Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) have developed robotic buoys located 20 miles off of the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, MA, which are used to detect nearby whales in near real-time. These buoys listen to whale songs using underwater microphones, and compile these songs into spectrograms, or “pitch tracks” which resemble notes on sheet music. The spectrograms are then sent to on-shore servers, where Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used to compare these recordings to existing libraries of whale songs, to identify the species of whale. This data is then examined by human analysts and the detected species and number of whales are recorded in a public database and shared with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). 

The need for this kind of near real time detection of whales was realized by Mark Baumgartner and his colleagues at WHOI. In 2005, Baumgartner and his associates utilized gliders with passive acoustic monitoring capabilities to research and locate whale populations, but the data from these gliders was not analyzed and published for months on end. While this research was incredibly illuminating for marine biologists, it did little for the conservation of whale species and marine life. Baumgartner and his colleagues realized that in order to protect these threatened and endangered species, they would have to develop technology capable of communicating whale locations much more quickly.

The near real time data provided by these modern buoys is invaluable to the efforts to protect whales and other marine life who reside near popular fishing and shipping routes. When researchers at WHOI detect the presence of whales, they can quickly transmit this data to NOAA, who can establish or update “slow zones” in the surrounding area. “Slow Zones” are sections of ocean in which whales have been spotted recently or are known to inhabit, and have a suggested speed limit to mariners of 10 knots. Ships moving more slowly are far less likely to hit and kill whales, but unfortunately slow zones are not mandatory in the US, which leads to a low compliance rate with the regulation. Baumgartner believes that in order to protect our whales and wildlife, we should implement mandatory slow zones, which have very high rates of compliance in Canada, and we should continue to research methods of ropeless fishing, to prevent whales from becoming entangled in fishing nets.

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