Whale ID Program

The Aquarium of the Pacific has been documenting endangered and non-endangered whales and dolphins through its Whale Photo I.D. program since 2010. Aquarium staff photograph and record sightings of each whale during the Aquarium’s daily public whale watch outings aboard Harbor Breeze Cruises. After this, they log the species, upload the photos, add GPS coordinates, record, animal behavior, and note the weather conditions on the water. The photos themselves are tagged with specific keywords—such as lunge feeding, rostrum, and blowholes—to make it easy to use the photos later for identification purposes. This data is used by scientists to better understand these whales and even resulted in the discovery of a resident population of fin whales.