Manta Matcher
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Legal status | nonprofit |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Online citizen science database to identify and track manta rays |
Parent organization | Marine Megafauna Foundation, WildMe |
| Website | https://www.mantamatcher.org |
Manta Matcher is a global online database for manta rays.[1]
It is one of the Wildbook Web applications developed by Wild Me, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization in the United States, and was created in partnership with Andrea Marshall of the Marine Megafauna Foundation.
Manta rays have unique spot patterning on their undersides, which allows for individual identification.[2] Scuba divers around the world can photograph mantas[3] and upload their manta identification photographs to the Manta Matcher website,[4] supporting global research and conservation efforts.
Identification of rays
Manta Matcher is a pattern-matching software that eases researcher workload; key spot pattern features are extracted using a scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) algorithm,[5] which can cope with complications presented by highly variable spot patterns and low contrast photographs.