Global News - April 2008

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Network of buoys 'will help protect rare whales'

Tue 29 April 2008 14:00 UK — North America,Marine Wildlife

A network of buoys could help endangered North Atlantic right whales avoid potentially fatal collisions with ships off the coast of the US.

The new ten-buoy Right Whale Listening Network was developed by researchers at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and works by detecting the mammals' distinctive calls.

This information is then transmitted to a public website and a marine warning system which means that ships can avoid the animals.

"For the first time, we can go online and hear up-to-the-minute voices of calling whales, and see where those whales are in the ocean off Boston and Cape Cod," explained Christopher Clark, director of the bioacoustics research program at the Lab of Ornithology.

"Better yet, those calls immediately get put to use in the form of timely warnings to ship captains."

It is believed that fewer than 400 North Atlantic right whales survive in the wild and that collisions with ships are currently a leading cause of death for the remaining animals.

"Scientific studies show that even the deaths of one or two breeding females each year could lead to the population's extinction," Mr Clark explained.

"If all ships slow down for whales, it could make a real difference."

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