Latest / How To Protect The Ocean / Marine Conservation Projects: Why Recent Wins for Endangered Species Matter

Transcript

Marine Conservation Projects: Why Recent Wins for Endangered Species Matter · How To Protect The Ocean

• 0:00
  There has been a ton of good news surrounding the ocean these days, even
• 0:04
  though there's still some bad news.
• 0:06
  There's been a ton of great news.
• 0:07
  We've seen the green sea turtle drop from endangered to least
• 0:11
  vulnerable, which is fantastic.
• 0:13
  We've also seen that there's been a little slight increase in
• 0:16
  the North Atlantic right whale population, which is wonderful.
• 0:20
  And now there's been a discovery of potentially two more new vaquitas,
• 0:25
  which there are an estimated less than 10 vaquitas at some point.
• 0:29
  And any new calf is great.
• 0:31
  So there's been some good news and I wanted to address it today to talk
• 0:35
  about why this has happened because with all the bad news that's happening.
• 0:39
  There's some good news and there's a reason why this is happening, and we're
• 0:42
  gonna talk about it on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
• 0:45
  Let's start the show.
• 0:47
  Hey everybody.
• 0:48
  Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
• 0:51
  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find
• 0:53
  out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean,
• 0:56
  and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action.
• 0:59
  And today is a good day because I'm gonna explain to you why there has
• 1:04
  been some good news in three separate occasions of ocean stuff that's happening.
• 1:09
  There's been increase in the green sea turtle population, which has
• 1:12
  degraded them from endangered species to least endangered or
• 1:15
  least vulnerable, which is great.
• 1:16
  We've also seen an increase, a slight increase in the population of the
• 1:21
  North Atlantic right whale, which shows not necessarily an increase in
• 1:23
  population, but we know that it's not a decrease in population, which is
• 1:26
  the first time in a number of years that's happened, and we actually
• 1:29
  have witnesses of a calf, vaquita calf
• 1:33
  that hasn't been seen in a long time.
• 1:35
  Like we haven't seen a calf in such a long time.
• 1:37
  The estimated population was under 10.
• 1:39
  Doesn't necessarily mean that this population is going to
• 1:41
  increase beyond being extinct.
• 1:44
  Still has a long way to go, but we've seen some good news and around all three
• 1:50
  of these species, there is a reason why.
• 1:53
  But first, let's talk about some of the bad news that has happened to
• 1:56
  cause this stuff with sea turtles, with whales, there's been some hunting.
• 2:02
  Every time, green sea turtle, all seven species of green sea turtle
• 2:05
  or have been endangered other than the green sea turtle now.
• 2:08
  Any sea turtle has the endangered kind of label to it and in a
• 2:11
  number of different countries.
• 2:12
  Also the IUCN red list and now the green sea turtle is actually in certain, and
• 2:16
  overall has increased in population enough that it's not endangered anymore.
• 2:20
  I think it's least vulnerable, which is great news.
• 2:23
  There's still a lot of pressure on sea turtles in general and green
• 2:26
  sea turtles in general because people use it to eat sea turtles.
• 2:29
  People use it to eat the eggs, which obviously the eggs are important.
• 2:33
  If you don't know about sea turtles, when they lay their eggs, they lay a number and
• 2:36
  they can range anywhere from 50 to 450.
• 2:39
  These sea turtle eggs will hatch at some point underneath the sand
• 2:42
  and they will get to the ocean.
• 2:44
  They will make their mad rush to the ocean.
• 2:46
  Some will get eaten on the way by birds, raccoons, other animals.
• 2:49
  Some will go the wrong way due to lighting and stuff like
• 2:52
  that, depending on where it is.
• 2:53
  And then some will make it to the ocean.
• 2:54
  And out of that clutch of eggs, usually about one or
• 2:58
  two will make it to adulthood.
• 3:00
  The odds are not in their favor to get there.
• 3:02
  And then there's a lot of animals that will die along the way for
• 3:05
  one or two animals per clutch to get actually to adulthood.
• 3:08
  The odds are already against them.
• 3:10
  Now you have a lot of human factors like digging up the eggs, eating all the
• 3:13
  eggs, or going in and hunting them or hitting them by their boats or getting
• 3:17
  entangled in fishing gear and so forth makes for a very difficult situation
• 3:23
  for these sea turtles around the world.
• 3:25
  Now with northern right whales, they were hunted to extinction.
• 3:28
  There used to be 20 to 30,000 before we started hunting them for their
• 3:31
  blubber, for energy matters and oil.
• 3:34
  Once that stopped, you started to see an increase.
• 3:36
  And then of course we started to see a decrease in the last 10 years, 15 years.
• 3:40
  If you don't know the details, you can go to the episode.
• 3:42
  I'll link it in the show notes, or I'll link it to this video
• 3:44
  and you can go check that out.
• 3:46
  But it's starting to slowly come back again.
• 3:48
  We started to see a decrease and started to slowly come back and there's a
• 3:51
  reason for it and we'll talk about it.
• 3:52
  And the vaquita, well, the vaquita, a lot of people are still doubting the fact
• 3:56
  that we can get it back to what it is.
• 3:58
  The big thing around the Vaquita is the Totoaba.
• 4:01
  The Totoaba is a fish that is highly sought after for it's swim bladder.
• 4:06
  It has apparent medicinal properties, which hasn't necessarily been
• 4:10
  proven in any medical journal at all or any medical research.
• 4:13
  And so that gets sent off to China.
• 4:15
  Now, unfortunately, throughout this whole process, organized crime got involved.
• 4:19
  There's a lot of money in it.
• 4:20
  And so they catch and sell a lot of totoaba.
• 4:23
  Now, the totoaba, the way they catch it, they use gillnets.
• 4:25
  They catch a lot of them.
• 4:26
  But when the gillnets are set, these Vaquita, these little porpoises get
• 4:30
  caught in the gillnets, and so they end up dying in the gillnets and
• 4:34
  then the totoaba would die as well, and they get shipped off to China.
• 4:37
  So that population has decreased so much.
• 4:39
  Last time there was an estimated under 10 individuals.
• 4:42
  They're also very elusive, so it's very difficult to get a proper estimate.
• 4:45
  So there might be less, there might be a little bit more,
• 4:47
  it's very difficult to tell.
• 4:48
  Regardless, a calf has been cited, which is fantastic.
• 4:51
  And now we're saying, oh, well maybe just, maybe there's a bit
• 4:54
  of a reason why that's happening.
• 4:56
  And all three have the same properties.
• 4:59
  There are people, multiple people, numerous people that are
• 5:03
  dedicated to their protection.
• 5:05
  And there are a number of people, individual organizations, there are
• 5:08
  government departments, multiple government departments, and depending
• 5:11
  on which country you're in, who are dedicated to protecting and have put
• 5:15
  it into law to protect these animals to make sure that this population increases.
• 5:20
  Now some will win and some won't.
• 5:22
  Right?
• 5:22
  In the case of the Vaquita, there's a good chance that this thing's gonna
• 5:25
  go extinct within our lifetime just because there's so few, however.
• 5:29
  However, the fact that there are so many of these projects going on
• 5:32
  around the world, some are small, some are large, some are just kind
• 5:36
  of in the middle, it is happening
• 5:38
  where we are seeing these projects, these policies help in conservation.
• 5:44
  This is huge.
• 5:45
  And this means that it works.
• 5:47
  If we come together or if we do things individually and we work to take our
• 5:51
  little sections of our world and say, Hey, I can do the best I can for this
• 5:56
  species, for this habitat, for this coastline, for this natural area,
• 6:01
  I can do something good.
• 6:03
  As a collective, we can do something good.
• 6:05
  The IUCN red list that has all these species, including the green sea turtle,
• 6:09
  can't protect everything in every country.
• 6:11
  Every country where these green sea turtles are found has to have
• 6:15
  their own policies and laws, have to have their own organizations that
• 6:19
  will do the work to protect them.
• 6:22
  They have to have their own individuals that will volunteer
• 6:25
  or that will spend their time and their money, or even their career
• 6:28
  to be able to dedicate to protecting these animals, and that is huge.
• 6:32
  When it comes to the Green Sea Turtle, there are organizations all over the
• 6:36
  world that are working within their own collective areas, whether it's Costa
• 6:39
  Rica, whether it's Greece, whether it's somewhere in South America, whether
• 6:43
  it's along the Florida coastline or the southeast coastline of the us.
• 6:46
  It doesn't matter along Europe, anywhere there's sea turtles and green sea turtles.
• 6:51
  We've seen projects to one patrol at night to make sure that these eggs, these nests
• 6:57
  where these eggs are laid, are protected.
• 6:59
  There are no poachers that come out there because they've been
• 7:01
  actually protected by volunteers.
• 7:03
  By students, by scientists, by conservationists who are dedicating
• 7:08
  their time and their effort and sometimes their safety to be able to protect
• 7:13
  these areas, to protect these species.
• 7:16
  And that protection has scaled and it's allowed the chances, even if
• 7:21
  their odds are not in their favor for those sea turtles to get out into the
• 7:24
  ocean for those one or two sea turtles to be reach adulthood per clutch.
• 7:29
  That's how great it is.
• 7:31
  That's what we need to do.
• 7:33
  The North Atlantic right whales, do you think that they've just
• 7:36
  gotten better because of policy?
• 7:38
  No.
• 7:38
  There are a lot of people out there, organizations, scientific bodies,
• 7:42
  academics, government agencies who are monitoring these whales, whether they're
• 7:47
  doing flyovers, whether they're doing drone work, whether they're doing along
• 7:50
  the coastline or ship, you know, watching and do like whale watching surveys.
• 7:54
  These are so important to understanding not only the size of the population,
• 7:59
  especially when they're endangered, but understanding what's affecting them.
• 8:03
  There are organizations that are there just dedicated to untangling whales.
• 8:07
  Do you know how hard it is to untangle whales?
• 8:09
  It's actually quite dangerous to untangle a whale while it's swimming at its speed,
• 8:14
  which is usually faster than you want it to be, and people trying to untangle.
• 8:18
  People have actually passed away because of it.
• 8:20
  It is tragic, but they have spent their time to make sure that these animals
• 8:25
  are protected as best as possible.
• 8:28
  And this is why it's so important, whether you're a scientist, whether
• 8:32
  you're a conservationist, whether you're somebody who just wants to
• 8:35
  help, is to support these projects.
• 8:38
  There are people who volunteer to help bring awareness for the Vaquita.
• 8:42
  There are people who volunteer down in Mexico to go into the villages
• 8:46
  and convince the villagers who are out there fishing, who are trying
• 8:49
  to feed their families to find alternatives to using gillnets
• 8:52
  'cause gillnets are banned in the area, but they use them anyway.
• 8:55
  And that's what kills the vaquita and the totoaba, which is also endangered.
• 8:58
  And they try and work their way and work within the community, work within the
• 9:01
  village to be like, Hey, we don't want you just to stop and not make money.
• 9:04
  We want you to be understandable and to be like, Hey, you know what?
• 9:08
  We want you to not only stop fishing for these and start using these gear,
• 9:12
  but we want you to be profitable.
• 9:14
  We want you to help, and they're doing whatever they can to help.
• 9:17
  And work with the fishing villages that need their money to feed
• 9:20
  their families, to have their kids go to school and be happy.
• 9:23
  It's not an easy thing to do.
• 9:24
  This is not something that is easily done, and this is to save a porpous
• 9:29
  that could go extinct anyway, but they're fighting as much as they
• 9:32
  can tooth and nail just to get the species up by one individual at a time.
• 9:37
  That's the important thing.
• 9:39
  This is what makes conservation so great, is there are people who are so passionate
• 9:43
  and you don't have to be a scientist.
• 9:45
  You don't have to know much about the ocean.
• 9:46
  You just have to be dedicated to protecting nature and
• 9:49
  have a passion for it.
• 9:51
  And people are out there doing the work, whether it's on the front lines, on the
• 9:55
  ocean, on the coastlines, or if it's in the workshops, in the hotel conference
• 10:00
  rooms, making sure that policies are going forward that will protect these species
• 10:04
  and continue to protect these species.
• 10:06
  Because I don't know if you've ever watched but there are some governments
• 10:09
  that are in power these days that are stripping those protections away.
• 10:13
  It happens a lot.
• 10:14
  It doesn't matter what party you're from.
• 10:16
  If they want something specific, they will strip those powers away.
• 10:19
  Those protections away that people work so hard to be put in place,
• 10:23
  including government officials, elected government officials
• 10:25
  that want to protect these areas.
• 10:27
  We've seen it in the us, we've seen it in Canada, we've seen
• 10:30
  it all over the world, and it's something that we have to protect.
• 10:32
  And there are people out there who are protesting, who are lobbying,
• 10:35
  who are speaking to the right people and saying, Hey, you know what?
• 10:39
  We need to protect these animals.
• 10:41
  And so when people come to me and they say, Hey Andrew,
• 10:44
  how do I protect sea turtles.
• 10:46
  How do I protect sea grass habitats?
• 10:49
  How do I protect sea birds, or how do I protect sharks, or how do I protect a
• 10:53
  coral reef or whatever I like to protect whatever you're interested A kelp forest
• 10:57
  is that you look up these organizations and you say, Hey, I wanna support you.
• 11:01
  I wanna donate to this organization.
• 11:03
  There are individuals who are on Patreon who do a fantastic work to educate not
• 11:07
  only individuals, but educate villages, educate people who are gonna take over and
• 11:12
  monitor like on small island communities that don't have the capabilities to
• 11:16
  learn how to use specific technologies.
• 11:19
  These are the people you can support individually.
• 11:22
  You can support studies that help scientists understand
• 11:25
  the environment more.
• 11:26
  You can go on experiment.com or patreon.com.
• 11:29
  experiment.com.
• 11:30
  You can actually fund studies.
• 11:32
  These are the things that you can look out for that you may not have
• 11:34
  a direct effect, but you might be supporting somebody, a student,
• 11:38
  a vet in the industry like a scientist or a conservationist, or a policy
• 11:43
  maker, or a lobbyist, or somebody who's in charge of an organization
• 11:45
  or works for an organization.
• 11:47
  You can be supporting them like $20 a month or $60 one time donation.
• 11:52
  You can do that, and you can say, I'm helping support this organization.
• 11:55
  Then you can share whatever comes outta that organization, whether they're sharing
• 11:58
  studies or they're sharing call to action.
• 12:00
  You can share that online and you can feel like you're a part of something because
• 12:03
  what you do, whether you're watching this episode or you're listening to
• 12:07
  this episode, what you do is important.
• 12:09
  And you may not see it
• 12:11
  right away.
• 12:12
  You may not see it six months from now.
• 12:13
  You may not see it tomorrow, you may not see it a year from now.
• 12:16
  You may not see it 10 years from now.
• 12:17
  You may not even see it within your lifetime, but supporting these projects,
• 12:21
  supporting the people who are working to do this stuff, these organizations
• 12:26
  will help forward conservation.
• 12:29
  There are so many people who are on the front lines and working in
• 12:32
  stranding networks to ensure that if we see a marine mammal stranded,
• 12:36
  they're the first ones out there.
• 12:37
  They have protocols, they've been trained to do certain things.
• 12:40
  They've been trained to put them back out or float them or doing whatever
• 12:43
  you can for marine mammals to get them out there to understand what's
• 12:45
  happening to these animals as they wash up, whether it's something
• 12:48
  that we should be concerned about.
• 12:50
  whether it's something that, you know, just they're old and they ended up passing
• 12:52
  away, whether they're entangled and how to get rid of the entanglement, to
• 12:55
  get the ropes off and the lines off.
• 12:57
  These are all things that people do and you can support those
• 13:00
  organizations through a donation.
• 13:02
  And it's so good.
• 13:03
  If makes you feel so good, trust me, from somebody who does it, like just
• 13:07
  these bracelets here that I have.
• 13:08
  This is from Fahlo.
• 13:10
  F-A-H-L-O.
• 13:11
  It's an app that I found that somebody told me about.
• 13:14
  And you can help tag an animal.
• 13:17
  And so what they do is that through these braces as they sell, it's a for-profit
• 13:20
  company, they sell these bracelets.
• 13:21
  A portion goes to the organization that is tag the animals.
• 13:24
  So if you wanna protect the dolphin, a shark, a whale shark, a penguin,
• 13:28
  a polar bear, you wanna do a land animals like gorillas, sloths even.
• 13:32
  They do a lot and they show you the animal that you're sponsoring
• 13:35
  to put a satellite tag on.
• 13:37
  These are all important to conservation.
• 13:40
  And they're small and they may not feel as if they are
• 13:43
  gonna be big, but they are big.
• 13:45
  And it's something that's important.
• 13:46
  And it's something that I want you to think about.
• 13:48
  When somebody says, Hey, climate change is rearing its ugly head again or We see a
• 13:51
  storm, you can do something by protecting the environment, not even just a specific
• 13:55
  animal, by protecting the environment.
• 13:57
  That's what you can do.
• 13:58
  Donate your time, donate your money, whatever it might be, small project,
• 14:02
  big project, it doesn't matter.
• 14:03
  It all helps in protecting sea turtles, in protecting whales,
• 14:07
  in protecting porpoises, coral reefs, seagrasses, everything.
• 14:10
  That's the message today.
• 14:11
  That's it.
• 14:12
  Short and sweet.
• 14:13
  I'd love to hear your thoughts on what you work to protect.
• 14:16
  Let me know in the comments below if you're watching this on YouTube.
• 14:18
  If you are listening to this on your favorite podcast app, let me know by
• 14:22
  DMing me at how to protect the Ocean.
• 14:24
  Or you can go to speak up for blue.com/contact.
• 14:28
  Fill out the form.
• 14:29
  It goes right to my email.
• 14:30
  I'd love to hear what you're doing or what you want to do to protect the ocean.
• 14:35
  And if you have information, let me know.
• 14:37
  I wanna thank you so much for joining me on this episode of the
• 14:40
  How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
• 14:41
  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin from the True north strong and Free.
• 14:44
  Have a great day.
• 14:44
  We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.