NASA Tool To Protect Endangered Blue Whales
WASHINGTON: The US space agency is set to launch a new online tool to protect endangered blue whales.
The WhaleWatch tool, set to be released later this year by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), will help decrease whale mortality due to collisions with shipping and fishing gear.
About a fourth of the roughly 12,000 blue whales in the world today live in the Pacific Ocean. They are the biggest animal to have ever lived on Earth, over 100 feet long, over 100 tonnes in weight and their colour a sort of iridescent blue.
"When you see them rising to the surface, you start seeing this glimmer that keeps getting bigger and bigger. They are just amazing," said Bruce Mate, director of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University in a statement.
Mate, who has been tagging blue whales since 1979, is part of a team that has created the new WhaleWatch tool. The tool will be used to address conflicts between humans and whales based on his tag data of four whale species and satellite observations from NASA and other agencies.
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