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It's not easy being a whale. Even if you avoid the whalers who still operate in some parts of the world and find enough to eat in waters made inhospitable by noise or chemical pollution, there is always a chance for you to fall on a ship.
It is difficult to find reliable statistics on ship strikes because many are not reported. But about 1,200 were reported between 2007 and 2016, according to the International Whaling Commission. At least four gray whales have been killed by ships this year in the San Francisco area alone. And a recent analysis of right whale deaths in the North Atlantic showed that out of 43 whales with known cause of death, 16 died from collisions with ships.
Ship operators have had a bit of luck using technologies, such as the WhaleAlert application and acoustic sensors, to prevent deadly collisions. And in the Gulf Islands, off the coast of British Columbia, researchers are testing a whale detection system that could one day make busy shipping corridors a safer place for endangered whales.
According to Dan Zitterbart, a physicist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, and a scientist responsible for testing the new system, if ship operators are warned of the presence of whales, "everyone is going to more slowly "and fewer whales are struck.
The system consists of a series of infrared cameras detecting whales by detecting temperature differences between warm-blooded mammals and the colder seawater in which they swim. A computer attached to the cameras uses machine learning to distinguish whales surfacing from ships, birds, etc., by improving the accuracy of alerts sent to ship operators.
Zitterbart said the system has been in development for years but that bulky equipment and its high cost limited functionality. "We are now experimenting with better algorithms and trying to use much simpler systems that could be easily and inexpensively installed on a variety of vessels to alert the ship when a whale is on its way," she said. he declares.
The latest version of the system will be installed on a ferry dock on Galiano Island, off Vancouver. There, he will analyze the abundant waters of whales and other large marine animals, detecting killer whales in a narrow strait where ferries and marine life may collide.
Orcas around the Gulf Islands are endangered, with less than 80 left.
If the tests proceeded as planned, the system could be used to build real-time models of whale location, which would give vessel operators the ability to slow down and maneuver carefully to avoid hitting marine life.
In the oceans increasingly dominated by large freighters, many large species of marine life are threatened with strikes. But those who spend a lot of time near the surface – such as humpback whales and humpback whales – are particularly vulnerable, said Vanessa Pirotta, marine biologist at Sydney's Macquarie University. In a 2019 study, she and her colleagues compared the threat faced by terrestrial animals whose habitats were traversed by highways – car collisions and chemical and noise pollution – with the threat of collision with passing whales. of time near the major maritime routes.
"The ship strike is essentially a killing," she said.
Pirotta praised the Zitterbart system, calling it "a piece of the puzzle" of whaling prevention. "This may not be the complete solution," she added, "but it's a step forward."
Zitterbart acknowledged that the system is designed to complement rather than replace other detection methods. "There is no unified solution for all places and all species," he said. "Everything has to be targeted simply because the animals behave in a very different way. It will be a mix of solutions adapted to the region. "
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