New tools for finding the right whales

North Atlantic right whales, hunted to extinction by the end of the 19th century, return to the Georgia Bight for calving. Marine scientists search the large ocean sector stretching from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina to Cape Canaveral, Florida to document the number of new calves, which remains below average. Franklin faculty at the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography are using a new technology to help track conservation and rebuilding of the North Atlantic right whale population:

Whale surveys like this are critical to identifying and cataloging every right whale calf that's born, important work because these are some of the most endangered whales in the world. Just about 370 North Atlantic right whales remain.

But the surveys in the sky and on the water are also imperfect, so scientists are ramping up the effort to track the whales in other ways — especially in the Southeast, where the whales migrate to give birth this time of year.

"Unfortunately, the weather in December, January, February, doesn't always let flights happen," said Catherine Edwards, a researcher at the University of Georgia's Skidaway Institute of Oceanography. So she and her team are using tools to listen for whales underwater, which can happen no matter the weather or time of day.

"The biggest success we had from last year is we have the very first confirmed passive acoustic detection of right whales south of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina," Edwards said.

Passive acoustic detection means supersensitive microphones floating around underwater, listening for whale sounds. Similar technology is used extensively in the north, but the shallower water off the southeastern U.S. makes it more difficult in the whales' calving grounds.

There used to be thousands of these whales. But the 19th century whaling industry prized them as the "right whale to hunt" because they're slow, and swim near the surface. By the time hunting of right whales was banned in the 1930s, there were only about 100 or fewer left. They bounced back to nearly 500 by 2010, but now they're back down to about 370 whales.

"We're at the point where the loss of a couple of animals could be the difference between recovery and extinction," said University of South Carolina professor Erin Meyer-Gutbrod, who's working with Edwards to improve acoustic tracking in the South.

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Image: A Teledyne G3 Slocum Glider tries to detect whale sounds off the coast of Georgia. UGA Skidaway Institute doctoral student Frank McQuarrie is taking it out of the water. Photo courtesy of Catherine Edwards Lab/SKidaway Institute