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Whales Are Sprinters: What a Blue Whale's Heart Does When It Lunge Feeds · How To Protect The Ocean

0:00
What happens to a whale's heart rate when it lunge feeds?
0:04
That's our topic for today's episode when we talk to Ashley Blawas from the
0:11
Hopkins Marine Center at Stanford at the Doerr School of Sustainability.
0:15
She's on the podcast.
0:16
She's doing her postdoc on this type of subject, measuring the heart rates
0:20
of blue whales and humpback whales to see how the heart rate is affected
0:25
when they actually lunge feed.
0:27
She goes into about her career and how she got to where she is right now, how
0:30
she started as a biomedical engineer and is now studying the physiology of some
0:34
of the biggest animals on the planet.
0:37
Uh, and, uh, she also talks about, like, how lunge feeding works.
0:40
There's three parts.
0:41
It's really cool to see how it works and to see how these animals are taking
0:45
advantage of these prey patches that they want to eat, of krill and maybe
0:49
depending on, the animal, depending on the marine mammal, these, uh,
0:52
small fish, prey patches as well.
0:54
This is a really interesting topic that we haven't touched on at all
0:57
yet, on the podcast out of over 2,000 episodes that we've done here.
1:01
So sharing this type of science has benefits to even human physiology
1:04
and understanding human physiology.
1:06
Apparently, whales can really change their heart rate from,
1:11
like, 120 beats per minute to 40 beats per minute in two beats.
1:15
That's pretty phenomenal, and it doesn't really affect them from a health
1:18
perspective that we've found so far.
1:20
Imagine a human doing that.
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That would not be good.
1:22
So it's kind of cool to hear the differences and, how these animals work,
1:25
uh, especially from a physiological standpoint and a scientific standpoint.
1:28
So thank you, Ashley, for bringing that.
1:30
So here is the interview.
1:31
We're talking all about blue whales, humpback whales, and lunge
1:33
feeding and their heart rates.
1:35
Enjoy, and I'll talk to you after.
1:36
Hey, Ashley.
1:37
Welcome to the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
1:39
Are you ready to talk about lunge feeding in whales?
1:43
Thanks, Andrew, for having me.
1:44
I'm super excited.
1:45
Can't wait to get into it.
1:47
All right.
1:47
I, I, you know, I have to admit, I don't think that's ever on this episode come out
1:50
of my mouth, where I said, "Are we ready to talk about lunge feeding in whales?"
1:54
But it's always something I've been interested in.
1:56
Because I've seen, you know, studies on it.
1:58
I've seen people talking about it.
2:00
Um, and then you watch it happen, like, you know, with these now
2:03
that with drones and, aerial photography and stuff like that.
2:05
And you watch these, blue whales and sperm whales and humpback whales and
2:09
all these, like, massive whales just kinda be able to just carry themselves,
2:13
just even in the water, and then be able to do these lunge feeding.
2:16
And I just think it's awesome, and I can't wait to be able to talk about it with you.
2:19
But before we get into that, Ashley, why don't you just let us
2:21
know who you are and what you do?
2:23
Yeah, sure.
2:24
So my name is Ashley Blawas, and I am a postdoctoral researcher
2:29
in Jeremy Goldbogen's group.
2:31
We are based at Hopkins Marine Station, which is affiliated
2:34
with Stanford University.
2:35
And, um, basically, I'm a physiologist, and I'm motivated to ask and answer
2:41
questions about how animals work, and primarily I work in big whales.
2:47
And so those are the rorqual whales, which include blue whales,
2:50
fin whales, humpback whales.
2:52
And mostly I'm interested in heart rate, and so that's been sort of the
2:57
latest and greatest of my research.
2:59
I love it.
3:00
I love it.
3:00
So post-docs, that means you've been through PhD. Did you do a master's
3:04
or did you go straight to a PhD?
3:06
I went straight from undergrad to the PhD.
3:08
Okay.
3:08
Amazing.
3:09
before we get into that part, what got you interested just in the ocean
3:13
in general and wanting to be a marine scientist or marine physiologist?
3:18
so I grew up in central North Carolina and spent every summer vacationing for like
3:25
a week or two with family at the beach.
3:26
And I think without knowing it, that was probably where my first interests
3:30
you know, the seed got planted.
3:32
But, um, then growing up and sort of having that as a part of my
3:36
life and really valuing, you know, not just the time spent like in
3:41
an environment like that, but how unique it is to be able to access the
3:46
water, see the animals in the water.
3:48
uh, yeah, I think honestly it started there with beach
3:50
vacations, and then sort of- Yeah … tumbleweeded into where I am now.
3:53
I love it.
3:54
Now, you went to Duke University, uh, obviously, and that makes
3:57
sense because you're so close in North Carolina, like in that area.
4:00
now you, got your undergrad in biomedical engineering.
4:03
I guess not too far off in terms of, looking at physiology as
4:07
you get older, but what made you go into biomedical engineering?
4:12
When I was in high school, I really liked science and I really liked math.
4:17
and so I kind of, going into college, I thought engineering could be a
4:21
nice way to fuse those two interests.
4:24
but I also kind of had this part of me that was really interested
4:27
in, you know, specifically like how things work under the hood, which is
4:31
a lot of what engineers do, right?
4:33
But I think I was most interested in applying that to biological systems, which
4:37
is really right where physiology falls.
4:39
So, when I was going to college, I knew I wanted to focus on engineering,
4:44
but biomedical engineering was this sort of, you know, perfectly, designed
4:49
major for what I wanted to do, which is like how do things work, but how do
4:53
things work biologically rather than maybe understanding like the electrical
4:57
or mechanical systems behind them.
4:58
Yeah.
4:58
and I, I'm glad you brought that up because when I hear of engineer, when
5:01
I think of engineering, you think of the mechanical, the electronical,
5:04
even the software engineers.
5:06
Right.
5:06
You don't hear a lot of people go into, you know, biomedical
5:10
engineering, but it makes sense, right?
5:11
Obviously, there's a lot of people who do.
5:13
It doesn't get talked about a lot, sort of like in the mainstream
5:16
conversations, I should say.
5:17
maybe it's just my conversations or I don't know.
5:19
But it seems like engineers are more focused on like you have mechanical,
5:22
civil, you know, you have those engineers.
5:24
what type of career could you have, you know, other than one that you took?
5:28
Like what were you thinking as you went through this of like, as you
5:31
go through those careers, what kind of careers could someone with a
5:34
biomedical engineering degree have?
5:37
Yeah.
5:37
So one of the main ones I would say that sort of I was, in the track
5:41
for was biomedical device design.
5:43
That's a lot of what- folks who are getting this kind of training do,
5:46
is how do we build the systems that measure the physiology, that we're
5:50
interested in in a clinical setting.
5:52
But also a lot of folks who are pursuing med school, a lot of folks
5:56
who are pursuing like graduate level education in biology or staying in
6:00
that biomedical engineering track.
6:01
But I think, to be honest, you know, it's a lot of having this
6:04
like problem-solving mindset-
6:06
Mm-hmm
6:06
… and applying that to how we learn more about biology.
6:10
So, you know, there are definitely the folks who are gonna build systems
6:13
that are electrical and mechanical and- Of course … and use those.
6:16
but there are also folks who are just, you know, thinking about how
6:19
do we do engineering, but how do we do it maybe on the human body, Yeah
6:22
rather than, a lab setting.
6:24
I,
6:24
I picture Rocky III.
6:25
You know, where they have the Russian boxer who's got… Like he's on the
6:29
treadmill, and he's got everything like, you know, hooked up to him,
6:32
all the pads hooked up to him so they were looking at heart rate.
6:35
I'm thinking of when you mentioned like coming up with the devices to
6:37
measure all like the physiological system and how it responds to
6:40
probably like stimuli and stuff.
6:43
And then it goes to like Rocky trying to catch a chicken in a farm
6:45
somewhere- … in the, in the winter.
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this is where my mind is going of like, 'cause like this is what I think about
6:50
when I think of biomedical engineering.
6:52
And I'm sure a lot of it was catered toward human biology, I assume- Right
6:55
like in that program.
6:56
Was there ever a time where you started to deviate from that and
6:59
start to think of, oh, well, there's mammals here as humans, but then there
7:03
are other mammals as other animals?
7:06
Did you ever think… Like was that when that started to deviate?
7:08
Or when did that hit?
7:10
Yeah.
7:11
So I had, as an sort of early college student, always been interested in,
7:18
um, visiting the Duke Marine Lab while I was at Duke for undergrad.
7:21
So Duke has this campus down by the coast that you can go and do,
7:25
quote-unquote, "a study abroad semester," though you're not going abroad, there.
7:29
And that actually happened to be in the town that I had, vacationed
7:32
in growing up with family.
7:33
Oh.
7:33
And so when I got in to Duke, part of me was really excited.
7:37
Wow, I could actually go and take classes there, this place
7:39
that I've known for so long.
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So I had always sort of planned that I'd like to incorporate time at the
7:45
Duke Marine Lab into my engineering curriculum, and I was able to do that,
7:50
and met a faculty member there who ended up being my PhD advisor, who was
7:55
actually doing this exact thing, which is that he was trained as a biologist,
8:00
in his undergraduate, and then trained as an engineer in his graduate training.
8:04
Mm-hmm.
8:04
And then building tools to study animals in the ocean.
8:08
And that was, I think, when it clicked for me.
8:10
oh, wait, actually maybe my sort of, otherness in the sense that I'm an
8:15
engineer playing marine scientist, could actually come in handy here.
8:20
And some of the things that I think about building or for understanding humans might
8:25
be relevant in a way that I didn't- Yeah
8:27
think of before.
8:28
That's really cool.
8:29
So I love it.
8:30
It's out of curiosity of just being in the town that you used to vacation in.
8:34
You're gonna go and do, like, a semester just to see what's there.
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Then you meet somebody there that is doing something very similar to what you
8:41
wanted to do, but you never really thought about from an animal or ocean animal
8:45
perspective at that point until you met…
8:47
Who, who was it, sorry?
8:48
This was, my PhD advisor, Dr. Doug Nowacek.
8:51
Okay, cool.
8:52
Mm-hmm.
8:52
So you d- you hadn't really thought about animals until, like, or
8:55
doing what you were, gonna do and applying it to animals at that point?
8:59
Not really.
9:00
I think I almost saw it as, like, a two disparate paths of my career.
9:03
It was like- Right … "Okay, I'm an engineer." And then, every once in
9:07
a while go to the beach and, like, play this marine scientist role.
9:10
and I think it was when, yeah, really seeing him and his expertise that
9:14
I realized those two things could synergize in an interesting way.
9:18
I love it.
9:18
I think that's great.
9:19
I mean, so what a way to explore, too.
9:22
Um, even just natural curiosity coupled with sort of, like,
9:25
childhood feelings, you know, about being- Yeah … in that town.
9:27
But then just being like, "Oh, this would be kinda cool." And then it ends up kinda
9:30
changing your life in a way of, like, or the path of your life, in that way.
9:34
Right.
9:34
That's amazing.
9:35
Totally.
9:35
Yeah.
9:36
That's, that's awesome.
9:37
And so your PhD was on that type of work.
9:40
Can you kinda go into a little bit about what you were doing?
9:43
Yeah, sure.
9:43
So then sort of for the last two years of undergrad, I really started to orient
9:47
towards, you know, how could I apply these engineering skills towards building,
9:52
for lack of a better term, biomedical devices for, um, for marine mammals.
9:56
Mm-hmm.
9:56
And one of the courses that I got to take while I was at the Duke Marine Lab was,
10:00
uh, the biology of marine mammals, and that was where I first learned about these
10:04
bio logging tags that are so standard in the field, that I'm working in now.
10:08
Um- But so I was exposed to this in the last couple years of undergrad, pursued
10:14
a couple opportunities in the summers to, get exposure to the field more
10:20
like out of the classroom and- Mm-hmm
10:22
in a research setting.
10:23
And so I got the chance to work with Dr. Andres Folman, who's a
10:28
comparative physiologist that's worked with like any marine system
10:32
you can name, he's worked with it.
10:34
He's worked with penguins, he's worked with Steller sea lions, he's
10:38
worked with whales, and, he let me sort of be a, you know, sort of an
10:43
undergraduate volunteer on a project, to look at dolphin physiology.
10:47
And yeah, that really led me to pursuing, the graduate
10:52
research with Doug as my advisor.
10:54
And for that work, I studied both dolphin and pilot whale physiology.
11:00
Those are two fairly related species.
11:03
the pilot whales are much better divers than the dolphins.
11:05
But, um, my graduate work was basically on diving physiology of these animals.
11:10
Mmm.
11:10
What are the specifically cardiac and respiratory adaptations that they
11:14
have to hold their breath underwater for extended periods of time?
11:17
So I did that in a couple different ways, but that was the broad theme of it.
11:20
yeah, so I spent-
11:21
That's crazy
11:22
Four and a half-ish really fun years working on that- Yeah
11:25
before the postdoc.
11:26
That's amazing.
11:27
and to think that hasn't really been studied that much before, I assume,
11:30
like in terms of the adaptations for these different whales or these
11:33
different, like dolphins and stuff?
11:35
Yeah.
11:35
I mean, I would say there are definitely experts who've dedicated full careers
11:39
to this field, but I think that, it wasn't really till the 1940s that
11:44
you see the first publications on these animals, in terms of like how
11:48
do they hold their breath and what might be going on under the hood- Mm
11:51
that's different than humans.
11:53
Um, so yeah.
11:54
I mean, there's only been, you know, a handful of generations of
11:57
people doing this kind of work.
11:58
Mm. So there's still quite a bit that's new and that we haven't learned yet.
12:03
It's amazing, though, how much we can still find out about, you
12:07
know, just whales in general.
12:08
Like you'd think everybody loves whales.
12:10
We pretty much know everything we do, but no, there's still so much we can find out.
12:13
I find the same thing when we do the Beyond GE Shark podcast.
12:16
Like we know very little about sharks- Yeah … in the world compared to what we
12:20
can find out, and we're always finding new ones, and we're always finding new things.
12:23
It's the same, I feel the same thing with marine mammals is
12:26
just- Totally
12:26
… you just, you never know, right?
12:28
Yeah.
12:28
Re- Um,
12:28
which is awesome … is
12:29
it… Yeah.
12:30
It's awesome, and then it's an exciting part of the job is that often- Yeah we
12:34
might put one of these bio logging tags out that we use, and chances are you're
12:38
probably gonna see something you've never seen before just because- Mm
12:42
there's not that much data of this type.
12:45
Yeah … yeah.
12:46
And I, I mean, you know, something we'll get to later, but like
12:49
something as basic as heart rate.
12:50
You know, we don't even know- Yeah … the heart rates of these
12:52
animals, which is like such a basic measurement, uh- Yeah … for people.
12:57
So yeah, it's an exciting- But-
12:59
field to work in, for sure.
13:00
And if you think about it, it's like how do you get a heart rate from… Like it's
13:03
not as if you can have a stethoscope and just kinda swim as they're diving down.
13:06
Like that's not happening.
13:07
Um, so yeah.
13:08
So there's obviously challenges, uh, with that.
13:10
Can I ask from your PhD, what's like something that you figured
13:15
out that has stuck with you today?
13:18
That's a good question.
13:19
I would say, I think probably the main takeaway from my graduate research
13:27
that I still really look back to is that, the dive response, which is sort
13:32
of the, this is the main adaptation that we think of when we think of, you
13:39
know, how is a blue whale going down and performing exercise underwater.
13:42
It all comes back to this idea of a dive response.
13:45
And I think one of the things that I learned is it, it is so complex-
13:50
Mm-hmm … as a graduate student.
13:51
and so one of the papers that I wrote was looking at how
13:56
breathing alone affects heart rate.
13:58
Mm-hmm.
13:59
in dolphins, if they're just sitting at the surface and breathing, just the
14:03
act of breathing itself can vary their heart rate dramatically from, say, 120
14:08
beats per minute, during the breath down to, like, 40 beats per minute- Wow
14:13
in the period between breaths, which is really dramatic, and that's not
14:16
something- Yeah … as humans… You know, actually, that phenomenon does happen
14:19
in humans, but we don't perceive it.
14:21
It's happening to a much, uh, smaller degree.
14:23
And I think just that, how complex and how variable this sort of physiology
14:28
can be was, quite fascinating and has definitely stayed with me
14:33
through- I feel like if it was a human that was doing that, you would not be
14:35
in good health if you were- It's true
14:37
going from, like, 120 down to 40 and then back up to 120, you know, so forth, right?
14:41
With every breath.
14:42
Yeah.
14:42
It's- So that's-- Oh, that's really interesting.
14:44
Good for you.
14:45
Uh, and now you're at a postdoc.
14:46
did you go right from your PhD to Stanford, uh, as a postdoc?
14:50
Is this your first postdoc after that, or did you do one
14:52
before?
14:52
I did.
14:53
Yeah.
14:53
So this is my first postdoc after that.
14:55
So I, I finished my PhD, early 2023, and then made the move
15:00
from North Carolina out here to California and started the postdoc.
15:03
Okay.
15:04
Interesting.
15:04
Before we go on the postdoc, you did about four and a half
15:07
years, finished early 2023.
15:10
How did COVID affect your PhD because, like, I don't know, I know the States
15:17
didn't close down as much, but, you know, that must have impacted it.
15:20
Did it impact it any, kinda change the way- Oh, definitely … what you were,
15:23
you were… 'Cause I know with a lot of people who started graduate programs,
15:26
you probably started, what, 2019?
15:28
Is that when you started?
15:29
Yeah,
15:29
2018. Yep.
15:30
2018. So starting in 2018, hitting that, like, for maybe a year and
15:34
a, and a- maybe two years, and then hitting that, that pandemic March,
15:38
whatever, 17th or whatever it was.
15:40
Did that affect sort of, like, your field work?
15:43
Did that affect anything that you had for your PhD?
15:47
It totally did.
15:48
I mean, at Duke, the boats were considered an extension of the classroom.
15:52
Okay.
15:52
And so it meant boats were a no-go, so long as the campus itself was shut down.
15:59
Yeah.
15:59
Um, and so for my work specifically, I ended up doing a couple different pivots.
16:05
In one sense, instead of collecting my own data in the field, I used h- basically
16:11
what we would call historical data.
16:12
Not that it's super old data, but just things that have been
16:14
collected by lab mates in the past.
16:17
So that was one change I had to make, was instead of collecting new data,
16:21
turning to things that we already had.
16:23
And then another pivot that I made that actually ended up being something that
16:27
has continued to stay with me through the postdoc and probably will through
16:31
the rest of my career, is that I got involved with a lab at the Duke Cancer
16:36
Institute that was doing, lab work.
16:39
And at the time because they were caring for live cells for humans, they
16:44
had the ability to go into lab and continue that work to some degree.
16:48
And I had got involved with them through a, serendipitous, like, meet and greet
16:53
sort of thing, and, uh, they ended up getting some whale biopsies and
16:58
culturing cells from those whale biopsies for different sort of experiments.
17:03
Um, but because we were in COVID and because they could still do lab work,
17:07
that enabled this whole other branch of my research, which was diving into
17:12
whale adaptations at the molecular scale.
17:15
and like I said, it's something I still work on and something that was a chapter
17:18
of the PhD, but it was, it… You know, one of those moments where you're
17:22
like, "Oh, okay, this actually maybe," you know, turned out for the better.
17:25
I ha- Yeah … I mean, I had lab mates who were… Or not lab mates I should say,
17:28
but cohort mates who were doing, like, marsh grass experiments in their backyard.
17:33
Um-
17:33
Mm-hmm.
17:34
Yeah
17:34
… yeah.
17:34
So everyone, was doing something, but for me it, worked out well in that sense.
17:38
Good.
17:38
I mean, you had to be creative at, some point too, right?
17:41
to be able to continue to work and towards that.
17:43
And it's great that it became a chapter in your PhD, which is great- Yeah
17:45
you continue to work on it.
17:46
That's awesome.
17:47
okay, so Going back to Stanford, you got this postdoc at Stanford.
17:50
And what was this one, this specific, It's a, it's a postdoctoral scholar, I guess.
17:55
And, and- Sure.
17:55
Yep … so can you tell us a little bit about it?
17:57
'Cause I think this is gonna be the focus for the rest of the interview.
17:59
Yeah.
18:00
So I was hired as a postdoctoral researcher in Jeremy Goldbogen's group
18:05
with my main, project being to enhance the design of a biologger device.
18:12
And when I say biologger, all I mean is a sort of like a mini computer,
18:16
you can think of it much like an iPhone, that is, gonna sort of
18:20
ride the back of the animal- Mm-hmm
18:22
uh, for lack of a better explanation, and record a bunch of different
18:25
parameters about its life.
18:26
Okay.
18:26
So I got brought on to enhance the design of one of these
18:31
biologgers to record heart rate.
18:33
And I say enhance because the lab had had some success in the past measuring
18:38
heart rate using, a technique called an electrocardiogram, short for ECG.
18:44
It's very common in human medicine too.
18:46
Um, and they had recorded the f- first ever blue whale heart rates that way.
18:51
Um- Wow … but then, wanted to expand the use of this device and, use it
18:56
to study different species and make it more reliable in different ways.
19:01
And so that's why I got brought on specifically under an
19:05
Office of Naval Research grant, which supported me to do that.
19:08
And then, you know, in the off times of that, working on other related projects.
19:13
So I mean, the fact that you did the biomedical engineering, giving you
19:16
that basis in You know, these using devices and testing out devices and,
19:23
kind of figuring out how they're built so that you can test them out later
19:26
on for this postdoc and your PhD.
19:28
Like, I mean, that's come in, quite a bit of handy for your career.
19:32
Extremely.
19:32
Very unique aspect.
19:33
And I mean, obviously I was just reading up as you were reading,
19:35
like Jeremy Goldberg's lab, that's essentially what he does is, is
19:38
looks at the technology in that.
19:41
So when you're testing this out, are you looking at both the testing itself
19:46
as they're fastened to the animals, and also how they're actually built?
19:51
Like, are you using that engineering, uh, degree and, knowledge to look at how
19:55
they're actually built and how they can be either improved or kind of fidget with
19:59
it a little bit to do something different?
20:01
Definitely.
20:02
And I would say the engineering expertise has come in extremely handy.
20:07
It's one of those things where people, you know, might look at my CV and imagine
20:12
like, "Wow, you perfectly planned this."
20:14
But I certainly did not, and I think, it's just one of these, you keep putting
20:19
yourself in places to end up being at the right place at the right time, and
20:23
I think it worked out really well for me that this post-doc brought together
20:27
the engineering knowledge and the marine mammal physiology knowledge from
20:30
grad school in a, yeah, an ideal way.
20:32
Um, but I would say as for the tags, definitely.
20:36
I mean- Mm-hmm … we're, the fundamental idea of an electrocardiogram recording,
20:42
we're not engineering in any way.
20:44
That works the way it works.
20:45
And, you know- Of course … there's some different aspects that you can,
20:48
experiment with, number of, leads that you might use, the material- Mm-hmm
20:52
of the electrode that's making contact with the skin.
20:55
These are variables you can change.
20:57
But I mean, the biggest part of that most certainly is actually
21:01
the engineering of the device.
21:03
What are the- Mm-hmm … drag forces on the device?
21:05
Is it making contact?
21:07
Do we have high-frequency oscillations of the tag that
21:10
are adding noise to our signal?
21:12
All of those sorts of things become really relevant.
21:15
Um, and so definitely it was an engineering project through and through.
21:20
Yeah.
21:21
That's awesome.
21:22
That's so cool too.
21:23
'Cause it's like, people will do marine biology degrees, they'll go
21:25
into marine biology, and they'll kinda come up with all these…
21:28
their path leads to people who you meet, like you said, being in
21:31
the right place at the right time.
21:32
And, but I think it's kinda cool when you go into something where you
21:35
start off with the biomedical aspect, then you go into a little bit more,
21:39
but now you're in the, marine side.
21:41
And then now this is like a perfect kinda thing, and you're discovering
21:44
things that is just amazing.
21:47
and you know, we're obviously, we're here to talk about lunge feeding.
21:49
So how did you come across this project in particular?
21:53
'Cause you're measuring a bunch of things.
21:55
Is it as they do the lunge feeding?
21:58
Is that it?
21:58
Or how did this entire project- Mm … just kinda come up in
22:01
terms of we wanna know what's happening to them physiologically?
22:04
Like, how are these massive bodies are, how are they able to go through the
22:08
water At this, like, lunging speed, you know- Sure … this quick burst, right?
22:12
Yeah.
22:13
So I think really the impetus for, like, how can we use this tool that
22:19
records heart rate to understand lunge feeding comes from what our group's
22:24
larger motivations are, which I would say the theme under which we all
22:29
work is, um, how did we end up with the biggest animals on the planet?
22:34
Why are they in the ocean?
22:36
And what are the keys that unlock life at the largest scale?
22:40
Yeah.
22:40
So that's what we all work on as a group, and we think one of the big keys to how
22:47
we've ended up with these giant animals in the ocean, my boss Jeremy likes to
22:51
say we're living in the age of giants.
22:53
These are the largest animals that have ever lived.
22:55
and so we have the unique opportunity to study, uh, these types of questions.
23:00
But lunge feeding is definitely a key to how they've been able to do that.
23:04
Right.
23:05
So unlike terrestrial mammals who are, you know, single prey predators, like
23:09
they're going after something, grabbing it with teeth, and then processing
23:13
it, these are filter feeding animals.
23:15
So they are underwater identifying in some way a big prey patch, and they're
23:22
accelerating up to speed towards that prey patch, at which point they open
23:27
their mouth, engulf the prey, and then instead of teeth, they have baleen plates.
23:33
These baleen plates are a lot like coffee filters, and so they allow them to push
23:38
the water out, retain the prey, and then after this lunge, they can swallow.
23:43
And that filtering time takes quite a bit, and so that limits how
23:47
many lunges they can do per dive.
23:49
But really the motivating factor for like what does heart rate do during
23:53
these lunges is, is that we think these are a key, sort of a, a key life history
23:59
strategy for the biggest whales, and we wanna know how it is they do that.
24:03
Okay.
24:04
So let's talk about, uh, first how you measure this.
24:07
You have this… Say, let's take a blue whale, for instance, right?
24:10
Largest animal on the planet.
24:12
Uh, they're absolutely gorgeous.
24:14
They run up and down, the Pacific East Coast or like the West Coast of the US.
24:19
can you just talk a little bit about how do you measure the heart rate of a massive
24:24
animal that's moving through the water at I would imagine would be, at a good speed?
24:28
Yeah.
24:29
So it is definitely non-trivial, and, we don't get it all the time.
24:34
So, when you're just like sitting on your couch measuring your heart rate with,
24:38
you know, some sort of smartwatch, you might get a clean signal all the time.
24:42
But if you start jumping up and down or going for a run- Mm-hmm
24:44
or anything like that, you can of course add noise, and
24:46
we face the same challenges.
24:48
but the way that we are recording heart rate, like I said, is using, uh,
24:54
a method called an electrocardiogram.
24:56
And in simple terms, what this is looking for is measuring an electrical
25:03
signal across the heart as it beats.
25:06
Um, because if we sort of scale down to the smallest scale of cardiac function, we
25:11
have little muscle cells that are beating, and the way they do that is by moving
25:16
charged particles across their membranes.
25:20
And so we can measure that charge, basically the movement of that charge.
25:24
Gotcha.
25:24
And from that movement, we can pick up heartbeats.
25:27
So functionally, that's what we're doing.
25:30
What it looks like in practice is we have a bio logging device that, like
25:36
I said, kinda looks like an iPhone.
25:37
In this case, it's a little bit bigger 'cause we're doing a little more with it.
25:40
but it has two metal electrodes that are almost, like, quarter-sized, and
25:47
they make contact with the whale's skin, and the electrical potential across
25:53
those two electrodes is what we're picking up, to capture these heartbeats.
25:57
And so, yeah, we use these bio logging tags that have really been
26:00
the bread and butter of our group's work for the last decade or so.
26:05
Yeah.
26:05
And we've outfitted them with a new sensor in this case.
26:08
That's amazing.
26:09
So this gets attached on, so is it just like a harpoon-type
26:12
thing where it gets shot and it attaches on so it's on the skin?
26:16
It's on the skin … 'cause it's gotta be able to take going over the surface
26:18
and, like, you know, some rough areas, you know, currents and obviously the
26:22
whale movement and the friction of the ocean currents on that device, right?
26:26
So it's gotta be- Right … able to be fastened quite sturdily.
26:29
Yeah, exactly.
26:30
So they are- That's two words … suction cup attached tags.
26:33
So they- Oh,
26:33
okay.
26:33
Cool
26:34
yeah, so they're non-invasive and they, are attached by attaching
26:40
the tag itself to the end of a six meter or so carbon fiber pole.
26:45
Okay.
26:46
And then one of our team members in the field gets up on the pulpit of a small
26:51
boat, which is sort of like, you know, an overhanging part of the boat where they
26:56
can get a good view of- Mm-hmm what's below or what's right next to the boat.
27:00
And then as, say in this case, a blue whale comes up to take a breath,
27:04
um, they can just go ahead and reach out this pole and basically,
27:09
give it a little slap and get these suction cups to attach to the back.
27:14
And then the perk of the hydrostatic pressure in the ocean is that once the
27:18
animal takes a deep dive, you get a little extra press- Oh onto the tag.
27:23
Yeah.
27:24
And so then because they're only suction cup attached, they won't stay
27:28
on for really long periods of time.
27:30
Most typically we're getting, you know, maybe 12 to 36 hours
27:35
of- That's pretty good.
27:35
Yeah.
27:36
That's more than I expected.
27:37
when you first attach them on, what's the success rate of it sticking before
27:41
it goes down a little deeper to get that?
27:43
It can't be easy.
27:45
Yeah.
27:45
I don't personally do it- Right … so I have to give big kudos to my lab mates.
27:49
they're the ones who've, been putting our tags on, for this project and many others.
27:54
But- I mean, I would say it's fairly high.
27:57
It depends, you know, if the animal maybe does some turn away
28:01
at the last second, you know, maybe your attachment isn't so good.
28:05
But I would say for the most part it's pretty good that these-
28:08
Yeah … tags will stick on.
28:09
we benefit from working with huge animals that we model, you know,
28:14
almost like they're as flat as a table because they're so large.
28:17
So - Yeah … if you were tagging something like a pilot whale, you
28:20
might have a little bit more to think of in terms of finessing- Gotcha
28:24
the creature, but we get away- Yeah … with a lot more.
28:26
Yeah, that makes sense.
28:26
You don't think about that until, like, you're right up there with
28:29
them, and you're just like, "Oh, okay, there's more surface area to attach
28:32
than in flat surface area." Right.
28:33
That's cool.
28:33
So this, device basically like a ECG, it just kinda just takes that
28:38
measurement for, like, 12 to 36 hours.
28:40
It pops off.
28:41
You go retrieve it, and then you get the data.
28:44
It's not like satellite-driven data.
28:46
It's like the data is, recorded within the tag, and then you download
28:50
the data once you get the tag.
28:51
Is that, is that right?
28:52
Correct.
28:52
Yeah, that's correct.
28:53
So we call these sort of type of tag archival.
28:56
Yeah.
28:57
So they write all of the data onto the tag, and then,
29:01
require us to go pick them up.
29:02
And part of the reason for that is that not the heart rate tags specifically, but
29:07
a lot of the tags we work with have video and audio data, which would be- What?
29:11
… really hard to satellite up.
29:12
oh, yeah.
29:13
Oh, yeah, we've got- What?
29:15
… you can ride the back of a blue whale.
29:17
You can ride the back of a humpback whale in our lab.
29:19
I mean- That is- … you
29:20
know … so cool.
29:21
Theoretically speaking, not, not literally.
29:23
Yeah,
29:23
yeah, of course.
29:24
But, um-
29:25
But you're watching it like you could… Like you're on the back-
29:26
Right, right
29:27
… basically.
29:27
Right.
29:28
Yeah.
29:28
That is so cool.
29:28
Yeah.
29:28
So
29:29
this is… I mean, and this is one of the really important features of
29:33
the tags that we use that allowed us to learn so much about lunge feeding.
29:38
Mm-hmm.
29:38
So a lot of the early work in, uh, the group was to basically use all
29:45
of the sort of movement sensors that the- Yeah … tags have and compare
29:48
them to what they were actually seeing in the video to be able to say, "Oh
29:52
yeah, we can see the animal start to fluke. We can see the animal open-
29:55
Yeah … its mouth at this time."
29:57
So video has been a huge asset to the lab to be able to validate
30:02
a lot of these kinematic events.
30:04
Yeah.
30:04
Um, yeah, that you just otherwise you wouldn't be able to… Unless
30:08
you had a scuba diver down there, you couldn't actually confirm- That's for
30:10
sure … that's what the animal's doing.
30:11
Yeah.
30:12
And then for 12 to 36 hours, you're not gonna be able to s-
30:14
keep up with an animal that long, even on a boat.
30:16
Like, that's, that's phenomenal.
30:18
yous- mentioned audio.
30:19
Is that to hear… do you guys measure- you know, the whistles,
30:23
clicks, and all that kind of stuff that they do, and are you measuring
30:26
whether it coincides with heart rate or, lungeing or anything like that?
30:31
Or is that, a different project?
30:33
That's a good question.
30:33
I would say the audio gets used for lots of different things.
30:37
Right.
30:37
We haven't used it specifically related to the heart rate work yet, but we use it to
30:43
study noises the animal itself is making.
30:46
We use it to study noises in the animal's environment- Mm-hmm
30:50
like if a ship passes by- Oh, yeah.
30:51
Yep
30:52
… or if, you know, there might be some other acute, uh, noise
30:56
that the animal's exposed to.
30:58
So yeah, the audio comes in handy for all sorts of different things, not
31:01
specifically for this project though.
31:02
Yeah.
31:03
That's amazing.
31:03
That's so cool.
31:04
Before we talk about the results that you saw, let's talk a little bit about
31:07
lunge feeding and what it actually is.
31:09
Sure.
31:09
Uh, and what can people kind of picture if they haven't seen it themselves in a,
31:14
in any format?
31:14
Yeah.
31:14
I mean, if you can, imagine a blue whale in your mind, um, lunge feeding is sort
31:20
of a three-part of feeding strategy.
31:24
The first part is acceleration, and during this part, you can
31:28
imagine the animal fluking hard.
31:31
So it has these large flukes.
31:34
It's moving them up and down to pick up speed.
31:36
Uh, so during the acceleration phase, the animal increases in speed
31:40
to about four meters per second, which is about 10 miles an hour.
31:44
Mm-hmm.
31:44
It doesn't seem super fast, but they're huge animals, so it's pretty fast.
31:48
Yeah.
31:49
And then the second part of lunge feeding is the engulfment phase,
31:53
and this is a really quick phase.
31:55
So this is when the animal has reached peak speed, it'll open its mouth and
32:02
engulf the prey patch that it finds, and then close its mouth completely, and that
32:08
phase is usually several seconds long.
32:11
but during that phase, because the, ventral groove blubber, which is
32:15
sort of what allows the animal to scoop up a large amount of that
32:19
pre-saturated water, it expands a ton and acts almost like a parachute.
32:24
So it slows the animal down.
32:26
So we see their speed drop almost instantaneously from
32:30
10 miles an hour down to zero.
32:32
So that's part two, and then part three is the filtering phase.
32:36
And so during this phase, what you can envision is a blue whale sort of riding
32:41
out its momentum of the lunge it just did.
32:44
This is a largely unpowered phase, so they're not fluking at all.
32:48
They're just sort of gliding through the water, and this is the part where
32:51
they're pushing that water out through the baleen, and then at the end of
32:55
the filter phase, they'll swallow.
32:57
and so that acceleration phase, say for like a blue whale, could
33:01
be, 10 to 20 seconds or so,
33:05
the engulf- Oh, they can get that fast, that, that…
33:07
They can go that fast that quickly?
33:09
Yeah, it depends on exactly the circumstances surrounding the prey
33:12
patch- Of course … and what, at what depths they're foraging.
33:14
but that's relatively short.
33:16
The engulfment is very short, and then the filtering is pretty long.
33:20
Okay.
33:20
Um, so the filtering phase for the largest of blue whales takes about
33:24
a minute to a minute and a half.
33:26
Okay.
33:26
So for a minute and a minute and a half, they are just gliding through
33:30
the water, expending no energy, pushing this water out, Right … to
33:34
then be able to swallow their prey.
33:36
So that's kind of the mental image is like-
33:38
Yeah
33:38
… accelerate, engulf, filter.
33:41
That's amazing.
33:41
to go back to the part one, the acceleration phase, do they time it?
33:47
'Cause I imagine, you know, you're going, was it 10, 10 miles per hour, equivalent
33:50
of 10 miles, so four meters per second, is
33:52
that what you said?
33:52
Right.
33:53
so you're seeing something ahead.
33:54
You know there's something ahead, And obviously the distance they travel within
33:58
that time is gonna be different depending on currents and everything like that.
34:01
How do they see the patch ahead?
34:04
'Cause they're probably going a good distance.
34:07
how do they see the patch ahead and realize, "I'm gonna
34:09
start accelerating now"?
34:10
Like, how do they detect that?
34:12
Yeah.
34:12
So I think part of it is that something we see most often when they're foraging
34:18
deep is rather than come across to a patch, they're often coming up on it.
34:23
Oh,
34:24
okay.
34:24
And so that helps to have, depending on the depth, if there is any light
34:29
penetrating, to have sort of the patch- Yeah … backlit in that way.
34:33
Yeah.
34:33
Um, but to be honest, that is a big question mark.
34:37
We don't really know what sensory capacities they have, … what
34:41
they might be cueing off of.
34:42
Are they cueing visually?
34:44
are they cueing with some tactile means that we don't fully understand?
34:48
Are they cueing based off vocalizations that, you know, another animal's
34:53
making in the same vicinity as them?
34:55
It's a really big question mark, and I have a lab mate who's trying to
34:58
tease apart some of that, uh- Yeah
35:00
and thinking about how they might sense water temperature or some other- Right
35:05
… features of the oceanography- Yeah … to sort of pick out these patches.
35:09
but this is really important.
35:10
We know that, you know, sort of a big thing in our field is these marine
35:13
predators cannot survive on the average distribution of prey in the ocean.
35:17
They have to find patches that concentrate their prey to survive.
35:22
Right.
35:22
And so it's a really important question.
35:23
How do they find them, um- Yeah … and how do they know
35:26
what, patches are worth feeding at?
35:29
Yeah.
35:29
and of course, and if it changes with climate change coming in,
35:32
currents changing, and that, prey patch gone or somewhere else.
35:36
Right.
35:36
They have to find it.
35:37
that's a lot of energy they have to expend to go to a new place to find it.
35:40
So yeah, that's a cool question.
35:41
I love all these questions.
35:43
And going back to the heart rate, so what did you find with heart rate, measuring
35:49
heart rate with these lunge feedings?
35:51
Yeah.
35:52
So we had two big findings that came out of the study.
35:54
The first being that the heart rate patterns of these lunge-feeding blue
35:58
whales and humpbacks, which were the two species that we studied here,
36:02
mimic the heart rate patterns we see in human sprinters in the sense that-
36:07
Hmm … the animal goes through the acceleration and the engulfment phase,
36:10
and then they go into this really low energy, unpowered filtering phase.
36:14
But we see that the heart rate stays pretty high at the start of the filtering
36:18
phase and only gradually recovers.
36:21
And actually, that's exactly what happens in human sprinters, and this
36:25
is really important because it allows oxygenated blood to perfuse the body in
36:31
this sort of, rest or recovery time and renew the fuel sources that the animal
36:37
or that the sprinter's gonna use on the next sprint or on the next lunge.
36:41
So that was one really cool result, is that these animals
36:45
act a lot like sprinters.
36:47
It gives us the idea that probably they're using similar metabolic fuel
36:51
sources to human sprinters, might have similar muscular adaptations
36:55
to human sprinters, and so on.
36:56
And then the second result that was really neat is we said, "Hey,
37:00
what if we look at these heart rate patterns in the biggest animals and
37:05
we compare them to smaller animals?"
37:06
So that's like smaller marine mammals- Yeah … sea birds, and also terrestrial.
37:11
And what we found is that it seems like these really big whales, because of their
37:17
large body size, access a larger, what we called cardiac or heart rate scope.
37:23
Hmm.
37:23
Which is to say, you know, maybe your average humpback or blue whale
37:27
can access heart rates from 5 to 35 beats per minute, which is about
37:33
sevenfold range in heart rates.
37:35
Whereas a human on the day-to-day is accessing 60 to 180 beats
37:40
per minute, which is only a threefold range in heart rates.
37:43
And so we think this fact of large body size, unlocking this large
37:49
heart rate scope might actually be a key to allow these animals to sort
37:54
of, support the intense exercise of lunging at depth, but also conserve
37:59
oxygen while on a breath-hold dive.
38:02
That's amazing That's so cool.
38:05
Just all the, stuff that you can find out from, like, this one device, Mm-hmm.
38:08
And looking at a behavior is absolutely phenomenal.
38:12
Um-
38:12
Yeah, it's really fun to… I think one of the things I like is to take
38:18
these things we learn about in whales and compare them to other systems.
38:21
There's so much to learn, you sort of take whales as, like, this
38:25
extreme- Yeah … and then compare them back, um- That's awesome to the
38:29
average, what the average is doing.
38:31
So the results that you have now, how many… Was it more than one field
38:34
season, or is this, one field season?
38:37
We did collect all of these records, so there were nine records in
38:40
total, over multiple field seasons in multiple different study areas.
38:44
Okay.
38:45
Um, yeah.
38:46
So in the future I think we'll probably target, you know, maybe broader scope
38:50
of species in different areas, but at least- Yeah … for this study, it was
38:54
a little bit more opportunistic where we had the chance to put these tags out.
38:57
And this was on blue whales and humpbacks?
39:00
Correct.
39:01
Okay.
39:01
So cool.
39:02
So what, species are you looking forward to finding out, that you haven't done yet?
39:07
So the minke whales are the smallest rorquals.
39:09
Okay.
39:09
Which is funny to say because they're not that small.
39:12
No,
39:12
exactly, yeah.
39:13
They're about six meters-
39:14
six meters in length, which, the biggest elephants stand at about four meters tall.
39:20
So these are big animals even though- Yeah … in our world we talk
39:23
about them- For sure … as small.
39:24
they would be really interesting because they're sort of… We think of blue whales
39:28
as pushing the upper limits of size, and minke whales as pushing the lower
39:31
limits of size in this animal group.
39:33
Yeah.
39:33
So that would be one.
39:35
And then the second group that I'd be really interested in is big whales
39:39
that don't rely on lunge feeding.
39:41
So something like a North Atlantic right whale, for example.
39:44
Mm. They have a totally different strategy, which is ram filter feeding.
39:49
So almost like a lawnmower, like they just open their mouth and they just mow
39:53
the lawn, and whatever they trap, um, while they mow the lawn is what they eat.
39:58
And so- So
39:59
they're going at the same speed as they would be going regularly, like swimming.
40:03
Right.
40:04
Exactly.
40:04
Ah,
40:04
interesting.
40:05
Slow… Yeah, super slow speed, very sort of stable, kind of energy profile.
40:11
Much different than the lunge feeders.
40:12
So that's the other group that I'd be really interested in putting
40:16
these tags on to understand- Yeah
40:18
you know, what… how does that look in?
40:19
Is that much different from lunge feeding?
40:21
Expecting it probably is.
40:23
yeah, I would imagine it, it would be.
40:24
But it, yeah, you wonder how much- energy it can take to do that
40:27
is probably a little bit more.
40:29
Cause you, wonder with these big animals, the lunge feeding, is it
40:32
the most efficient way of feeding?
40:34
Like I assume what happens if they just went through and did this ram
40:36
feeding, they would disperse and they may not catch all of them at one time.
40:40
Right.
40:41
'cause like these patches, they're essentially plankton, right?
40:44
Like it's zooplankton that they're eating.
40:45
Yeah, right.
40:46
Exactly, yeah.
40:47
So they're targeting krill and- Yeah … small forage fish for
40:49
some species, but yeah, largely
40:51
krill.
40:51
Okay.
40:51
Right, right.
40:52
Yeah.
40:52
and so like the lunge allows them to kinda catch them off guard,
40:57
I guess- Right … in a way.
40:58
But for a plankton kind of, just plankton, like they're not really
41:02
going anywhere unless they're in a current of some sort, right?
41:05
Right.
41:06
And I think the real key of lunge feeding is that, it's really only
41:10
worth it as a feeding strategy when the prey are at high concentrations.
41:15
Yeah.
41:16
So we say something like, you know, you're not gonna go to a
41:18
poorly stocked grocery store when there's a well-stocked- Of course
41:21
one down the street.
41:22
Yeah.
41:22
Um, and so I think that's a big difference is that these lunge
41:26
feeders rely on dense patches, whereas something like a right whale, which
41:32
is more of- Yeah … a grazer, they don't necessarily require density
41:36
They're just opening up the mouth when it's around.
41:37
That's- Exactly
41:38
that's what they do, right?
41:39
Yeah.
41:39
Yeah.
41:40
Okay.
41:40
that's really cool.
41:41
So obviously you already have some questions.
41:43
You kinda know what you wanna do, uh, next.
41:46
This paper, where was it published?
41:48
Uh, it came out in PNAS about a month ago.
41:50
Okay.
41:51
Awesome.
41:52
and so, You guys just probably, like, you're doing a field season
41:55
or finishing up a field season.
41:56
Are you doing follow-ups on this?
41:59
Or like, what's the next step for this understanding of lunge feeding-
42:04
Oh, yeah … with this tool?
42:04
Yeah.
42:05
I would say anything that probably comes to mind, we're trying.
42:09
more deployments on the same species to try to capture different behaviors.
42:13
So for example- Mm-hmm … can we capture heart rates, after an animal has lunge
42:18
fed for an extended period of time?
42:20
Can we- Mm-hmm … understand maybe how they're recovering on longer timescales?
42:24
like I said, smaller species to see how these patterns translate.
42:28
and then I think, one of the hopes we have for this tool is that in the same
42:33
way that you might rely on a smartwatch or a smart ring to give you heart
42:38
rate information to track your health over time, or to track when you've
42:42
had, like, a stressful event in life-
42:44
Mm-hmm
42:45
we hope that these tools can be used in a similar way for whales.
42:50
Um- Yeah … and to do that, we need to collect larger data sets and get a better
42:55
sense of, what's the resting behavior like, what's, the high-activity feeding
43:01
behavior like, and how do heart rates, you know, track those different behaviors.
43:04
So- Yeah … yeah, I think there's a million directions to go, and
43:08
we're trying to pursue the ones that interest us most- Yeah … but also
43:11
have important conservation impact.
43:14
Yeah.
43:14
And, and speaking of that, like, you know, on, the West Coast, and I know this is not
43:18
one of your study animals, so I apologize if this is kinda going out of scope.
43:21
Gray whales have been hit pretty hard over the last few years, right?
43:24
They're a big large animal.
43:26
They're baleen.
43:27
They're ba- baleen, uh- Yes … cetaceans, right?
43:29
And so, but I know that a lot of their feeding style is different.
43:33
They go down into the sediment.
43:34
They kinda grab a bunch of stuff, and then bring it to the surface, and
43:38
then kinda eat whatever's in there.
43:39
It could be critters and things like that.
43:41
Mostly, they travel all the way to the Arctic to do that,
43:43
and then they come back.
43:45
Uh, a lot of people are saying just because of the way things are happening
43:48
up north, and the melting of the ice is happening a little earlier than they
43:52
expect before they get there, some of the plankton's not there when they grab stuff.
43:55
so it might just be that their energy levels are just a little lower when
43:58
they do these large migrations.
44:01
Do you think in the future, 'cause I know that might be way off right now,
44:06
this measuring of heart rate through these loggers and maybe other things
44:09
as you go along and as you develop this more could give researchers insight
44:15
into how their energetic resources are impacted by not enough food.
44:20
Or even with the ones that, you know, you, mentioned earlier with the blue
44:24
whales and like these concentrated patches, if they're not there, how does
44:28
that affect their physiology in, uh, i.e. heart rate at a most basic level when
44:33
they don't get the food that they need?
44:36
Yeah.
44:36
And like what's the detection there?
44:38
And like what's that point where survival, non-survival?
44:42
Like is that- Right … something that has ever been discussed or
44:45
could be a possibility way down in the future, do you think?
44:48
Yeah.
44:49
I think way down in the future it could be possible.
44:52
We have tools that can answer that question much better
44:55
than heart rate can- Oh
44:56
at this point.
44:56
Gotcha.
44:57
So, like, there are a lot of folks, including in our lab, who use drones to
45:01
track- Right … animal body condition.
45:03
Right.
45:04
Or even, uh, one of the students in our lab has looked at, because some of the
45:08
gray whales that she studies feed in tidal cycles- Yeah … when the water
45:12
sort of pulls back, she can measure the pits they make and how many- Oh
45:17
count how many instances they feed and estimate how many calories
45:21
they're getting from each of those.
45:22
So there's a lot of tools that could definitely answer that question better
45:25
and more quickly than heart rate.
45:27
But- Gotcha … just, like, to say something about it, I think the thing we
45:32
would look for in heart rate data that could be helpful to that question of,
45:36
you know, potentially long-term stress, are these metrics that we think about
45:41
in humans called heart rate variability.
45:42
Mm-hmm.
45:43
So this might be something you've heard of before, but essentially-
45:46
Mm-hmm heart rate variability, you want heart rate variability to be high.
45:50
A high heart rate variability shows that your sort of rest and digest and fight
45:55
or flight systems are- Yeah … both at play and one is not dominant over the
46:00
other, which generally reflects health.
46:02
and I think there's some interesting work that can be done there with whales.
46:06
And once we have bigger data sets over longer time scales, those
46:10
types of measurements might be informative about long-term stress.
46:14
we're not there yet.
46:15
It's definitely a far off in the future thing.
46:17
Yeah.
46:17
But I think, there's work that could be done, and I think- Yeah
46:20
there's definitely heart rate data that could be informative
46:23
about long-term stress.
46:25
It's amazing what we can find out from just, like, drones or a heart rate monitor
46:28
or something like that about these massive animals, and, uh, still quite mysterious
46:33
it, it appears to be, but we're, getting to know them bit by bit and, um-
46:37
Exactly
46:38
ECG by ECG- which is kinda cool.
46:40
so yeah, no, this is, fantastic.
46:42
you know, like, I guess one thing that I'd love to ask is, like, when you find
46:46
something like this, like the heart rates and how they change, you know, as they're
46:50
lunge feeding, like, from a scientific point of view for you as a scientist
46:53
personally, like, what goes through your mind when you kinda come out with
46:57
these two cool outcomes from this paper?
47:00
Yeah.
47:01
It's a fun question to think about.
47:02
I think on the day-to-day, you don't realize, you know,
47:07
maybe how novel something is.
47:09
Um, because of course we expect these tags to go out and collect this, and
47:13
collect heart rate data, and then it's there, and then you're like, "Woo,
47:16
it did the thing we wanted it to do."
47:19
And then you analyze it, and you write a paper just like
47:21
you've always written papers.
47:23
But then I think, you know, it's at these times when something like this
47:26
comes out, and you take a step back, and you're explaining it to folks who
47:29
are generally curious and maybe not sort of in the weeds of the field.
47:33
And, yeah, you get that sense of awe and curiosity about learning
47:37
new things about awesome animals.
47:39
Yeah.
47:39
That I think sometimes it hits and you realize, "Wow, this is amazing." Yeah.
47:44
And I feel very proud and inspired to be able to contribute
47:48
to the field in this way.
47:49
So- That's
47:50
awesome
47:50
… yeah, it, it's very motivating.
47:52
It's motivating- I can imagine … to get something like this to the finish line.
47:55
Um.
47:56
Yeah.
47:56
Yeah.
47:56
Not easy stuff to do.
47:57
Like, you know, there's a lotta, stuff, a lot of variables that go into that,
48:00
and, uh, you know, from the field, from like working up the data and everything.
48:05
and, uh, we appreciate you coming on, Ashley, to kinda tell us all about it
48:09
and what goes into a study like this.
48:11
And, um, it's been a while where I've had somebody come on and we talk
48:14
about like getting into the science of it and the physiology of it.
48:17
Uh, and I think that's a lot of fun for I know my audience, I know for me.
48:20
Uh, and so I'm sure the audience is gonna enjoy it as well.
48:22
We'd love to have you back on or even some of your lab mates back on to
48:26
talk about more about these massive giants and, uh, talk more about, what
48:30
you guys are discovering about them that we could learn from them as well.
48:32
So, um, you're always welcome on, just let me know, uh, when you- Oh, thank you
48:36
… when you wanna come on and when you
48:37
have something new.
48:37
That's awesome.
48:37
Yeah, you may take that offer back.
48:38
I, I've got- … a lot of friends who can say a lot about blue whales, so,
48:42
That's… Well, that's not a bad thing.
48:44
I think I like that.
48:45
Yeah.
48:45
that's great.
48:46
Uh, so thank you very much, Ashley.
48:47
We really appreciate your time.
48:49
and thank you for bringing this information and the work that you do.
48:52
can't wait to have you back on.
48:53
And, uh, yeah, it wa- it was great.
48:55
Awesome.
48:56
Thanks so much for having me.
48:57
I appreciate it.
48:58
You bet.
48:59
Thank you so much, Ashley, for joining us on today's episode of the
49:02
How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
49:03
It was great to be able to talk to someone talking about science and physiology and
49:08
sort of all the questions that can come out of a study like this, where there
49:13
are so many answers that we could get.
49:16
These little devices that these engineers are creating, to measure
49:19
heart rates, to measure, you know, body size from, uh, drones and pictures
49:24
and all these algorithms and stuff that are done are just phenomenal.
49:27
It's being able to answers we didn't have yet about these animals, and to
49:31
understand them better, to maybe even help better understand us and how we work
49:35
and how we could work in the futures.
49:37
Lots of stuff that's coming.
49:39
Uh, Ashley, uh, and I were talking after, and talking about hooking me
49:42
up to a couple people I could talk to that really look at whales and
49:46
people and the differences and how that could be beneficial to people.
49:49
Uh, it's gonna be a lot of fun in the future.
49:51
So thank you, Ashley, for not only coming on, but also giving us those contacts.
49:54
And all the people at Stanford, at the Doerr School of Sustainability
49:57
and the Hopkins Marine Center, for all the work that you do.
49:59
It's just great to be able to find out more and more about these animals, more
50:03
and more about our environment, and how these animals interact with them.
50:06
It's so cool to see.
50:07
Uh, we love whales, especially big whales, the giants, the giants of the sea, folks.
50:11
That's what it's really all about.
50:12
Uh, but again, thank you so much.
50:13
I'm gonna put links to the website and, uh, to the papers.
50:16
Uh, and then also links to, of course, my socials if you have any questions
50:19
or, comments about the episode, you can go ahead and hit me up, uh, DM
50:23
me on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, wherever you can find me.
50:27
Uh, and of course, if you're on Spotify and you wanna make a
50:30
comment, uh, you know, you can do so.
50:32
I'll be more than happy to respond when I can.
50:34
Uh, and, uh, yeah, I can't wait to ta- chat with you about, all
50:36
this stuff and how cool it is.
50:38
So thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How
50:41
to Protect the Ocean podcast.
50:42
I'm your host, Andrew Lewin.
50:43
Have a great day.
50:44
We'll talk to you next time, and happy conservation.