Captains say a mixture of new tech and old-fashioned skills is the best way to keep these majestic sea mammals safe from boat strikes.
Captain Harley Sheffield stood at the bridge door of the Fleming 55 off the Northern California coast when he clocked it: a big firehose of white spray 10 feet to his left. It was a small humpback, and even though Harley was only going eight knots, he knew it was too late to do anything but brace for impact. “His tail was underneath me, under the middle of the boat, and 15 feet from the propellers,” he recalls almost three years later.
The veteran captain has encountered hundreds of humpbacks and gray whales along the North American Pacific coast. But this near miss, in a vessel smaller than the ones he’s used to, spooked him. “I’ve always been aware and waiting for one to come up at the wrong time,” he says. “Usually, the whales are going north-south with the direction of the boat, but this one was weird; it was coming in sideways.”
Orcas have been making international headlines for ramming into boats in the Strait of Gibraltar, sinking five vessels in the last three years. But that’s not how most vessel strikes with whales occur. Since 2020, at least 16 North Atlantic right whales have been killed or injured by ships and boats. So far, no humans have been seriously or fatally injured in these collisions, but there have been close calls: In February 2021, eight anglers made it to an inlet after their 54-foot Jarrett Bay sportfisher struck a juvenile North Atlantic right whale off the coast of St. Augustine, Florida, and sank. The calf was found dead with a fractured skull and prop wounds the next day.
This was particularly devastating because of the several endangered whale species none are as close to extinction as the North Atlantic right whale. There are estimated to be only 370 left on the planet, and of those, only 70 are reproductively active females. Since 2017, North Atlantic right whales have been experiencing what the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) calls “an unusual mortality event,” with more than a fifth of the population believed to be seriously injured, ill or dead. There is some good news: though the total number of North Atlantic right whale deaths in the past two years has not yet been released, documented births from 2023 to 2024 seem to be on the upswing.
Ship strikes and entanglement are the leading causes of North Atlantic right whale deaths. US regulations prohibit approaching or remaining within 1,500 feet of a North Atlantic right whale, and most vessels 65 feet or longer must travel at 10 knots or less in specific locations along the Atlantic Coast at certain times of the year.
In response to mandates in the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act, NOAA proposed a rule in 2022 to expand its 2008 speed restrictions: applying a speed limit of 10 knots to more coastal regions and include most vessels 35 feet to 65 feet. It was a win for conservation groups that accused the government agency of not doing enough to protect the species but received fierce backlash from the yachting and recreational boating community. The blanket rule, they argued, was too broad and lacked sufficient evidence. NOAA nixed the speed restriction expansion this January.
“I’m not too sure how much bureaucratic regulations will help, albeit well-intended,” says Nick Appleberry, a South Florida-based captain. “You can still have a whale strike at 10 knots — safe speed isn’t an exact number.”
A panel of experts, with backgrounds in marine mammal monitoring, spatial risk analysis, marine electronics and telemetry, decided not to wait for NOAA to issue speed restrictions. They joined forces to use technology and monitoring tools to mitigate North Atlantic right whale deaths instead. They called themselves the Whale and Vessel Safety (WAVS) Taskforce and began meeting monthly in 2022. That has continued even after NOAA backed off its speed limits.
“So even without that regulatory driver, we’re still committed to moving forward with this work,” says John DePersenaire, WAVS Taskforce chair and director of government affairs and sustainability for Viking Yacht Company. “As boaters and as an industry, we are very keen on making boating safer and avoiding hitting any objects, regardless if it’s a shipping container, a buoy or a North Atlantic right whale.”
Fortunately, there are more ways to prevent whale collisions than human sight alone. Captains tout the benefits of forward-looking infrared (FLIR) cameras that use thermal imaging to reveal floating debris, jetties and even whales through thick fog and at night. “It’s really a good thing because it can pick up whales,” Captain Harley says. “Even if they’re a mile out in front of you, their blows will light up the screen. It’s pretty fun to watch.”
But water blocks infrared wavelengths. For underwater detection, forward-looking sonar can build real-time 3D maps from the surface to the seafloor up to a half nautical mile ahead of a vessel. The forward-looking sonar company FarSounder currently offers three devices with detection ranging from 1,150 feet at up to 18 knots to 3,200 feet at up to 25 knots.
“We set out to solve the problem of navigation and to tell vessels what is underwater before you get there so you can avoid hitting stuff,” says FarSounder CEO Matthew Zimmerman, who is also a WAVS Taskforce member. “A lot of people are really surprised to find out that we don’t know what’s underwater.”
For many, sonar and whales conjure memories of the calamitous, high-profile beach strandings in the early 2000s. Most notably, 34 pilot whales, two dwarf sperm whales and one newborn minke whale beached themselves and died along North Carolina’s Outer Banks soon after the US Navy deployed powerful sonar during a 2005 training mission. Matthew, however, stresses that the sonar frequencies used in FarSounder devices are not harmful to whales and other marine wildlife.
“Unfortunately, some of the really loud, low-frequency systems that are primarily used for hunting submarines or for exploring for oil and gas under the seabed likely have a negative impact on the marine environment,” he says. “But our systems are not at all like that and are safe for the environment and for whales.”
FarSounder’s technology is forward-looking in more ways than one. Not only does each device log and update its travel history, but it also gives users the option to anonymously share their data with others in the FarSounder fleet who have done the same, contributing to a centralized, continuously evolving map. FarSounder, then, passes on that data to Seabed 2030, a global initiative to map the entire ocean seabed by 2030.
“If the crew sees a whale or floating trash, they can push the observation button in our software and we will log the sighting,” Matthew says. “They can then choose to connect to our cloud service to share that depth data and also to send those observations anonymously to the relevant organizations that care about mapping trash or whale populations.”
There are so few North Atlantic right whales left, but tagging each one with an AIS transponder is out of the question for this species. “That would be extremely helpful since even the smallest boats have AIS capabilities,” John says. “The problem is their blubber is so thick and they rub against each other a lot that they’d just shed the tags, and it can open them up to infection.” Researchers have tried suction cups, but those only stay on for up to a week at most, he says.
For these reasons, AI is emerging as the leading solution for whale tracking. Montreal-based startup Whale Seeker — also a member of the WAVS Taskforce — uses AI to scan satellite and aerial drone imagery, automatically detecting and identifying marine mammals.
“What is going to be the most valuable development — and we’re getting to that point now — is when we have AI classification software annotating what’s coming through the marine radar and FLIR feed and it’s recognizing and creating alerts or classifying within that frame at the millisecond level,” John says. “Operators can keep their eyes on the water but have this AI running their other systems.”
AI is going to be a “game changer,” he says, but for now, he vouches for the low-tech, low-cost benefits of subscribing to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s US Notice to Mariners, which relays timely updates to nautical charts, and regularly checking Whale Alert, a citizen-science app that tracks and verifies whale sightings.
“Technology is going to play a critical role moving forward with the conservation of this species,” John says, “but even non-tech things are really important in the overall conservation strategy for the species.”
Whales are the long-haul truckers of the sea, transporting vital nutrients across ocean basins on their migrations that can range between 5,000 to 12,000 miles a year. They’re also the MVPs of the marine food web; they feed at great depths and release iron-, nitrogen- and phosphorus-rich waste at the ocean surface that fertilizes the phytoplankton, which then absorb carbon dioxide and support the rest of the ocean ecosystem.
Nineteenth century commercial fishermen gave North Atlantic right whales their name, calling them the “right” type of whale to hunt since their carcasses floated to the surface. By the 1890s, they were on the brink of extinction, and have never fully recovered, even though whaling has been outlawed in the US since 1971. More so than other whale species, North Atlantic right whales spend more time socializing and mating at sea level, where their black bodies and lack of a dorsal fin make them hard to spot from ships.
“In most cases, when mariners reported a collision with a whale, they noted that they did not see the whale prior to striking it,” a NOAA Fisheries spokesperson says. “Our data indicates that calves and their mothers are particularly vulnerable.”
For John DePersenaire, it’s crucial to distinguish ships from yachts and smaller recreational boats. Avoiding a bus-sized whale in a 1,000-foot cargo ship is about as difficult as it is dangerous. And thanks to the bow null effect, which creates a quiet zone in front of massive ships, whales are often drawn right into the cross-hairs as they escape disruptive engine sounds.
“These large vessels contribute to 80 percent of the mortality associated with vessel strikes,” John says. “A lot of times they may strike a whale, even a large whale, and not know it at all.”
That’s not the case with recreational boats, where any collision with a whale will be “catastrophic,” he says.