|  Anothony
Anderson
email: amanderson@mail.ecsu.edu
Mentor:
Dr. Kevin Chu
Internship: ECSU Undergraduate Research Experience
in Ocean, Marine, and Space Science
Title: Correlations between Right Whale Distribution
and Sea Surface Temperature
The
survival of endangered species plays an important role in
our environment. Right whales are highly endangered and are
sometimes killed by boats or entanglement in fishing gear.
We studied the relationship between right whales and sea surface
temperature to see if it might be feasible to predict where
the whales will be in order to alert boats.
We used
right whale sighting data from aerial surveys of waters near
Massachusetts, USA. Sea surface temperature data was collected
from NOAA’s AVHRR satellites. We were only able to find
eight clear satellite images among the days with right whale
sighing data. This allowed only minimal quantities analysis.
Nevertheless, we believe that it might be possible with more
data to predict right whale distribution using remote sensing.
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