For Mark Baumgartner, Whale Safe is the natural Evolution of WHOI’s Work With Passive Acoustics
Published:22 Oct.2020 Source:WHOI
Mark Baumgartner is a senior scientist and marine ecologist in the biology department at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who focuses on studying the behavior of the ocean’s top predators.
In the last decade, his lab has deployed buoys and gliders armed with passive acoustic recorders to listen for and detect whale movements in areas along the U.S. coast. His lab’s sound research has become the groundwork powering Whale Safe, a new mapping and analysis tool launched in September of 2020 that overlays whale and ship location data to reduce fatal collisions. We sat down with Baumgartner to discuss how passive acoustics studies have evolved over the years at WHOI, and how Whale Safe is a great way to build upon this research.