July 12, 2021 — A lot of people want to know where right whales are and where they are going. As the state’s lobster fishery faces dramatic changes to preserve the species, regulators, fishermen and conservationists all want to know the paths the critically endangered species take up and down the east coast.
“We’re constantly being asked ‘Where did you get detections?’” said Genevieve Davis, a research biologist working in passive acoustic research at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Mass.
To help visualize the paths of right whales, as well as several other species of whale, Davis and other researchers created a mapping tool based on data from underwater listening devices that have picked up the sounds of whales going all the way back to 2004.
The map includes data from several different listening devices, known as hydrophones, operated from platforms such as bottom-mounted moorings, surface buoys, Slocum gliders and towed hydrophone arrays. It also brought together data from several different studies and researchers and compiled them into a single, navigable tool.