[SEMCO] "Oceans Alive" Kick Off April 17

Tue Apr 10 09:15:40 EDT 2007

For more information, contact:                                        
For immediate release:  April 10, 2007
Kate Madin, Sea Grant Educator
(508) 289-3639
kmadin at whoi.edu

"Oceans Alive" Speaker Will Discuss Ways Humans and Whales Can Share 
Waterways

Join Dr. David Wiley, Research Coordinator at the Stellwagen Bank 
National Marine Sanctuary, to hear about exciting current and coming 
research on endangered whales in Massachusetts Bay and how the 
Stellwagen Sanctuary is developing ways to let people and whales share 
the same waters. Dr. Wiley will talk about the sanctuary's part in 
efforts to re-route ship traffic and study the underwater behavior of 
whales , on Tuesday, April 17th at 7:00 p.m. in Redfield Auditorium on 
Water Street, Woods Hole, to begin Woods Hole Sea Grant's annual "Oceans 
Alive" lecture series.

In 1992 the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary became the first 
marine protected area in New England, part of the National Marine 
Sanctuary system. The sanctuary is charged with managing, conserving, 
and protecting marine life in an area of 842 square miles extending from 
Cape Ann to Cape Cod, while facilitating compatible uses by people. One 
of the sanctuary's greatest concerns is marine mammal conservation in 
these busy waters.

Wiley's presentation will highlight whale research at the sanctuary. "We 
conduct several marine mammal conservation initiatives," he said. These 
include acoustic monitoring of whales, tagging whales to understand 
their underwater behavior, and evaluating the use of voluntary 
guidelines for the whale watch industry and commercial shipping.

"Science can only go as far as people propel it," Wiley said. "It's up 
to the general public to take the science and make it count in the 
policy arena. At the Stellwagen Bank Sanctuary, we do policy-oriented 
research."

Stellwagen Bank is a shallow underwater plateau lying at the mouth of 
Massachusetts Bay, 25 miles east of Boston, where underwater topography 
and ocean currents come together nurture a rich and diverse 
concentration of marine life. More than a dozen resident and seasonal 
marine mammal species feed on Stellwagen Bank?among them endangered 
whales, and the severely endangered north Atlantic right whale.

Because of its rich resources and location, Stellwagen Bank has a long 
history of human use?for fishing, for transit, and trade. Both 
commercial and recreational fishing and maritime shipping into and out 
of the port of Boston create heavy traffic across this sensitive region. 
Inevitably, a concentration of feeding whales in waters carrying a high 
volume of ship traffic creates a high risk of collision between 
commercial ships and whales.

In a significant recent achievement, Wiley and colleagues have worked 
towards an international agreement to move shipping lanes to and from 
the Port of Boston northward, out of the area of highest whale 
concentration. "This was a four-year collaborative effort," said Wiley, 
"that will take effect July 1, 2007, and promises to reduce deadly ship 
strikes in this highly traveled region." A National Oceanic and 
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report recently estimated that ship 
strikes to right whales could be reduced by up to 58 percent, and to all 
large whale species by up to 81 percent by the shift.

Sanctuary researchers are also beginning "one of the largest 
non-military ocean noise projects in the world," said Wiley, a joint 
project with the National Marine Fisheries Service and Cornell 
University to monitor noise in the water. "How much noise is produced by 
commercial ships? A lot," he said. "But underwater most noise attenuates 
fast, so after about 200 yards the noise has decreased 
dramatically--which will benefit whales when the shipping lanes have moved."

A guest investigator in the Biology Department at WHOI, Wiley received 
his Ph.D. in Conservation Biology from Antioch University New England, 
and he has been at the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary since 
2001. He has worked for the past several years with WHOI colleagues 
Peter Tyack, Mark Johnson, and Mark Baumgartner to monitor whales in the 
sanctuary, giving us new insights into how large whales actually use 
their environment. With a unique suction-cup tagging device that they 
attach to whales, researchers record where the whales travel, how they 
find food, and their diving patterns for the first time. "We tagged 15 
animals during just the past summer," Wiley said, "for over one hundred 
hours of data" on whale behavior, adding to hundreds of hours collected 
over the past several years.

Woods Hole Sea Grant's "Oceans Alive" lecture series for 2007 continues 
on Tuesday, April 24th at 7:00 p.m., with Glen Gawarkiewicz, associate 
scientist in the WHOI Physical Oceanography Department, speaking on "A 
Costal Current in Winter: Exploring coastal ocean cooling with a REMUS 
autonomous underwater vehicle." The series will conclude on Tuesday, May 
1, at 4:00 p.m., with "Young Scientists Present: winning science fair 
projects," which showcases the talents of the winners of local high 
school science fairs, students from Falmouth Academy and Falmouth High 
School.

All presentations are in Redfield Auditorium on Water Street in Woods 
Hole, and are free and open to the public; families are especially 
encouraged to attend. Light refreshments will be provided. Parking for 
evening lectures is available in the parking lot opposite the 
auditorium, and parking for the May 1 afternoon lecture is available in 
on-street, metered spaces.

For more information, contact the Woods Hole Sea Grant Program, 
508-289-2398 or seagrant at whoi.edu.

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