International Workshop "Maritime Transport and Biodiversity
Conservation: Concerning Efforts for A Coherent Management of the Risk
of Whale-Ship Strikes". Tenerife (Canary Islands, Spain)
10/24-10/26/12

Whale Alert: A mobile app for transmitting right whale conservation
and management information to the maritime industry

David Wiley1; Roland Arsenault2; Christopher W. Clark3; Tim Cole4; Peter DeCola5; Deborah Hadden6; Beth Josephson4; Jake Levenson7;  Patrick Ramage7; Kurt Schwehr2,8; Michael Thompson1; Brad Wellock6;  Brad Winney9

1 NOAA/Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, 175 Edward Foster Road, Scituate, MA 02066
(David.Wiley@noaa.gov)
2 Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping, University of New Hampshire, 24 Colovos Rd, Durham, NH, 03824, USA
3 Bioacoustics Research Program, Cornell University, Laboratory of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca, NY 14850, 
4 NOAA/National Marine Fisheries Service, Northeast Fisheries Science Center, 165 Water Street, Woods Hole, MA
5 U.S. Coast Guard, First District (dre), 408 Atlantic Ave, Boston, MA 02110
6 Massachusetts Port Authority, 1 Harborside Drive, East Boston, MA 02128
7 International Fund for Animal Welfare, 290 Summer Street, Yarmouth Port, MA 02675
8 Google Oceans, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 
9 EarthNC, Inc. 1515 N. Swinton Avenue, Delray Beach, FL, 33444

Whale Alert integrates GPS, Automatic Identification System (AIS),
auto-acoustic-detection, Internet and digital nautical chart
technologies to alert mariners to NOAA’s right whale conservation
measures active in their immediate vicinity and beyond. NOAA is the
U.S. agency responsible for protecting and recovering this endangered
species. Whale Alert is disseminated as a free app for iPads and
iPhones.  With Whale Alert, captains can view their ship’s location
and all pertinent right whale management information in a single
nautical chart display.  Information can be updated via AIS or
Internet feeds and includes both static (e.g., seasonal speed
restrictions, areas to be avoided) and dynamic (e.g., acoustic
detection buoys and dynamic management areas) information.  Whale
Alert has been developed by a collaboration of government agencies,
academic institutions, non-profit conservation groups and private
sector industries.  Whale Alert increases whale protection by reducing
the risk of collisions between right whales and ships.  It also
increases mariner protection by decreasing the risk of mariners being
fined for inadvertently violating regulations.  While designed for
right whales and ships along the U.S. eastern seaboard, extending the
Whale Alert app to support the protection of additional species on a
world-wide basis is technologically feasible and being actively
investigated.