Overview:
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is seeking state-of-the-art solutions enabling the detection and avoidance of North Atlantic right whales, allowing vessels to take action and avoid collision.
Background:
North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) are endangered marine mammals found along the East Coast of the United States and Canada. Despite international efforts to protect the whales from entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with vessels, the species remains at risk of extinction, with approximately 360 remaining.
Additional efforts to protect North Atlantic right whales include detection technologies that may enable vessels to slow down / change course/stop and reduce vessel strike risk.
Solutions will:
- Be on-board or off-board technologies with capacity to accurately communicate the location of a whale to vessel operators at appropriate temporal and spatial scales.
- Provide real-time detection data to vessels with enough time for vessels to react.
- Not harm the whales, other marine life, or their habitat.
Possible Solution Areas:
- Drones
- Predictive Modelling
- Visual monitoring
- Infra-red thermal monitoring
- Radar
- AI data analysis
- Passive acoustic monitoring (less desired, as whales do not vocalize all the time)
Related TechNeeds:
Seeking: Real-Time Whale Detection & Monitoring Technologies
Exploring: Buoyless Underwater Object Location Marking
Seeking: Scent Detection of Invasive Dreissenid Mussel Veligers
Image by Michael Blum on Unsplash
