How many whales exist in our oceans? Land based methods of counting whales can require trained researchers spending hours of their time recording numbers and this can be costly and inefficient. Now high resolution satellite imagery has been used in an attempt to count whale numbers from space. Peter Fretwell and colleagues counted Southern right whales in part of the Golfo Nuevo in Argentina. It appears certain species of whale may be easy to locate from space making this a perfect technique. This will help us gain important information about prey populations and their marine ecosystem. Hopefully this new technique can now be used for various whale species to give an accurate prediction of numbers.More information