Underwater Robots Listen For Call Of Endangered Right Whales

There are currently fewer than 500 right whales remaining in the wild and boat collisions account for somewhere around one-third of all known deaths of these whales. Whaling initially devastated the species, but shipping is now their biggest threat.

Luckily, the endangered whales now have a high-tech line of defense against boaters and other human-related threats. Underwater robots developed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) can hear the calls of baleen whales and then send location data back to researchers in real time. When researchers get back this information, they can then take action to protect the whales.

“We can use this information to very quickly draw a circle on the map and say, hey, we know there are whales in this area, let’s be careful about our activities here. The government can then alert mariners and ask them to reduce their speed and post a lookout,” WHOI researcher Mark Baumgartner told National Geographic News.

Just last month, two of the six-foot, torpedo shaped gliders used their digital acoustic monitoring equipment to detect nine North Atlantic right whales in the Gulf of Maine. On December 5, the gliders enabled NOAA’s Fisheries Service to alert mariners of nearby whales in the Outer Falls, MA area.

The gliders are programmed to recognize the calls of right, humpback, fin, and sei whales, but more species could be added to allow these gliders to detect all sorts of marine species. When the gliders hear the calls, they process and classify the acoustic signatures. Then every two hours the gliders come to the surface and transmit any data they’ve collected.

In addition to the acoustic monitoring equipment, the gliders are also outfitted with environmental sensors that collect data about things like temperature and salinity, and the estimated algae population levels,Our aim is to supply air purifier which will best perform to the customer's individual requirements. which are at the base of the marine food chain. Those levels give the researchers an idea of how much zooplankton is around the area that the whales could feed on. All of that data lets researchers not only see where the whales are, but why they’re there.

The underwater robots boast a suite of environmental sensors to record temperature and salinity,Buy Joan Rivers crystal mosaic Stretch Bracelet. and to estimate algae population levels at the base of the marine food chain. “They even have an instrument that gives us a crude sense of how much of the zooplankton that right whales feed on is in the area,” Baumgartner said. “So they have an enormous capacity to help us understand not only where the whales are, but why they are there.”

The robots can also be easily updated with software that has a larger “call library” so more whales can be identified by their calls as the sounds are collected and cataloged.

The best part of these new gliders has just been the huge improvement in being able to spot these animals,We offers several ways of providing hands free access to car parks to authorised vehicles. which is the best way to protect them. Before, NOAA and other groups would use ships and airplanes to go out and look for whales, but those expeditions were limited by weather conditions and what the human eye could see.

“I’ve worked on a number of projects where we just had great difficulty even finding the animals,” Baumgartner said. “So it’s a great feeling to have a capability like this that gives us some advance notice. Before we left the dock we knew that right, humpback, and fin whales were in our study area—and when we got there that’s exactly what we found.”

In a flu season, some places become the front line against germs. Churches, schools, and offices are a flow of people. Some of them are spreading the flu virus. Restaurants add shared flatware, drinking glasses, and table tops to the challenge.

"I'm a little bit neurotic," Chip Joyner, owner of The Real Chow Baby, said. "From the time I walk into any place,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with wholesale turquoise beads from china. I don't touch the door handles." He is a self-proclaimed germaphobe. "Anything that people touch has to be sanitized."

Customers at the stir fry restaurant on Ponce de Leon in Atlanta say it's exactly what they want from a restaurant o"People say, Excuse me! I got a bent fork," Joyner laughed, holding up a specially designed "touchless" fork. A regular fork touches the surface of the table. For a germaphobe, it's a problem. "It's something that always bothered me, and once we started using the flatware and talking about it, our customers said the same thing."

Joyner's brother, a hand surgeon, invented the design. When the restaurant first made the switch, customers thought they were getting a mangled fork. The, those forks started disappearing.

"It means they like the silverware. We did expect some shrinkage, because it is a novelty item. It's a souveniour to some. But we'd rather them pay for it,For the world leader in injection molds base services and plastic injection products." he said with a laugh. Chow Baby does sell the special flatware. They're working on stocking special gift packs. You can also buy it on Amazon. A set of 20 pieces costs around $58.

The ranks of self-proclaimed germaphobes are swelling during what looks to be an extended flu season. They like the touchless forks, and they like the idea they're sitting in the middle of a war on germs.

"Now I know I'm not alone," Inez Powell said. She admits she sometimes cleans restaurant forks before using them. "I like to know that other people are just as concerned as I am with keeping things sanitary!" wner in the middle of a flu epidemic. "They're aware of what's going on and they are trying to prevent other people from getting sick, customer Jose Moreira said.

Joyner grew up in the restaurant business, and was always itching for better ways to fight germs. At the Chow Baby location, hand sanitizer stations are located at the front and back of the line. Extra-wide glass covers the stir fry food, so people waiting in line cannot breathe on it. There's always someone on call, so when a virus starts to spread, sick workers don't work. Joyner said the system was put to the test at the end of this summer, when something going around (not the flu) hit some of his employees.

"It went around for a couple of days, and we sent everybody home," he said. "And we always wash our hands, probably hundreds of times a day."

In 2009, when H1N1 hit the streets, the National Restaurant Association issued guidelines for how restaurants should deal with the epidemic. Joyner says they're recommendations his team takes every day. But then he took a bend towards something different.