3 ms·

How much money was burned on this?

• dathos 3y ago
  Does research you disagree with always cause money to be burned instead of spent?
• pvaldes 3y ago
  The correct term is 'money invested', not burned. And the payback was huge. This is a catalogue of recognizable individuals and is classical research in aquatic mammals. Used to track migrants all around the world, to calculate how many of an endangered species are still alive, and even to discover several new species of cetaceans in hot spots like California or Australia (new species of bottlenose dolphin). One of the best tools to study cetaceans populations without harassing them, and done routinely since maybe 50 years ago or more. Marine Theriologists had tried to automatize it for decades. The news here is that has been publicly released. This could mean that the main researcher has quit or retired (maybe to train and pay a human for that job is not needed anymore, maybe the funds dried or the researchers are aging and the team is trying to recruit new volunteers in the so called citizen science or slave's science, dunno). We should take in mind that many of this photos depict dead dolphins now. I had seen exactly the same fin shapes since 00's if I remember correctly