With public funding for science and conservation uncertain at best, research organizations are relying more on private funders. Case-in-point is an international shipping company that has stepped up its support for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
CMA CGM Group is a French-owned international shipping company. It partnered with WHOI four years ago to install, operate and maintain digital acoustic monitoring buoys off ports in Savannah, Ga. and Norfolk, Va. The buoys are equipped with underwater microphones called hydrophones that listen for the calls of a North Atlantic right whales. When an acoustic monitor hears one, it reports back to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which puts out an announcement telling mariners to slow their ships down to under ten knots and keep an eye out for right whales.
CMA CGM ships heed that warning, but that’s not true of all mariners. The slow zones are voluntary, even though vessel strikes are among the leading causes of death for these critically endangered animals. So CMA CGM recently committed to helping spread the word throughout the shipping industry, in addition to renewing its commitment to operate and maintain the monitoring equipment.
"There's been research to suggest that if you slow ships down, it has an impact on vessel mortality," said WHOI Senior Scientist Mark Baumgartner, who has been studying North Atlantic right whales for over 25 years. "This is really an effort to try to move forward efforts to reduce vessel strikes by sort of reaching out to the entire shipping industry and saying, 'Look, CMA CGM, they've committed to slow their ships down whenever we hear right whales on our systems. And if they can commit to do that, and they're still a prosperous shipping company, surely the rest of the shipping community can do that as well.'"
Baumgartner helped to establish the acoustic monitoring network of buoys and robotic gliders all along the east coast.
"Today, we have buoys and gliders that are out listening for the sounds of whales, sending information back to us every two hours," said Baumgartner. "And we can tell you, 'Hey, there are right whales here, because we just heard them a few hours ago.'"
Right whales travel up and down the east coast, giving birth during the winter in warmer southern waters and returning to northern feeding grounds. With only around 380 left in the population, every whale is important to the species’ survival. But what Baumgartner calls a "double-whammy of human-caused mortality and climate change" is preventing recovery.
"Sadly these animals just don't ever make it to old age," Baumgartner said. "They die prematurely and they die because of human activities in the ocean. And so dealing with fishing gear entanglements and ship strikes are really important, particularly now because right whales are sort of changing their movement patterns because of climate change."
Climate change also impacts the marine microscopic organisms WHOI’s Heidi Sosik studies. CMA CGM is funding that research as well. Sosik receives data from a robotic microscope recently installed on a ship called M/V Oleander. It’s operated by a different shipping company – Bermuda Container Line.
"Things like the temperature and current patterns have been measured from Oleander for decades," Sosik explained. "What we've done with this new project is added these biological observations of the diversity of these microscopic organisms, and that was never done before."
The ship travels twice a week between New Jersey and Bermuda, crossing the Gulf Stream and other parts of the deep ocean that are hard for scientists to access. Sosik says the early data sets are exciting.
"The ocean changes so fast, so many things are happening," she said. "Every time we cross the Gulf Stream it looks different and we've never had information about the biodiversity of microscopic organisms in that dramatically variable part of the ocean before."
Among the early surprises are hot spots of plankton called diatoms in the open ocean. Sosik says diatoms are the base of different food webs than smaller plankton, and also play a part in ocean carbon sequestration.
