WATCH: How Stellenbosch software identifies Great White sharks by their fins
New software developed by the University of Stellenbosch may help scientists figure out how many Great White sharks exist worldwide.
When marine biologist Dr Sara Andreotti of the University of Stellenbosch first tried to calculate how many Great White sharks lived off South Africa’s coast‚ she was forced to manually wade through thousands of photos of sharks and compared their fins.
Each great white shark has a unique fin‚ much like a fingerprint.
Great White sharks are facing extinction due to the international trade in shark products for human consumption‚ so it is important to understand exactly how many there are left.
To avoid having to redo the process manually‚ Andreotti asked the university’s software developers to come up with a way to automate it.
While software has been developed for identifying other species‚ according to Stellenbosch University software developer Dr Pieter Holtzhausen‚ the fact that sharks are in water proved a challenge.
“Water is very stormy and unstable‚ so it is very hard to find the edge‚ to know where the fin starts and stops‚ and then also the fins are taken at various angles‚ so that also introduces a number of uncertainties‚” Holtzhausen explained.
After two months of development‚ Stellenbosh’s team managed to get the software to work to about 80% accuracy – allowing Andreotti to do in minutes what previously took months to do manually.
The software also will allow biologists to standardise their databases of shark sightings‚ giving a better idea of how many Great Whites there are worldwide.