Acoustic Technology helps to Keep Whales Safe

Whales are the largest mammals and are found in waters around the world. Numbers of many species are rebounding after many countries have discontinued whale hunting and that is something to celebrate.

But there are still species that are considered endangered. And human activity is still responsible for killing whales but now it is not a harpoon that is the weapon, it is collisions with ships, reported The Economist. Ship collisions are killing 20,000 whales annually and this is a worldwide problem. Ocean traffic is forecasted to grow by at least 240 percent by 2050 and that will make the whale strikes much more likely. But a strike-prevention program, called Whale Safe, was just expanded across North American waters that can help keep whales safe from ships.

Whale Safe
Whale Safe was introduced on the West Coast of the US, in 2020 after an increase in whale collisions. According to Callie Leiphardt, the lead scientist of the project at Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory, for every killed whale that was found, 10 more are believed to die unrecorded.

While a voluntary speed limit was in effect, the team believed that by alerting ships to nearby whales, there might be more compliance with ships reducing speed and that would bring down the number of whale deaths. Whale Safe does this by listening for whales using microphone-equipped buoys that can separate whale calls from ocean background noise.

The technology was developed by Mark Baumgartner at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. When whales are detected and fed into Whale Safe’s alert tool, along with model predictions, this is relayed to nearby ships to alert them to slow down. The team then monitors the ship’s speeds via a tracking system and awards grades from A to F  that are visible online.

This has worked remarkably well. In California’s  Santa Barbara channel – which is known as a high collision spot – the proportion of ships that slowed down went from 46 percent in 2019 to 63.5 percent in 2023.

Protecting additional endangered whales with this technology
One of the endangered North American whales is the Right whale, In fact there are only  approximately 370 left, according to the US government’s NOAA Fisheries website, and only around 70 reproductively active females. With so few left, researchers have to monitor the waters of the entire East coast of the US, from Maine to Florida.

The NOAA Fisheries and organizations that they partner with use different technologies including passive acoustic monitoring (used since 2004) and vessel-based surveys. The data collected is used to reduce the risk of whale strikes through the dynamic management of slow zones.  

The idea is catching on in other places too, according to The Economist. In 2022, Chile moored its first acoustic buoy to alert ships to nearby humpback, southern-right, and blue whales. Greece is trialing the technology to protect sperm whales.

But it will not necessarily be smooth sailing. Whales and ships will come in contact with each other in busy ports and shipping lanes. Baumgartner  believes the technology will only work if it influences a ship’s behavior. Spotting whales is only useful if a ship is going slow enough to be able to react. Still, anything that helps the endangered mammals, like right whales, brings hope.