Whale Guardians is an NGO that combines whale sighting data with shipping data (AIS) to help reduce whale-ship strikes, particularly in areas near ports.

Over the past year, we have mapped 27 whale-sensitive areas and translated the underlying data into usable coordinates, which are now available through an API.

We are working with ports, shipowners, voyage optimisation software providers and weather-routing solutions to integrate this data into existing shipping workflows.

We use AIS data to

1) analyse vessel traffic in whale sensitive port regions and

2) to give feedback to our shipowners how their fleet is performing in whale sensitive areas

We have an annual cost of over €30k to run our application (AIS, API, platform cost,...). This is one of the less "sexy" parts of our NGO to invest in but very much needed.

Nature Integrated Routing for Whales