Smith JN, Double M, Grundlehner A and Townsend A (2026). Aerial survey of the Australian southern right whale (Eubalaena australis) ‘western’ population and development of AI for photo-identification. Report to the National Environmental Science Program. Murdoch University.
Overview
The technical report presents the 2025 aerial survey results within the long-term trend data for the ‘western’ population of southern right whales in Australian waters, a species listed Endangered under the EPBC Act. These results are of interest to a diverse audience, although specifically directly inform state and Commonwealth government management and the National Recovery Plan of the Southern Right Whale. There continues to be highly fluctuating annual variation in abundance for both female-calf pairs and animals without a calf, with stalled growth in female-calf pairs since 2016 and a substantial decline (~74%) of unaccompanied animals since 2011. The results from this survey further support the western population of southern right whales is no longer recovering at previous growth rates (since 1976), with a stalled growth rate and current abundance well below (~20%) pre-whaling abundance. Continued development and implementation of artificial intelligence tools occurred in 2025 to automate image workflows to process the photo-ID data and improve image processing/matching capabilities and provide contemporary data to inform demographic parameters and population dynamics. Continued annual population aerial surveys to inform long-term population trend data from the western population will be the best approach to assess any potential slowing of the population growth rate, and still represent the best frequency for detecting change over longer periods of time.
