Robotic buoys developed to keep Atlantic right whales safe

Aldridge and Peter de Menocal, WHOI president and director, with a CMA CGM branded DMON buoy. The robotic buoys project aims to protect a vanishing whale from lethal collisions with ships. — JAYNE DOUCETTE/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

A Cape Cod science center and one of the world’s largest shipping businesses are collaborating on a project to use robotic buoys to protect a vanishing whale from lethal collisions with ships.

A lab at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution developed the technology, which uses buoys and underwater gliders to record whale sounds in near real time. The robotic recorders give scientists, mariners and the public an idea of the location of rare North Atlantic right whales, said Mark Baumgartner, a marine ecologist with Woods Hole whose lab also operates the buoys.