Latest / How To Protect The Ocean / Why Healthy Whales Are Suddenly Ending Up on Beaches

Transcript

Why Healthy Whales Are Suddenly Ending Up on Beaches · How To Protect The Ocean

• 0:00
  The whales we're gonna talk about today, they weren't sick.
• 0:02
  They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
• 0:06
  This is the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, and if you are interested in
• 0:11
  knowing more about the ocean, need a resource to find out more about the
• 0:14
  ocean, what's happening, the good, the bad, maybe the ugly at some point, I
• 0:17
  want you to hit that follow button right now because this is the podcast for you.
• 0:22
  You're gonna learn everything five days a week on this podcast.
• 0:25
  Normally, we do a solo show Monday through Thursday, and then we'll do an interview.
• 0:30
  This week, we're gonna be doing five randomized podcasts, solo
• 0:34
  podcasts, Monday to Friday.
• 0:36
  Normally, there's a theme.
• 0:37
  Today we're just gonna randomize, gonna go back to the old school How to Protect
• 0:40
  the Ocean podcast, and I can't wait to get into it 'cause we're gonna talk
• 0:43
  about these whales, these pilot whales.
• 0:45
  Why are healthy whales ending up stranded on beaches?
• 0:49
  Every time you see a stranding or news of a stranding... I've
• 0:53
  never seen a stranding live.
• 0:54
  I don't know if I can handle it emotionally.
• 0:55
  You have people who react to them.
• 0:57
  You have whale stranding networks.
• 0:59
  There's some in the UK.
• 1:00
  There's some in North America.
• 1:01
  There are some all over the world, and these are a lot of times
• 1:04
  volunteers that will patrol or go out.
• 1:08
  They're trained to specifically handle beached whales situations or any kind
• 1:13
  of beaching of any type of animal, and they go out, and they make sure the right
• 1:16
  authorities know what to do, or they can come out to these whale strandings.
• 1:19
  But it's really difficult to go out there.
• 1:21
  You have these whales that a lot of the times they don't make it.
• 1:24
  They come onto the beach.
• 1:26
  We don't really know why they're coming onto the beach.
• 1:28
  A lot of times, if it's like pilot whales, they tend to follow the leader.
• 1:31
  And if the leader's sick or it ends up beaching itself, the entire
• 1:34
  pod will beach itself as well.
• 1:36
  So it's a difficult situation to look at.
• 1:38
  In this latest or recent study that was reported by phys.org, which is a great
• 1:43
  site as well, looked at a major pilot whale stranding in Scotland, where
• 1:47
  more than 50 whales were stranded.
• 1:51
  That is insane amount.
• 1:53
  Now, like I said, pilot whales, they come in large pods.
• 1:56
  We don't know why they really beach themselves, but they're known to beach.
• 1:59
  They beach in New Zealand, up in the UK.
• 2:02
  This is not necessarily a rare occasion.
• 2:05
  It's just one that we've seen a lot.
• 2:07
  And the ones that were stranded, these 50, many of them were in good
• 2:10
  health before it actually happened.
• 2:12
  That's what makes this one different.
• 2:15
  The detail that really changes this story is that most of the animals were healthy.
• 2:20
  They weren't sick, they weren't disoriented, they didn't
• 2:23
  have any problems with them.
• 2:24
  All the animals that stranded and ended up dying, they were actually healthy.
• 2:29
  This wasn't a disease, and it wasn't an obvious injury.
• 2:32
  Instead, researchers found something else, and this is
• 2:35
  where it really comes into play.
• 2:37
  Like the mysteries of the ocean, everything that comes on.
• 2:40
  These whales had been feeding in areas that were closer to the continental shelf,
• 2:45
  right near shallow coastal zones, which these pilot whales aren't really there.
• 2:49
  Now, these places are productive, but they can be dangerous because
• 2:52
  of the shallowness of the area.
• 2:55
  Whales follow food.
• 2:57
  That's how the ocean works.
• 2:58
  But when food shifts, so do whales, right?
• 3:01
  That happens with a lot of these animals.
• 3:03
  They gotta go where their food is.
• 3:05
  And now, these days, with everything going on in the world, you have climate
• 3:09
  change that is shifting where these fish are going, where whales are going to
• 3:13
  follow the fish, where upwellings happen.
• 3:15
  And if you don't know what an upwelling is, essentially It's a place like, on
• 3:18
  the ocean where cold, nutrient-rich waters come from deep in the ocean,
• 3:22
  they come up to the surface, and it brings fish around 'cause you get a
• 3:26
  lot of plankton in those upwellings.
• 3:28
  The fish will come to feed on the plankton.
• 3:30
  The larger fish and marine mammals and sea turtles and everything will come in and
• 3:34
  feed on everything else that's coming in.
• 3:36
  Seabirds will dive in, and it's actually quite a productive area.
• 3:39
  You have a lot of these different areas around the ocean that are being shifted
• 3:42
  around because currents are shifting, 'cause wind patterns are shifting,
• 3:45
  because the climate is changing, and that's what we have to go with.
• 3:48
  And so it becomes really difficult to track where these new areas are.
• 3:52
  Like, let's go back to marine mammals that were being killed, like
• 3:55
  the North Atlantic right whale on the East Coast of North America.
• 3:59
  They were normally in the US.
• 4:00
  They would go from Jacksonville, Florida, in the winter all
• 4:03
  the way up to, say, like, New England and Maine in the summers.
• 4:06
  Then, all of a sudden, they started to go into the Gulf of
• 4:09
  St. Lawrence and up in Canada.
• 4:11
  Why are they up there?
• 4:12
  It's warmer waters.
• 4:13
  They can extend their range because it's warmer waters, and they ended up being
• 4:15
  there, and 17 of them that summer that we found them there ended up dying
• 4:19
  because the ships weren't ready for them.
• 4:20
  The ships ran into them.
• 4:21
  They got entangled from fishing gear, and they ended up dying.
• 4:24
  A lot of the shifts had to change.
• 4:25
  Not only are we seeing a shift in ecology, but we have to get into a
• 4:29
  shift of how we conduct ourselves in the ocean during that time.
• 4:33
  So that's essentially what's been happening.
• 4:35
  The shifts of animals coming into closer to shore can bring these
• 4:39
  marine mammals that follow the prey into risky environments,
• 4:42
  which is essentially shallow water.
• 4:44
  That's probably their biggest crux.
• 4:46
  As my daughter would say, the biggest op.
• 4:49
  I know.
• 4:49
  I'm older.
• 4:50
  I, I don't... I- it doesn't work.
• 4:51
  It doesn't feel good coming off my lips.
• 4:53
  But whatever.
• 4:54
  Yeah, yeah, I said it.
• 4:54
  I said it there.
• 4:55
  I said I'm not editing that out regardless.
• 4:57
  But, you know, shallow waters have complex coastlines.
• 4:59
  Places where navigation can become harder.
• 5:02
  It's difficult for pilot whales to go in.
• 5:05
  You add one more layer that pilot whales are highly social.
• 5:08
  If one individual gets into trouble, like I mentioned earlier, the
• 5:10
  entire group will actually follow.
• 5:13
  And when you have an entire group that's following one animal or a couple of
• 5:17
  animals that are going through, this social behavior amplifies the risk of
• 5:22
  what is gonna happen to these animals.
• 5:23
  They're in coastal waters.
• 5:25
  They're close to coastal waters, where navigation can be difficult.
• 5:27
  They navigate using echolocation.
• 5:29
  That shallow water compared to deep water, the sound reverberations that they use
• 5:34
  to look for the way they're going, their navigation, can really throw them off and
• 5:38
  disorientate them in these shallow areas.
• 5:40
  So as they're going through the shallow areas, they get disoriented,
• 5:43
  they lose their navigation, they end up getting beached, and then
• 5:46
  because they're so social, a lot of the other animals will just follow
• 5:49
  them even though they're healthy.
• 5:50
  So one mistake becomes a mass stranding, and this is the key insight here.
• 5:55
  Strandings are not just random.
• 5:57
  They are signals telling us that the ocean is changing.
• 6:01
  And so when we have a changing ocean, we have a lot of stuff going on.
• 6:05
  And to keep updated on finding out what's going on in this changing ocean,
• 6:08
  I want you to hit that follow button right now on this podcast so you make
• 6:11
  sure you don't miss any of the episodes where we talk about the different
• 6:15
  things that are changing in the ocean.
• 6:16
  Yesterday, we talked about sea cucumbers decreasing and how because of fisheries,
• 6:19
  because how important that is and how important they are to the ecosystem.
• 6:22
  Now, we're talking about pilot whale stranding and how healthy ones will
• 6:25
  strand because they are very curious.
• 6:28
  They're social animals.
• 6:29
  They wanna stay with their pods, and they will go until
• 6:32
  they are very much in trouble.
• 6:34
  So hit that follow button so you make sure you know everything that's
• 6:36
  going on because we're gonna get down into what needs to happen next.
• 6:41
  If we don't wanna see this, 'cause we're gonna see more of this, we're likely
• 6:44
  gonna see more of these pilot whales stranding, not because the whales are
• 6:47
  failing, because the ocean is shifting.
• 6:50
  Prey is moving.
• 6:52
  Conditions are changing, and species are adapting in real time.
• 6:55
  They're adapting 'cause they need to.
• 6:57
  A lot of the times, people will look at climate change and look at everything
• 7:00
  that's happening, and they'll tell me, "Andrew, like, why do we need to change?
• 7:03
  I love the hot weather.
• 7:04
  It's great when we get a shorter winter and a hotter summer or a
• 7:07
  longer spring, summer, fall because those are the seasons I like.
• 7:10
  I don't wanna be in Canada in the snow for long." As winter ends here
• 7:15
  in Canada, here in Ontario, people are like, "When's spring coming?
• 7:18
  When's spring coming?" So much so that we look to a groundhog
• 7:21
  to tell us when spring is coming.
• 7:23
  That's how much we don't like it by the end of the winter.
• 7:26
  We love winter for a little bit, but after a few weeks of really cold, people
• 7:29
  are like, "When's summer coming?" And so, people are not ready to change to that.
• 7:33
  And a lot of times they don't see the change.
• 7:35
  They don't see that they need to change because they haven't been affected
• 7:37
  too much yet or personally yet.
• 7:39
  Although many people around the world are being impacted.
• 7:41
  Now, that has been a buildup, and we're starting to see what is happening.
• 7:45
  But the animals that are in the ocean have to change because they need their food.
• 7:48
  And when their food moves, they need to move too.
• 7:51
  So the question now is whether we can track those shifts, like
• 7:54
  these ocean shifts, fast enough to understand and respond.
• 7:57
  Like, how can we do this?
• 7:59
  So there's modeling and then monitoring of these fisheries and where they're gonna
• 8:04
  go, doing stock assessments, why they're shifting, what are the major components?
• 8:08
  Is it temperature?
• 8:09
  Is it because their prey is shifting 'cause currents are shifting?
• 8:12
  And what's gonna happen when these marine mammals come close to the
• 8:15
  shore or close to coastal areas?
• 8:17
  Again, are we gonna go out there and try and divert them outwards?
• 8:20
  What happens to their food?
• 8:22
  Are they gonna be emaciated?
• 8:23
  Who knows what's gonna happen in the future?
• 8:25
  But this is where the call to action is, where we need more funding of
• 8:29
  just fundamental science, fundamental ocean research, that will actually
• 8:33
  have applications to the real world problems that we see each and every day.
• 8:38
  So that is teaming up with coastal communities, like, so
• 8:40
  the science community teaming up with coastal communities and be
• 8:42
  like, "What are you looking for?
• 8:45
  What are you seeing out there along your coastline that you have seen for
• 8:49
  generations?" Whether it's indigenous communities or non-indigenous, anybody
• 8:53
  who has been there for a long time can tell you what's been happening to the
• 8:56
  fisheries, what's been happening to the coastline, what's been happening
• 8:59
  to sea level rise, temperature, shifts in wind, shift in currents, shifts in
• 9:04
  prey, anything, they are able to tell it.
• 9:06
  And allow the scientists to come in and collaborate with those local
• 9:10
  communities to be able to find out solutions on how they can actually, just
• 9:14
  sit there and be like, "Hey, you know what? We can actually adapt to this."
• 9:17
  These whales didn't make a mistake.
• 9:20
  They followed the ocean as it changed.
• 9:22
  We're gonna see that a lot more.
• 9:24
  And that is something that is scary to see because these are healthy
• 9:27
  whales and we're gonna see more of these whales do this, but their prey
• 9:31
  is shifting closer to the coastline.
• 9:33
  This may not be a problem if the prey shifted like further away from the
• 9:37
  coastline, but they're coming in.
• 9:38
  And so now it's a problem, and now we need to have better monitoring in the future.
• 9:43
  I would love to hear what you think, 'cause this podcast, this
• 9:45
  whole thing, is the start of a conversation, not just this episode.
• 9:48
  But this is why I started this podcast 11 years ago.
• 9:51
  I wanna hear from you.
• 9:52
  I wanna have that conversation.
• 9:53
  Reach out to me on my socials.
• 9:55
  You can see it in the description.
• 9:56
  You can subscribe to my newsletter, speakupforblue.com/newsletter, that
• 10:00
  I send out every Monday to Friday.
• 10:02
  And of course, you can always hit me up at speakupforblue.com/feedback.
• 10:07
  Leave a voicemail or you can type in your feedback.
• 10:10
  I would love to hear from you.
• 10:12
  If you listen to this podcast more than once a day or even this is your first
• 10:15
  time, I'd love to hear your thoughts, your comments, anything, criticisms even.
• 10:20
  I would love to hear from you.
• 10:21
  I wanna thank you so much for joining me on this episode of the
• 10:24
  How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
• 10:25
  Have a great day.
• 10:26
  We'll talk to you next time, and happy conservation.