How Tech Can Save Right Whales

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:00:00] In the world of wildlife conservation, there's one group of animals that's gotten a lot of public attention since the early 1970s. We're talking about whales. [00:00:09]

Peter Gros: [00:00:10] I remember the album that came out called Songs of the Humpback Whale, which was amazing because until that point, the public hadn't heard what whales sound like in the water. These low, moaning pitches and sounds that they made, it seemed like they were communicating with each other so meaningfully. [00:00:29]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:00:30] I agree completely. [00:00:31]

Peter Gros: [00:00:32] Unfortunately, despite greater regulation of the whaling industry, there are a number of whales that are still in trouble. On today's show, we'll discuss why the North Atlantic right whale is under threat and what we can do about it. [00:00:45]

Orla O'Brien: [00:00:46] We need to stop killing them, and we need to let these breeding females give birth to calves that live to adulthood and can have their own calves. And that's the only way that they're gonna survive. [00:00:59]

Peter Gros: [00:01:03] I'm Peter Gross, wildlife expert and educator. [00:01:05]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:01:06] And I'm wildlife ecologist, Dr. Rae Wynn -Grant, and this is Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom The Podcast. Episode three, how tech can save right whales. You know, Peter, something that I did not necessarily expect would be a part of my role co -hosting our TV show, Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild, was all of the prep and kind of certifications that we have to do just to do our job. Some of the scenes that we film or the locations we go to require some serious safety training in the air, in the ocean. I mean, it's intense. [00:01:54]

Peter Gros: [00:01:54] It really is. For our recent television episode about right whales, I was given a chance to go up in a small plane with a team of scientists who track whales in the Atlantic Ocean. But first, I had to take a literal crash course for safety in case the plane went down. My instructor, Alex Chapman, guides me through this important safety course. [00:02:18]

Alex Chapman: [00:02:18] I'm gonna flip you upside down, you gotta push out the window, unbuckle, and get yourself out. [00:02:22]

Peter Gros: [00:02:24] I think I'm ready for that, it sounds breathtaking. [00:02:26]

Alex Chapman: [00:02:28] A little bit, yeah. [00:02:28]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:02:30] Peter, I was glued to the screen when the right whale episode of our TV show came out because a big part of the episode shows you underwater, literally saving yourself from an airplane that had crashed. I mean, that training seemed wild. [00:02:46]

Peter Gros: [00:02:47] Yeah, it was interesting, right? I was strapped into an airplane seat in what looks like a capsule of a plane. Then it's dropped into a massive swimming pool. Then while underwater, the capsule gets flipped upside down violently and quickly I have to unbuckle myself, follow my bubbles and swim to the surface of the water. Apparently, it's all a very important part of training and the idea is to get you relaxed so you know what to do if the plane crashes. [00:03:15]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:03:16] all in the spirit of saving right whales. [00:03:19]

Peter Gros: [00:03:19] Fortunately, I never had to use the skills I had learned. The plane stayed in the air, and while we were up there, we actually got to see a pod of whales. [00:03:29]

Orla O'Brien: [00:03:29] There was probably about 15 or 20 whales all spread out and feeding. So we spent about an hour circling. We did see some juvenile animals, and we definitely saw an adult female named Chiminea that we were able to recognize in the plane. [00:03:44]

Peter Gros: [00:03:47] You heard Orla O 'Brien there. She's a marine biologist at the New England Aquarium and is our guest today. She oversees the aquarium's aerial survey project, and she knows many of these whales by name. I was so surprised to see how many whales Orla's team could recognize. But given that they spend 60 hours a month in the air, they've really come to know the local whales by now. [00:04:09]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:04:10] Peter, it's so fitting that for this story, you had to go up in a plane, you know? Because we learned while filming the episode that a big reason why right whales are so endangered is because people really can't see them. So they're being hit by boats and entangled in fishing lines. Mark Baumgartner, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts, put it this way. [00:04:32]

Mark Baumgartner: [00:04:33] Rye whales suffer from this problem of out of sight, out of mind. Most of the public doesn't even know they exist, let alone that they're in peril. They're really on the brink. Rye whales don't die of old age. They get killed before they get to grow old. [00:04:45]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:04:46] It's a really sobering fact. And it's so ironic, because these whales are massive. If they were on land, for example, they'd be unmistakable. [00:04:55]

Peter Gros: [00:04:56] Exactly. They can grow to be 56 feet long and weigh 200 ,000 pounds. But because they live underwater, they're at great risk. That's why it's so important that Orla and her team have eyes on them. They can keep track of where the whales are, how they're faring, and what needs to be done. Orla, welcome. It's certainly nice to talk to you. One of the thrills of my life was the time we spent together off the East Coast in a small aircraft learning about whales, right whales specifically. You know more about whales in general and right whales than anybody I've ever met. Where did your passion for whales begin? [00:05:37]

Orla O'Brien: [00:05:38] I remember as a child being, I guess I would say, obsessed with whales. I have a memory of adopting a killer whale when I was a kid. I was like eight or 10 and I remember saving up for it and her name was Moonlight. And I actually still have the photograph of her. [00:05:56]

Peter Gros: [00:05:57] There's Moonlight! [00:05:58]

Orla O'Brien: [00:05:59] Yeah. So I've kept it with me this whole time. And then, you know, as I got older, I went to college and studied marine biology. And when I was there, I took a class with someone who studies behavioral ecology on dolphins in Australia. Taking that class actually changed my life a little bit because I ended up doing my master's research with this person, Dr. Richard Connor. And when I left, I started working on a whale watch boat. which was basically an opportunity to work for a nonprofit research organization that studied the behavior of humpback whales. [00:06:35]

Peter Gros: [00:06:36] Now just for our listeners, how does one study whales from a boat when the whales are generally under the water most of the time? [00:06:43]

Orla O'Brien: [00:06:44] That's a great question because so much of it is really observational, especially historically, it's been very observational. And so from a whale watch boat, we're observing behaviors and writing down behaviors of what are the breath intervals? What are the dive intervals? Does it have a calf? Who is the whale with? Because many species of whale, you can tell them apart and identify them as individuals. So for instance, with humpback whales, which was a main focus of that first job I had on the whale watchboat, the underside of their tails and their dorsal fins all look different. So you can do things like say, how old are they? How many calves have they had? Do they look like they're in good health? Do they spend time with the same whales over and over again and things like that. [00:07:33]

Peter Gros: [00:07:34] You've seen them so often that you recognize them. I know you're a scientist and you're a researcher and you're studying whales, but I just have to ask this question. Do they have different personalities? Do you notice that in their behavior? [00:07:46]

Orla O'Brien: [00:07:47] 100%, they have different personalities for sure. And you'll notice that with behaviors they perform. So maybe some whales are more likely to be surface active, you know, breach or flip or slap, things like that. And for a lot of this species, including right whales, we have catalogs of them too. So we might not recognize them right off the bat, but we have photographs of them and we go back and we look through. and we identify after the fact who we saw. [00:08:17]

Peter Gros: [00:08:17] What are some interesting facts about whales that our listeners might not know? [00:08:20]

Orla O'Brien: [00:08:21] Right whales are bowhead whales. We don't know for sure, but they probably are able to live somewhere in the range of 150 to 200 years old. They are smart. They are social. They have incredibly interesting behaviors and they're all very different from each other, the different species. So right whales, we saw on our trip, something called a surface-active group. It's basically when they're feeling like they've gotten enough to eat, they're well rested. they move into a sort of social behavior where they're very tactile. So they roll around at the surface and kind of like, we might see them stroking each other and so on. And that's a really unique behavior to right whales. [00:09:05]

Peter Gros: [00:09:06] what's happening now with the right whale population and what sort of thing you're studying now. [00:09:09]

Orla O'Brien: [00:09:10] So the official term is that they're critically endangered, which is actually worse than endangered. And what that means is that their populations have been declining. Right now it's thought there's maybe somewhere around 360 whales left and 70 breeding females. There used to be thousands of whales on the East Coast before whaling. And what it means is that they need all the help they can get to get back to where they were. [00:09:39]

Peter Gros: [00:09:41] New England has a history of whaling which largely ended in the early 1970s, thanks to legislation like the 1973 Marine Mammals Protection Act. These days, some of the threats are coming from a different industry, lobster fishing. [00:09:57]

Orla O'Brien: [00:09:57] I think that New Englanders view whales and right whales as an iconic type of species. We're proud of having them here. People value that. But it's complicated because one of the iconic things about New England is also lobster and the lobster fishery. And lobster and other kind of fixed fishing gear, gear that sits on the bottom and to be collected actually can prove to be a huge danger for right whales and other types of large whale. [00:10:31]

Peter Gros: [00:10:32] Traditionally, fishermen drop buoys attached to ropes that are connected to multiple lobster traps along the ocean floor. The buoys and the rope lines can remain suspended in the whale's habitat for days before the and return to check the traps. [00:10:48]

Orla O'Brien: [00:10:49] Right whales feed by basically, it's called ram feeding. They open their mouth and they swim through the water. And if they swim into a line and it gets caught in their mouth or around their flippers, they can end up dragging that gear around with them for weeks, months, even years. And sometimes it can affect their ability to feed or it can injure them. [00:11:15]

Peter Gros: [00:11:16] And correct me if I'm wrong, isn't it true that each lobster fisherman can have over a hundred lines and traps out? So the whales have to sort of make their way through this menagerie of long nylon ropes to be able to migrate and feed. But there is a solution. Can you tell us a little bit about that? [00:11:37]

Orla O'Brien: [00:11:37] Yeah. So as you mentioned, you know, Massachusetts is kind of working on this and a little bit on the forefront. And one of those solutions is ropeless or on -demand fishing gear. So historically, these traps have sat on the bottom and on either end of what's called a trawl of traps, there would be an end line. So a line or rope that's hundreds of feet long that goes to the surface so they can find their gear and haul their gear. And that's the thing that is most dangerous to a whale. people are working on solutions where the rope is stored essentially inside an extra trap at the bottom and a fisherman can kind of go up to where they set it and have like a device, an iPad or a tablet or a phone and connect to it and say like, oh, let me haul my gear now and all the rope will kind of come spooling out from the bottom and they can haul their gear from there. So, I think moving in that direction... is a huge step and I think Massachusetts lobstermen have been on the forefront of that, which is amazing. [00:12:44]

Peter Gros: [00:12:45] To see this new whale -saving technology in action, I'm meeting up with lobster fisherman Mike Lane. [00:12:52]

Mike Lane: [00:12:52] Good morning. How you doing? Good, nice to meet you. Since 2018, we've worked with on -demand gear to see if we can figure this problem out. It's not flawless, but it works. Every fisherman is now a conservationist. We have great respect for these creatures. You know, I've always told my kids, I'm like, you know, you're responsible for your actions, right? Yes. In life, you know, so if there's something I'm doing that's causing harm, can we fix it? [00:13:17]

Peter Gros: [00:13:19] So far, not all lobster fishermen have adopted this new rope -less fishing method and whales are still getting entangled. What happens then? [00:13:27]

Orla O'Brien: [00:13:28] Basically, if a whale is seen entangled and there's a team close enough, they're able to go out and do that. They're not always successful, and it's definitely more of a band -aid than a solution. But the work that they do is also really important. And I just, if I can, I want to touch on one of the whales that we saw on our flight together, Chiminea, who is an adult female. she's 14 years old and she had her first calf a few years ago. and, you know, she's young and she could have many, many more calves in her life if she survives. In between the time that we saw her and roughly the end of September, at some point in time she was entangled in fishing gear and it's wrapped around her head and trailing out of her mouth and she didn't look good and she looked thin and I think That's just a huge reminder. of how quickly things can go wrong for these whales. And she had one calf, and if things don't go better for her, if she's not disentangled or managed to unentangle herself, she might die and never have another calf again. That's why I think people on the ground implementing these things is really important because the pace of government I think is too slow for what is needed to save right whales. [00:14:56]

Peter Gros: [00:14:57] So we've talked about the dangers of entanglement. Are there any other dangers that right whales might face? [00:15:02]

Orla O'Brien: [00:15:03] Yeah, so aside from entanglement, the main problem for right whales is vessel strikes. Right whales, when you saw them from the air, they probably looked pretty big. Once you see them, you kind of understand what they look like and so on. But when you're on a boat, they're actually really hard to see and they don't have dorsal fins. A lot of times when they feed at the surface, they might be like six inches below the water. and it makes them really difficult to see. And they spend a lot of time when they're feeding in that area right near the surface. And so what happens is when you get a lot of overlap between where whales like to be and where people like to boat or where there's shipping traffic, you can have issues where vessels strike the whales. And there's a lot of different issues with this because in the case of large vessels, it can kill the whale outright, like a cargo ship or a cruise ship or a tanker. But even smaller boats, like the type of boats that people in coastal areas might go out on on the weekends, like a sport fishing boat or a recreational vessel, can still harm whales. We've seen a lot of whales that have what we call prop scars, propeller scars, from these smaller boats. and... There are a variety of what we call sublethal effects, which means doesn't kill you, but is going to affect you. And these are things like, are they taking longer to give birth to their first calf? Or do they not give birth as often or at all? Are they spending a lot of energy healing themself? It takes a lot of energy from them when they're injured. So, it is a big problem for them. [00:16:54]

Peter Gros: [00:16:56] This is another problem with a possible high -tech solution. Researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have developed a floating network of microphones that listen for whales and then alerts boaters in the area of their presence. [00:17:11]

Orla O'Brien: [00:17:13] What you're describing is these passive acoustic buoys that listen and can distinguish different species of whale. And if there's enough acoustic detections of say a right whale, and this actually goes for visual as well, if there's enough visual detections of a right whale in an area, it triggers something called a dynamic management area. [00:17:32]

Peter Gros: [00:17:33] This system is the equivalent of that yellow flashing light outside of an elementary school. If there are kids around, you have to slow down. [00:17:42]

Orla O'Brien: [00:17:43] Unfortunately for the whales, I guess, these dynamic management areas are voluntary. So, what it does is it alerts boaters to the possibility that there are whales in the area and asks them to slow down to 10 knuckle miles an hour. So, it is voluntary, which is a problem because for the most part, people don't follow voluntary measures. There are also, along the East Coast, what are called seasonal management areas. which are static areas where it is mandatory for boats to slow down during certain types of year when we know that there are whales active. For instance, the calving grounds off of Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. We know every winter there are going to be whales there and there's a mandatory slow zone there. [00:18:34]

Peter Gros: [00:18:35] does a right whale sound like? You're talking about the sounds they make. I don't mean to put you on the spot here, but do you imitate right whales? [00:18:43]

Orla O'Brien: [00:18:45] I don't think I have, but I can. [00:18:48]

Peter Gros: [00:18:49] Please, let's hear it. [00:18:50]

Orla O'Brien: [00:18:51] The classic right whale call that, for instance, the acoustic buoys are looking for is something called an up call. And it kind of sounds like. And so it's this up sweep or this up call that's very distinctive to right whales and that's why it works so well on the acoustic buoy. [00:19:15]

Peter Gros: [00:19:16] Can you tell when they're communicating with each other? Do they do it as groups? Is it sort of location sounds to stay in touch with each other or all of the above? [00:19:23]

Orla O'Brien: [00:19:24] A lot of the noises that they make are behavior specific. For instance, when right whales are feeding, they're much more quiet. And so you have places where maybe an acoustic buoy isn't going to detect whales as effectively because if they're all feeding, you're not really hearing that. Something else that's really interesting is that mothers and calves are very quiet. And they also, when they do make noise... they make it much more quietly, like they're whispering to each other. So something that's really important is acknowledging the gaps in what different technologies can provide, you know, acoustic buoys, observers, infrared technology, things like that. And it's never just one silver bullet. You need a lot of different things working together. [00:20:17]

Peter Gros: [00:20:18] Are you hopeful that with change in the manner in which they're fishing for lobster, there's a buoy system to warn captains of ships, there's a radio system to warn recreational boaters where they are and what they're doing, with enforcement, are you hopeful this species can be saved? [00:20:35]

Orla O'Brien: [00:20:36] I do have hope, but I think the change needs to come from us and the industry and the people implementing things on the ground. And I think showcasing the technology on the episode is a great example of someone who is on the ground right there on the forefront implementing it, even though they don't have to. You know, a lot of these things that are going to save whales are things that may be like a government level, regulations, things like that, that's really going to move the needle. And some of that comes from public interest, people being involved and excited about it and caring about it. And I think where that comes from is sharing our stories and maybe not telling you the listener. that you need to care about a specific whale or a specific species, but encouraging people to just engage with nature because I think that what has been happening is that we're losing touch with nature and people stay inside more and people live in big cities more. And I think what's really important is things like your show and us going out there. And I recognize that I am incredibly privileged to. have a job where I get to see whales, and there's so many people that are never gonna see a whale, and I wanna share that with people. [00:22:05]

Peter Gros: [00:22:09] Well, Orla, that was incredible. Thank you for sharing all your knowledge with us. Great talking to you. Of course. I think everybody listening to this podcast is gonna learn so much more than they ever knew about whales. And I think they're gonna wanna go out and say, what can I do to help? You're so passionate about what you do, Orla. I think you're gonna inspire people to get involved as well. So thank you. [00:22:31]

Orla O'Brien: [00:22:31] Well, thank you so much for having me on and it was great to see you again. [00:22:34]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:22:40] Now it's time for conservation connection. We know that the more we can connect with endangered animals, the more likely we are to protect them. [00:22:48]

Peter Gros: [00:22:48] And since this episode was about one of North America's largest endangered species, we thought we'd go the other direction and focus on a much smaller animal that needs our help. [00:22:58]

Jeff Baughman: [00:23:01] They definitely do have a cute face. [00:23:04]

Peter Gros: [00:23:05] This is Jeff Baughman, Field Conservation Coordinator of the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, talking about one of North America's most endangered amphibians, the Wyoming toad. [00:23:15]

Jeff Baughman: [00:23:16] And when we feed them, they actually do a toe tapping behavior. It's their hind toes that they twitch when we're feeding them. And we kind of joke that maybe they're just excited about their bugs or their insects that they're going to eat. [00:23:29]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:23:30] This species of toad is only found in the Prairie Lakes region of Wyoming, in an area of land smaller than the island of Manhattan. [00:23:37]

Jeff Baughman: [00:23:38] They were abundant in that area until the 1970s, and then they drastically reduced to where there were only 10 left in 1996. did not yet know in the 1990s that there was a fungus that was causing drastic declines of amphibians globally. It just became an urgent need that we need to breed this species and reintroduce them back out into the wild. [00:24:05]

Peter Gros: [00:24:05] These days, thanks in part to the breeding efforts by Jeff and his team, there are roughly 1 ,500 Wyoming toads living in the wild. [00:24:14]

Jeff Baughman: [00:24:15] Just seeing that there are toads that are surviving year after year definitely gives us hope. It's a lot of work. We're still trying to come up with new strategies to ensure that they'll survive the year and breed and hopefully build some resistance to the fungus. But knowing that some toads are, that just gives us hope not really just for the Wyoming toad, but all other amphibians. [00:24:38]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:24:39] Amphibians like the Wyoming toad are indicator species, meaning they can act as an early warning for an ecosystem being out of balance. Amphibians around the world are in trouble. We need to come together to protect these species and their habitats. [00:24:54]

Jeff Baughman: [00:24:55] We're just really hoping that we can all kind of learn from each other and figure out how we can go about making sure that we have amphibians in the future. [00:25:03]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:25:09] That conversation was recorded at the 2024 Annual Conference of the AZA, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums in Calgary, Canada. [00:25:17]

Peter Gros: [00:25:21] Thank you for listening to this episode of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom The Podcast. And remember, if we protect wildlife and the environment today, we can ensure magical moments in the wild kingdom for future generations. [00:25:35]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:25:36] Join us next week as we talk to filmmaker Ben Masters about how he captured footage of one of North America's rarest wildcats, the ocelot. [00:25:46][9.2]

Ben Masters: [00:25:46] An ocelot is beautiful. It has rosettes and spots and stripes and these amazing bars above and below its eyes. It almost kind of looks like a little linebacker. It's, you know, this little ninja of the forest. [00:26:05]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:26:06] That's next week on Mitchell of Omaha's Wild Kingdom The Podcast. [00:26:09][3.5]

Peter Gros: [00:26:16] Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom The Podcast is a production of Pineapple Street Studios and Mutual of Omaha. Our senior producer is Stephen Key. Producers are Elliot Adler and Jenny Van Soelen. [00:26:29]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:26:30] Associate producer is Lisa Cerda. Editor is Darby Maloney. Executive producers are Barry Finkel, Gabrielle Lewis, and Jen Wulf. Pineapple's head of sound and engineering is Raj Makhija. Senior audio engineers are Marina Pais, Davy Sumner, Javi Cruces, and Pedro Alvira. This episode was mixed by Davy Sumner. [00:26:54]

Peter Gros: [00:26:54] production music courtesy of Epidemic Sound and Hearst Media Production Group. [00:26:58]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:26:59] Episode clips courtesy of Hearst Media Production Group. Marketing and promotion by Emily Poeschl. This podcast is hosted by me, Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant. [00:27:08]

Peter Gros: [00:27:10] Peter Gross, a special thanks to Katelyn Williams, Sophie Radmelamich, and Stephanie Diaz. [00:27:15]

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant: [00:27:16] Today's episode is based on the Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom series created by Don Meyer. Our next episode will be out in a week. [00:27:23]

Peter Gros: [00:27:24] Make sure you listen on the Odyssey app, or wherever you get your podcasts. [00:27:24]