About

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

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+)