| Summary: | 25th Conference of the European Cetacean Society. Long-terms datasets on marine mammals: learning from the past to manage the future, Cadiz, Spain, 21-23 March 2011. The Archipelago of the Azores is a group of oceanic islands located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, due its own characteristics can be considered as a cetacean biodiversity "hot spot", with 27 species of cetaceans identified. The AzoresPhotoID catalog uses photos contributed by the local whale and dolphin watching operators, from tourists and from local researchers. An off-line database was constructed using commercial image processing software. However the catalog has an online version, based on blogging and image sharing platforms (http://azoresphotoid.blogspot.com/for communication and http://www.flickr.com/azoresphotoid/ for the catalog itself). Images and the associated data are available on a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons license. From 2003 to 2010 nearly 700 individuals have been catalogued, from seven different species: Megaptera novaeangliae, Tursiops truncatus, Globicephala macrorhynchus, Grampus griseus, Balaenoptera borealis, Balaenoptera physalus and Physeter macrocephalus. From these, more than twenty individuals have been resighted at least once. The analysis of the catalogue showns that Bottlenose Dolphins, Sperm Whales and Risso’s Dolphins seem to have a pattern of interannual sightings, what suggests the preference of the Azorean waters for some individuals. This study shows that opportunistic images can be a valuable photo-identification resource.
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