Co-occurrence of gray whales and vessel traffic in the North Pacific Ocean

With increasing vessel traffic, whales are becoming more susceptible to vessel strikes. In order to measure the extent and risk of these vessel strikes on gray whales of the North Pacific, Silber and colleagues used published range data from gray whales (in polygonal data format) to help inform management reform. ArcGIS was used to convert Keyhole Markup Language (KML) data into vector format and the Buffer tool was used to transform linear features to vectors. The Clip Tool was used to extract vessel traffic data that was derived from Automatic Identification Systems (AIS).

Silber identified the risk of not only large tankers to fatal vessel strikes, but also the potential risk of strikes from fishing vessels due to the sheer amount of commercial fishery activity in this region. Maps generated within GIS using both vessel and gray whale range data were used to identify areas of high vessel-strike risk. This type of data can be applied to a number of whale species to help manage vessel traffic in a way that can reduce the risk for whale fatality.

Silber G, Weller D, Reeves R, et al (2021) Co-occurrence of gray whales and vessel traffic in the North Pacific Ocean. Endang Species Res 44:177–201. https://doi.org/10.3354/esr01093