Conserving orcas with acoustic AI
There are only 75 Southern Resident Killer Whales (SKRWs) living in Puget Sound as of December 2025. They share their waters with boats and ships near the port cities of the Pacific Northwest. These vessels contribute to underwater noise that hinders the whales’ ability to echolocate and find fish to eat; especially the salmon they prefer.
Our goal is to create a sustainable co-existence for SRKWs and human activities across their range, from California to Alaska.
About AI for orcas
We are expanding a network of underwater microphones, known as hydrophones, that we hope will soon span the whales’ territory along the west coast of North America. With the bioacoustic data collected from the hydrophone network, we develop machine learning models to detect signals made by killer whales (calls, clicks, and whistles) in real-time. Artificial intelligence increases our capacity to detect whale signals by allowing a handful of experts to focus their attention on locations where whales are likely to be present. View our projects >
OrcaHello
When orcas call, we’re listening. OrcaHello is an AI-powered system that listens to live audio streams from hydrophones across 7 locations 24/7, alerting conservation groups and port operators when orca calls are detected. By filtering hours of ocean audio down to what matters, OrcaHello makes round-the-clock near-real-time monitoring of SRKWs practical for the first time in the Puget Sound. Operating for over 5 years, OrcaHello has picked up confirmed orca calls over 130 days, with verified alerts issued to stakeholders such as the Port of Seattle to slow vessel traffic and pause pile-driving during whale presence. It also recently picked up the first recorded calls of a newborn J-pod calf (Maple Ridge News) before visual sightings in the day. Built over the Orcasound hydrophone network, the project began during the 2020 pandemic as a hackathon collaboration between volunteer engineers and marine biologists, growing into a global open source effort.
Learn more >
Orcasound
Orcasound was created over 20 years ago with the goal of helping expand the hydrophone network in Washington and organize the open development of new bioacoustic solutions. It is a cooperative network of underwater “hydrophones” and an open-source software/hardware project – that enables citizen scientists to listen and report live. It also provides the infrastructure that powers OrcaHello and other conservation applications. As of 2025, 19 NGOs cooperate through Orcasound, streaming live audio from 7 hydrophone locations in orca habitat, and 100s of contributors building open, free software and hardware for bioacoustics.
Learn more > or Listen here >