Spotting whales from 240 metres like finding 'a needle in a haystack'


READ MORE

With 460,000 square kilometres of ocean to survey, and only about 450 North Atlantic right whales left in the world, the people trying to spot the endangered giants from airplanes this summer have a very tough assignment.


Jean-François Gosselin, a biologist with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, is co-ordinating the marine mammal aerial surveillance program for DFO and Transport Canada.


So far 27 right whales have been spotted from the skies.


This data is the main tool for managers at the federal departments who make the decisions about closing fishing areas and reducing speed limits in shipping lanes in the continuing effort to protect the whales.


‘We try to keep emotion out of it’


Five planes, some making daily flights, are surveying the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Bay of Fundy, Scotian Shelf and the southern coast of Newfoundland.


Jean-Francois Gosselin, a biologist with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, is co-ordinating the daily flights over the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Bay of Fundy, Scotian Shelf and southern coast of Newfoundland. (CBC)


“All the planes are flying at low levels between 1,500 and 800 feet,” Gosselin said. “The detection of whales is done visually by marine mammal observers that got training before the fishing season opened.”


In addition to the eyeballs of the observers, who are looking for the “V-shaped blows” of right whales, some of the planes also have cameras.


It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack and to make it more efficient we’re trying to concentrate our effort where we expect the whales will be.– Jean-François Gosselin


“The fisheries surveillance planes are equipped with high-power magnification cameras that can help detect the animals,” Gosselin said.


“But they can also take photographs of the animals to identify them to make sure they’re right whales.”


When a North Atlantic right whale is seen, Gosselin and the observers “try to keep the emotion out of it.”


“When you’re in the plane you have to forget these emotions and make sure you’re objective and keeping with the objectives of the work you’re doing,” he said.


“It’s always sad to have an endangered species, but to make the decisions to protect those animals we have to make sure we’re collecting the best information possible to make the best decision you can make.”



Using past data to improve odds



The first North Atlantic right whale of this season was spotted on the Scotian Shelf on May 15, and the first right whale in the Gulf of St. Lawrence was seen May 19.


“We’re looking for animals for which the population has been estimated in 2016 at 458 animals so we’re looking for … one animal per 1,000 square kilometres,” Gosselin said.


Twelve whales have been killed in Canadian waters alone since the beginning of last year, with the blame going to ship strikes or entanglement in fishing gear.


The spotting of 27 whales in the region this year has led to the closure of several fishing areas off northeastern New Brunswick, the latest of which goes into effect on Wednesday,


“As soon as we spot a right whale the information is transmitted to the situation centre of Transport Canada, which then relays the information to the Fisheries and Oceans managers.”


Gosselin said observers are using past data, collected by hydrophones mounted on buoys throughout the Gulf of St. Lawrence and along the Atlantic coast, to help them in their daily search.


Marine observers on board the flights try to spot North Atlantic right whales so decisions can be made to protect the endangered species. (CBC)


“It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack and to make it more efficient we’re trying to concentrate our effort where we expect the whales will be, and to do that we’re looking at areas where whales have been detected in the past.”


The surveillance flights will continue until the whales leave the region, which is usually in November but could be as late as January.


Other projects planned for the summer include placing satellite transmitters on North Atlantic right whales.


Gosselin said that has proven successful for blue whales, but keeping the transmitters on a right whale is much more difficult.


“The problem with right whales is they tend to roll over themselves in social groups and there have been similar instruments deployed on the East Coast and they only last about a couple of weeks.”

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Canadian expected to be aboard Russia's 1st manned space mission since rocket failure

READ MORE The first manned mission to the International Space Station since a Russian rocket failed to launch successfully earlier this month may take off on Dec. 3, space agency Roscosmos said on Wednesday. And the crew is expected to include Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques, Agence France-Press reported. A Russian cosmonaut and U.S. astronaut were forced to abort their mission on Oct. 11 and perform an emergency landing after a launch accident that Roscomos said was caused by a faulty sensor. The accident was the first serious launch problem experienced by a manned Soyuz space mission since 1983, when a crew narrowly escaped before a launch pad explosion. Sergei Krikalyov, a senior Roscosmos official, was quoted by state news agency Tass as saying the next manned launch had been planned for mid-December, but that Russia was trying to bring the date forward so that the ISS is not briefly left without a crew. “The industry is making significant efforts to move the launch t...
Read more

Getting the dope on pot stocks is becoming easier as media groups invest in content: Don Pittis

Image
READ MORE “What’s the buzz? Tell me what’s happening,” goes the ’70s rock anthem. Part of the catchiness of the lyric — from the rock musical Jesus Christ Superstar  — was that in that era the term “buzz” had developed a second spicy meaning. It described the high that people got from smoking cannabis. In the 1970s, the magazine High Times was a brand new title keeping an eye on the illegal but growing business of marijuana pricing and sales. It ran centrefolds of glistening pot plants and of an apartment filled to the windows with what the magazine insisted was an entire ton of cannabis. Now some of Canada’s most staid media voices are looking for ways to go toe to toe with High Times and its U.S. competitors, hoping to profit from Canada’s global head start in legal recreational cannabis. But when it comes to making a killing from spreading the buzz on the cannabis biz, to q...
Read more

Toronto man denies conspiring with Marvel CEO in alleged hate mail scheme

Image
READ MORE A Toronto man accused of conspiring with the head of Marvel Entertainment in a bizarre hate mail campaign against his wealthy former employer has denied any role in the alleged scheme. David Smith, along with Marvel CEO Isaac (Ike) Perlmutter, is the target of a slander lawsuit launched earlier this year by Canadian businessman Harold Peerenboom. Now Smith — a former employee of Peerenboom’s Toronto-based executive search firm, Mandrake Management — has filed a motion to dismiss the U.S. civil suit. It’s the latest development in the years-long legal battle between Peerenboom and Perlmutter, a notoriously reclusive American billionaire and personal friend of U.S. President Donald Trump. The hate mail campaign, which ran   between 2012 to 2015, saw anonymous letters falsely accusing Peerenboom of being a child molester, murderer and anti-Semite...
Read more