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.