Innovation grants available to help better protect whales

A collaborative project involving NOPSEMA and the Australian Antarctic Division to improve the detection and identification of whales during marine seismic surveys has been shortlisted for development through the Australian Government's Business Research and Innovation Initiative (BRII).

Through the BRII process, businesses are invited to respond to challenges identified by Government agencies and independent bodies such as NOPSEMA, with ideas for innovative solutions.

BRII has approximately $2.4 million for each approved challenge, including NOPSEMA's, to support businesses to build feasibility studies and produce working prototypes or demonstrations.

NOPSEMA's challenge highlights the opportunity to build automated and integrated whale detection systems for fixing to vessels during seismic surveys.

This technology would help to provide further real-time information to industry to better manage their surveys and data for regulators and researchers to improve our understanding of the spatial distribution and behaviour of whales.

A video explaining NOPSEMA's BRII challenge has been published on the NOPSEMA website.