The SAvE Whales (System for the Avoidance of ship-strikes with Endangered Whales) system for the prevention of sperm whale collisions with ships was featured in a special edition of newspaper “Efimerida ton Syntakton” for “Posidonia 2024”, the international maritime exhibition taking place in Greece between June 2 and 7.
The system detects the exact position of sperm whales at a distance of up to 7 kilometers & transmits the information in real time to inform the ships’ crews to slow down or adjust their route in order to avoid a collision.
During the 9th Our Ocean Conference, held in Athens from 15 to 17 April 2024, a joint commitment was announced by the Ministry of Environment and Energy, the Natural Environment and Climate Change Agency (OFYPEKA), the international marine life conservation organization OceanCare and Green Tank to “upgrade the monitoring and early warning system of passing ships to detect large mammals so that ships in Greek territorial waters slow down and avoid colliding with them in the area between Kythera, Cape Tainaro and Cape Maleas”.
The SAvE Whales system is applied in those areas where there is no option to change the ships’ course, which is the main way of mitigating the threat of collision between ships and sperm whales.
The feature on “Posidonia 2024”, edited by the journalist George Alexakis, was published on Saturday 1 June 2024.
