Could an underwater microphone in Pacific Ocean hold the key to protecting whales?

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Sitting 280 feet below water on the floor of the Pacific Ocean just 26 miles from the Golden Gate Bridge, a credit-card-sized underwater microphone represents the latest attempt to keep Earth’s largest mammals safe from human-caused destruction.

The device, called a hydrophone, listens to the calls among blue, humpback and fin whales as they swim and feed off the Northern California coast. Every two hours, it reveals their identities and locations via data transmitted by a buoy on the surface.

Back on shore, the locations of whale calls and sightings are superimposed over the routes of ships, revealing the ocean’s potentially deadly intersections.

The technology, dubbed Whale Safe, alerts the public – and, as important, shipping companies – to whale locations, helping vessels avoid collisions while traveling near busy ports. Last month, Whale Safe launched in San Francisco after a two-year pilot program in the Santa Barbara Channel, which many ships travel through on their way to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

The effort seeks to stem the loss of whales due to ship collisions. There were 70 fatal collisions recorded off the California coast from 2007 to 2020, 49 of them involving endangered or threatened species, according to data in the 2021-22 ship strike report from the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

In addition to locating the beloved marine mammals, Whale Safe evaluates whether vessels are adhering to a recommended slower speed of 10 knots while traveling through whale habitats.

This latest effort to reduce fatal whale-ship collisions is a collaboration among The Marine Mammal Center in Marin County, the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory in Santa Barbara and federal agencies.

Callie Steffen, the lead project scientist at the Benioff lab, said that linking whale and ship locations is key for the public to appreciate the problem and push for solutions.

“We don’t often think about … what was the ship’s behavior or speed when they’re coming through whale habitat carrying my iPhone” and other consumer goods shipped from China and elsewhere, Steffen said.

The ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland handled about 35% of all U.S. imports in 2020, according to the 2021-22 ship strike report. In 2020, 1,921 large container ships visited the Oakland port.

So far this year, five whales have died from ship collisions off the San Francisco coast. One was Monterey Bay’s famed and widely photographed humpback whale Fran, who washed ashore on a Half Moon Bay beach with a broken neck in August. Whale researcher Ted Cheeseman said he was devastated when he identified the carcass as Fran; he had personally tracked her movements for seven of her 17 years.

But the death toll is likely far greater. According to Steffen, for every one whale found on a beach, roughly 10 whales sink to the ocean floor.

While no mandatory speed reduction is currently proposed for the West Coast, NOAA superintendent Brown said she welcomes the public into the conversation about whale-ship collisions.

“They can let industry know it’s important to them,” Brown said. “And that’s very powerful.”