New camera might save Right Whales
Right Whale with her calf
From ecoRI News (ecori.org)
The beginning of the calving season for North Atlantic Right Whales, one of the rarest marine mammals, is looking promising with four newborn calves observed in December. But the outlook for the species, whose global population is estimated at only 360 individuals, remains grim. Between fishing-gear entanglements and collisions with ships, more whales have died in recent years than were born.
A new technology on the horizon may help to reduce one of those threats, however. A smart-camera system invented by a team of scientists and engineers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts is being tested in local waters and could be deployed on vessels traversing the East Coast to reduce the threat of ships striking Right Whales.
“The idea is simple,” said WHOI assistant scientist Daniel Zitterbart, who is leading the project. “We took a commercial thermal imaging camera, highly stabilized for roll and pitch, and a computer algorithm that looks at images and tries to tease out what’s a whale compared to what’s a wave or a bird or whatever.
“The key part is, if you’re in a large vessel and you know there’s a whale 300 yards in front of you, it’s probably too late for you to turn away from it. Our aim is to push the detection range as far as we can, which makes things difficult on a rocking boat. But getting the range we need to make a difference for the animal is the objective.”
A prototype of the smart-camera system was tested last summer on a research vessel in the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, in Massachusetts Bay, about midway between Gloucester and Provincetown, where humpback whales congregate to feed each year. A similar land-based installation was also deployed at a busy shipping channel in British Columbia traversed by endangered southern resident Killer Whales. The initial tests were promising.
“If you’re talking about very large vessels like tankers or cargo vessels, they may not be maneuverable enough for the detection ranges we get, but for cruise vessels, ferries, and fishing vessels that are more maneuverable, it definitely can make a difference,” Zitterbart said.
A little larger than a half-gallon milk carton, the camera system must be installed at least 15 feet above the water line to be effective. Within seconds, it can detect the presence of whales a mile or more away and alert the captain in time for the vessel to slow down or change course.
Unlike human observers or spotter planes, which are occasionally used in the United States and Canada to watch for Right Whales and alert nearby ships, the camera system can spot whales in daylight and darkness with little effort.
James Miller, an ocean-engineering professor at the University of Rhode Island, invented a forward-looking sonar device about 20 years ago that could be used to detect whales, reefs, and other obstacles to navigation beneath the water’s surface. He commercialized the product by founding FarSounder Inc., a Warwick,R.I.-based company with clients around the world. The company’s sonar devices can scan up to 1,000 meters in front of a ship moving at speeds of up to 25 knots to detect underwater obstacles.
“Dr. Zitterbart's technology for detecting whales at the sea surface can be an important part of the solution for reducing ship strikes, one of the leading causes of death for large whales,” Miller said.
Zitterbart said sonar is a better detection method for sensing static objects beneath the surface, but he believes his thermal camera system is more effective at detecting moving objects such as whales that may only be noticed for a few seconds. Both technologies can be hampered by challenging environmental conditions.
The recipient of the 2019 Young Investigator Award from the U.S. Office of Naval Research for his work on whale detection, Zitterbart previously developed a thermal imaging system for protecting whales and other marine mammals from underwater noise produced by air guns used in seismic surveys.
Assuming that his tests are successful this year, Zitterbart plans to deploy his camera system on a number of vessels without his development team aboard to ensure that remote troubleshooting can be conducted effectively. Eventually, he hopes to find a company interested in commercializing the technology.
“Thermal imaging systems are a powerful new tool in real-time whale detection,” he told Ocean Insights. “Used alone or in conjunction with acoustic monitoring, this technology could significantly reduce the risk of vessel strikes.”
Todd McLeish is a Rhode Island resident and nature writer .
Techno hope for Right Whales?
North Atlantic Right Whale with her calf.
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
‘Man is rapidly wiping out species. Perhaps new technology can help save at least a few of them (though not nearly as a much as stabilizing human population growth). Consider, the Associated Press reports, a new simulator that lets scientists use a joystick “to swim a virtual whale across a video screen’’ as part of efforts to save the close-to-extinction North Atlantic Right Whales that swim off New England. The idea is to better understand how the huge mammals become entangled in fishing lines and then develop such solutions as ropeless fishing gear, an experiment with which is underway with Maine lobstermen.
Tim Werner, a senior scientist at the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, told the AP: “If we can see how they get entangled, it would help us prevent it. The technology in computers has evolved to a state where we can model these things.”
More than 80 percent of Right Whales, of which there are only about 400 left, become ensnared by fishing lines. Many then die of starvation because they can’t move around to find food. Some drown. The stress of entrapment itself can kill them. It’s probably too late to save this intelligent species, but Mr. Werner holds out a little hope.
Todd McLeish: Decline in birth rate of North Atlantic Right Whales raises alarms
North Atlantic Right Whale with calf.
Just three North Atlantic Right Whales were born this winter, a precipitous decline in the species birth rate that has scientists concerned for the future of one of the rarest whales.
With four Right Whales killed by human causes last year, the birth rate is now below the mortality rate, signaling a population decline from which the animals may have difficulty recovering.
The endangered whales give birth off the coast of Georgia and northern Florida, and the three calves born this winter is the lowest total since 1999. An average of 24 calves were born each year during the 2000s, and the average for the 2010s had been 13.
“We had an increasing trend from 1982 to 2009, when we had a record 39 calves born, but since then it’s been going in the other direction steeply,” said Robert Kenney, a marine-mammal expert at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography who manages the sighting database for the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium. “I’m more worried about the animals than I was the first time we had a drop in calf numbers in the 1990s.”
The prior decline quickly reversed itself, but Kenney doesn’t see the present decline in birth rate improving any time soon.
“The most obvious reason for the decline is that something has disturbed the predictability of their food supply,” Kenney said. “There’s something about the warming water or the timing of the spring plankton bloom or something else — the food is just not where the whales expect it to be in the abundance and concentrations they expect. They still go to their traditional feeding grounds, but they don’t stay because the food isn’t there.
“They’re spending more time hunting for food, and looking for food is energetically expensive because they have to travel. The more they travel, the more chance they have of running into fishing gear and becoming entangled.”
Fishing-gear entanglement is the leading cause of mortality for Right Whales, followed by ship strikes.
A healthy female Right Whale gives birth every three years, according to Kenney. They are pregnant for a year, they nurse their calf for a year, and they take a year to recover and regain their fat stores so they can become pregnant again.
“But if she can’t get find enough food to put on that fat, she’ll skip a year,” Kenney said. “So that resting period between pregnancies gets longer as they become more and more energy stressed.”
In recent years, female Right Whales have doubled the interval between pregnancies from 3-4 years to 6-7 years, which lowers the species’s overall birth rate.
“Survival and mortality haven’t changed,” Kenney said. “The change in their population trajectory is because of a decline in the birth rate. Not enough babies are being born to replace those that are dying.”
Scientists believe that only about 524 Right Whales are known to exist, up from about 400 a decade ago.
“With the way the climate and oceanography is changing, we don’t know if the population can adapt to it and rebound,” Kenney said. “They’ve adapted multiple times through their history, so they might be able to do so again. But before, they weren’t getting drowned in fishing gear and run over by ships with the same frequency.”
Mortality from ship strikes is no longer increasing, despite significant growth in the shipping industry, thanks to regulations imposed in 2008 requiring ships to decrease their speed to 10 knots in areas where the whales are known to spend time during certain periods of the year. Just one Right Whale per year, on average, is killed by being struck by a ship.
About four or five Right Whales are known to die annually as a result of becoming entangled in fishing gear. However, it’s likely that others die but their carcasses aren’t recovered.
“If a healthy Right Whale is killed by a ship, it floats and is apt to wash up on a beach, so we know about it,” Kenney said. “But when a whale becomes entangled, it often takes a long time to die — they starve to death or eventually succumb to their injuries — so they are much more likely to have lost much of their fat and they sink, and we never know about it.”
Despite fishing regulations aimed at limiting whale entanglements, mortality rates haven’t declined. Four out of every five Right Whales have scars from being entangled at least once.
“There is nothing we can do in the short term about the changes in the ocean affecting the whale’s food supply,” Kenney said. “We can only stand by helpless and watch it happen. Where we can make a difference is on the human mortality side of the equation. We really need to get a handle on entanglements. It’s happening way too frequently.”
Unfortunately, he said, the future looks bleak for Right Whales.
“Given the expectation that changes in the ocean are going to be continuous and are going to get worse, the handwriting could be on the wall,” Kenney said.
Todd McLeish runs a wildlife blog. This piece originated in eco RI News (ecori.org)