Using Ship Speed and Mass to Describe Potential Collision Severity with Whales: An Application of the Ship Traffic, Energy and Environment Model (STEEM)

This paper presents an application of the Ship Traffic, Energy, and Environment Model (STEEM) to estimate and visualize the risk and severity of collision between ships and the North Atlantic Right Whales along the U.S. and Canadian Atlantic coast. According to the physics of the interaction between a ship and a whale, for ships larger than 500 tons, speed is more important than the size of a ship in determining a lethal injury to a whale. Reducing ship speed could reduce the ton-force significantly. The visual representation of the risk and potential severity of ship-whale collision along the U.S. and Canadian Atlantic coast shows that the coast between Jacksonville, FL and Savannah, GA, the major shipping lanes of Cape Cod, the mouth of Bay of Fundy, and the area south to Nova Scotia, Canada (Roseway Basin) are the areas with highest risk of severe or lethal injury due to a ship strikes. On the waterway network the distribution of ton-force of ship traffic is rather uniform, and thus, the distribution of whales rather than ton-force determines the distribution of risk of potential severity of injury to whales.

• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Wang, Chenfeng
  • Lyons, Shannon B
  • Corbett Jr, James J
  • Firestone, Jeremy
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 86th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2007-1-21 to 2007-1-25
• Date: 2007

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: CD-ROM
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 18p
• Monograph Title: TRB 86th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers CD-ROM

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Animals; Crashes; Fishes; Ship lines; Ship management; Ship motion; Ship operations; Ship pilotage; Shipping; Ships; Water transportation crashes
• Uncontrolled Terms: Shipping policy
• Subject Areas: Administration and Management; Marine Transportation; Operations and Traffic Management; Safety and Human Factors; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01045028
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 07-2368
• Files: TRIS, TRB
• Created Date: Feb 8 2007 7:03PM