A series of buoys in the busy shipping channels leading into Boston Harbor are tracking the calls of North Atlantic Right whales in an effort to decrease noise population and its adverse effects on the health of the whale population around Massachusetts.

The buoys, described in a short video on the Boston Globe site contain ‘hydrophones’ or underwater listening devices, which were engineered to withstand the adverse weather conditions of Boston Harbor and to filter out irrelevant background noise. When a hydrophone picks up a Right whale call, it transmits the call to Cornell University, where it is verified and sent on to ships in the vicinity of the signaling buoy. The ships then slow down to reduce the amount of engine noise output and send crew members to the deck to look out for the endangered whales.

It is an interesting solution to the noise pollution problem in the oceans, though it still involves active human intervention (screening the call, obeying the requests to slow down the ship, etc). Does anyone know if other harbors are using this technology to dampen noise pollution in a defined area? Is it working?

These buoys likely won’t solve the problem the world over, but they are a step in the Right (pardon the pun) direction. Now if there was only a way to reconfigure the Sonar waves to make them less harmful to the whales, we would be well on our way.