Current Event #2

             Andrew Harwood


For this current event, I chose to read "Call of the Whales," by Stephanie Murphy. Last fall a team of researchers put two torpedo-shaped underwater robots in the Gulf of Maine. The purpose of this was “to find whales for us,” said Mark Baumgartner, a biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). The robots had digital acoustic monitoring to listen for specific whale calls and to identify which one was which. The labor-intensive work of surveying for whales is usually completed on an airplane or on a nearby ship. Also, during the rough times at sea it is very hard for humans to study the whales extensively. These gliders enable us humans to study the whales much more extensively. Knowing where right whales are helps you manage interactions between them. It can also tell us where the most endangered ones are and where they are migrating to. One of these whales is the North Atlantic Right Whale, and extremely endangered whale that has been migrating off the coast of Maine for quite some time. Now, the gliders themselves have been used for about a decade now. "The vehicles move up, down, and laterally in a sawtooth pattern through the water by changing their buoyancy and using their short wings to provide lift," says Murphy. The gliders are battery powered and are extremely quiet. One would think because they do not want to startle any whales. The gliders take data from the belly of it and can send it by GPS to the nearby station. It is quite spectacular technology. 

I believe that this article explains how this technology can benefit the whales. Specifically, we as humans may not benefit but the whale population definitely will. With the technology of the new gliders, scientists are now able to study these whales much more extensively. This will in turn help them track the whales during the rough season, where tracking seems to be nearly impossible.

I really enjoyed this article for several reasons. I feel that this article provides the reader with a better understanding of whales and their migration. Throughout the article, the reader learned how this new glider works.  I think the article written by Stephanie Murphy teaches us about the latest technology we have today as well. Although, I feel as though I did not learn enough about the actual calls of the whales. Finally, I wish we could learn how to decipher specific calls to see what the mean. Overall, I did really like the article and I would recommend it to any enthusiastic marine biologist. 

https://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/call-of-the-whales