Japan scans whale migration with eye from the sky

The Japanese have taken an enterprising new move to fight the cause of the whales. Japan has now made a plan to monitor whale migration via satellite . The satellite will use global-positioning technology to track the migration patterns of whales. Built by a private Japanese university as part of a $2.72 million research project the satellite has been planned to be launched around October.

The data collected will also provide Japanese restaurant owners easy pathways to serve whale meat, a delicacy for some Japanese. This veiled eye in the sky, searching for whales, is being spearheaded by Tomonao Hayashi, 74, an engineering professor at the Chiba Institute of Technology.

Coming to the nitty gritties of satellite observation, small titanium pins up to 5.9 inches long tucked in to their layer of blubber will be doing the submarine tracking for the aerial eye. The satellite which is at a distance of more than 500 miles above the earth and weighing 110-pound will be on a holy grail to save the whales. Earlier in the year, the same country was instrumental in sending an expedition to hunt 440 minke whales in Antarctic waters. Therefore, the whale tracking mission being led by Japan sounds quite dicey! Under the surface.