FREEPORT, Long Island—A couple of applications for iPad and iPhone promise to make tracking whales in the Bay of Fundy a whole lot easier.

The newest of the apps is called Spotter Pro and is designed for the citizen scientist, says Moira Brown, senior scientist at Boston’s New England Aquarium and a member of the Canadian Whale Institute.

Spotter Pro is a free data logging program that can be used to report whale sightings, she said this week.

“We haven’t had something like this that was easily available … ever before,” she said.

“They’re using it quite regularly in California right now (where) there’s a user group,” said Greg Trowse, chief technology officer with Fundy Tidal Inc., the company that will harness Fundy’s tidal power at three locations around Digby.

“We have our own user group that’ll be specific for the Bay of Fundy,” Trowse said this week.

“We’re providing information to (app developers) now on our species of interest and the behaviours.”

The Fundy user group will include whale tour companies and people to be employed by Fundy Tidal Inc. to observe marine life at tidal energy sites. Other interested people may also join the network of users, said Trowse.

“We get funding through the Offshore Energy Research Association of Nova Scotia. That’s the funding that allowed us to do the Bay of Fundy version.”

He said that includes hiring someone to manage the database.

“The value in these citizen scientist programs and these observer programs is really getting the information on what they see,” Brown said.

Sightings from new and unexpected places will help researchers learn more about the range of the animals, she said.

The other app, Whale Alert, was designed for professional mariners and is important in helping to reduce vessel strikes of right whales, said Brown.

“Last year we expanded and included the Canadian (data) as well.”

Whale Alert provides ships with up-to-date information as they travel through areas where whales congregate.

The app will also be of interest to people who like to follow whales, she said.

Whale Alert gets much of its information from 10 underwater listening posts, in hydrophone buoys in the Boston shipping lanes.

“You can go on Whale Alert and see if there are any right whale vocalizations being detected,” said Brown. “When those listening devices are activated by a call from a right whale, there is a request for vessels to slow down to 10 knots (18 kilometres per hour) or less to reduce the chance of a vessel strike.

“Right whales are actually enjoying more protection from vessel strikes now than ever all the way from Florida, where their calving ground is, to the Bay of Fundy.”

The app provides information from Florida to the Bay of Fundy, though the only hydrophones are in the Boston shipping lanes.

Whale Alert was geared for the east coast of the U.S. from Florida to Boston but will now have a broader scope.

But there are no plans to place hydrophone listening buoys in the Bay of Fundy, said Brown.

“In the Bay of Fundy, the vessel lanes were relocated,” she explained. The lanes were shifted about six kilometres east so ships go around the deepest part of the Grand Manan Basin in the Lower Bay of Fundy, where right whales feed on densely concentrated plankton.

South of Nova Scotia, in the Roseway Basin, an area has been internationally designated to be avoided. We have about 80 per cent compliance with that area by big vessel traffic,” she said.

There’s also a prototype for Whale Alert for the Android platform expected soon, said Brown.

She also promoted the Whale Emergency Network, saying people who see an entangled whale can call toll-free (1-866-567-6277).