Scientists are using facial recognition software to track and protect seals

Scientists are taking a controversial technology associated with surveillance, and adapting it for conservation.

It's called SealNet, and it's a facial recognition database that's used to track the movement of seals. 

"It's sort of transforming this technology from the Big Brother concerns that we have in human facial recognition technology, to using it for good," biologist Krista Ingram told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. "There's no downside."

Ingram, a biologist at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y.,  is the team leader of SealNet. The software was developed in part by Ahmet Ay, a Colgate associate professor of biology and mathematics. It's based on PrimNet, facial recognition software used to identify primates.

In a recent test Ingram, Ay and their colleagues found SealNet could accurately identify individual harbor seals between 90 and 97 per cent of the time. The findings were published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

If you think all seals look alike, you may want to check your human biases. 

Ingram says each seal is unique — and she should know. She and her colleagues have spent hours in Maine's Casco Bay snapping pictures of harbor seals for the database.

Ingram says she's taken more than 8,000 photographs of the critters so far. They've uploaded 1,250 of them to SealNet.

"I'm getting really good at it," she said.

She and her team photograph the animals while they're resting on rocks that jut out of the water at low tide. They snap the shots from a boat using long-range cameras, so as to abide by federal regulations to keep 50 metres away from marine mammals.

It's not without its challenges.

"The difficulty is that you can't manipulate them. So you have to wait until they're actually looking at you if you want a full-on front picture," Ingram said. "So one of the things we're working on is using some new drone technology to allow us to more easily manoeuvre around … to get every face of every seal on that rock."

Tracking the movement of seals is key to conservation planning, Ingram said.

Traditionally, scientists follow the movement of seals and other marine mammals using satellite trackers. But facial recognition technology could provide faster, cheaper, more accurate data with a non-invasive technique.