spent many mornings off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard keeping an eye out for fin whales. Each time they spotted a pod of whales, the researchers aboard the boat began prepping their specialized drones to either drop a tag—that harmlessly adheres to a whale’s back via suction cups—or gather material being exhaled from a whale’s blowhole. The drones also took photos to measure the size of the whales.
“The tags themselves are a minor engineering marvel,” Nowacek said. “They’re fitted with accelerometers that can tell us about the movement of the whale, pressure sensors that tell us how deep they go, and, perhaps most importantly, acoustic sensors so we can measure the loudness of the construction noise.”
Nowacek points out that BOEM already enforces substantial restrictions on the noise a construction project is allowed to make and requires abatement measures at all times; crews must also shut down work when whales are spotted nearby. Construction is prohibited at night when whales are harder to spot. Construction of Vineyard Wind I and Empire Wind I, two large wind farms under construction off the coast of Massachusetts and coast of New York, is expected to wrap in the summer of 2024.
Then at the start of the second year, the field teams got to work. Nowacek’s crew focused their efforts on monitoring the behavior of whales. They chose to focus on fin whales, which are relatively poorly studied, plentiful in the area during the summer, and protected under the Endangered Species Act.
The WOW team also used drones to snap photos of the whales to capture their size and unique markings—another way to keep track of the species. Image: WOW Project