2022-06-30 Release

Release notes for June 2022
Hey everyone! Here are the details of the major work completed over the last month.

Software DOIs for June release
To reference Wildbook in a publication, use the following DOIs:

Codex Updates

• We have successfully migrated our zebra platform to zebra.wildme.org.

Wildbook Updates

• ID can be re-run from bulk import.
• The WBIA job queue status is now available in Wildbook.

Individual Wildbook Updates

• New life stages are available on Amphibian.
• Amphibian Contact Us link and header image have been updated.
• New organizations are available on ACW.
• Anonymous_ is no longer displayed in the ACW encounter list.
• New species are available on GrouperSpotter.
• Sea Bass now has a pdf user agreement available.

Wildbook Bug Fixes

• WB-1971: Cloned encounters no longer get put in all projects.
• WB-1968: Metrics are more accurate for the number of tasks per user.
• WB-1962: Project links to tasks are consistent across algorithms.
• WB-1949: Cloned encounters go into the same project as the originating encounter.

Wildbook-IA Release Notes

There are no updates to WBIA this month.

2022-05-31 Release

Release notes for May 2022
Hey everyone! Here are the details of the major work completed over the last month.

Software DOIs for May release
To reference Wildbook in a publication, use the following DOIs:

• Codex DOI:
• Wildbook DOI:
• Related WBIA DOI:

Codex Release!
We are excited to announce that we have released our new software, Wild Me Codex. Over the coming months, we will be migrating existing Wildbook platforms over as new functionality is added and improved on.

Wildbook Updates

• African Carnivore now uses HotSpotter for face recognition of lions.
• SeadragonSearch has expanded their supported locations.
• GiraffeSpotter now leverages silo security.
• Flukebook database migration freed up storage space.

Bug Fixes

• WB-1965: Visual Matcher is more stable.
• WB-1961: Individual Search displays haplotype color codes on maps.
• WB-1930: Individual page display corrected for non-logged-in users.
• WB-1848: Bulk import is no longer interrupted if new import from same user begins.

Wildbook-IA Release Notes
There are no updates to WBIA this month.

2022-05-01 Release

Release notes for March and April 2022

Hey everyone! Here are the details of the major work completed over the last two months.

Wildbook community updates

• New locations have been added to Flukebook, Amphibian, and GiraffeSpotter.
• Hyenas have been added to Whiskerbook.
• Lions have been added to ACW
• Projects have been updated to reflect user feedback, including sortability and visibility of sightings.
• Bulk import now displays information about queue times.
• Start Match, from the encounter page, now shows information about the queue times.
• GiraffeSpotter has improved prefix digit padding.

Bug fixes

• WB-1959: Restored the ability to set individual ID on unmatched Encounters.
• WB-1947: Links to match results from projects now go to the correct matches.
• WB-1941: Project links to matching results now tied to the appropriate encounter rather than the associated bulk import.
• WB-1933: Sharkbook is now more stable.
• WB-1910: Recaptcha has been restored on Lynx Wildbook.
  *WB-1909: Bugs have been addressed in the SOCPROG and CAPTURE export formats.

Wildbook-IA Release Notes

The following updates were made to WBIA last month:

• SAGE-444: Added PIE V2 support for lion faces, allowing automated matching for baseline comparisons.
• SAGE-503: Investigate train/validation split correctness with the PIE V2 algorithm.
• SAGE-489: Publish all WBIA plugins on PyPI.
• SAGE-432: All Azure-based ML APIs have been migrated to on-premises hardware.

2022-02-28 Release Note

Release notes for February 2022
Hey everyone! Here are the details of the major work completed over the last month.

Zebra updates

• Measurements cascaded from the VM to the repo.

Giraffespotter updates

• Added new location IDs.

Amphibian and reptile updates

• Added new location IDs.
• Added new species, yellow bellied toads.

Flukebook updates

• Humpback co-occurences linked appropriately.
• Add gray whale populations as social units.

Bug Fixes

• WB-1929: Resolved exceptions that cause leaks from the logs associated with iaResults.
• WB-1928: Bulk imports now lists the correct number of media assets in each task.
• WB-1925: Query cache is turned on for amphibian wildbook.
• WB-1923: Viewpoints are available for manual annotaiton for amphibian wildbook.
• WB-1922: Bulk import page is now sorting the entire table by date.
• WB-1917: Social display is now accounting for all co-occurrences.
• WB-1916: Bulk imports no longer faling randomly.
• WB-1912: iaResults is now filtering by project correctly on Flukebook.
• WB-1799: Sighting export no longer breaking with an error on ACW.
• WB-1780: Prevent error from displaying with old match candidates.

Full Changelog: 5.4.0...2022-02-28_Release

2022-01-31 Release

Release notes for January 2022
Hey everyone! Here are the details of the major work completed over the last month.

Wildbook DOI for January release
To reference Wildbook in a publication, use the following DOIs:

• Wildbook DOI:
• WBIA DOI:

For all Wildbooks
Projects list is now returned alphabetically to improve readability.

Sharkbook updates

• Added new location IDs.
• Added support for leopard sharks, basking sharks, and nursehound sharks.

Giraffespotter updates

• Added new location IDs.
• Giraffespotter has been migrated to mailchimp for automated email services.

Flukebook updates
Added new location IDs.

GrouperSpotter updates
Improved bicolor mapping for match results.

Bug Fixes

• WB-1911: Bulk import displays match results again.
• WB-1899: Encounter upload no longer blocked with a 500 error.

2021-12-31 Release

Release notes for December 2021
Hey everyone! Here are the details of the major work completed over the last month.

Wildbook DOI for December release

For all Wildbooks

• Improved security for all Wildbooks with refreshed security keys.
• Audit logs show name changes for encounters and individuals.
• Bulk import improvements to better indicate the status of processing.
• Bulk import log has been upgraded to a better searching format, allowing the ability to search historical tasks quickly.

Sharkbook updates

• New encounter submissions now include species in email updates.
• WB-1898: Hotspotter support added for leopard (a.k.a. zebra) sharks

ACW updates

• About Us logos have been resized.

Flukebook updates

• Increased the picture book maximum from 10 to 250 individuals.
• New location IDs.

Seadragon Search updates

• Custom text removed from the submission page.

Bug Fixes

• WB-1897: Encounter excel export is created accurately with measurements.
• WB-1894: Errors are handled during scan comparisons for spot mapping.
• WB-1872: Seadragon Search encounters had detection re-run.
• WB-1859: Non-admin users can edit their email addresses on their profile.
• WB-1701: Project filter restored on iaResults and encounter submission.

Wildbook-IA Release Notes

The following updates were made to WBIA last month:

• SAGE-484: Release of Wildbook IA Version 4.0 on GitHub, PyPI, and Docker Hub, with updated documentation on ReadTheDocs. The WBIA project has been modernized in how it builds for multiple platforms (e.g., Homebrew on macOS, Docker Buildx for multi-arch containers, removing pypkg-build on GitHub CI Actions). Furthermore, old detection and ID plug-ins have been removed from the standard build process and archived on GitHub. [also SAGE-483, SAGE-467]
• SAGE-406: Upgraded C++ pyastar implementation to pyastar2d by Weideman in the CurvRank V2 plug-in. [also SAGE-493]
• SAGE-480: Added formal support for Elephant ear contour ID with CurvRank V2.

Bug Fixes

• SAGE-473: HotSpotter match rendering failures due to dependency library version update, fixed all known failures, and added monitoring for future silent errors. [also SAGE-481, SAGE-491]
• SAGE-479: PyTorch DataLoader resizing error in the WBIA orientation plug-in.
• SAGE-495: Added support for camel case dependency cache (depc) tables names when using SQLAlchemy with PostgreSQL.
• SAGE-490: Fixed FLANN memory leak and added automatic failure disk clean-up on container start. [also SAGE-482]
• SAGE-492: Fixed empty image UUID API failures with the background job engine.

2021-11-30 Release

Release notes for November 2021
Hey everyone! Here are the details of the major work completed over the last month.

For all Wildbooks

Updated the picturebook keywords to reflect keywords general to the community.

IOT welcomes new species from the land!

We have added a few new species, Southern Vietnamese box turtle (Cuora picturata) and Bourret's box turtle (Cuora bouretti), to the Internet of Turtles.

Flukebook updates

• Increased the picture book maximum from 10 to 250 individuals.
• New location IDs.

Seadragon Search updates

• New location IDs.

** Spot-A-Shark USA updates**

• New location IDs.

GrouperSpotter updates

• Configuration updates and management.

Bug Fixes

• WB-1878: Norppagalleria email configuration resolved.
• WB-1871: SAS USA submitted encounters emails now getting to users.
• WB-1870: SAS USA users can see their own submitted encounters once more.
• WB-1868: Resolve SAS AUS locations in sharkbook.ai.
• WB-1865: SAS USA has no duplicate life stages.
• WB-1864: GiraffeSpotter IA pipeline issues resolved.
• WB-1862: Encounter tables on individual pages showing correct cooccurrence.
• WB-1860: Spot-mapping spots saving correctly on Sharkbook.ai.
• WB-1857: Collaborations issues resolved.
• WB-1851: Encounter page is now centered on the actual encounter GPS.
• WB-1845: IOT data now processes apostrophes in locationID correctly.
• WB-1786: SAD USA encounter image now working.
• WB-1739: Import tasks no longer causing a key violation.
• WB-1621: Projects now set ID when using the Confirm No Match button.
• WB-1565: SAS USA grid pages now show individual links instead of UUIDs.

2021-10-28 Release

Release notes for October 2021

Hey everyone! Here are the details of the major work completed over the last month.

For all Wildbooks

• Spot mapping has been refined to only match patterns from the same species.
• Data integrity checks now include a check for viewpoint = null.
• Bulk import now handles and displays progress of acmID registration of uploaded images.
• Bulk import review page improvements have been made.
• Social relationships and co-occurrences now load faster.

Whaleshark.org is now Sharkbook.ai

• New species and locations have been added to the platform.
• The platform has been generalized to reference sharks broadly.
• The domain has been updated.
• SAS AUS, Leopard shark, and Sevengill databases have all been consolidated into the Sharkbook platform.

GrouperSpotter updates

Configuration updates have been managed.

Seadragon Search updates

New locations have been added.

ACW updates

New behaviors and life stages have been added.

IOT updates

New location and related region role have been added.

Bug Fixes

• WB-1854: Encounter Search mark-recapture search includes capture sessions that occur on the same day as the session end time.
• WB-1808: The "Add to existing individual ID" function no longer has an unneeded dependency on the ShowTaxonomy configuration option.
• WB-1795: Script developed to ensure all unique emails are hashed correctly.
• WB-1785: Project matching has improved user feedback regarding IA status.
• WB-1574: IA tasks are no longer causing recursive references.
• WB-1480: SAS USA is now filtering to USA sharks only.
• WB-1093: An exception in the social relationships no longer occurs.

2021-09-30 Release

Release notes for September 2021

Hey everyone! Here are the details of the major work completed over the last month.

Wildbook DOI for September release

For all Wildbooks

• Established a default setting for new Wildbook users to not receive email alerts.
• Measurements are available for standard export.
• Collaborations expanded to include public data for non-silo communities.
• Org admins can add managing researchers to encounters.

Spot A Shark Australia updates

• New location IDs.

Bug Fixes

• WB-1798: Removed an assertion error that was impacting IA matching on various platforms.
• WB-1784: Resolved email issues for SAS AUS.
• WB-1781: User can now self-edit email addresses.
• WB-1779: Resolved email signature issue for SAS USA.
• WB-1777: Valid email checks account for wider range of valid emails.
• WB-1773: Platform crossover of whale styling removed.
• WB-1770: Lynx HotSpotter configuration restored.
• WB-1761: MantaMatcher client_max_body_size default is now greater than 1MB.
• WB-1759: SAS AUS grid admin page is now working.
• WB-1757: Anonymous_* users are now hidden and names are alphabetized.
• WB-1740: Dates on images in match results now reflect user-provided dates rather than exif.
• WB-1736: Improved stability of IOT.
• WB-1549: Org admin functionality stabilized.
• WB-1535: Decoupled Spot-A-Shark platforms to improve accuracy and usability. [Also WB-1768]
• WB-1479: Scroll wheel actions work with encounter search results.
• WB-1364: MantaMatcher data drive expanded.

Wildbook-IA Release Notes

The following updates were made to WBIA last month:

• SAGE-375: Release of WBIA version 3.7.1, avaiable on GitHub, PyPI, and Docker Hub.
• SAGE-374: Add image import tracking to Promethus activity metrics.
• SAGE-345: New API to add images and immediately run detection, support for Codex development.
• SAGE-346: Upgraded API response for ID callbacks to include compute status of the background engine job.
• SAGE-200: New PIE model for wild horse faces, including report.
• SAGE-353: New data annotation for asian turtles, including training of researchers. [also SAGE-350, SAGE-349]
• SAGE-342: New data annotation for whale sharks, including training of researchers. [also SAGE-354]
• SAGE-338: Updated detection model for beluga whales to support calf detection, updated report.
• SAGE-337: New sperm whale fluke detector and related detection pipeline models, including orientation network support.
• SAGE-356: Paper draft review for SDRP on CurvRank V2 and finFindR results.

Bug Fixes

• SAGE-373:Rremove all deprecated links from WBIA review web interface that linked to old pages.
• SAGE-333: Duplicate sea dragon detections from WBIA. [also SAGE-341]

2021-09-01 release

Release notes for August 2021

Hey everyone! Here are the details of the major work completed over the last month.

Wildbook DOI for August release

For all Wildbooks

• Sighting/Occurrence search sorts user alphabetically.
• Improved Sighting/Occurence comment behavior from bulk import.
• IAResults correctly displays images that have been corrected with an orientation network.
• Added additional metadata reports for bulk imports.
• New locations for GiraffeSpotter and Spot-A-Shark USA.
• New species for GiraffeSpotter and Leopard Shark.

GiraffeSpotter updates

Updated the GiraffeSpotter contact information.

Bug fixes

• WB-1772: Corrected thumbnail orientation, which was impacted bounding boxes on encounters.
• WB-1753: ACW - Country dropdown is alphabetized.
• WB-1741: Collaboriations were causing database connections to leak, impacting memory.
• WB-1731: IOT - Mixed species classes misassignment resolved to be properly mapped, improving match results returns.
• WB-1730: Sequential naming for marked individuals made more robust for large catalogs.
• WB-1727: Multiple attributes can be edited on an individual and encounter.
• WB-1585: MantaMatcher - ID is preserved when re-drawing a candidate region.
• WB-1560: Amphibian - Individual gallery has been restored.
• WB-1538: Bulk import functionality restored on post-import validation screen.
• WB-1536: Button UX improved when managing the identity metadata on an encounter.
• WB-1456: Merged names displaying as appropriate.
• WB-1274: Skunkbook - Encounter pages have been restored.
• WB-605: Search results highlight in red when you need to request access to the object.