This article was taken from the May 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.
The first time marine biologist Asha de Vos saw a blue whale, she was on a boat sailing from the Maldives to Sri Lanka; six of the enormous mammals were huddled together, hunting krill. "Blue whales usually migrate to the poles in warm weather, but these ones had stayed behind," she says. "I was instantly intrigued. Why was nobody else curious about their presence?" Since then, de Vos has spent a decade getting to know the unorthodox blue whales that are permanent residents off the coast of Sri Lanka. Her current mission: to save them.
The southern Sri Lankan coast has one of the highest shipping-traffic densities in the world, so being hit by ships is a growing danger to these creatures. "We recently documented two blue whale carcasses within 12 days," de Vos says. "I'm trying to develop effective mitigation strategies." She is currently working with a team at University of California Santa Cruz to collect data on whale deaths and produce mathematical models that calculate how the risk of ship strikes can be reduced. Some of the strategies include re-mapping shipping lanes further offshore and reducing the speed of ships, to give whales more time to move out of the way.
Five metres shorter than its Antarctic counterpart, the Sri Lankan blue whale speaks a different dialect, lives in tropical waters year round and breeds six months out of sync to other whales. "I realised these guys in Sri Lanka were unique, they are reliant on a limited ecosystem. If there are environmental threats, they can't leave in a hurry, so the risk to their survival is much higher," de Vos explains. The area is also an important breeding area for blue whales, so reducing ship strikes will be crucial to the long-term survival of the species. "You don't think about how majestic they are until one swims up next to you," says de Vos. "When it arches and starts to dive, you keep looking for it to come out from the water, but that moment just never ends."