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What Orcas Are Changing in Antarctica Might Surprise You · How To Protect The Ocean

• 0:00
  Orcas are changing Antarctica faster than scientists expected.
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  What if the most powerful predator in Antarctica is also the least understood?
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  Orcas aren't just hunting.
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  They're teaching.
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  They're adapting.
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  And they're reshaping entire ecosystems in real time, and scientists
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  are just starting to catch up.
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  This is the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast, your weekday ocean news update.
• 0:26
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  that follow button right now so you don't miss tomorrow's story.
• 0:34
  Antarctic orcas are not just one population.
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  They're multiple ecotypes.
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  Type 1, B1, B2
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  and C each with different diets, behavior and hunting styles.
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  Recent research shows that these groups rarely mix.
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  They specialize deeply, and some may even be on separate evolutionary paths.
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  So this is not just biodiversity.
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  This is multiple predators occupying the same Ocean in completely different ways.
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  Like just imagine all these orcas in and around the same
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  area, and they're not mixing.
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  This is showing that there's probably different dialects,
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  there's different behaviors, there's different eating patterns.
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  It just goes to show that these orcas are highly intelligent, emotionally
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  intelligent, and very, very specialized in their ways, just like humans in some way.
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  And you wonder if they have beef with other different ecotypes.
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  One of the most studied orca behaviors that we have seen is how they
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  create waves to wash seals off ice.
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  So if you've seen any of these videos around, it's really cool.
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  You'll see usually two orcas on one side of an ice float where
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  there's a seal on that ice float.
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  And on the other side there is one orca just waiting, waiting
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  for this seal to fall off.
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  And you're trying to wonder like what do these orcas do
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  to get this seal to fall off.
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  The orcas behind two, maybe three, they will drive.
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  They will swim as fast as they can towards the ice float and cause a tidal wave.
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  They dive underneath the ice float.
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  The wave hits the seal and the seal gets moved closer to that one orca
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  that's waiting on the other side.
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  If that doesn't hit him off that first wave, they'll do it again
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  and again and again until that tidal wave knocks the seal off.
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  The orca either falls right into his mouth or the orca goes and chases
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  it in the water and gets his meal.
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  This is coordinated behavior, coordinated hunting, and it's really interesting
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  because it's one of those behaviors where we're seeing Marine mammals actually
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  hunt for another individual in their pod.
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  It's really interesting to see if you ever have a chance.
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  I know it's sad to see this poor seal die, but the way these coordinated
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  efforts work, these coordinated hunts work is just unbelievable.
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  It's really cool to see.
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  Recent drone research revealed that these groups are coordinated.
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  They have different roles that they do.
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  There's precise timing in this hunting behavior, and there's learned behavior
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  that passes across generations.
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  This is culture, not instinct.
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  That's what's really interesting in how this is done.
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  We talk about culture in animals as a bit of a conservation factor because being
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  able to study these animals, especially orcas that have this type of culture, that
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  have different dialects and behaviors with the different pods that they're in, or
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  even different ecotype especially in the northeast Pacific, the Northwest of US
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  and Southwest of Canada, you'll see like resident orca populations past transient
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  orca populations, and they don't even mix.
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  They don't even have the same dialect apparently.
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  And so that's kind of a cool thing that we need to study these different patterns,
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  these different dialects, these different behaviors to see why they're so different
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  and understand this animal a lot more.
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  'Cause losing one of these pods could mean we lose a lot of
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  information about these orcas.
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  And that's something that I don't want to see done in ever.
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  And so that's something that is very worrisome for me as a biologist, as a
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  scientist, as an Ocean conservationist.
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  And of course, as the Antarctic ice declines, orcas are gaining access to
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  new hunting areas that they've never had access to before.
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  Seal and penguin populations are shifting because of that, and predator
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  prey relationships are also changing.
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  Some studies suggest orcas may be increasing pressure on certain
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  species as the ice retreats.
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  Think about that.
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  Not only is your home retreating for penguins and seals and so forth where
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  they need ice to relax, but you have these orcas, these highly, highly
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  intelligent animals that hunt together.
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  They get smarter and smarter every time in their hunting.
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  They refine their hunting skills and their hunting patterns, and they are
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  now putting more pressure on penguins and on seals in the Antarctic because
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  they are hunting better and the ice is retreating due to climate change.
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  That is kind of scary, to be honest if I were one of those
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  animals, those prey animals.
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  It's something that once they have access to new areas, they change everything.
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  Very similar to the wolves that were reintroduced in Yellowstone.
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  They're everywhere now.
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  They've repopulated places.
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  They've actually expanded more than ever and they're now doing
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  really well, which is great to see.
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  But they've actually changed that entire park, the way from what it was.
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  And so that's really interesting.
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  So you can almost ask the question for the orcas, like, are the
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  orcas stabilizing or destabilizing ecosystems in climate change?
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  Are they that much of an added pressure?
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  You talk about Antarctica, but we also talk about South Africa.
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  You have these two orcas that are inhibiting the population of great whites
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  by adding another cumulative effect onto climate change, onto overfishing,
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  onto a lot of different things.
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  That's a big problem for those great whites in South Africa.
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  They're disappearing.
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  They're declining, and they're moving around to find more food.
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  And now they have to worry about these pressure for these orcas.
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  So orcas are really, like I said, they're very efficient hunters and they
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  are something to be worrisome about.
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  That's something that's really interesting.
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  Oracles are not just predators.
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  They're also ecosystem engineers, if you will.
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  So just hold on for like stay with me for a bit.
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  When they change behavior, prey population shift, just like
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  penguins and seals in Antarctica.
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  Food webs get reorganized and entire systems end up responding.
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  This is happening right now in Antarctica.
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  When you have animals being pressured because their habitat
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  is decreasing, you're gonna start to see things being removed.
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  Like I said, great white sharks in South Africa are being removed.
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  That's changing the ecosystem.
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  That's changing the food web dynamics of that entire system.
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  You're seeing other sharks increase in population ' cause there's less pressure
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  on there and there's overfishing involved so that can cause a lot of problem.
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  There's a lot of predator drama that happens when you start to see these
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  different animals put pressure where other things are causing so much more pressure.
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  So climate change is causing a lot of pressure.
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  And then you have this predator that moves in and kind of eviscerates a
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  population or changes that population.
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  We still don't know their population sizes.
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  We still don't know how climate change will affect each ecotype.
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  Whether human activity will disrupt their culture, we don't know.
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  And to be honest, that's the risk.
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  You can't protect what you fully don't understand.
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  And I think that's a, a big, big problem.
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  There's so many gaps.
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  Antarctica used to be such a big area to worry about because we
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  can't get there all the time.
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  It's very difficult to work in there.
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  And by the end of the week, you're gonna hear an interview I did with
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  Ocean Networks Canada on their work installing essentially a system, a
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  data acquisition system, or two in Antarctica because something had already
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  gone wrong before they teamed up with some Spanish researchers on their
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  Spanish base, and they implemented these things to look at ice flows.
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  Really interesting research.
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  Now, a little bit more accessible because Antarctica is melting.
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  Not a good thing that it's accessible but we're starting to learn
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  more about this melting and more about how this can really change.
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  The logistics of work in Antarctica is very, very difficult, very challenging.
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  Now we're just starting to learn the ramifications of climate
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  change, especially in these areas.
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  So you wonder like, are we reacting too late to Antarctic research?
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  Is this something that we should have done maybe a little bit earlier?
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  But we are doing it now.
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  And that's the really the thing.
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  And orcas and Antarctica are not just surviving change.
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  They're actually driving change.
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  And if we don't understand them, and we don't understand
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  the future of the Southern Ocean.
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  And I think that is a big thing when we look at science, when we look at
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  biology, when we look at Antarctica and how these penguins and seals and other
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  animals that are in Antarctica, how important they are to our system and
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  how important, just the habitat, just Antarctica in general, that's this big
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  ice island, that continent really, that is
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  driving so much change in the world and we don't really understand it and
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  we need to understand it a lot better.
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  So, that's it for today's episode.
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  I really appreciate it.
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  If you wanna learn more about Antarctica this week, you will learn a lot
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  because we're gonna be talking about different animals that are around.
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  We're gonna be talking about leopard seals and penguins, and we're also gonna
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  be talking about glaciers and we're gonna be talking about what it's like
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  to work there in an interview on Friday.
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  So we have all week of just Antarctica News and I can't wait to bring it to you.
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  So follow How to protect the Ocean for your daily Ocean Science updates.
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  It's gonna be a lot of fun.
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  I can't wait to see you tomorrow.
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  Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How
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  to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
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  Have a great day.
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  We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.