Page 15: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (June 2023)

as meaningful and painless as possible and it is an inherent unintegrated website whalemap.org, and there are also pri- technical fact that, therefore, there will be no single solution. vate companies that provide whale tracking services.)

There will only be partial solutions that get optimized through There are a substantial number of vessels out there that careful balancing of a wide variety of push and pulls, and would actually be interested in hitting the button whenever careful analysis without distractions by bad data and lies. they see a whale. A whale watching boat can even hit the but-

That is complicated, and requires much more space to fully ton whenever they see a whale surface and it would provide discuss than is available in this column, but some actions, like a great track for further research and analysis. Unfortunately, reducing entanglement trash, have no downside and should be I have been told that there are whale watching operators who pushed hard. actually turn off their AIS to keep competing operators from

Increased situational awareness can also be very effective. knowing where the whales are. This should be very strongly

Just knowing where whales are present can be very helpful in condemned, because the AIS track of a slow-moving whale allowing crews to adjust course and speed. AIS can be of great watching vessel already signals to other vessels that there are help in that regard. Fitting right whales with AIS transmit- whales in the area and that they should pay closer attention. ters, if technically feasible, would be an excellent approach to Moreover, sharing whale locations between whale watching avoiding collisions with right whales. operators reduces CO2 emissions since much less time and

Noting that humpback whales are not as “valuable” and fuel is wasted looking for whales independently. Taking turns much more numerous, ? tting them with AIS may not make unnecessarily wasting fuel is particularly uncool if you are in sense, but recording whale locations (including right whales) the environmental business.

in real time using AIS would be of great help. This could be Who else would provide good whale tracking data with this accomplished with the addition of a simple record button system? How about the offshore wind vessels, which, by per- on a ship AIS. A ship’s crew sees whales, pushes the but- mit obligations, are required to carry whale observers. Yes, if ton when they pass the whales, and chart plotters on ships we do not stop offshore wind development, there will be more in range display a whale location just like it displays a ship whale observers, which, with proper technology, will reduce with AIS. This whale position will gradually fade once it the possibility of vessel strikes for all. Situational awareness. gets older, so the screen does not get overloaded, but the Gotta love it.

data can be stored and processed forever. This will provide somewhat messy data because whales move, but such data can provide a lot of insight in the long run and is an easy message to a following ship that they need to keep an eye

For each column I write, MREN has agreed to make a small out when they pass through an area where whales have been donation to an organization of my choice. For this column I spotted. Not every watch stander would bother to do this, select Gotham Whale, New York City’s own whale research and obviously it would not work at night, but, in this case, and advocacy organization. www.gothamwhale.org partial data is better than no data at all. (There is partial data out there. NOAA provides right whale locations, but it is an

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MR #6 (1-17).indd 15 6/5/2023 12:31:26 PM