All hands on deck

A 'shockingly large number of whales die after collisions with ships, even in protected areas. But can solutions be found to protect this vulnerable species?

- Ida Emilie Steinmark

Janie Wray could tell there J horribly was something wrong from the way her colleague gasped. They were on a research station off the coast of British Columbia and Wray's colleague was watching live drone footage through a pair of goggles. "She just went, oh my God," said Wray.

She had spotted a humpback whale on its migration south, swimming without the use of its tail. Wray and her colleagues at BC Whales crowded around a computer screen to watch the footage. "Immediately, we all knew that we had a whale that most likely had a broken back," she said. It was almost certainly the result of a ship strike. Later, they discovered it was a whale they knew: Moon.

A collision with a vessel is one of the main threats to whales and if the whale does not die on impact, it is usually only a question of time. In Moon's case, Wray knows she made the 4,800km migration to Hawaii, but there is no food for her there. "We're actually hoping that she has passed," said Wray. She has not been seen since December.

With potentially thousands of whales hit every year, and with the number of ships rapidly increasing across the globe, the problem is only getting worse. But as the recent UN high seas treaty shows, there is increasing political will to protect the world's oceans and their inhabitants. The question is whether it is even possible to save the whales from dying at the bows of ships. New technology suggests yes - but it's going to take all hands on deck.

Commercial whaling, which killed 3 million whales in the 20th century, was banned in most countries in the mid-1980s. But since then, another threat has continued to grow: ocean traffic. Worldwide ship numbers quadrupled between 1992 and 2012, and while it is driven by increased traffic in Asia, it is happening everywhere.

For example, in western European waters, the density of ships and boats increased by more than a third in the mid-2010s, a recent paper claimed.