New Buoys Deployed to Listen for Endangered White Whales Off Massachusetts Coast
Thanks to two new buoys deployed in the water, researchers are carefully listening for the sounds of endangered North Atlantic right whales off the coast of Massachusetts.
Last month, the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution dropped the buoys into the waters of Cape Cod Bay and off Cape Ann. These buoys make up a larger collective of East Coast buoys that state officials said would “listen for, detect, classify, and report vocalizations of large whales in near real-time.”
“Within a few hours of the buoys being in the water, they were already picking up detections, including vocalizations of right whales in Cape Cod Bay,” said Erin Burke, the protected species program manager with Marine Fisheries, in a statement shared with CBS News Boston.
Since being deployed, the buoys have transmitted data that has detected a right whale every day since Feb. 23. The Cape Ann buoy has detected sounds from fin whales and recorded possible detections of humpback and right whales.
Data from the buoys is transmitted to shore every two hours. This information helps researchers make decisions about fishing restrictions, boat speed limits, and other conservation strategies.
Researchers estimate only 370 right whales are left in the world. Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Tom O’Shea said that two-thirds of them visit Cape Cod Bay annually. Researchers in a plane spotted the season’s first right whale mother and calf in Cape Cod Bay on March 11, five miles west of Wellfleet.
“While incredible progress has been made, human impacts and climate change continue to threaten the survival of this species,” O’Shea said in a statement. “Strong partnerships give this species the best chance of recovery.”
