I took some pictures of dolphins on the way to the Channel Islands and was surprised how many obvious propeller scars they had. Given how much they seemed to love playing all around the boat, I guess it makes sense.
Many of those scars depict bite marks of other male dolphins fighting for females or females raped. Failed killer whale attacks, deep sea shark bites and cyamid parasite "cities" can be seen also.
Are you sure those are propeller scars? They look too shallow and close together. Propeller scars I've seen have looked more like deep cuts more widely spaced out. Propellers are moving with incredible force. I imagine they cause quite a bit of tissue damage upon contact, and it seems unlikely that you'd be able to see such fine detail.
A similar research is done for humpback whales by HappyWhale: https://happywhale.com/
They're doing a great effort with already over 600K user/tourist submitted photos of whale encounters to track individual whales over the globe
This is great. I've been looking for photos to train a vision detector.
Boats doing hydrographic sounding are required to stay distant from dolphins similar. Currently they need an actual person (persons) to monitor. It would be good to make it easier and less expensive.
Speaking of dolphins, here's some pictures of dolphin I have from waaay back,(these were taken by my father). I unfortunately can't upload them to Unsplash. https://photos.app.goo.gl/5nQt8MNddd4T4PhL7
Sleepy me was expecting something like "1000 thumbnails photos in Dolphin", and I almost opened Dolphin to start testing... but, whoah! Actual things turned different way :D
The correct term is 'money invested', not burned. And the payback was huge. This is a catalogue of recognizable individuals and is classical research in aquatic mammals. Used to track migrants all around the world, to calculate how many of an endangered species are still alive, and even to discover several new species of cetaceans in hot spots like California or Australia (new species of bottlenose dolphin). One of the best tools to study cetaceans populations without harassing them, and done routinely since maybe 50 years ago or more. Marine Theriologists had tried to automatize it for decades.
The news here is that has been publicly released. This could mean that the main researcher has quit or retired (maybe to train and pay a human for that job is not needed anymore, maybe the funds dried or the researchers are aging and the team is trying to recruit new volunteers in the so called citizen science or slave's science, dunno).
We should take in mind that many of this photos depict dead dolphins now. I had seen exactly the same fin shapes since 00's if I remember correctly
https://www.flickr.com/photos/8913083@N05/5419104265/in/albu...