The last months of 2016 have brought reason for mingled optimism and worry about the state of Canada’s cetacean species. On one hand, North Atlantic right whales appear to have rebounded in the Bay of Fundy; on the other, there are signs of renewed trouble among the west coast’s beleaguered southern resident orca population, including the recent death of a female of breeding age.

The difficulty with protecting endangered whales, or even determining the status of a population, is that researchers first have to be able to find them — no easy feat given the vastness of the open ocean. But with the proliferation of high-quality photo and video cameras, citizen scientists are more easily able to share verifiable sightings with researchers, thereby adding valuable data to both long and short-term studies.

“These animals are highly migratory, so the only way we can manage their conservation is to manage their habitats,” explains Kimberley Davies, a post-doctoral research fellow at Dalhousie University in Halifax. Both Dalhousie and the Whale Lab at the University of Victoria recently started using battery-powered acoustic monitoring devices to patrol both coasts for whale activity; when whales are detected, their location can be broadcast to ships in the area (find out more about this project in the December 2016 issue of Canadian Geographic).

Here are three other innovative whale research projects taking place in Canada. 

Churchill, Man. Beluga Boat Cam