A research team in Perth is becoming familiar with what whales look like from space.

They have commissioned two satellite images to be taken from 600 kilometres above Earth in order to do an accurate headcount of humpbacks migrating up the WA coast.

"Previously it was done by traditional methods with people on aeroplanes or boats counting whales," researcher Michele Thums said.

"But we're trialling a new method, which is to see if we can count them from space, and specifically from satellites that are in space."

As part of a whale population project funded by the WA Marine Science Institute, Dr Thums commissioned two satellite images to be taken mid-last year, at a cost of about $40,000.

The American-run satellite snapped Camden Sound, off the Kimberley coast, during the peak of the breeding season.

Researchers spend days trawling through images to spot whales

Dr Thums and her colleague Curt Jenner have since spent long days trawling through the digital images.

"It turns out because the satellite imagery is really high resolution, we can see the whales with quite a bit of certainty, although it is a time-consuming process," she said.

"It's been really surprising, we've been able to see the whales really easily with the human eye.

"That's great and it's looking like it's got heaps of potential to be a method we can use in the future."

Curt Jenner and Michele Thums are using satellite technology to track whales off WA's coast. ( ABC News: John Kerr )

It is an exciting project for veteran whale researcher Mr Jenner, who also runs the Centre for Whale Research in Perth.

He has spent long stints at sea tracking the movements of the migrating whales, and said he had dreamt of a more high-tech way to accurately gauge whale numbers.

"I'd been trying to do this in an armchair in my spare time, looking at Google Earth images and trying to find spots where on the WA coast and see if I could find a whale, but I could never do it, so it was frustrating," Mr Jenner said.

"So as we got these images with 30-centimetre resolution and 40 pixels covering a particular whale, it was incredible, you can see a lot of detail on these whales, so it's a fascinating thing."

Satellite scanning system could provide long-terms solution

The pair are conducting a cost-benefit analysis of the technique, which is only being used in a handful of research projects internationally, to see if a long-term monitoring program is viable.

They are also trying to develop a computerised scanning system that can spot the whales within the black-and-white satellite images.

It is thought humpback whale numbers have been increasing by about 10 per cent each year since hunting was banned in the 1970s.

Mr Jenner said that was largely speculative, and accurate monitoring was needed to work out exactly how the once-endangered species was faring.

"People say, 'the whale numbers are very healthy aren't they?' Well we can't actually honestly say yes to that, we don't know because we haven't had a monitoring program for this largest humpback population on the planet for about 10 years," he said.

"So we're very interested to find out if this very large number of whales can be sustained and whether it is healthy enough to continue on into the future."