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The
IRIS photo-ID spot-matching program has been used by whale
shark researchers in many areas for several years now and
the latest version has taken on-board suggestions to make
it more applicable to this species. Originally the program
was developed to assist in the matching of spot patterns
in Ragged-Tooth sharks off
South
Africa
but its global adoption by whale shark researchers has
prompted the designers to update the interface to suite
this species. The current version is now called I3S
(Interactive Individual Identification System) and is
available for free download from www.reijns.com/i3s/index.html
.
The
program now allows a choice of set-up for different
species which on the whale shark now has correctly named
registration points as used by cooperative whale shark
research groups; this makes registration of the images
significantly more intuitive and should minimise the
chance of mis-locating these important points. The search
capabilities of the new program have also been expanded to
incorporate search parameters based on the sex of the
animal, which will be useful for certain analyses. Along
with the downloadable program are both a User Manual and a
specific manual for using the program on whale sharks by
Simon Pierce.
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| The new
I3S photo-ID program now updated specifically for
whale shark use; the red box indicates the area
needed for photo ID and the spots marked inside
this are the 'fingerprint' spots used by the
program . Image MCSS. |
The
development of the I3S program is not stopping here; the
current program relies on the marking of the locations of
individual spots relative to the three reference points
and it does not take into consideration the size or shape
of the spots concerned. A number of researchers have been
trying to use the program for species that do not have
lots of regular sized or shaped spots, such as in several
species of sharks and on Manta Rays; funding from PADI
Project Aware has been awarded to the program designers to
further develop the program to enables it use on these
species.
We look forward to seeing these new developments in the
coming months!
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