Kids: Helping whales by rerouting ships
In a first for the U.S., shipping lanes have been moved to avoid collisions with whales.
EarthSky talked with David Wiley of the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary near Boston Harbor.
Nearly 5,000 ships cross the sanctuary each year – which means lots of ship running into whales.
When boats and whales collide,” Wiley said, “usually the whales are the losers.” They get injured, and sometimes die.
He said, “Our sanctuary is one of the most heavily used areas in the country for large endangered whales. And also it’s extremely heavily used for commercial shipping traffic. So you put those things together, and there’s a recipe for accidents and collisions to occur.”
Wiley used hundreds of thousands of sightings over about 20 years to pin down where and when whales are likely to cross the path of ships.
And in mid-2007, about 15 minutes were added to ship routes through the sanctuary. That reduces the risk of collision between ships and whales in the area by about 81 percent, according to Wiley.
“Our task was to find ways to not limit human activities unnecessarily,” Wiley said, “but limit it in ways that could certainly have a great conservation bang for the dollar. And that’s exactly what we did by moving the shipping lanes. And that move protects endangered finback, humpback, and right whales.”
Wiley said this research into preventing whale strikes can be used beyond the sanctuary near Boston Harbor.
But to really make a differenece to whales, said Wiley, “these types of activities are going to have to occur all up and down the eastern seaboard, not just in this one isolated case.”
David Wiley on saving whales from ship strikes
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