Blue Whales - When Giants Collide
Blue whales are increasingly being hit by ships, especially off the coast of California. As whales recover from hunting this is a growing problem. What can be done?
Blue whales are increasingly being hit by ships, especially off the coast of California. As whale numbers recover from hunting and the number of ships that ply the oceans increases this is a growing problem. What can be done? Monty Don explores this little known threat to whales, a threat that is found in all oceans all over the world and effects most species of whale. It seems that the welcome news that whale numbers are slowly rising is being countered by concern over ship strikes, most of which are fatal. A simple solution is to slow the speed of ships down to around 10 knots, but this has financial implications for the shipping industry, so a balance has to be struck. Technology could help, but it is expensive, not reliable in choppy seas and in the case of sonar could fill the ocean with more noise. How can we share the oceans with giants and still move 90% of traded goods by boat?
Last on
More episodes
Previous
Rob Sullivan
He specialises in films about wildlife conservation and the relationship between people and animals and won a Bafta for the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ2 series .
John Calambokidis
His primary interests are the biology of marine mammals and the impacts of humans. He wrote the award-winning Guide to Marine Mammals of Greater Puget Sound with R. Osborne and E.M. Dorsey and has produced more than 150 publications in scientific journals and technical reports.
He has conducted studies on a variety of marine mammals in theΜύNorth Pacific from Central America to Alaska. He has directed long-term research on the status, movements, and underwater behavior of blue, humpback and grey whales.
Some of his recent research has included attaching tags to whales with suction cups to examine their feeding behavior and vocalisations.
Picture: Evergreen State College
Simone Panigada
Since 1992, he has been responsible for research and conservation of cetaceans in the Mediterranean Sea; in particular he has focused his attention on habitat use and preferences, and the use of research techniques such as radio tracking by Velocity-Time-Depth Recorders and marking with satellite transmitters of fin whales in the Mediterranean Sea.
Since 2001, he has dealt with the problem of collisions between ships and large whales, and plays the role of ship strike coordinator for the International Whaling Commission. From 2003 to 2005, he held a post-doctoral fellowship at the at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, funded through a Marie Curie scholarship of the European Commission, with the aim to use spatial modeling techniques applied to study habitat preferences of cetaceans in the Mediterranean Sea.
In recent years, since 2009, he has been involved in estimates of abundance and density of cetacean populations in the central Mediterranean, organising a series of aerial surveys, both in winter and summer.
Lee Adamson
Lee Adamson is Head of Media and Communications at the (IMO), the London-based specialised agency of the United Nations with responsibility for the safety, security, efficiency and environmental performance of international shipping.
Μύ
Its main aim is to create a regulatory framework for the shipping industry that is fair and effective, universally adopted and universally implemented. IMO has adopted mandatory ship-routeing measures to avoid collisions with whales and other cetaceans as well as issuing guidelines on how ship strikes can be avoided.
Μύ
In his spare time, Lee is a keen wildlife photographer and has written and published a book on maritime vessel traffic management.
Broadcasts
- Tue 11 Nov 2014 11:02Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4
- Mon 17 Nov 2014 21:00Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4
Learn about habitats with The Open University
Explore the twists and connections of natural life in four different UK habitats.