Escépticos en el Pub Tenerife no. 131: «From thermal cameras to hydrophones: how to spy on whales without getting (too) wet»verified
In session no. 131 of Escépticos en el Pub in Tenerife, Olivia Marín Delgado, a PhD candidate in the ULL cetacean research group, talks about how sperm whales and other marine mammals use sound to find their way and hunt, how noise and ship traffic affect them, and how thermal cameras combined with artificial intelligence open the door to spotting them from ships. At Pub Sócrates; free with prior registration.
In the depths of the ocean, where hardly any light reaches, marine mammals such as the sperm whale use sound as a kind of natural «radar» to find their way and locate food. That adaptation also makes them particularly sensitive to human activity: underwater noise and heavy ship traffic can interfere with their ability to hunt and put their survival at risk, which is especially relevant in the Canaries, where many of these species share the sea with busy shipping routes. New tools such as thermal cameras combined with artificial intelligence are opening the door to detecting cetaceans from ships in real time, which could help prevent collisions.
The speaker, Olivia Marín Delgado, is a PhD candidate in the ULL cetacean research group, and her research focuses on thermal and acoustic detection to study the behaviour of deep-diving cetaceans such as sperm whales and pilot whales. Academic direction: Luis Javier Capote Pérez. Attendance is free with prior registration, and the ULL issues a certificate of attendance to those who sign up. The talk is on Friday 6 November 2026 from 20:00 to 22:00 at Pub Sócrates in San Cristóbal de La Laguna.