tonal “Mother Attraction Calls”, having...