Integrating 3D models with morphometric measurements to improve volumetric estimates in marine mammals

1. Studies of body condition are key to understanding the health, bioenergetics, and ecological roles of marine mammals. Due to challenges in studying marine mammals at sea, body condition is often approximated using metrics representing the size of the dorsal surface visible from aerial imagery, but quantifying variability in body volume would enable a more holistic understanding of bioenergetics. Further, the number and location of measurements needed to accurately quantify body condition has received little attention. Three-dimensional (3D) models provide a promising tool for representing morphology and providing holistic estimates of marine mammal body condition when combined with field-based morphometric measurements.
2. We use humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) to demonstrate the utility of 3D models for estimating body condition in marine mammals. We integrate morphometric measurements taken from Unoccupied Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) with scalable 3D models to generate estimate...