Can a devise like this one save the lives of the endangered blue whales?
These gentle blue giants of the sea and the right whales need protection from being chopped up in the shipping lanes of the world.
Scientists have engineered a high-tech system of submerged listening posts stretching across 55 miles (88 kilometers) of Massachusetts Bay that can detect the sounds of the critically endangered animals.
The network is protecting the whales in the from deadly collisions in the busy shipping lanes that run through Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. When whale sounds are detected, cell phone and satellite technologies relay the information from buoy to shore in nearly real-time, so that ship captains can be warned to slow down and keep a sharp lookout.
Can the same system work to protect the Blue Whales?
These gentle blue giants of the sea and the right whales need protection from being chopped up
in the shipping lanes of the world.
Last week another blue got chopped off the Northern California. She was a 70-foot, adult female blue whale. Probably struck by a ship the blue whale washed ashore. A few hours after an ocean survey vessel reported hitting a whale a few miles away. Then a long and slender, bluish-grey body with a somewhat lighter underbelly was found dead a few miles down the shoreline.
One day will you only see this beautiful blue’s eye on the web?
The eye belongs to a Blue Whale (Balaenoptera musculus), a baleen whale from the Mysticeti group. They average 32.9 metres (108 ft) in length and 172 metric tons (190 short tons) or more in weight, it is the largest animal ever known to have existed.
Like other baleen whales, the Blue whale’s diet consists primarily of small crustaceans known as krill.
Once abundant in nearly all the oceans, intense hunting for forty years around the turn of the 20th century almost drove them to extinction.Other threats to these ancient creatures include
Other threats to these ancient creatures include:
1. becoming trapped or entangled in fishing gear
2. the excessive amount of ocean noise, including sonar, decreases the ability of the whales to hear the vocalizations produced by other pod members.
3. the accumulation of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) chemicals within the whale’s body that come from plastics dissolving in the oceans .
Do you want to see whales, sharks and other ancient animals only in pictures and videos in the future?
In 1966 the international community banned their hunting under most conditions. In 2002, 5,000 to 12,000 Blue Whales have been counted worldwide. Before whaling, the largest population was in the Antarctic, numbering approximately 239,000 (range 202,000 to 311,000). Only 2,000 remain.
Help us put pressure on the shipping and fishing industries to help develop devices that will save these whales and other sea critters from us.
Please write letters to your congressmen and women and insist they support cleaning up the oceans and waterways of the world and protecting the sea creatures.
Do you want to see whales, sharks and other ancient animals only in pictures and videos in the future?
Resources
Excerpts courtesy of news.nationalgeographic.com/blue-whale-washed-ashore
Excerpts courtesy of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/blue_whale
Image 1. http://www.fearofflyinghelp.com/photos/radar.jpg
Image 2. http://www.wdcs.co.uk/media/flash/whalebanner/content_pub_en.html
