JellyTrack

Jellies are one of the primary prey for the critically endangered Leatherback sea turtle. Adult Leatherback turtles travel from nesting beaches in Indonesia across the Pacific to the surface waters off central California. The adults will spend two to three years roaming from California to Hawaii to feed on jellies before returning to nesting beaches to mate and reproduce. For my undergraduate honors capstone, I created detection algorithm to estimate jelly populations in the surface waters off central California using aerial photography. This included her developing a simple camera system to take the aerial photographs during aerial transects, creating and refining the algorithm, and testing the results against aerial observer observations. This method improved the estimate of the surface water jelly populations. To further this research, my graduate professional paper, incorporated this new methodology to improve the estimate of the jelly populations during a two-year period.