Where are the orcas at? Answering that question with pinpoint accuracy is crucial to protecting the famed “southern resident” orcas off North America’s northern Pacific coast. An AI-driven initiative is now helping parse through large amounts of ocean sounds to identify and detect the orcas in real time.
OrcaHello is working with scientists and government agencies to detect the presence of this specific group of orcas and minimize the impact that coastal activities may have on them. Southern resident orcas (Orcinus orca ater) are considered an endangered subspecies made up of three distinct pods. According to the Center for Whale Research, a U.S.-based nonprofit that studies this group exclusively, there are only 76 remaining individuals of these orcas as of December 2025.
A decline in the populations of Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), their primary source of food, along with noise pollution and vessel traffic are major threats to their survival. “Inbreeding is also starting to be a problem, which is what you’d expect for a small population,” David Bain, chief scientist at Orca Conservancy, another nonprofit focused on the southern resident orcas, told Mongabay in a video interview. “That means the decline is going to resume unless we make conditions better.” OrcaHello was developed to look specifically into the issue of noise pollution and vehicle traffic.
“It’s a real-time AI alert system that’s listening 24/7 for orca calls,” Akash Mahajan, who co-developed the tool, told Mongabay in a video interview. The tool builds on Orcasound, an open-source network of underwater…This article was originally published on Mongabay