Protecting whales from ship strikes

To begin this morning, David Pogue with a whale of a story. So we're on the beach at Half Moon Bay and we see this massive thing. In the summer of 2022, I was walking on a California beach when I saw the strangest thing approaching on the waves. When it struck the shore and deflated, I knew it was a dead whale. But it wasn't just any whale. When I knew this whale, I'm like, oh. And it just hit my heart because Fran is, at the time, she was the most well-known whale in our entire database. Ted Sheesman is the creator of HappyWhale.com, a database of whale sightings. It includes over 850 pictures of Fran the humpback whale, identified by her tail markings. She had a big personality. She was playful around whale-watch boat. You know, you'd hear on the radio, hey, Fran's over here. Oh, cool. You know, let's go hang out with Fran. Oh, look at Fran lying on his side. Fran, what's up? Fran had a baby known as Aria. There's mom and calf. Cute little Fran and Aria. So what happened to her? Mother is killed and there's this orphan. We didn't know if the calf could survive. I didn't think so. I didn't think it was very likely. Fran died from a collision with one of the cruise ships and container ships that make more than 200 million trips a year. Number one and number two threats to whales are ship strikes and entanglements in fishing gear. Sean Hastings is a policy manager for NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Nobody knows exactly how many whales are ship strike victims every year because most of them sink after they're hit. But blue whales, humpbacks and fin whales are on the endangered list and the northern right whale is just about extinct. Only about 350 of them are left on Earth. That's why every whale counts, so that we can bring their populations back and help them recover. The good news is that the shipping companies themselves say they care. There's no one in our industry that wants to see any one of these magnificent creatures harmed or killed by anything we do. This is one of your smaller ships? This is one of the smaller ships, yeah. Bud Darr is the policy director for the world's largest shipping company, MSC. Are your knees getting tired yet? Mine are. They will. Your thighs will feel like you skied a double black diamond. He wanted to demonstrate why ship captains can't just steer clear of whales. And we're looking forward to the bow here? You are, yeah. Okay, now I get why the captain cannot see a whale. It's hundreds of feet away. It is, and very difficult to see them in close proximity. And even if you could spot a whale ahead, there's not much you could do about it. You know, the ship is an extremely large object. It's moving very fast and it's noisy. I mean, you may not know if there was impact with the whale at all. If there was, unfortunately, I mean, you've had whales that have remained on a bulbous bow of a ship when it's come in. One obvious solution, move the shipping routes. Off of Sri Lanka, we realized if we could just move where we operate, about 15 miles further offshore from where that was, you could reduce the risk by 95% or more. But the approach channels to most ports don't have the room for rerouting. So the second best idea is to slow the ships down from about 18 miles an hour to 12. By slowing ships down, it gives the whales more opportunity to get out of the way. And in the event that they are struck, there's a higher likelihood of survival ship. This is much akin to having a slow speed zone around a school. There's an emissions payoff for the ports too. Slower ships emit less air pollution and reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they emit out of their stacks. But rerouting and slowing down both require a key piece of data for the ship captains. Are there whales ahead? And that's where technology comes in. So this is called a Slocum glider. It's an autonomous vehicle. At the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, marine ecologist Mark Baumgartner's lab operates a fleet of gliders like this one. They fly beneath the waves listening for whale song. Every two hours, the vehicle comes to the surface, uses the antenna to send all that information home to a computer in my lab. He's also deploying an array of these microphone buoys. The whole point of all these machines is to listen for this. And they're likely transmitting information to either other males or females to say how big I am, how fit I am. Maybe you'd like, we'd like to get a drink later, right? All the things that men do to attract women is encoded in that song. Ship captains receive word of the whale locations from the buoys and gliders so they can slow down. But on the West Coast, slowing down is voluntary. At Whalesafe.com, you can see the paths of the ships, the locations of the whales, and letter grades for shipping company compliance. About 30% of them still plow ahead full speed, ignoring the warnings. MSC's Bud Darr can tell you why. And there is some impact on the schedule. There is some impact on costs that probably comes with that. And that takes a lot of sophistication and planning to mitigate that and get that right. But most of these solutions are manageable. Compliance is also voluntary on most of the East Coast, so ships continue to kill northern right whales. NOAA has proposed a regulation that would make the slowdowns mandatory in more areas. Mark Baumgartner is cautiously optimistic. If I didn't have a little bit of hope, I'd just go home and curl up in a ball and be done with it. So it helps keep me going. Well, maybe this will cheer him up. Remember Aria, Fran's baby whale? Whale tracker Ted Cheeseman has some news. I got a phone call from a naturalist and he says, Hey, Ted, I think I've seen Aria just now. Can you confirm this? And then he texts me a photo. I confirmed. I was like, yes. I'm so excited. Aria's alive. You know, hopefully in a few years time, she'll bring a calf here. And if we protect them from ship strike, if we protect them from entanglements, if we continue to protect the healthy ocean, you know, happily ever after, I hope.