Updated Maps of Commercial Whale Watching Activity

Whale watching near Cape Cod. (Photo credit: Matt McIntosh / NOAA)

Updated maps of commercial whale watching activity are now available to view in the Recreation theme map and in the Data Explorer.

Over the past year, the Northeast Ocean Data Portal Working Group met with whale watch owners, operators, naturalists, and data managers to review and discuss updates to the Portal’s Commercial Whale Watching Areas dataset. The updated data reflect input received via virtual meetings and depicts places where commercial whale watching takes place in the region. The group also developed a layer that shows the locations of commercial whale watching entities that were invited to participate in the review of the data on the Portal. Clicking on the point locations will reveal the name of the entity, its location, and website URL.

Screenshot of updated Portal map showing commercial whale watching areas classified as general use areas (orange), dominant use areas (darker orange), and supplemental areas (yellow). Lines indicate transit routes for whale watching vessels. Red dots represent locations of commercial whale watching entities that were invited to participate in the review of the data on the Portal.

The updated data layer builds on the 2015 Characterization of Coastal and Marine Recreational Activity in the U.S. Northeast conducted by the Northeast Regional Ocean Council and Northeast Regional Planning Body with SeaPlan, the Surfrider Foundation, and Point97. That study resulted in the first regional map of commercial whale watching activity and showed general use areas, dominant use areas, transit routes, supplemental areas, and areas mapped via the Rhode Island Special Area Management Plan. The updated layer incorporates those results and adds areas of activity in the Gulf of Maine that were previously not included. The resulting map reflects the footprint of commercial whale watching activity in roughly the last decade.

Humpback whale and whale watching vessel at Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. (Photo credit: Jeremy Winn)

To develop the updated data, the Portal Working Group, with the help of industry members and naturalists, used AIS (Automatic Identification System) vessel tracking data associated with known whale watching vessels over 65 feet to validate and “ground-truth” the existing Commercial Whale Watching Areas layer. The patterns in the 2015-2019 AIS data corresponded remarkably well to the areas delineated by participants five years earlier. Because AIS transponders have increased in use on whale watching vessels over the last five years but don’t capture all of the whale watching activity in the region, the group discussed using AIS data to continue to validate the Portal’s Whale Watching layer approximately every three years. For more information about the group’s work in 2020, download the metadata report.