Melissa Laurino

Final Project – Data Stewardship

North Atlantic Right Whale Data Program

Design a data driven application while considering ethical data gathering, storage, and
usage practices:
• Diagram describing data flows and what occurs where at what stage in the system.
• Design a system involving sensitive data.

Background:
The North Atlantic Right Whales are critically endangered due to the direct and
indirect human causes of intensive whaling during the 1600’s and the present threats of
vessel strike and entanglements. A slow swimming speed, abundance of time spent at the
surface and lack of echolocation made induce vessel strikes. The species is protected under
both the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 and the Endangered Species Act, which
makes it illegal to hunt, harm, harass, feed or swim with any species of marine mammal in
United States coastal waters. With an estimation of less than 400 Right Whales left in the
Atlantic, current rules and regulations apply to all vessels that travel in the offshore
shipping lanes with these whales during their migratory route: Do not approach the animal
closer than 500 yards and report all sightings of alive, injured, or dead Right Whales.
Current vessels of the United States, or departing from a United States port must
comply with regulations of NOAA Fisheries Services Right Whale Protection Program, a
training that provides masters and crew with the knowledge to identify Right Whales,
navigation while they are present in the area and how to report sightings.

Additional Regulations:
• Seasonal Management Areas are in affect through out the entire East Coast where
all vessels greater than 65ft in length operating out of a United States port cannot
travel faster than 10 knots.
o Southeast, United States: November 15-April 15
o Mid-Atlantic, United States: November 1-April 30
o Northeast, United States: January 1-May 15
• No later than January 1, 2019, the National Marine Fisheries Service will publish
and seek comment on a report evaluating the conservation value and economic and
navigational safety impacts of this section, including any recommendations to
minimize burden of such impacts.

Why is more data necessary to protect Right Whales?

The Overview:
• A Right Whale is observed by:
o A United States vessel
o A United States vessel exempt from Right Whale protection laws
o A Non United States vessel
• The vessel will report the observation to the Coast Guard via VHF Radio Channel
16 (International Distress, Safety and Calling Channel). The vessel will report the
sighting of a Right Whale, and nothing else. The Coast Guard shore station
monitoring the channel will obtain the following vessel information from the
mandatory AIS (Automatic Identification System) monitoring system:
 o Vessel identity, country origin, make, type, GPS position, course, speed,
navigational status, gross tonnage, route destination and last port departed.
• The United States Coast Guard uses a cryptography method known as encryption to
keep the vessel name and country of origin secure. They will use the Advanced
Encyrption Standard (AES) using 256 bits because the data may be considered
government property and very secure. This method uses symmetric key encryption,
in order to access the vessel name and country of origin, the key would have to be
shared, but in this case it is not being shared with anyone. This information is
essential to be kept secret for military missions, federal government laws, and other
countries traveling through United States waters but not necessarily traveling to a
United States port. These vessels can be enforced to report Right Whale sightings
because their report will remain anonymous to everyone except the Coast Guard.
The United States Coast Guard is constantly monitoring the AIS system and does
have access to this information by law and in the event of an emergency.
Something to consider when it comes to encryption is speed, especially since this
data is time sensitive.
o The rest of the data is also encrypted and transferred to the Right Whale
Report SQL storage database server via the Internet. The data must be
encrypted to guard against cyber attacks.
o Data integrity is maintained in the SQL server database by requiring the
date, time and GPS position of the vessel to be recorded. If for some
unforeseen circumstance the other vessel information cannot be obtained
from AIS, this information can be obtained by the vessel calling to the
Coast Guard on VHF Channel 16. Indexes in the database can be used to
ensure this data is not left blank. Every time a new entry is entered into the
database, the checksum function in SQL is computed to ensure that no
column has an incorrect data entry. This is especially important for units. If
the checksum information is not validated, an error message will occur for
the information to be re-entered. Assuming the data is recorded via AIS
every time, the data should never have to be entered manually.
• The data is decrypted by using a private key and password to access data from a
shore monitoring facility. Different users will have different keys to increase
security.
o The data is monitored 24/7.
o If more than three reports are entered into the system within a 10 nautical
mile area of each other within 24hrs, all vessels traveling through the area
will receive a broadcast message on VHF Channel 16, with the optional
message to tune to a different channel to hear more information about
identifying Right Whales.
§ Using ZMQ with the MySQL database, before a broadcast is sent,
two-factor authentication (User password/Radio code) will have to
be entered to activate the message that is sent to all vessels within
10nm of that area.

Using this data in combination with NOAA Animal Tagging Data, Stranding and Survey
Data:
 • NOAA Data and North Atlantic Right Whale Data Program will remain two
separate data sources but studied together by data analysts, research scientists and
policyholders with required two factor authentication from individuals who have
previously underwent background checks and are certified to view such data due to
the critical state of the population to arrive at conclusions to help the species as a
whole.
• Once the data is stored, it will not be deleted. Even after a vessel becomes inactive
and their MMSI number (What makes all vessels unique) is no longer in use, the
data will not be deleted to have for future analysis.

Conclusion:
With this system, vessels can be confident that despite their mission on the water,
they can still provide helpful information to scientists and law enforcers to help the
critically endangered population of the North Atlantic Right Whale. Additional reports
from vessels over sea and United States vessels that are currently not required to report
Right Whales can be handled safely and securely with enhanced data security and integrity
procedures. With real time monitoring by analysts, active alerts can inform vessels to slow
down for the presence of a possible Right Whale before the observation occurs and
especially at night where visibility is severely restricted. This will make a difference when
Right Whales are present in an area where a speed restriction is lifted or in an area where
speed restrictions do not even apply. With real time monitoring by the United States Coast
Guard using AIS and VHF from a land based facility, further actions can be taken for
vessels that receive the alert and do not slow down for the possible presence of a Right
Whale.
Research questions to be answered with this data may include:
• What is the average speed a vessel over 65ft is traveling when a Right Whale is
spotted? Does this mean that vessels traveling over the average speed do not sight
the whales because they are moving too fast?
• What is the most common type of vessel to report a Right Whale? Is this due to
crew trainings on identification, the travel area, the time of year or the speed?
• How often are Right Whales reported when the vessel is at anchor in the shipping
lanes?
• Should the seasonal management plans be updated for inshore/offshore
regulations?
• After a 1 year time span, have there been less vessel strikes for Right Whales?
What about other species traveling in the same areas?