Warning system keeps whales all right

 September 30, 2010 (Doug Fraser). PROVINCETOWN — The Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary display at the Cape Cod National Seashore’s Province Lands Visitor Center is surprisingly modest, with computerized charts and an accompanying video.

Those who stop by to see it are looking into a portal that reveals how private industry, scientists, researchers and the government can work together to benefit the environment — in this case, to prevent ships from hitting right whales.

The new warning system is the first in the world to show, in real time, the general presence of endangered whales as well as ships in one of the mammals’ most populous gathering spots.

Scientist and sanctuary research coordinator David Wiley last year garnered the U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal, the agency’s top honor, for his role in relocating busy international shipping lanes around the Outer Cape to minimize whale strikes and for the sanctuary project publicized in the Province Lands exhibit.

The display shows shipping lanes that bend around the Cape and make a beeline for Boston, cutting through the heart of the sanctuary. Ships make about 3,400 trips across the sanctuary each year. A brief video with whales, ships and satellites helps explain graphics on an adjacent chart showing the ships moving in and out of Boston and the right whales that also might be in the area.

In a telephone interview this week, Wiley recalled that in 2007, the hard-won agreement with the international shipping industry that shifted shipping lanes to protect whales was suddenly jeopardized when Excelerate Energy and Suez Energy decided to locate two deepwater liquefied natural gas “ports” close to the sanctuary and the reconfigured marine highway.

LNG ships are among the fastest and largest vessels afloat, he explained. In the case of whales, it is speed that kills. Slowing vessels by just a few knots dramatically increases the whales’ chances of surviving or avoiding a collision.

But first you have to know where they are.

As part of an agreement to lessen their potential impact on whales, the gas companies funded an automatic alert system that includes the placement of 10 acoustic buoys in the shipping lanes that run through the sanctuary. Computers in the buoys are programmed to recognize a distinctive sequence of sounds that the right whales use to signal the desire to gather. These “up” calls do not travel farther than five miles, which means the whales are relatively close to the buoys.

Once the computers identify the pattern, they send a recording via satellite to Cornell University, where experts verify it as a right whale call. Biotechnicians then alert LNG tankers in the shipping lanes.

For a large ship moving at nearly 18 knots that cannot turn or slow down easily, advance notice that such a gathering of the world’s most endangered whales is taking place is critical. Federal laws require ships to reduce their speed to no more than 10 knots and to post lookouts when whales are nearby.

What Wiley and others at the sanctuary are hoping to do is leverage this system into one that will alert all ships in the area. Thanks to a federal law that requires all vessels over 300 tons, or that carry more than 150 passengers, to use a device that broadcasts a signal containing its location, identification and other information at two-second intervals, scientists can pinpoint every large vessel operating close to shore and close to whales.

Through this onboard system, they can reach the bridge of every vessel with an e-mail alert. They also use Internet and radio broadcasts.

Wiley is taking it a step further, distributing iPads to 10 vessels that regularly dock in Boston. These are capable of displaying alerts instantly. If the feedback from the captains of these vessels is positive, the program could be expanded.

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