Latest / How To Protect The Ocean / A Full Circle Moment: The Return of L-Pod to Penn Cove

Transcript

A Full Circle Moment: The Return of L-Pod to Penn Cove · How To Protect The Ocean

• 0:00
  From tragedy and trauma comes hope. Over
• 0:04
  50 years ago, in the 1970s, the southern resident
• 0:07
  orca population, L-Pod, were corralled tragically
• 0:12
  and with a lot of trauma associated with it, using
• 0:15
  bombs and boats to corral this orca population into
• 0:19
  Penn Cove in the Northeast Pacific, just
• 0:23
  off of the state of Washington coast. to be
• 0:27
  able to capture 80 orcas to send
• 0:30
  them to various aquariums so that people can connect to them
• 0:33
  and start this failed experiment that we've known
• 0:37
  to become as a failed experiment of orcas in captivity. It
• 0:42
  was brutal. Five orcas died, a
• 0:46
  lot of orcas were captured, including Tokite,
• 0:50
  or known as Lolita, who spent 50 years in the Miami Seaquarium
• 0:54
  by herself, still using the same calls
• 0:58
  as her LPOD mates. Unfortunately, she
• 1:02
  passed away in 2023, and recently, as last week, While
• 1:07
  many people were worried about the election in
• 1:10
  the U.S., the LPOD came home to
• 1:14
  Penn Cove. There were a couple of videos that were posted that
• 1:18
  showed the emotional response of people, the emotional response of
• 1:21
  people of Penn Cove and researchers to see this
• 1:25
  full circle moment of the orcas coming back to Penn Cove.
• 1:30
  Did they avoid it because of what happened 50 years ago? We'll
• 1:33
  really never know, but they are back and people are happy to
• 1:37
  see them. We're going to talk about why that's important for orcas,
• 1:41
  for people, in this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
• 1:45
  Let's start the show. Hey
• 1:50
  everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the
• 1:53
  Ocean podcast. I am your host Andrew Lewin, and this is a podcast where you find out what's happening with
• 1:57
  the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for
• 2:00
  a better ocean by taking action. And if this is the first time
• 2:04
  you're here, you are in the right place if you want to know more things about
• 2:07
  ocean. You can find out more on this channel, on this podcast,
• 2:11
  however you're listening to this. We're on YouTube, we're on Spotify, we're on
• 2:14
  all your favorite podcast apps. But we're also at speakupforblue.com. If
• 2:18
  you want to find out more information about the ocean, go to speakupforblue.com. And
• 2:22
  if you want more information sent to you Monday to Friday, all
• 2:26
  about ocean news, jobs, new podcasts that we put out, new
• 2:29
  videos that we put out, you can sign up for our
• 2:32
  newsletter. Go to speakupforblue.com forward slash newsletter.
• 2:36
  That's speakupforblue.com forward slash newsletter. You can get access
• 2:39
  to videos that I don't really publish a lot of,
• 2:42
  but I've just started a vlog on the YouTube channel. If you go to that
• 2:46
  newsletter, you can get access to it. It's talking about the changes in
• 2:50
  government in the US and how we can start talking about it
• 2:53
  in science communication, how to approach science communication and
• 2:56
  how to speak to your audience. That's what I talk about. I'm gonna do more of these
• 2:59
  vlogs, probably about once a week or so, just to talk more about
• 3:03
  how we should be doing science communication from my point of view and my experience, and
• 3:07
  hopefully that'll help you start your journey, because we need more and more people to
• 3:10
  start talking about the ocean. Speaking of talking about the ocean and
• 3:14
  ocean news, I have some good news. Like, I know a lot of us who listen
• 3:17
  to this podcast or are part of this audience, We're a little disappointed by
• 3:20
  the election results from last week. And I completely understand and
• 3:24
  I completely am with you for a lot of different reasons other than climate
• 3:27
  change action and ocean action. However, I
• 3:31
  thought I would start off with a bit of a good news story. This is a story
• 3:35
  where I feel like has a lot of hope for the future. It starts off
• 3:38
  with a lot of trauma and tragedy, but has
• 3:41
  some hope for the future. And that story is about the Southern
• 3:45
  Resident Orca population. the LPOD actually of that population
• 3:49
  that came back last week to Penn
• 3:52
  Cove. If you've never heard of Penn Cove, Penn Cove is a famous site, notorious
• 3:57
  for an event that happened in the 1970s when people were allowed to
• 4:01
  capture orcas for the purposes of showing them in captivity.
• 4:05
  right for the sea worlds of the world and everything. Across the
• 4:08
  U.S. there were other aquariums, marine aquariums that were holding these animals
• 4:12
  and people can go up and look, and I mean they still have them in some
• 4:15
  areas, people can go and look at these animals and just be
• 4:19
  like, oh these are really cool and connect with them. That was an experiment that
• 4:22
  we know failed. If you have never seen the movie Blackfish, the documentary of
• 4:26
  the early 2010s, I highly recommend that you watch it. It is
• 4:29
  a little bit graphic. It does talk a lot about the capture and how
• 4:32
  violent that capture was, especially in Penn Cove. There
• 4:36
  were 80 total orcas captured, but
• 4:39
  there were five in Penn Cove that were killed during the capture. They
• 4:43
  got tangled in netting. and they drowned. One was
• 4:46
  a mature female, four were calves. Very, very tragic area.
• 4:50
  The LPOD, which the animals were from, had never come
• 4:53
  back to the Penn Cove since that tragic event
• 4:57
  until last week. Last week, there was a video that
• 5:01
  was circulating of Penn Cove and these orcas
• 5:04
  coming in. Some of them are breaching, you can see some calves having a
• 5:07
  good time. We don't know why they came back, and
• 5:11
  we really don't understand if there's like a significant reason and
• 5:15
  significant time or was it just because there was prey that they were
• 5:18
  following or they were just kind of navigating into new territories because
• 5:21
  maybe you know there wasn't prey somewhere else we don't really know
• 5:25
  but the people of Penco were pretty happy in fact the video I'm going to show you uh has
• 5:29
  a bell that bell is to signify when whales
• 5:33
  are in the area. They haven't been able to do it for orcas for over
• 5:37
  50 years and they're happy to ring the bell. A bit of an emotional video, so
• 5:40
  here it is. Check it out and I'll talk to you after. As
• 6:24
  you can see, the person who's never seen an orca population in
• 6:27
  scenes before, according to her video, she was
• 6:30
  able to record it for the first time and such a monumental event. Congratulations
• 6:34
  on capturing that on video. We appreciate you sharing that with us and we just
• 6:38
  love the fact that you know, this is a
• 6:42
  huge event to see these animals coming back after 50 years. They
• 6:45
  hadn't been there in over 50 years. Now, we do
• 6:48
  not know if it's a place where they would have gone normally before
• 6:52
  that event. We don't really know if it's a place that
• 6:56
  they just didn't want, they weren't interested in. you know after
• 6:59
  a while we just wanted to see that the fact
• 7:02
  that they come back it signifies maybe more to us humans that
• 7:06
  they've come back as a way of almost like a bit of a forgiveness like
• 7:10
  hey we know what you did last time because some of the some of the orcas that
• 7:13
  were from that time were still alive and let's be honest The
• 7:17
  event that started that, that led to the Pen
• 7:21
  Cove event of the capturing of 80 Southern Resident Whale populations affected
• 7:25
  the Southern Resident Whale populations so
• 7:29
  much so that they're now critically endangered. Now there are other things that
• 7:33
  have signified and have led to the contribution of that
• 7:36
  critically endangered status. They used to have 150 individuals, they're now down to
• 7:41
  just in the low 70s, 71, 72, maybe 73. It depends
• 7:45
  on how many calves they had this summer. I know they did lose some this summer. But
• 7:48
  there have been some major impediments
• 7:52
  to that rebuilding. One, these
• 7:56
  whales are long-lived species. They don't reproduce as much.
• 7:59
  They reproduce maybe one or two calves a year, and that
• 8:03
  has been a struggle. There's not a lot of food left for
• 8:06
  them. These southern resident orca populations are
• 8:09
  very stubborn in what they eat. They like, I believe it's
• 8:13
  salmon, chinook salmon or coho salmon, I can't remember, a specific type
• 8:16
  of salmon. That salmon population has dipped. We don't have as
• 8:20
  many as we used to, and that's because of a number of reasons. There's dams
• 8:24
  along the shoreline and the rivers that they usually go to. Just
• 8:28
  fish ladders that are just ineffective for what we want. There's climate
• 8:32
  change that affects the pH levels, affects the temperature. We
• 8:36
  don't know what's happening out in the ocean with the salmon,
• 8:39
  which basically get born in rivers, go out to the oceans for
• 8:43
  two to three years, then come back to spawn. So all that
• 8:46
  life cycle when they go to the ocean, they come back. Sometimes they come back in
• 8:49
  huge amounts. Sometimes they come back like a million of them. Sometimes
• 8:52
  it's like 12 million when they come back. So that really fluctuates and it's just not
• 8:56
  enough to sustain a population. Then you also have the
• 8:59
  bioaccumulation that happens of toxins because of
• 9:02
  plastic pollution, because of other toxins of bad
• 9:06
  water quality in certain areas. that bioaccumulate in
• 9:09
  the salmon, and then that, as the salmon get eaten by
• 9:12
  the orcas, that bioaccumulates in the orcas, and the orcas have been known to die
• 9:16
  due to toxins, due to plastic suffocation, and
• 9:19
  so forth. So there's a lot of things going against these orcas, which
• 9:22
  are a long-lived species, take a long time to mature sexually,
• 9:26
  so they're able to reproduce. Even the calves have trouble surviving
• 9:30
  within that first couple of years. And so it's been a very tragic
• 9:34
  time since that first event on August 8th in
• 9:37
  the 1970s and it just till now. It's just the
• 9:40
  recovery just hasn't been there and they haven't gone over 80 orcas
• 9:45
  in a long time, individuals of that southern resident population. So
• 9:49
  being able to maintain that, being able to build off of that and
• 9:52
  grow off of that has been a struggle, continues to be a struggle and
• 9:56
  we need to do a lot more to protect the ocean and protect those
• 10:00
  orcas, to protect their habitat, to protect their food, We
• 10:03
  can have those orcas stick around and grow in their population so
• 10:06
  that they're not, they can get out of that endangered status, critically endangered
• 10:10
  status. So that is a big problem. That's
• 10:15
  besides the point. The point right now is we're seeing a bit of a full
• 10:18
  circle moment, right? We're seeing that full circle moment where these animals
• 10:22
  are coming back into the cove. It's very joyful.
• 10:26
  As you saw in the video, you saw the bell ring. People were happy to
• 10:30
  see these orcas. They're playing, they're jumping around like
• 10:33
  nothing ever happened. Again, we don't know
• 10:36
  why these orcas are in Pen Cove, it could be for
• 10:40
  a variety of reasons. Could be due to food, could just be to
• 10:43
  exploration. Who knows what it is. These animals are very
• 10:46
  curious. These animals are very intelligent, emotionally,
• 10:51
  as well as being able to hunt and being able to locate food
• 10:54
  and proper habitats. So maybe this is a new thing. Maybe
• 10:57
  they'll come here. I don't know, but it's just one of those happy
• 11:01
  feel-good moments for a population that has had
• 11:05
  a lot of trauma, a lot of tragedy over the last 50 years,
• 11:09
  especially in that day in Penn Cove
• 11:12
  where five of the orcas were killed trying
• 11:16
  to be captured and a number of those animals being captured on
• 11:20
  that day. It's just a story I want to share. It's
• 11:23
  a quick one. There's nothing really more to go into it. If
• 11:27
  you want to follow this story and follow these
• 11:30
  orcas, there are a lot of creators on TikTok. I'll try to list them all that
• 11:34
  I know of that and put them in the show notes that you can follow that.
• 11:38
  There's a Cascadia Research, which is a company that looks after orcas
• 11:42
  and does a lot of research on orcas. There's NOAA that does a lot of
• 11:45
  research on orcas, University of British Columbia, University
• 11:49
  of Washington does a lot of work on orcas and
• 11:53
  that population, the southern resident population as
• 11:56
  well as the northern resident population and the transients. It's really good to
• 11:59
  get to know a lot of the different ones because They're so
• 12:03
  cool. They're such a cool animal. They're one of the only animals that
• 12:06
  we know of that will actually hunt for another member
• 12:10
  of its pod for them to eat. So they're not just
• 12:13
  out for themselves, they're out for the pod. It's a matriarchal pod. And
• 12:17
  it's just, it's really cool to learn about them. So
• 12:21
  if you want more information, I'll try and list as much as I can in the
• 12:24
  show notes. And if I'd love to hear if you've ever had sighting
• 12:28
  of those orcas in person, what your thoughts are
• 12:32
  on this event of them coming back, what
• 12:35
  do you think they're coming back for? Love to hear what you think, or you can DM me
• 12:39
  at HowToProtectTheOcean. Love to hear from you. Thank you so much
• 12:42
  for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Have