User:Consorcia

SONG OF THE WHALE

SONG OF THE WHALE is the International Fund for Animal Welfare's research vessel. She is a specially modified 46 ft sailing vessel dedicated to promoting the conservation and welfare of marine life. She travels the worlds ocean studying wales, dolphins, harbour porpoises, turtles and other marine life.

Song of the Whale is an Oyster 46 ketch (two masts) built in the U.K. in 1979. She is 46 feet (14 metres) long and 12 feet (3metres) wide at her widest.

She was purchased by IFAW in 1987 at the end of a hard life as a charter vessel and adapted to her new role as an ambassador for benign, non- intrusive research into the life of marine animals.

The role of a pioneering research vessel may seem daunting for so small a boat and at first sight a modest sailing vessel may seem an odd choice compared with the huge research vessels used by many institutes today. In fact IFAW has a number of very good reasons for choosing this sort of boat.

She is small and thus inexpensive to buy, run and maintain. Also, her size means that she is a minimal disruptive presence to the study animals. Usually she is actually smaller than the animals (whales) being studied.

Her size and simplicity means she can be run and maintained by a small, largely unspecialised crew who combine a knowledge of sailing with scientific expertise and a commitment to animal welfare.

She is a sailing vessel. The sails provide extended range, allowing her to cross oceans between projects and stay at sea for prolonged study periods. The sails steady the boat, providing a better platform from which to work. Much of the boats work involves passive acoustic monitoring using hydrophones, and the lack of engine noise while under sail makes for much better acoustic surveying.

If we want to learn about the undisturbed behaviour of any animal there is no alternative to spending a lot of time observing it unobtrusively in its own environment. For oceanic animals, like whales and dolphins, that means spending a great deal of time in the open ocean and small ocean going yachts like Song of the Whale are the most cost effective platforms for doing this safely and effectively.

Through research carried out from her decks, methods for surveying and assesing populations of whales are being developed which IFAW hope will remove any possible justification for scientific whaling.