NANNING, June 07 (Xinhua): In the heart of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, scientists have repurposed earthquake-monitoring gear into an AI-powered "marine stethoscope." By combining an island-based seismometer with advanced deep learning algorithms, this innovative system now tunes in to the elusive, low-frequency calls of an endangered whale species.
The breakthrough reveals that the whales "overstay" and breed in local coastal waters of the Beibu Gulf in the South China Sea for months longer than previously recorded.
The study, published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, details how a research team led by Xiao Zhuo, an associate professor at Guangxi Minzu University, trained an AI model to isolate the calls of Bryde's whales from a full year of seismic recordings collected off Xieyang Island, a small volcanic outcrop off the coast of Beihai city.
The AI system classified the whale calls with 99 per cent accuracy after being trained on a dataset of more than 1.7 million labeled seismic samples, according to the study.
"What genuinely astonished us was that the low-frequency sound energy emitted by Bryde's whales could travel kilometers to the island and still be received by the seismometer with such clarity," said Xiao.
The genesis of the discovery lies in a chance encounter.
While Chen Mo, a marine biologist at the Guangxi Academy of Sciences and co-author of the study, had teamed up with Guangxi's earthquake monitoring authorities (Earthquake Agency of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region) in 2021 to build a research station on nearby Weizhou Island, they had struggled to find a way to bridge seismology and marine science.
Then, Xiao approached Chen to see if seismic monitoring could be adapted for whale research. Chen shared insights from his fieldwork dating back to 2018, while Xiao mapped out the technical capabilities of seismic detection.
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