When a whale surfaced near whitecaps in San Francisco Bay this week, ferries and other vessels moved through busy waters under a new system designed to spot the animals sooner and reduce collision risk. The Associated Press reported that WhaleSpotter, an AI-powered whale-spotting network, began operating this week to track whales day and night and provide near-real-time alerts to mariners.
The system is built to detect whale blows and heat signatures at distances of up to 2 nautical miles, according to the AP report. Its goal is to give crews time to make adjustments “way before they get anywhere close,” Thomas Hall, director of operations for San Francisco Bay Ferry, said, adding that the system also helps operators track whale activity over time.
WhaleSpotter’s approach combines automatic detection with human verification. Artificial intelligence flags potential whale sightings, marine mammal observers verify them, and then alerts go out via radio to ferry operators and vessel traffic controllers and are also posted publicly on the Whale Safe website, AP reported.
The launch comes as gray whales have been dying at elevated rates in the Bay Area. The AP report said The Marine Mammal Center found 21 dead gray whales in the wider Bay Area last year, the highest number in 25 years, and said at least 40% were killed by ship strikes. It also reported that at least 10 more gray whales have died in the Bay Area so far this year, and that scientists say carcasses may sink or be carried out to sea before they are ever found.
Researchers linked the pattern to changes in feeding conditions driven by a warming Arctic, as whales migrate along the California coast. The AP report said a 2023 study in Science describes how warming temperatures and shifts in sea ice disrupt the food web gray whales rely on during summer feeding months, leaving many malnourished during migration. It also said increasing numbers of gray whales now divert into San Francisco Bay and linger for days or even weeks inside the crowded estuary.
Rachel Rhodes, a project scientist at the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory who led the initiative, said whales have increasingly concentrated in a high-traffic corridor between Angel Island, Alcatraz and Treasure Island where ship traffic is intense. She said in the AP report that “It’s the worst place possible in terms of all the ship traffic,” and that the teams responding to strandings have run out of places to land dead whales as collisions have mounted. The report described how the overlap between that corridor and ferry routes and shipping lanes creates an urgent challenge for mariners.
In early testing, researchers said the network quickly produced many detections. Douglas McCauley, director of the Benioff lab, said it was “Suddenly to have a full sense of how much whale activity is in this space honestly put me a little bit on edge,” but added that researchers planned to use the data to manage space more carefully. The AP report said thermal cameras can operate through the night and in foggy bay conditions that can limit purely human observation.
Officials and scientists also described how the detection system will expand. The AP report said one camera is installed on Angel Island, and a second is set to be fixed aboard a ferry traveling between downtown San Francisco and Vallejo to create what Rhodes called a “moving data collection platform.” It said cameras on the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz could eventually broaden coverage across the bay.
The broader effort is occurring as warming waters also threaten other whale species. The AP report described a severe marine heat wave off the California coast shrinking the band of cold, nutrient-rich water where prey species thrive, pushing humpback whales closer to shore and into areas with fishing activity. It said the Marine Mammal Center’s Kathi George warned that humpbacks “are curious and they’ll scratch their backs on the gear,” and that if a line gets caught they can breach, roll and end up entangled, potentially dragging gear for months and leading to starvation, infection and drowning.
The AP report said that regulators have closed parts of the crab fishery off central California at times this spring, a measure described as increasingly common as warming increases whale overlap with crab fishing seasons. It also said California approved commercial use of ropeless pop-up crab fishing gear for the first time this spring, which stores ropes and buoys on the seafloor until fishermen return and trigger an acoustic release that brings the gear to the surface. Supporters, the report said, argue the technology can keep fishermen harvesting while dramatically reducing the risk to whales as climate change reshapes where whales, ships and fishing gear overlap.