The Sound of Whale Song. Preferable to the Sound of a Whale’s Head Getting Crushed


So imagine that you are Momma North Atlantic Right Whale. You are just one of 350 to 400 of your species, making you officially ”endangered” so you’re feeling pretty desperate about staying alive to reproduce and ensuring that your babies do as well. Which is getting harder and harder - especially around the Boston Harbor area - cause those damn container ships keep on running your friends over, crushing their skulls and slicing off their tails.  Even though you’re like 40 or 50 feet long, those metal mammoths of the sea or about 900. Squishy.

A recent analysis of your population suggests that, unless there are fewer deaths from ship strikes and fishing gear entanglements, you and your buddies are never going to recover. Collisions killed 24 of the 67 right wales reported dead (that’s reported only) between 1970 and 2007. Scientists argue over how to fix the problem. Avoid certain areas, re-route shipping channels, just plain slow down...all of these may help. Except the slowing down; a 90,000 ton ship doesn’t have to move that fast to be lethal.

But slowing down DOES make it easier to avoid the whales. If anyone is looking or LISTENING that is. And now they can.

Scientists at Cornell’s Ornithology Lab (yes, that means birds, but who cares) are piloting a project whereby buoys floating around the waters off Massachusetts (and especially in the shipping lanes) detect the sounds of right whales, triangulate their location and then broadcast it to ship captains. It’s called the Right Whale Listening Network and you can enjoy their terrifying interactive graphics and pretty pictures.

Of course the ship captains still have to CARE about the info when they get it, but if some regulatory intermediary is FORCING them to watch and then FINING them millions of dollars if they don’t comply, it might work. Happy Momma Right Whale.

(PS. Right whales are called right whales cause they float to the surface when dead, making them easier to harvest..hence the “right” whale to go after. Huh)


Posted by Anna Gosline on April 14, 2008 at 3:32 PM in creature feature
Comments 2 Comments   The Sound of Whale Song. Preferable to the Sound of a Whale’s Head Getting Crushed   Digg

Comments

Anna, great post, the situation seems pretty bad. Only one comment about the speed of the container ships. They are so BIG that I doubt they can avoid the whales (even if they wanted to).

The idea might well be that it would be the whales who avoid the monster ships. Anyway, let’s hope those impressive animals do all… right.

Posted on April 25, 2008 at 3:22 PM by MintMe

Hey - I’ve read a fair amount about this topic and I can reassure you that slowing your giant container ship does make it possible to see whales earlier and adjust course to miss them. The real catch is that only a few natural-gas supply ships in the area (around 65 per year, tops) are actually required to slow down. The other 1,500 or so commercial ships are merely *requested* to slow down.

But NOAA has been requesting slow-downs for several years along sections of the Massachusetts coast and the Georgia/Florida coast (where whale moms give birth to their adorable whale calves). The hope with the buoys is that if pilots are warned of specific, short stretches of water where whales have recently been heard, they may be more likely to take a bit of time out of their busy schedules.

A bill to make this polite request into a requirement has been kicking around Congress since 2004. John Kerry just managed to get it out of committee in the Senate, according to the Boston Globe: http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/green/greenblog/2008/04/kerry_pushes_for_federal_right_whale_rule_to_be_released_.html

Posted on April 29, 2008 at 1:27 PM by Hugh

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