Orca Allokelping: Newly Documented Mutual Grooming Tool Use in Marine Mammals

1:00:00 Now you might have been to the spa and gotten, you know, facial and you've used all these different types of plant material to make your face look good, make your body feel good. But how do animals react to itchy skin or sensitive skin in the ocean? I mean, the saltwater can be kind of harsh on our skin. Is it harsh on like marine mammals like orcas? Maybe so. And they have a remedy for that. It's called allo-kelp. It's the first documented use of a tool other than for hunting where an animal like the orca gets off a piece of kelp and rubs it in between two orcas to take care of any itchy skin or sensitive skin. It's pretty cool. And we're going to talk about it on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.

1:00:42 Let's start the show. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. And this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. Now, look, I know that a lot of the times when we talk about the ocean and how to protect it, we have to talk about some of the stuff that's not so fun to talk about, you know, climate change, overfishing, water quality issues, plastic pollution and so forth. But today we're going to do something a little different. We're going to talk about some really cool things that orcas do. And they do a lot of cool things. But we found another cool thing to do. And that's using a tool to help their skin.

1:01:24 It's a really fun thing to do. And, you know, this is what we do on the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. We kind of teach you about the ocean, some of the cool things that animals do and how to protect a little bit more. But we go a little bit deeper now when I decided to join a group of cofounders that we're putting together an undertow community. It's called the undertow. It's a community where you can join. It's going to be a digital app. You can join as a community. We want 10 million connections, 10 million of you to take five million dollars worth of action by 2030. It's an ambitious goal, but we want you to get there. We want to help guide you to doing the right thing and protecting the ocean and how to do that. Get over all the greenwashing or blue washing or however you want to call it. Really get down to the nitty gritty and be able to say, hey, this is how you protect the ocean.

1:02:08 So go to speak up for blue dot com at forward slash join the undertow. Join the undertow and get better and guided experience or guided ways and methodologies of protecting the ocean and being involved in a community where you're not worried about algorithms on social media and be able to kind of join a community that's there to protect the ocean. No algorithm all ocean all the time. It's a lot of fun. All right. Let's get back into the episode. Orca's orca's are cool. We love orca's and they did something really cool. We're going to go over to the orca's not the orca's by the Strait of Gibraltar who are taking down boats and who are continuing to harass boats.

1:02:50 That's kind of a cool thing in its own right, but a little scary. We're going to go to the critically endangered southern resident orca population just off the coast of BC and the sailor sea and as well as off the northwest coast of Washington or the United States. And we're going to look at how these orca's who are very well monitored and very well studied how they are interacting and how they are kind of just living right how they are enjoying life and being able to live and survive. There's only 73 of them left. There used to be over 150 160 and they went through some pretty critical impediments in their population in the 1970s. A lot of that population was grabbed up caught and shipped off to a number of marine theme parks.

1:03:32 So what we know now is like marine land in Canada and the sea world parks as well as many of them in Russia, China and Europe probably South America as well. And we know that's documented as captivity is not good at all for marine mammals and it affects their psyche. It affects their emotions. It affects their physicality, their physical presence. They are stuck in small, you know, tubs and that's not good. Right. We know that's not good. So a lot of them were captured after that and the population went down quite a bit. I think 60 of them were caught. And then we have the lack of salmon that's coming back. We have dams that were put up in critical rivers where salmon were frequenting for hydropower.

1:04:13 And we saw a lot more predation by sea lions as they started to increase. And with that effect, that cumulative effect of climate change and so forth, we are seeing a lot less of the coho salmon, which is their favorite food. The southern resident oracle population favorite food. And so we kept seeing a continued decline in their population. So now there are 73 of them. We've seen a couple of calves be born over a couple of times. But then we've also seen some that have died at a very, very young age, which is heartbreaking. We know the behaviors of the ability of these orcas to mourn their lost calves. And it's been heart wrenching to watch, but also very interesting to see how they have this culture about them. We know that each pod, even within the southern oracle resident population have their own language and have their own dialect.

1:05:00 And the transient orcas also have a dialect, which eat marine mammals and sharks and large animals. And then you have the northern resident population, which also each pod has their own dialect. And some of them can understand each other. Some of them can't. It really depends. But that's something that becomes more and more interesting as we look at this. And so the culture of these animals is something that's very, very interesting to scientists, very interesting to ocean conservationists. And just I would imagine anybody who's not in the field just because it's so cool to see. And it helps us understand their behavior and helps understand what is critical to their survival. This behavior that we saw through drone footage, so drone monitoring, where you have these drones that have like highly defined cameras on them, and they're flown with permits and they have to follow certain rules and the drone operators have to be licensed by like if you're in Canada has to be like the National Federation of Flights of flying or flying.

1:05:54 Or whatever you call it the equivalent of the FAA. And then the FAA in the US has specific guidelines and tests to be able to operate a drone. And especially if you're around a marine mammal, they used to never allow it around a marine mammal because the Marine Malle Protection Act in the US didn't allow anybody to harass these animals. And there's such a noise that comes off of some of them that it can be considered harassment. But the things that progress since the beginning of drones and drone operations and using drone operations to monitor marine mammals. And there have been some more research on it. It shows like they're in specific situations with the proper permitting and the proper drone operators. You've been able to use drone as a monitoring tool to monitor these behaviors.

1:06:35 And it's really difficult to go up on a boat 200 400 meters away, depending on what the permits are for and be able to monitor things because you're present, you're there. And so the animals are probably going to behave differently when you're there. They might be curious and come over and see you or they might have tried to avoid you, but you're not seeing their natural behavior because there's somebody present, right? There's a boat present that's causing noise that can affect their communications and so forth. Having a drone go above them in certain height and everything and following those permits, you're able to see things that they don't display when you're present. And this is one of those things I imagine. And it's basically defined as allo kelping, which is like trimming the kelp types of part of the kelps, the kelp plants, and then wedging the kelp types between their bodies.

1:07:23 So taking two orcas and wedging it between their bodies and then S shaped rubbing each other. So they're rubbing it down. And what they notice is that like it happened between all sexes. It happened between all ages, akin among peers, among family members, among peers. A lot of times the peers were about the same size. Some were like really close relatives and some may have been mates in the past, but all of them were doing it. And this was something that's part of their general upkeep and maintenance, it seems. One of the tools used is the first known mutual grooming tool among wild marine mammals. Isn't that fascinating to be able to capture that using technology from far away, using high resolution cameras, following permits and following the rules. It's amazing what you can do when you do things ethically and what you can discover.

1:08:08 It's amazing. It's absolutely amazing. So why do they do this? Well, it's a physical kind of remedy and social strengthening for bonds. But essentially, it's skincare. We as humans, you know, a lot of us go to the spa. I've been to a couple of times. You get massage, you get treatment, you get like your face down, like a facial, you'll get your nails trim like a manicure and a pedicure. You'll put like kelp products, you'll put seaweed, you'll put cucumbers, whatever it is. I haven't been to many. You probably noticed that by then. But you use all of the properties of these seaweed or kelp or sea grasses that are used for antibacterial treatments or, you know, facial treatments and like exfoliating and all that kind of stuff.

1:08:52 Well, that's what marine mammals have been doing for a long time. We just didn't know about it. I don't know how long they've been doing this, but they're definitely been doing it for a while because they do it. It's very much compared to like primates on land who groom each other. There are other animals that use the tool, but to think that comparing, you know, primates to marine mammals, like primates have the hand coordination. They have that very, very close, really related to humans. And they have a lot of the same kind of movements and the same kind of abilities to grab things with their hands to be able to grip things to be able to use tools and fine tune tools. You look at an orca, they're a 60 to 65 foot animal. They have fins. They don't have fingers. They can't grip things unless it's with their mouths. So they have to be very intricate in placing this kelp type and be able to put it between their bodies and rub it back and forth so that they actually feel the effect of it.

1:09:50 And they're usually like the antibacterial properties of the kelp to be able to do it. And then look, look, they are in habitats where there is kelp, there's bull kelp. That's the type of kelp that they use. They could use other type of kelp, but that's what they were seen using. So we're going to assume that it's them. Now here is the important part with conservation. You have a population that is critically endangered. They are having trouble finding salmon. They are having trouble with climate change. They are having trouble just being able to reproduce. And their physiology is facing some dire straits when it comes to chemicals in the water or from plastics and it gets into their tissue and it degrades their system. It degrades their health. And so they are facing a lot of problems.

1:10:33 Now we've discovered that they've been using this bull kelp to help with their skin care. Right? That could be something that's critical to them. We don't know how often they do it. We don't know if this is a necessity or if this is just for fun. We don't have a clue. And so when you have bull kelp, which is reducing in its number and its spatial coverage, and you have a critically endangered species that is using that bull kelp for potential skin care. Now you're looking at the conservation connections here. Right? You're looking at critically endangered population and you're having a kelp that used to be very abundant along the coast of BC and Washington. And now it's reducing because of pollution, climate change and so forth.

1:11:13 We have no idea how important the skin care routine is for the orcas. It could be vitally important. It could help them get rid of parasites. It could help them get rid of any kind of cuts or flush wounds or anything like that. That could be important in terms of their overall care, their outer care, right? To protect their skin. And we don't know how often they do it, but we're going to start to figure that out as we can observe where we're not directly interfering with their regular patterns. And we can observe using drones. So hopefully we see more of this. We see how they use it, but it's definitely something to emphasize that not only is this good for conservation, but it's also good to understand their culture. To emphasize that cultural loss, like loss risk if populations decline further.

1:11:55 So that we lose that culture of those species and how they interact and how they strengthen bonds with each other by rubbing close to each other, how they take care of each other, how it's like all sexes, all ages, and they partner up in different ways. This is all part of their culture and the more we lose from these animals, the more culture we lose in these animals. We are not seeing the replacement of young as much as we're seeing the death of the old. This population is not sustainable as we see it. Until you start getting that regular reproduction rate and that regular success in reproduction and those calves surviving beyond two, three, four, five, six years and be able to get to sexual maturity and be able to reproduce themselves. We do not have a sustainable population.

1:12:42 So we are not only losing these animals as apex predators, but we're also losing the culture that they bring and something that we can learn from them and that we can understand what they can do this behavior. Although it might seem small to some this reshapes what we know about work intelligence and culture. It reaffirms what we think that they can do, but also brings us to another level in terms of what they can do. So it calls for like broader conservation measures to understand like the protection, not just of the species, but of their traditions. And this also has a big tie probably to the indigenous populations that know them that have cultural ties to them.

1:13:22 There are some indigenous population. I don't know if it's all who believe that when their elders die or pass away or somebody from their community passes away, they become the orcas. This is very close to tying to their cultural feelings and very close to the time to like how they learn from the orcas and how the orcas learn from them. Right? So there's a lot of stuff going on here and it's a big deal probably bigger than you think of like, Oh, that's cool. Yeah, they can use kelp to kind of like exfoliate themselves. That's kind of cool. No, no, no, this is bigger than that. It shows how intelligent they are, how they use tools. And it's the first time we've ever seen something like this other than hunting, which we already know they're smart at. So I want to bring this to your attention. I think it's really important.

1:14:03 I'd love to hear what you think. Put your comments down below. If you're watching this on YouTube or if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast app, you can email me by going to speak up for blue.com forward slash contact fill out the form. It goes right to my email or you can contact me just DM me on Instagram at how to protect the ocean. That's at how to protect the ocean. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did telling you all about it and recording it. This has been another episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin from the true north strong and free for a lot of this happened in Canada. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.