Fran washed up on the south coast of San Francisco in August. A broken neck is most likely the result of being hit by a ship.
Four whales have been killed by ships near San Francisco this year, up from two in the previous year. As whale carcasses sink to the sea floor, the true death toll may be much higher.
They are trying to eliminate that number. Whale Safe, an A.I.-powered detection system, began operating on Wednesday. When whales are near, it wants to warn large ships.
The great white shark hunting grounds of the Farallon Islands are about 25 miles from the Golden Gate. On a boat close by called the Nova, Douglas McCauley, director of the Benioff Ocean Initiative at the University of California, Santa Barbara, jumped into the brine to give the buoy some T.L.C. before its big day. The buoy is attached to an underwater microphone.
More than 80 whales are killed by ships on the West Coast each year. The problems created by thousands of massive ships are expected to only get worse with increasing global marine traffic. Climate change is placing whales in harm's way more often due to the fact that the whales' food is closer to shore.
The Whale Safe project was developed with funding from the Benioffs. Since 2020, Whale Safe has been operating in the Santa Barbara Channel, providing near-real-time data on the presence of whales and sending out notifications to everyone who signs up. If there are lots of whales in the area, the hope is that the captains will shift course or slow their approach to the port, which could make fatal accidents less likely.
Maria Brown said that the near-real-time aspect of Whale Safe's alerts and being able to have an idea of where whales are 24 hours a day is really unique.
There were no recorded whale-ship interactions in the Santa Barbara Channel in the first year of Whale Safe.
During whale season, which runs from May to November off California, Whale Safe uses publicly available location data transmitted by ships to determine if they slow down to 10 knots. Shipping companies are assigned a letter grade by Whale Safe.
Maersk, one of the world's largest shipping companies, earned a "B" for slowing down more than 80% of the time. The ships operated by Matson slowed only 16 percent of the time.
The company has always instructed its ships to participate in the voluntary speed reduction programs. The majority of our vessels have averaged less than 12 knots.
Dr. McCauley used a kitchen scrubber and a plastic knife to clean the buoy on Monday. The underwater microphone was attached to a rubber-clad cable beneath his flippers and was used to listen for whales at the bottom of the ocean. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts developed a high-tech buoy that is being used to listen for North Atlantic Right whales along the East Coast.
The buoy listens for and identifies the songs of blue, fin and humpback whales, and beams its findings to a satellite, as well as a mathematical model that predicts where blue whales are most likely to be.
These data sources are integrated into Whale Safe's platform to alert ships if they encounter whales.
Before the Santa Barbara launch, 46 percent of vessels slowed down in the Southern California voluntary speed reduction zones, and the percentage has risen to 60 percent in the next four years. The Blue Whales Blue Skies program that pays shipping companies that slow down for whales is one of the reasons for the increases.
For the last three years, the rate of cooperation with the speed limits has hovered around 62 percent, and the hope is that Whale Safe can help get them higher.
Ms. Brown wants industry to rise to the occasion. If they can't do that, our council wants them to make the speed limits mandatory like they are on the East Coast.
The response from shipping companies has been encouraging, with some of the world's largest outfits asking for more information about the good or bad grade they received.
The world's third largest container shipping company created an automated system to distribute Whale Safe's warnings to captains near the Santa Barbara Channel.
The team at Whale Safe is working with the world's largest ship builder to bring the system's data into the navigation systems of new ships.
The goal is to reduce whale deaths from ship strikes to zero in the places where Whale Safe is operating. All areas of whale concern in the United States and Canada should be monitored by Whale Safe.
The horizon was erased by fog as the Nova drove away from the buoy. There were whale spouts and leaping sea lions when the fog broke. The boat cut its engines, and Dr. McCauley whipped out a camera with a long lens to try to identify some of the whales.
The air on the plane took on the smell of whale breath as people marveled at the wildness on display. The radio crackled that the Nova needed to leave the shipping lane because a large vessel was approaching. The scientists told the big ship it needed to be warned that whales had been seen.
He couldn't help but think of Fran when he was framing up the feeding whales for his pictures.
He said that the person should have been her.
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