A new system of high-tech offshore buoys is designed to warn ship captains when whales are swimming nearby.
The trouble is, some captains pay attention to it, and some don’t.
Four whales have been killed by collisions with boats so far this year near San Francisco Bay. The number is probably higher; dead whales often sink to the ocean floor.
Last week, an organization called Whale Safe launched a whale-detection system of buoys in known whale feeding areas outside the bay. The system uses a buoy with a microphone 280 feet underwater to listen for whales. It then relays that information in almost real time to ship captains in the area.
Whale Safe was founded two years ago by Marc Benioff, the founder of SalesForce, and his wife, Lynne, in the Santa Barbara Channel. The first full year it was working, 2021, there were no recorded whale-ship collisions there.
Whale Safe uses the ship’s AIS data to see if the captain has slowed down or changed course as a result of its alerts, and awards a letter grade to shipping companies for their compliance. So far, Maersk, one of the largest shipping companies in the world, got a B for slowing down 79 percent of the time. Matson, another giant company, got an F; its ships slowed down only 16 percent of the time.
Whale Safe also uses AIS data to determine whether ships slow down to 10 knots when they pass through whale feeding grounds. NOAA has been asking for this during whale migration seasons since 2014.
The high-tech buoys were developed by Mark Baumgartner at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod. They have been used to listen for endangered North Atlantic right whales on the East Coast. Read more:
