is looking to capture something much more subtle as it continues developing the nation's first commercial-scale, offshore wind farm in coming months: Whale blows — those fleeting clouds of moist breath the marine mammals expel when they surface to get some fresh air.
"We've been in development for this technology for at least the past decade. We use it for different things. We started out really focusing on ship detection, and then transitioned over to looking for whales," Ross Eaton, principal scientist and director of marine systems at Charles River Analytics, said.
Charles River Analytics, Ross said, is still"very much in the early phases" of testing the system for real-world use on vessels. In developing the system, the company has collaborated with marine scientists, mariners and whale-watching outfits over several years to collect data to understand the technology's performance and work to perfect it — an ongoing process.
. That program is what Vineyard Wind created to help develop and employ innovative technologies"to enhance protections for marine mammals as the Massachusetts and U.S. offshore wind industry continues to grow."Charles"Stormy" Mayo, director of the right whale ecology program at thein Provincetown, said there is a lot of promise in the emerging detection technology.
"I think it's got to start somewhere and this is a good place to try it," he said, noting it will either eventually become acknowledged as a proven concept or areas for improvement will be identified.