For the few right whales left, technology and teamwork are showing promise
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Nate Iglehart Staff writer
| Scituate, Mass.
By the time Herman Melville wrote “Moby Dick” in 1851, New England was already famous for its whaling industry – hunting the North Atlantic right whale to near extinction and earning Nantucket, a tiny island off Massachusetts, the title of whaling capital of the world.
Today, the once-targeted whales are prized conservation targets as New England leads efforts to bring them back from the brink. An emerging linchpin to their survival is taking form in a small but mighty network of coastal signaling devices.
North Atlantic right whales are one of the most endangered large whale species in the world, with only about 370 left. Although whaling was almost entirely banned worldwide in 1986, the whales’ numbers have not recovered. Eleven new right whales were born this year, far below the 50 per year needed to create a stable population. Some models predict their extinction by 2035.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onThe interests of industry and endangered species often are at odds. But the North Atlantic right whale is drawing notable cooperation from several parties as it tries to survive.
As the whales migrate each year from calving grounds near Florida to foraging grounds near New England, they are often struck by passing boats or entangled in fishing gear, which can hurt or kill them.
Now, everyone from fishers and marine ecologists to maritime corporations and coastal residents – even in Nantucket – is leaning into technology to help stem the decline.
The cooperation and technology is causing hope for the right whales’ survival to slowly, and cautiously, grow.
Electronic lighthouses for whale sightings
Mariners already try to avoid whales to protect the animals and their ships. But they don’t always know when one is around.
When a whale is spotted, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) sets up a slow zone, in which mariners are asked to slow their speed to 10 knots (11.5 mph) or less to reduce the likelihood of hitting a whale and the risk of fatally injuring it. The zones are separate from seasonal management areas, which have mandatory speed rules.
Boaters are mainly alerted through email and text updates, and an app called WhaleAlert, which acts as a database for whale sightings and slow zones, says Greg Reilly, the International Fund for Animal Welfare’s marine campaigner. However, both need an internet connection, which is not required for boaters and is often spotty at sea.
That’s where Moses Calouro, CEO of Maritime Information Systems, comes in. Over the last two years, Mr. Calouro has partnered with businesses, nonprofits, and coastal towns to install devices called StationKeepers along the entire Atlantic coast. These small 20-pound boxes sit high on coastal buildings and lighthouses. Using an Automated Identification System (AIS), they transmit locations of whales and speed zones directly to the navigation screens of ships.
“The idea,” Mr. Calouro says, “is if you could tag every right whale, how would you get the word to the boaters?”
Mr. Calouro’s 2024 pilot program focused on the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, an underwater plateau and feeding ground for right whales off the coast of Cape Cod. Upon entering, over 85% of ships slowed down, with an additional 10% doing so after receiving an automatic message warning. Pete DeCola, the sanctuary’s superintendent, says the StationKeepers, combined with other efforts already under way to protect right whales, have reduced the risk of ships encountering whales by over 80%.
Even before Mr. Calouro’s project, shipping companies were buying in.
In 2010, NOAA researchers at the sanctuary created a program with the Massachusetts Port Authority and the International Fund for Animal Welfare that grades boaters and companies on their compliance. Last year, 91% of the 104 companies and 332 vessels that passed through slowed their boats appropriately.
“I have captains call me, saying, ‘I’m coming into the area over 10 knots. Please don’t tell my boss; I’ll slow down right now,’” says Dave Wiley, a marine ecologist at the sanctuary. Trade journals have begun publishing these ratings to show how companies are doing, he says.
Vessels that didn’t slow down were mainly new to the area and seemed unaware of the reduced speed limit. That lack of knowledge is another challenge Mr. Calouro’s system aims to address. Mariners are skilled at avoiding hazards; it’s what they do for a living, says Mr. Reilly. But “They have to know where the hazard is. ... It’s not like there’s a big speed limit sign when you come in.”
Consumer marine electronics manufacturers have also joined the effort. Garmin, for example, known for its innovative GPS technology, is working on rolling AIS messaging and electronic navigation data into its products, expanding the StationKeepers’ reach to recreational boaters.
Balancing industry with conservation
But perhaps the biggest threat to North Atlantic right whales is entanglements, often in fishing gear. Even if the whale survives the tangle, the damage and stress of thrashing in the lines hurt their ability to give birth, says Courtney Reich, coastal director of the Georgia Conservancy.
Technological advancements can reduce the need for buoy lines. Mike Lane, a lobsterman based out of Cohasset, Massachusetts, has worked with the underwater technology company EdgeTech to create prototypes of ropeless fishing gear. Typically, rope connects traps with buoys at the surface. But with ropeless gear, the traps use pop-up buoys, lift bags, or buoyant spools that, when remotely triggered, inflate or detach and bring the trap to the surface for collection.
The gear is not perfect, Mr. Lane says, but it allows lobster fishers to keep working during the months that fisheries close due to the whales’ migration paths. He says that extra work can help lobster fishers financially, and it helps to know their gear is not snagging whales.
But this gear, compared with a buoy and rope, is costly and can stress the fishers’ thin profit margins. There’s also a learning curve to using it, which takes up time.
One of the biggest issues, he says, is keeping track of the traps so they don’t interfere with other fishers. If you tried to plot hundreds of ropeless traps in the water, the mapping data would be too cluttered to use effectively. Losing the expensive gear would be devastating.
To Mr. Lane, ropeless fishing gear isn’t a large-scale, permanent solution.
“Trust me, I’m not a huge fan of it,” he says. “It’s not the way I prefer it. ... The [mapping] technology is there; someone’s just got to package it properly.”
It’s not really needed when whales aren’t around, he says. But it’s an important stopgap measure for when they are, and it helps lobster fishers balance protecting both their livelihoods and right whales.
New moms spark hope
This wave of new technology and cooperation comes at a crucial time. Despite a lackluster calving season this year, the appearance of four new first-time mothers is a positive sign, says Mr. Wiley: “Expanding that is expanding hope.”
The StationKeeper project is still evolving. Mr. Calouro and the Stellwagen Bank sanctuary plan to use the network to set up geofences, virtual geographic boundaries that send an alert when a mobile device enters or leaves a particular area. By putting these geofences around ropeless fishing gear, they can send real-time weather data and emergency alerts to mariners, a persistent logistical challenge. As Mr. Wiley puts it, “We are only limited by our imagination for the benefits for mariners.”
More innovation is on the way. The marine sanctuary is trying to create auto-detection buoys that can sit along right whales’ migration paths and automatically send spotting alerts. They are also considering using satellites to more accurately predict right whales’ paths, based on gas emitted when copepods, the whales’ food source, are feeding on phytoplankton.
“It seems clear to me,” says Mr. Reilly, “that if we get out of their way, they will do what they do, and they’ll bounce back.”
