Why Don't Right Whales Respond to the Noise of an Oncoming Vessel?
Right whales seem to be able to evade slow, small vessels, but appear to be oblivious to large ships that too often strike and kill them.
AbstractPeter Tyack's lab has been studying factors affecting the ability of North Atlantic Right Whales to avoid lethal collisions with vesselsa key threat to the population's recovery. Experiments have shown that right whales can very precisely detect and locate sounds, yet the whales fail to respond to the noise of approaching vessels. In subsequent experiments, the researchers tested alarm stimuli designed to alert whales of danger and found that 5 of 6 whales responded to the alarms by surfacing quickly and swimming rapidly at the surface.
Should ships be equipped with alarms to alert right whales? The whales' strong response to the alarm raises more questions than it answers for policy makers seeking to reduce whale-vessel collisions. By swimming to the surface, right whales actually increase their risk of collision with vessels. Future research by Tyack's group aims to evaluate whether alarm stimuli--in concert with other strategies perhapscould help reduce the risk of vessel collisions.