The (Fiber) Optics of Orca Tracking

Biologists have spent years developing ways to monitor the safety and health of orcas and other marine mammals. Our oceans are vast, though. That makes getting data tricky. Researchers at the University of Washington (UW) believe they’ve found a solution on the internet ... or, at least, in its cables.

Fiber optic cables are very thin. They are thinner than a human hair. They transmit data through little bursts of light. Humans have laid more than 870,000 miles of fiber optic internet cables along our ocean floors. That's enough to circle the Earth more than 100 times. Their special design allows them to pick up subtle signals in the water overhead. Those signals can include the clicks, squeaks, and whistles of orcas.

Shima Abadi is an oceanography professor at UW. He told The Associated Press that a fiber optic cable can act like "thousands" of underwater microphones. Using the cables, “We can know where the animals are and learn about their migration patterns," he said.

Abadi’s team has rigged one mile of fiber optic cable in the Salish Sea to track the region’s endangered orcas. The tech is known as Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS). It was originally made to offer data on damaged deep-sea oil pipelines. It can also pick up on the clicks that orcas use to hunt for food. It can even help identify individual animals.

Orca-monitoring DAS is still in the experimental phase. But scientists hope it will help us understand orcas and the threats they face.

“One of the most important challenges for managing wildlife … is that there’s just a lack of data overall,” Yuta Masuda told the AP. He worked with Abadi on the project. “We think this has a lot of promise to fill in those key data gaps.”

Reflect: How do you think technology could help people better protect animals or the environment around us?

Gif of orcas from GIPHY.