Ship captains setting sail will soon have an extra kind of forecast to check – the likelihood of whales.

Satellite predictions of where whales are likely to be will help ships avoid the area, and so reduce the chance of striking a whale or snagging one in fishing nets.

The forecast will be particularly important for finding – and avoiding – critically endangered right whales, which were hunted nearly to extinction in the North Atlantic and have failed to recover.

So many animals have been struck by ships or entangled in fishing gear that wildlife managers are desperate to keep whales and humans apart. Fewer than 400 right whales remain.

Nick Record of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, Portland, US, has helped develop the satellite detection method, and described it at the 2008 Ocean Sciences meeting in Orlando, Florida, which ended March 7.

Click here to read the complete story on ABC.com. (There are also two videos of interest on this site: Jan. 2008 - "Whales Snubbed for National Security" and Nov. 2007 - "Large Mammal (Humpback) Tangled."