A maritime vessel communication and navigational safety system may be effective not only in protecting people, but whales, walruses, and other wildlife species as well, scientists say.
The Automatic Identification System (AIS) - adopted by the International Maritime Organisation in 2000 for use in collision avoidance, coastal surveillance, and traffic management - effectively accomplishes navigational safety goals, and provides pre-emptive maritime safety benefits.
"AIS now provides a rich source of data to understand vessel traffic across the entire globe - even in the most remote areas of the open ocean," said Martin Robards from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
"This system also has the potential to help us minimise the negative effects of shipping on wildlife," Robards said.
The AIS can become a vital tool in helping to protect whale and other marine mammal species, particularly in locations such as the Arctic where shipping is potentially on the increase, researchers said.
"AIS can be used to identify regions where shipping lanes and important marine mammal habitats and migrations overlap, as well as areas where ocean noise may be impacting acoustically sensitive species," said Howard Rosenbaum from WCS.
Understanding vessel traffic in relation to marine conservation is critical, particularly given that maritime transport accounts for approximately 90 per cent of all world trade.
The continued development of maritime transportation around the world, especially in new areas such as the Arctic, can increase conservation impacts to wildlife, including disturbance, fatal strikes, introduction of pathogens through ballast water, habitat destruction through anchoring (especially on corals), introduction of invasive species, air emissions, noise, and fuel spills.
AIS works by continuously transmitting messages containing details such as vessel identification, position, heading and other data to networks of receivers that track the information.
Increasingly, satellites are involved in receiving this signals on little cube satellites. While little bigger than a bread box, these receivers can process up to 4 million messages a day and track up to 130,000 vessels at one time.
The system data enables users to understand, and subsequently to design tools that help mitigate the impacts of maritime traffic on the marine environment and wildlife.
AIS data have important applications in conservation science including describing baseline vessel use of a maritime area, assessing or modelling actual or potential environmental impacts, and monitoring environmental compliance.
Researchers say AIS can be used to establish areas where large cetaceans and vessels are likely to over-lap in space and time - a critical step to understanding and reducing vessel strikes.
The findings were published in the Bulletin of Marine Science.
