Imagine that you need to attach a small sensor to the back of a ten-story building, which also does not stand still, but dives to a depth of two kilometers and does not want to cooperate with you at all. This is exactly what biologists' task of tagging sperm whales looked like a few years ago. The methods were crude: approach by boat and try to set a mark with a pole. The process is stressful for an animal, dangerous for scientists, and not always accurate.

But technology is changing the rules of the game. The CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) project has figured out how to make this process surprisingly delicate, efficient, and even elegant. An unmanned climbing drone enters the scene.

Operation Polite Mosquito: A plan of attack

It all starts with intelligence. Scientists on a research vessel find a group of sperm whales by their characteristic fountains. A reconnaissance drone rises into the air, which hovers high above the group, accurately determining the location and size of each giant.

Then comes the finest hour of the second drone, a special "tap". This device is equipped not with a cannon or a harpoon, but with a delicate manipulator. He quietly descends from the sky, like a real heavenly courier, and at low speed carefully attaches the tag to the whale's back using special biodegradable suction cups.

What is the genius of the method?

Jeweler's precision: The drone allows you to place the tag exactly in the right place on the whale's body, which is critical for collecting high-quality data.

Maximum ethics: The whale may not even understand what happened. There are no loud boat engines, no physical contact with a person, no stress. This is the most humane way to study giants.

Safety for the team: Scientists no longer need to risk sailing a boat to a giant tail that can send them on an unplanned voyage in the blink of an eye.

Why mark them at all?

The collected data is not just points on a map. A small label conveys a huge amount of information:

Diving depth and routes: Sperm whales are record holders in diving. The tags show how they hunt giant squid in the pitch black depths.

Sounds of communication: This is the key goal of the CETI project. Tags record clicking sounds (clicks), which sperm whales use for echolocation and, possibly, for communication. Scientists are trying to decipher this complex language using artificial intelligence.

Social structure: By observing who swims with whom and how they interact, scientists will learn more about the complex social life of these amazing animals.

The big goal: To decipher the language of sperm whales

The CETI project is not just an environmental initiative. This is a large-scale interdisciplinary project at the intersection of robotics, biology and data science. His ambitious ultimate goal is to understand what the sperm whales are "talking about." Using machine learning to analyze millions of recorded clicks, the researchers hope to identify patterns and structures that may be analogous to words or sentences in the language of sperm whales.

Perhaps someday in the near future we will be able not only to admire these giants, but also, thanks to a courier drone and smart algorithms, to understand what they have been whispering about for thousands of years in the depths of the ocean.