French biologist Michel André, discovered that some whales have defects and traumas within their inner ears. This is in part due to excessive noise generated by commercial ship traffic and sonar applications. These traumas disable their low frequency hearing and thus unable them to hear approaching ships which results in collisions that cause both human and whale loss of life. In layman’s terms we got deaf whales ramming ships, people! This gets a little weird but to make a long story short (yeah right) Michel in collaboration with a folk drummer from Senegal isolated distinct patterns in whale communication (deep bong hit here) and incorporated it into a passive whale detection system that not only detects clicks unique to whales but also ambient echoes from silent whales. Michel André and his company Sons de Mar are currently looking for funding to implement a global WACS (Whale Anti-Collision System) which hinges on humanity giving a rats ass about a bunch of whales. Good luck Michel.
Greetings,
My name is Yasuo Fukuda, and I represent a whaling… that is to say a humanitarian ship Chimpo Maru. We have been following your developments closely. We believe it can have broad applications in the whaling… I mean in the happy and humanitarian whale helping industry. Will the WACS system be globally accessible by all whaling… errr happy whale helping ships? Can your system estimate the size, species and blubber content of the hapless… errr happy whale that needs help and should not be hunted into oblivion in accordance to certain savage beliefs?
All jokes aside there are way too many whales dying in this fashion. You mention hanging our hat on humanity “giving a rats ass” – I agree and sadly feel that humanity sucks with stuff like this. We are worse than locusts!
No way all of the ocean liners are going to remove their sonar. Assuming that is what is hurting the whales.
I do not think the OP is being cynical, just realistic. Thank you for bringing this to light. Looks like this project is trying to raise funds to create a system that works. They are not trying to remove sonars, they are being realistic. Good Luck to them!
This is important. I really wish them success.
Great idea, good luck getting funding.