Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. A humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) emerges, slow, deliberate, and gentle in its curious demeanor, casting a ripple across the surface. We wanted to know which whales.”[ Related: Humpback whales use bubble-nets as ‘tools’. ] So began a transformative shift in whale science, driven by photography, artificial intelligence, public participation, and lab research–and it all starts with the fluke. Early whale research looked at the species as a whole, Friedlander notes, but fluke matching has transformed this approach by allowing scientists to study individual whales in much finer detail.