The 'Whale Safe' Project Is Working To Eliminate Whale Deaths From Boating Accidents

David Shultz

David Shultz reports on clean technology and electric vehicles, among other industries, for dot.LA. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside, Nautilus and many other publications.

The 'Whale Safe' Project Is Working To Eliminate Whale Deaths From Boating Accidents
Padraig Duignan

It’s difficult to calculate exactly how many whales are killed by collisions with ships every year because many strikes go unnoticed and unreported. But some estimates put the number as high as 20,000 per year. This spring, the SF Chronicle reported that as many as 83 endangered whales are killed by ships off the coast of California each year, citing projections from Petaluma organization Point Blue Conservation Science. As the shipping industry continues to grow and climate change forces whales into closer proximity to humans, the problem is only set to get worse.


Fortunately, there’s a simple solution: Simply reducing the speed of the boat gives the whales enough time to respond and escape from threats. Which is why a new initiative, born out of the University of California Santa Barbara, is beginning to supply vessels with strategic information about when and where to brake for whales.

Known as Whale Safe, the project is an offshoot of Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory, which was created through a donation from SalesForce co-founder and co-CEO Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne. The concept behind the technology is relatively simple: An underwater microphone sits around 600 feet below the surface listening for whale vocalizations near the shipping lanes in the Santa Barbara Channel. That data is then combined with blue whale habitat maps and models as well as surface observations from whale watchers and scientists out on the water. All the inputs are then used to create a “whale presence rating” that’s sent out to ships indicating how likely a whale strike is in a given location.

“The best way I can describe the whale presence rating is it's almost like a Smokey the Bear fire warning, but for whales,” says Callie Steffen, the lead scientist at Whale Safe. “It's just a really easily digestible way to understand how much whale activity is happening in the Santa Barbara Channel on any given day.”

For now, the slowdowns are voluntary, but the second part of Whale Safe’s model is that it also collects data about which ships adhere to the warnings and issues public report cards for each company and the individual ships in their fleet.

The analytics are captured from each ship’s automatic identification system (AIS), which is essentially a GPS unit that large ships use to navigate and avoid collisions, says Steffen. The AIS data is obtained through Global Fishing Watch, but WhaleSafe processes the data to pull out the bits relevant to the whale zones they’re studying.

At first glance, it might seem like industry would hate this kind of oversight, but Steffen says there’s a lot of demand for these data from various stakeholders. Retailers and consumers now have a way to prove their goods are being moved in a whale-safe way, and shipping companies like it because it lets them check up on their colleagues and competition.

So far, the project appears to be working. When Whale Safe first began in 2019, only 47% of ships heeded the recommendation, but in 2020 that number jumped to 54%. Today, Steffen says 62% of ships follow the technologies recommendations.

Buoyed by the success, Whale Safe has recently set up a second operation off the coast of San Francisco. The team is also looking for a way to expand its vessel analytics software to the rest of North America. Which means report cards could soon be coming to the East Coast as well—a massive boon for the highly endangered North Atlantic right whale population. All of the data will remain open-source and free to the public.

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Astrolab's New SpaceX-backed Rover Could Change Space Exploration Forever

Lon Harris
Lon Harris is a contributor to dot.LA. His work has also appeared on ScreenJunkies, RottenTomatoes and Inside Streaming.
Astrolab's New SpaceX-backed Rover Could Change Space Exploration Forever
Photo by Samson Amore

Local Los Angeles-area startup Astrolab Inc. has designed a new lunar vehicle called FLEX, short for Flexible Logistics and Exploration Rover. About the size of a Jeep Wrangler, FLEX is designed to move cargo around the surface of the moon on assignment. It’s a bit larger than NASA’s Mars rovers, like Perseverance, but as it’s designed for transport and mobility rather than precision measurement, it can travel much faster, at speeds of up to 15 miles per hour across the lunar surface.

In the short-term, this “cargo” would be mostly scientific equipment, but down the road, it’s possible that FLEX could also contribute to larger-scale projects, such as building out a “lunar infrastructure.” Astrolab founder Jaret Matthews told The New York Times that his goal, ultimately, would be to serve as a kind of “UPS for the moon,” providing a “local distribution solution” once private companies had figured out the logistical challenge of getting their products to the lunar surface in the first place.

To that point, Astrolab plans to get FLEX itself on to the moon with help from SpaceX. Specifically, the company’s new giant spacecraft, Starship, which will reportedly be ready for uncrewed lunar cargo missions as soon as 2026. Matthews – an engineer by trade, and a veteran of both SpaceX and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory – assured the Times that FLEX will be part of the very first SpaceX commercial cargo flight to the moon. For their part, SpaceX has not yet made any specific announcements about when this might actually be happening, and didn't respond to requests for comment.

Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, surpassing even NASA’s own Saturn V and Space Launch System. It’s unconventional in a few other ways as well. Starship is constructed from stainless steel, the first time this particular metal has been used in a space rocket since the 1950s. Steel is heavy, so launching a steel rocket into orbit requires more fuel than alternate metals such as aluminum or titanium. Nonetheless, SpaceX prefers steel as it apparently works better in extreme temperature conditions, such as during launch and atmospheric re-entry. The use of stainless steel also gives Starship a distinct, rather stylish silver appearance.

SpaceX’s plans for the Starship megarocket lie not just in its massive size but reusability. Being able to launch heavy payloads into orbit and beyond without having to construct an enormous new rocket each time significantly lowers costs, and gives SpaceX a potential leg-up in terms of transporting satellites and spacecraft, along with cargo and even passengers on space tourism getaways.

The vehicle has flown a few times before, but only low-powered versions on quick roughly 6-mile trips above the Earth’s surface. SpaceX had hoped to launch some early orbital tests in 2022 but faced numerous delays. The new goal – pending FAA approval – is to get orbital tests going in late April, which founder and CEO Elon Musk predicts have about a 50% chance of success. (Yes, this could potentially include one of Musk’s personal favorite dates in the annual calendar: 4/20.)

Once FLEX arrives, it will actually rank among the first-ever American-made rovers to hit the lunar surface. Though NASA previously sent a famed “moon buggy” up there which astronauts used during the Apollo 15, 16, and 17 missions, and both the Soviet Union and China have deployed robotic rovers, the US has previously preferred to do its moon exploration in person. That’s all about to change, though, with not only FLEX’s debut, but NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER. This rover, about the size of a golf cart, will explore the area around the Moon’s South Pole looking for water ice ahead of the arrival of the Artemis Program – and human astronauts – in 2025.

Astrolab isn’t the only local company hoping to leverage SpaceX’s Starship plans for its own purposes. K2 Space, founded by brothers Karan and Neel Kunjur, are developing large-scale “satellite buses,” physical structures that can move and power entire spacecraft, which are about as large as any objects humans have ever attempted to blast into space. While previous efforts to innovate space travel on the commercial side have focused on making vehicles smaller, and thus cheaper to launch, K2 views the progress of SpaceX as a sea change, indicating that – one day soon – manufacturers will have a variety of “launch providers” for getting their products on to the moon and beyond.

Meet the Creator Economy’s Version of LinkedIn

Kristin Snyder

Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.

Meet the Creator Economy’s Version of LinkedIn
Creatorland

This is the web version of dot.LA’s daily newsletter. Sign up to get the latest news on Southern California’s tech, startup and venture capital scene.

LinkedIn hasn’t caught on with Gen Z—in fact, 96% rarely use their existing account.

Considering 25% of young people want to be full-time content creators and most influencers aren’t active on LinkedIn, traditional networking sites aren’t likely to meet these needs.

Enter CreatorLand.

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https://twitter.com/ksnyder_db

This Week in ‘Raises’: Total Network Services Gains $9M, Autio Secures $5.9M

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

This Week in ‘Raises’: Total Network Services Gains $9M, Autio Secures $5.9M
This Week in ‘Raises’:

It has been a slow week in funding, but a local decentralized computing network managed to land $9 million to accelerate deployment of its new product called Universal Communication Identifier (UCID™). Another local company that secured capital included Kevin Costner’s location-based audio storytelling platform and the funding will go toward expanding the app’s content library and expanding into additional regions in the United States.

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