There are only around 500 North Atlantic right whales left in the world, making them one of the most endangered of all whale species. Whales are adored by so many people, something that is highlighted by the popularity of the San Diego whale watching trip. This month, nearly that many data scientists raced to complete a project that might help researchers keep this small population from disappearing altogether. Their goal: Develop an algorithm that could identify any living North Atlantic right whale from a photograph of its face.

The contest was the brainchild of Christin Khan, a biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center, who was looking for a way to solve a problem she and other whale researchers come across every day in their work. Khan is part of a team that flies aerial surveys over the waters off the U.S. East Coast to look for North Atlantic right whales. (Two other species of right whale live in the Southern Hemisphere and the North Pacific.) To keep tabs on their target population, researchers track all of the whales individually, using each animal’s distinctive facial markings to identify the ones they see swimming below. (Some even have names: Whale 1611 is Clover, whale 1006 is Quasimodo, whale 1250 is Herb.) But the process can be difficult and tedious.

When the aerial-survey group spots a whale, they open the back window of their Twin Otter plane and snap a photo. Some whales are so distinctive that the team knows them by sight—but more often, the researchers don’t know who they’ve spotted until they get back to the office and consult the North Atlantic Right Whale Catalog. Maintained by the New England Aquarium, this online database has photos and detailed drawings of almost 700 right whales, alive and dead. Researchers study the photos they’ve taken at sea, input certain features of the whale, and then comb through the possibilities until they find a match.