Ocean 'highway' rerouted for right whales

Shipping lanes near Boston's busy port take a detour to try to prevent ship-whale collisions.

from the July 9, 2007 edition

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Those data indicate that the modest shift in shipping lane channels will cut the risk of deadly collisions for right whales by 58 percent, Wiley says.

Of course, time is money and the new routes add 3.75 miles to the overall distance and between 10 and 22 minutes to each one-way trip into Boston Harbor. Still, the Massachusetts Port Authority and the shipping industry, as well as the NOAA and other federal agencies, decided the detour is worth it.

"We have extensively studied the problem and whale behavior and have devised this measure as a much safer environment for ships and whales, while at the same time being the least disruptive to the economy," said Conrad Lautenbacher, Department of Commerce undersecretary for oceans and atmosphere, in a statement.

The move isn't without precedent. One similar lane change was made in Canada near the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia a few years ago to benefit the right whale.

Right whales travel south and winter off the coasts of Georgia and Florida, where females and calves feed. During their migration up and down the East Coast, they travel in shipping lanes. If whale concentrations can be mapped, similar lane-shift strategies might be adopted outside ports like New York; Baltimore; Charleston, S.C.; or Jacksonville, Fla.

Similar efforts could be made to help the Pacific right whale on the West Coast. The key problem, Wiley and others say, is that the data for these areas is not as extensive.

"The next important place is to focus on is the Great South Channel off Nantucket," Wiley says. "The applicability of this approach is quite broad. It's all the same thing: Anything we can do to reduce the amount of time of ships and whales in close proximity to one another, the better off you are."

New opportunities for gathering data are afoot, he says. As part of the recent approval to install new liquefied-natural-gas terminals just outside the Stellwagen sanctuary, the companies agreed to pay to deploy acoustic buoys that will help identify and locate right whales – and quickly relay their positions to approaching tankers – helping avoid collision.

That approach might also be applied to other species and at other ports, Wiley says.

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