Hi all,
My coauthors and I are excited to share our recent publication with you:
Hirtle, N. O., Stepanuk, J. E. F., Heywood, E. I., Christiansen, F., & Thorne, L. H. (2022). Integrating 3D models with morphometric measurements to improve volumetric estimates in marine mammals. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 00, 1– 13. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13962
We integrated UAV-based measurements from humpback whales in the New York Bight with 3D models constructed in Blender to generate realistic models that can provide estimates of volume. As was found in previous work, these scaled 3D models are fairly robust to missing measurements, and with as few as 5-6 width measurements (out of the 17 measurements taken), we were able to obtain volume estimates that were within 5% of the models scaled with all available measurements. We provide code and guidelines for constructing and scaling 3D models in the hopes that others may find these methods useful in their own study species, especially large whales.
Please do not hesitate to reach out with questions!
Cheers,
Nathan Hirtle