Whales are essential to regulating Earth’s carbon cycle, yet monitoring their populations across vast ocean areas has remained slow and expensive. Whale Seeker is a Canadian company, founded in 2018, combining a team of biologists, ecologists, data scientists, software developers and AI specialists. Their mission is to deliver better, simpler and faster data through AI-enabled marine mammal detection tools, ensuring accurate and long-term monitoring across oceans for a number of marine industries and conservation efforts. Partnering with the International Whaling Commission (IWC), World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), and as a B Corporation, Cetus empowers governments, NGOs, and maritime industries to make informed decisions to protect whale populations.
It is their second outstanding recognition within the Top 100 – AI & SDG index. In 2022, their solution Möbius was recognized as outstanding for detecting marine mammals through aerial imagery, while this year, Cetus is recognized for whale detection through satellite imagery. Cetus, harnesses AI and high-resolution satellite imagery, and accurately detects and classifies whales for global monitoring. In this article, we take a closer look at how Cetus is transforming whale conservation.
Why traditional whale monitoring falls short
Having worked as field biologists, Whale Seeker’s founders spent thousands of hours manually analysing over 6,000 aerial images to find marine mammals. The ocean, however, is vast and almost entirely unobserved. Traditional monitoring methods, such as research vessels, aerial surveys, acoustic sensors, are expensive, slow, and limited in coverage, leaving most of the ocean with no observational data at all. The consequences extend well beyond conservation: ships risk costly whale strike penalties, oil and gas companies face regulatory delays during seismic surveys, and governments lack the population data needed to set effective marine protection policies. The problem is not just ecological, but also operational and economic.
Cetus detects whales from satellite images at scale
Cetus uses deep learning and very high-resolution satellite imagery to detect and classify whales across large ocean areas. It does that automatically, accurately, and at a scale traditional manual surveys cannot match. The process is straightforward: the clients submit satellite images, which Cetus processes using proprietary AI models. The company returns clear annotated detections, maps, and reports that scientists, policymakers, and maritime operators can immediately act on to make appropriate decisions.
The company believes that the technology should be combined with expertise, so the detections that this AI tool makes are validated by their in-house biologists. This is how they ensure the results are reliable enough for scientific publication and practical enough for regulatory and commercial use. By meticulously curating and validating datasets, they also ensure to manage biases to represent diverse environments and species, fostering inclusivity across global marine ecosystems.
The platform serves a wide range of clients, from conservation organizations and governments tracking whale populations, to maritime operators managing ship strike risk, energy companies navigating offshore compliance, and environmental consultants conducting impact assessments. It provides each of them faster, more affordable visibility into whale presence across ocean areas that were previously impossible to monitor.
Cetus transforms ocean monitoring
Across Whale Seeker’s suite of tools, the team has collectively detected more than 165,000 marine mammals to date and is backed by a founding team of experts with over 40 years of combined field biology experience. But, for a team that began their careers as biologists, the metric that mattered most to them was the first time when they demonstrated that whales can be reliably detected in commercially available satellite imagery across large ocean areas. That breakthrough opened up monitoring coverage in regions that previously had little or no observational coverage. For conservation efforts, that kind of visibility is transformative.
With Cetus, scientists can now begin to observe whale presence at a global scale, uncovering migratory patterns, seasonal changes, and the impacts of climate change in ways that were simply not possible before. This work is supported by their network of partners, satellite data providers and academic researchers, who use Cetus data for making conservation and ocean management decisions that shape the policies and practices to protect whale populations worldwide.
“Cetus solves a fundamental problem: you can’t protect what you can’t see. By detecting whales at scale from satellite imagery, we’re building the data foundation that makes it possible for industries, and shipping in particular, to make decisions that are truly informed by where whales actually are. That’s the future we’re working toward.” Emily Charry Tissier, Co-founder and CEO of Whale Seeker.
Charting a course for ocean sustainability
Cetus contributes most directly to SDG 14 (Life Below Water), as it provides the whale population data that informs conservation policies, supports maritime regulation compliance, and helps reduce ship strikes that threaten whale populations globally. Progress is tracked through concrete indicators: whale population counts, recorded reductions in ship strikes, and conservation policy adoption rates. By tracking whale migration patterns, the company contributes to sustainable ocean management and advances SDG 13 (Climate Action).
The company has put in place a commercial model that deliberately aligns economic incentives with environmental outcomes, helping maritime operators, energy companies, and fishing industries meet their regulatory obligations cost-effectively, so that sustainability doesn’t become a constraint on business, but a condition for it.
Closing the ocean data gap
The ocean remains one of the least observed environments on Earth, yet it supports biodiversity and climate stability for the entire planet, while underpinning global economies through fisheries, shipping, and tourism. Cetus is closing that observation gap, giving scientists, governments, and industries the data they need to make decisions that protect whale populations at a global scale. Whale Seeker envisions a future where better data helps humanity make decisions that allow ocean life and economic activity to coexist.
For more information about Whale Seeker and their solution Cetus, visit their website or connect with the team on LinkedIn.
KEY FACTS
Project: Cetus
Description: An AI-enabled solution using satellite imagery to detect and classify whales, supporting global monitoring and conservation efforts.
Organization: Whale Seeker
Country: Canada
Industry: Environmental Conservation, Marine industries
Technology: Deep learning, Satellite imagery, Computer vision
SDGs: 13, 14
Reach: Over 165,000 marine mammals detected across Whale Seeker’s suite of tools.
Stage: Deployed, commercially active
IRCAI recognised this project as Outstanding in the Top 100 2025, evaluated for AI integrity, SDG impact, business sustainability, and ethical design.
