The most fragile thing, in the middle of a bay crossed every day by ferries, cargo ships, fishing boats, motorboats and huge ships, can be a warm breath that lasts a few seconds. A gray whale emerges, breathes, comes back down. Above her, the water looks almost the same as before. Around it, however, the San Francisco bay continues to function like a machine: routes, timetables, boardings, containers, commuters, tourism, maritime traffic. And for some time now, even long animals have been passing through this machine more and more often 12-15 metersmigratory mysticetes that should usually have other things to do, further out, along the Pacific coast.
This is why in California they have started to use artificial intelligence in a very concrete way: not to invent futuristic scenarios, but to better see what the human eye risks missing. The new system, developed by the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory at the University of California Santa Barbara with local partners, uses thermal cameras and detection algorithms to spot gray whales by the heat signature left by their breath when they surface. That breath, warm against the colder air and water, becomes a signal. The machine intercepts it, the experts verify it, the sailors receive the alert.
The breath that becomes a map
The project is called WhaleSpotter and starts from an almost banal detail: a whale, when it breathes, leaves a thermal signature in the air. The cameras can catch it even when the animal remains low in the water, a characteristic that makes gray whales difficult to distinguish, especially in fog or the constant movement of the bay. Once the signal is detected, the system passes it to a digital platform connected to Whale Safe, a map used to share sightings with boat guides and the Coast Guard traffic service.
The mechanism has its own almost brutal cleanliness: seeing, locating, warning. If a ship is entering an area where a whale has been spotted, it can slow down or correct course. No marine poetry, no documentary postcards. Just an enormous animal that risks finding itself in the wrong place while an even more enormous vehicle proceeds along its path.
The first node of the network was installed on Angel Island, an island in the center of the bay and a strategic point between Alcatraz, Treasure Island and the Bay Bridge. The second system is planned on a ferry on the Vallejo-San Francisco line, a very popular daily route. The idea is to also transform moving vehicles into sentries, because in such a busy bay a fixed point helps, a network helps more.
An initial test immediately measured the phenomenon: after turning on the device, dozens and dozens of puffs were recorded. It didn’t mean having dozens of different whales in front of us, but rather some very active animals in the bay. However, enough to understand that the problem no longer lives in the footnotes of marine biologists.
Why whales enter the bay
The gray whales of the eastern Pacific perform one of the great migrations of the animal world, between the feeding areas of the Arctic and the Mexican lagoons where they give birth. Yet in recent years some of them have begun to enter San Francisco Bay with unusual frequency. Scientists link this presence to a larger crisis: the changing Arctic, shrinking sea ice, changing food availability, leaner, more vulnerable animals forced to seek resources along less safe routes.
The bay, seen from a hungry whale, may seem like a worthwhile detour. Seen from a ship, an operational corridor remains. The Golden Gate thus becomes a funnel through which everyone passes: animals, ferries, cargo, pleasure boats. A beautiful and terrible geography at the same time. Gray whales surface low, often inconspicuously, and shipping traffic on the U.S. West Coast is among the busiest in the country. Collisions with ships are considered one of the main threats for many large cetaceans, and for gray whales the risk increases precisely because they migrate and feed along areas crossed by ports and very busy routes.
The numbers explain why this technology arrives at a delicate moment. Between 2018 and 2025, a study of gray whales entering the bay identified 114 individuals; 21 were later found dead in the area, with a minimum mortality rate of 18%. In the broader picture of local strandings, over 40% of the deaths analyzed were linked to vessel trauma. In 2025, dozens of dead whales were recorded in the area, and 2026 also began with new cases. Some remain without a certain cause, because a complete necropsy is not always possible. Others tell a clearer story: impacts, injuries, probable or suspected collisions.
Technology alone is not enough
The AI, in this story, has a specific task: to reduce the time between the presence of the whale and the knowledge of that presence by the sailor. This is an important leap, because many protection strategies only work if they arrive early enough. A whale reported when the ship is too close is of little use. A whale located in time can change human behavior around it.
The thermal system promises to work day and night and to intercept the breath up to several nautical miles away. Each detection, however, is checked by specialists before the alert is issued. This part is important: AI speeds up the process, humans maintain the filter. At sea, a continuous false alarm can blind even the best system. A correct alarm, sent at the right time, can avoid an impact.
Then everything else remains: routes, speed, coordination between operators, education of sailors, shared protocols. In other seas, different tools are being tested, from high-resolution satellites to locate cetaceans on the surface to acoustic buoys that listen to the clicks of sperm whales and transmit their position to ships. The principle is always the same: bring animals into human maps before it’s too late.
In San Francisco Bay, this principle takes the form of a camera pointed at the water and a map updated in near real time. It may seem small, compared to the scale of the problem. Yet maritime traffic moves thanks to signals, coordinates, corridors, prohibitions, radios, timetables. Inserting whales into that practical grammar means stopping treating them as apparitions and starting to consider them presences on which an immediate decision depends.
Scientists will understand in the coming months whether the system will really help reduce deaths. No technology alone can erase hunger, the climate crisis, trade routes and coastal traffic. But here at least we start from something that the sea grants for an instant and then resumes: a warm breath over the cold water. Enough to tell a ship: slow down, turn, wait. Sometimes saving a whale starts like this. With someone who finally sees her.
