Oceanographers and marine biologists are studying the many threats facing endangered whale populations, including noise pollution, fishing industry practices, and chemical pollution. These experts are working to implement solutions such as detecting whales with acoustic monitoring buoys to divert ship traffic, modifying fishing gear, and studying whale movements after oil spills to understand environmental impacts. By protecting whale habitats and populations, oceanographers help ensure the health of both ocean ecosystems and human communities.

1. Flores 1
There is no way of knowing what may be happening in the ocean. On the surface
it looks calm, but underneath the surface sharks and killer whales are swimming. This is
why people like oceanography; they want to explore the unseen deep ocean. They want
to know what kinds of animals live in the ocean including animals that people have never
seen before. Oceanographers specialize in working on equipment used to study the
ocean. Oceanography contains a wide range of jobs including engineers, marine
biologists and zoologists. These scientists study ocean life like the whales and dolphins.
Their research is important because the oceans and the sea life that lives there face many
issues. Today there is a big issue for oceanographers and marine biologists which is the
endangerment of whales because the whales are being killed by noise pollution in the
ocean, by the fishing industry, by the effect of chemical pollution and climate change.
Whales are endangered for many reasons. One of these is noise pollution. Noise
pollution is in the ocean and comes from shipping, seismic exploration, and sonar. This
noise confuses the whales’ sense of direction and causes them to beach themselves which
can kill them because “whales rely on hearing” (National). Oceanographers are involved
in solutions to this problem. They pushed the U.S Congress to include whales in the
Endangered Species Act, which has laws to protect whales from practices. Also, they are
asking the U.S. Navy and the shipping industry to change the way they use sonar. They
provide hotlines and website so that people can report beached whales.
Another reason why whales are in danger is because of fisheries and ship strikes
and fishing gear. That is a “great threat to whales with about 300,000 whales worldwide
killed in commercial fishing net every year” (national). “To reduce the number of human

2. induced injuries to the right whales, the Endangered Species Act requires that an early warning
system be developed which will alert marine fishermen when whales get trapped in their nets”
(Fegley). This law also says that fishermen in Maine and other states with a lot of whales have
to fix their fishing gear to help reduce right whale entanglements” (Fegley).
Whales also get killed in collisions with ships. It is the main cause of death to whales
(Fegley). “The right whale is particularly susceptible to ship strikes because of its habit of resting
near the surface” (Fegley). Ship captains have to be really careful about how they move their
ships when they are near to these animals, because one of the major threats to the populations
in such urbanized waters is ship strike. These are solution to help save right whales. There is a
system to detect right whales in Massachusetts. Listening buoy in the shipping lanes detect
whales and then call the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The lab verifies the detection and warns
ships in the area. “The network uses 13 auto-detection buoys”. The buoys have a five mile
listening radius. “If ship collisions can be prevented, we are going to save the remaining
whales.” There may be only about 345 right whales left. For example A whale is swimming near
the shipping lanes, occasionally making "up-calls" to stay in touch with other whales in the area.
Captains of large, fast-moving ships often can't see them in time to avoid collisions. New auto-
detection buoys installed in some shipping lanes monitor the water for right whale calls 24
hours per day. Calls from whales within 5 nautical miles are loud enough to be recorded on the
buoy’s hydrophone, mounted 60 to 120 feet beneath the surface. All day every day, a computer
on each auto-detection buoy analyzes sounds as they arrive. Whales have deep voices, so the
software focuses on sounds between 50 and 350 Hertz--roughly spanning the notes on the left-
hand half of a piano keyboard. The first step is to separate discrete sounds from background

3. Flores 3
noise, a computing task that’s similar to recognizing an object in a cluttered photograph. Before
scientists at the Bioacoustics Research Program invented auto-detection buoys; they had
another tool for studying whale sounds: the marine autonomous recording unit, or “pop-up,”
developed in the late 1990s. Whereas auto-detection buoys quickly analyze sounds looking for
a single type of call, pop-ups listen for months at a time, recording everything they hear for a
more thorough analysis. The duplicate recordings are each marked with a precise time-stamp,
allowing researchers to calculate where whales were when they called. The information helps
them learn about how right whales behave--something we still know little about. The precision
afforded by the arrays and their continuous coverage also help in studies of the noise levels in
Massachusetts Bay, including noise associated with construction and operation of the gas
terminal.(right whales).“So by putting these receivers out and listening to the songs, knowing
when they're here, we can actually do things to redirect ship traffic, so to reduce the mortality of
these great whales. That's right, because they communicate with each other through sound, the
sound of the ships, even things like dredging. We're talking about putting offshore wind power
right here in New York waters. All these things could have potential problems in terms of
allowing for these whales to communicate, which is important for their social structure (science
Friday).
Finally, chemical pollution is another reason why species of whales are in danger. For
example, petroleum and the toxic dispersants used to break up oil spills are harmful to whales.
After the BP oil spill, “massive amounts of dispersant were distributed into the Gulf of Mexico”
to break up the millions of gallons of oil spilled from the underwater well. There was a lot of
hope that the dispersants would assist in the removal of the toxic crude, but during testing, the

4. dispersants only removed a little bit of oil. The oil will hurt the whales because most of the time
they eat things that are infected with the oil. And sometimes the oil goes through their blowhole
when they surface or the fumes have a big effect on them. The dispersant will also have negative
effects on the whales. The baby whales may not develop right because the krill they eat is toxic.
“After the oil spill from the Exxon Valdez disaster, some populations of killer whales were
reduced by as much as 40 percent, according to a 2008 study led by marine biologist Craig
Matkin of the north gulf oceanic society in Alaska.” “Even now, that killer whale population has
yet to recover and will likely go extinct in a few decades,” Matkin said. “We lost so many
females out of that group that they couldn't catch up again. They still haven't caught up"(Ker).
Oceanographer have put “electronic ear” in the Gulf of Mexico to keep trackOf sperm whales,
giving scientist ideas about their movements, population numbers and how they are doing in the
gulf since the oil spill (Jeanna). Some good news is that it looks like the sperm whales population
left the oily part of the Gulf of Mexico and may not get hurt by the oil. Sperm whales left after
gulf oil spill. “Sperm whales showed good sense after the deep water horizon oil spill, acoustic
surveys show” (Hanlo).
Oceanographer and marine biologist are studying the endangerment of whales because
the whales are being killed by noise pollution in the ocean, by the fishing industry, and by the
effects of chemical pollution. These experts are helping to save whales. Saving whales is good
for the human population too. For example, humans eat some of the fishes that whales eat too,
and if the fish is contaminated by oil and chemicals, then people are going to get sick just like the
whales. So what is good for whales is good for people!

5. Flores 5