The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation is soliciting proposals to promote the development and adoption of innovative technologies that can help reduce vessel strikes of the endangered North Atlantic right whale (right whale) and other large whales.
Donor Name: National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF)
State: Selected States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 04/15/2026
Size of the Grant: $500,000 to $1 million
Grant Duration: 2 Years
Details:
The right whale is an endangered species, and vessel strikes are one of the major human-induced threats to their continued health and ability to recover. The whales’ habitat and migration routes are dynamic but overlap with major ports, harbors, shipping lanes, and areas of heavy recreational boating use along the Atlantic coastline, making right whales vulnerable to collisions with vessels that can be fatal. Generally, the faster a vessel is traveling when it hits a whale, the higher the likelihood of serious injury or death.
Priorities
- Research to develop, test, or deploy technologies that aid real-time detection of right whales and other large whales, especially for higher vessel speeds.
- Investigations that inform vessel strike avoidance or reduce strike severity including:
- Advance understanding of whale behavior and biology that is particularly relevant to informing detection technology or evaluation of such technology, that may aid in reducing vessels strikes. Specific proposals of interest include:
- Development of machine learning-based models to enable detection of whales in very-high-resolution satellite imagery. Approaches should be open-source Python for Vantor (formerly Maxar) WorldView imagery and recognize the challenge of model development with limited availability of training data.
- Research to develop innovative satellite tracking tags for large whales, with a focus on the following tag characteristics.
Funding Information
Grants will likely range between $250,000 and $750,000, but applicants seeking grants larger or smaller than that range are eligible and still encouraged to apply.
Grant Period
Applicants should design proposals that can be completed in 2 years (24 months) or less and project periods should start approximately 2 to 6 months after the expected November 2026 award notification date to allow for the contracting process.
Eligibility Criteria
- Eligible applicants include relevant state government agencies, local governments, regional governments, Tribal Governments and Organizations, educational institutions, non-profit 501(c) organizations, commercial (for-profit) organizations, and international organizations.
- Ineligible applicants include unincorporated individuals. Federal government entities are also ineligible.
- For-profit applicants: please note that this is a request for grant proposals, not a procurement of goods and services; see the Budget section below for specific cost considerations.
- For-profit applicants: please note that this is a request for grant proposals, not a procurement of goods and services.
For more information, visit NFWF.
