New England Aquarium partners
with local firm
Project could help work to save
endangered right whales
Associated Press in Boston
Sun 5 Jan
2020 18.40 GMT
An aquarium and an engineering
firm in Massachusetts are working on a project to better protect whales –
by monitoring them from space.
The New England Aquarium, based
in Boston, and Draper, a firm based in nearby Cambridge, say new and
higher-tech solutions are needed in order to protect whales from extinction. So
they are using data from sources such as satellites, sonar and radar to keep a
closer eye on how many whales are in the ocean.
A project involving complex data
and surveillance has an easy to understand name: Counting Whales From
Space. But John Irvine, chief scientist for data analytics at Draper, said that
was the only simple thing about the project.
“If whales are moving out of one area and into
another,” Irving said, “what’s the reason for that? Is it due to ocean warming?
Is it changes in commercial shipping lanes? These are all questions we’ll be
able to start answering once we have the data.”
The work will involve gathering
data from sources ranging from European space agencies to amateur radio
operators, in order to create a probability map of where in the ocean the
whales might be, Irvine said. Conservation groups will then be able to monitor
whales and their movements, he said.
The aquarium and Draper have
committed a combined $1m to the project, which is expected to develop over
several years.
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