Beam Reach catalyzes marine conservation wherever endangered salmon-eating orcas roam — from northern California to southeast Alaska. Based in Seattle, we are bioacoustic experts who create innovative technological solutions with our non-profit, government, and industry partners to help save the whales — especially the Southern Resident Killer Whales (SRKWs). We love being scientists and teachers — and sailing fast on a beam reach!
Recent projects & partners
Education & outreach
- 2024: Automate sharing of real time acoustic detections (v3 Orcasound web app & v2 OrcaHello AI) via Orcasound notifications & ; develop open SRKW whistle catalog (led by intern Lucy Day); mentor Swinburne University 6-student team in design & development of v2 of Acartia.io (co-led by Ali Alaydrus)
- 2023: Collaboration with HALLO and DFO partners to publish a new open catalog for SRKW calls; Integration of Acartia data cooperative with new end users, including an open salmon-orca dashboard, the Whale Report Alert System (WRAS), the Whale Alert mobile app, and the ERMA Northwest oil spill response web app.
- 2022: Humpback non-song vocalization catalogue (led by Emily Vierling); Acartia.io data cooperative for real time sharing of animal location data (launched via a Community science session at the 2022 Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference, chaired by Val)
- 2021: New version of the open source Orcasound web app (thanks to members of Orcasound’s Hacker Hall of Fame)
- 2020: Orcasound acoustic content for the Orca Survey Education & Outreach Center (with the Center for Whale Research)
- 2019: New Orcasound acoustic and video content for the Lime Kiln State Park Interpretive Center (with FOLKS)
- 2017-18: Pat Price Ocean Listening Exhibit at the Langley Whale Center (with Orca Network)
- 2011: Listening for Orcas exhibit (with the Port Townsend Marine Science Center, NOAA, & Killer Whale Tales)
- 2009: Hydrophone listening Station (with the Seattle Aquarium)
Research & consulting
- 2024: Begin 2-year test of Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) for sensing orca signals (led by UW College of the Environment); publish SeaStats open bioacoustic dashboard (frontend | API); mentor 2nd UW MSDS student team in developing open source Python code to compute noise metrics from Orcasound acoustic data (led by Valentina Staneva, UW eScience).
- 2023: Ze Cui finalizes v1 Yolo model for vessel detection in side-view imagery from the M2 system, along with open training data set.
- 2022: label open Orcasound audio data and test open software (with Canadian HALLO project); design and develop SeaStats — an open source bioacoustic dashboard (with the British Columbia Hydrophone Network and SoundSpace Analytics); experiment with AI to identify non-AIS vessels from side-on imagery (collaboration with Protected Seas and Ze Cui)
- 2021: facilitate open source ai4orcas projects with U.S. and Canadian colleagues; open source underwater noise modeling and photogrammetry software (developed and tested in partnership with Oceans Initiative); experiment with image-based AI to identify harbor seals based on their spotted markings.
- 2019-20: Field-testing of the Marine Monitor (M2) radar+camera system for monitoring vessel traffic at the Orcasound Lab hydrophone (collaboration with Protected Seas)
- 2017-20: Field-testing of the NEMES automated camera system for assessing vessel traffic at the Orcasound Lab hydrophone (collaboration with University of Victoria, NEMES = Noise Exposure to the Marine Environment from Ships)
- 2018-20: Assessing the Impacts of Noise Exposure on Southern Resident Killer Whale Foraging Efficiency (with Oceans Initiative)
- 2018: A key to quieter seas: half of ship noise comes from 15% of the fleet (PeerJ pre-print)
- 2016: Ship noise extends to frequencies used for echolocation by endangered killer whales (PeerJ peer-reviewed article)
- See also: Beam Reach wiki (staff & student research projects, 2005-12+)