Marine Conservation Projects: Why Recent Wins for Endangered Species Matter

0:00 There has been a ton of good news surrounding the ocean these days, even though there's still some bad news. There's been a ton of great news. We've seen the green sea turtle drop from endangered to least vulnerable, which is fantastic. We've also seen that there's been a little slight increase in the North Atlantic right whale population, which is wonderful. And now there's been a discovery of potentially two more new vaquitas, which there are an estimated less than 10 vaquitas at some point. And any new calf is great. So there's been some good news and I wanted to address it today to talk about why this has happened because with all the bad news that's happening. There's some good news and there's a reason why this is happening, and we're gonna talk about it on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.

0:45 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. And today is a good day because I'm gonna explain to you why there has been some good news in three separate occasions of ocean stuff that's happening. There's been increase in the green sea turtle population, which has degraded them from endangered species to least endangered or least vulnerable, which is great. We've also seen an increase, a slight increase in the population of the North Atlantic right whale, which shows not necessarily an increase in population, but we know that it's not a decrease in population, which is the first time in a number of years that's happened, and we actually have witnesses of a calf, vaquita calf that hasn't been seen in a long time.

1:35 Like we haven't seen a calf in such a long time. The estimated population was under 10. Doesn't necessarily mean that this population is going to increase beyond being extinct. Still has a long way to go, but we've seen some good news and around all three of these species, there is a reason why. But first, let's talk about some of the bad news that has happened to cause this stuff with sea turtles, with whales, there's been some hunting. Every time, green sea turtle, all seven species of green sea turtle or have been endangered other than the green sea turtle now. Any sea turtle has the endangered kind of label to it and in a number of different countries. Also the IUCN red list and now the green sea turtle is actually in certain, and overall has increased in population enough that it's not endangered anymore.

2:20 I think it's least vulnerable, which is great news. There's still a lot of pressure on sea turtles in general and green sea turtles in general because people use it to eat sea turtles. People use it to eat the eggs, which obviously the eggs are important. If you don't know about sea turtles, when they lay their eggs, they lay a number and they can range anywhere from 50 to 450. These sea turtle eggs will hatch at some point underneath the sand and they will get to the ocean. They will make their mad rush to the ocean. Some will get eaten on the way by birds, raccoons, other animals. Some will go the wrong way due to lighting and stuff like that, depending on where it is. And then some will make it to the ocean. And out of that clutch of eggs, usually about one or two will make it to adulthood. The odds are not in their favor to get there.

3:02 And then there's a lot of animals that will die along the way for one or two animals per clutch to get actually to adulthood. The odds are already against them. Now you have a lot of human factors like digging up the eggs, eating all the eggs, or going in and hunting them or hitting them by their boats or getting entangled in fishing gear and so forth makes for a very difficult situation for these sea turtles around the world. Now with northern right whales, they were hunted to extinction. There used to be 20 to 30,000 before we started hunting them for their blubber, for energy matters and oil. Once that stopped, you started to see an increase. And then of course we started to see a decrease in the last 10 years, 15 years. If you don't know the details, you can go to the episode. I'll link it in the show notes, or I'll link it to this video and you can go check that out.

3:46 But it's starting to slowly come back again. We started to see a decrease and started to slowly come back and there's a reason for it and we'll talk about it. And the vaquita, well, the vaquita, a lot of people are still doubting the fact that we can get it back to what it is. The big thing around the Vaquita is the Totoaba. The Totoaba is a fish that is highly sought after for it's swim bladder. It has apparent medicinal properties, which hasn't necessarily been proven in any medical journal at all or any medical research. And so that gets sent off to China. Now, unfortunately, throughout this whole process, organized crime got involved. There's a lot of money in it. And so they catch and sell a lot of totoaba. Now, the totoaba, the way they catch it, they use gillnets. They catch a lot of them.

4:26 But when the gillnets are set, these Vaquita, these little porpoises get caught in the gillnets, and so they end up dying in the gillnets and then the totoaba would die as well, and they get shipped off to China. So that population has decreased so much. Last time there was an estimated under 10 individuals. They're also very elusive, so it's very difficult to get a proper estimate. So there might be less, there might be a little bit more, it's very difficult to tell. Regardless, a calf has been cited, which is fantastic. And now we're saying, oh, well maybe just, maybe there's a bit of a reason why that's happening. And all three have the same properties. There are people, multiple people, numerous people that are dedicated to their protection. And there are a number of people, individual organizations, there are government departments, multiple government departments, and depending on which country you're in, who are dedicated to protecting and have put it into law to protect these animals to make sure that this population increases.

5:20 Now some will win and some won't. Right? In the case of the Vaquita, there's a good chance that this thing's gonna go extinct within our lifetime just because there's so few, however. However, the fact that there are so many of these projects going on around the world, some are small, some are large, some are just kind of in the middle, it is happening where we are seeing these projects, these policies help in conservation. This is huge. And this means that it works. If we come together or if we do things individually and we work to take our little sections of our world and say, Hey, I can do the best I can for this species, for this habitat, for this coastline, for this natural area, I can do something good.

6:03 As a collective, we can do something good. The IUCN red list that has all these species, including the green sea turtle, can't protect everything in every country. Every country where these green sea turtles are found has to have their own policies and laws, have to have their own organizations that will do the work to protect them. They have to have their own individuals that will volunteer or that will spend their time and their money, or even their career to be able to dedicate to protecting these animals, and that is huge. When it comes to the Green Sea Turtle, there are organizations all over the world that are working within their own collective areas, whether it's Costa Rica, whether it's Greece, whether it's somewhere in South America, whether it's along the Florida coastline or the southeast coastline of the us.

6:46 It doesn't matter along Europe, anywhere there's sea turtles and green sea turtles. We've seen projects to one patrol at night to make sure that these eggs, these nests where these eggs are laid, are protected. There are no poachers that come out there because they've been actually protected by volunteers. By students, by scientists, by conservationists who are dedicating their time and their effort and sometimes their safety to be able to protect these areas, to protect these species. And that protection has scaled and it's allowed the chances, even if their odds are not in their favor for those sea turtles to get out into the ocean for those one or two sea turtles to be reach adulthood per clutch.

7:29 That's how great it is. That's what we need to do. The North Atlantic right whales, do you think that they've just gotten better because of policy? No. There are a lot of people out there, organizations, scientific bodies, academics, government agencies who are monitoring these whales, whether they're doing flyovers, whether they're doing drone work, whether they're doing along the coastline or ship, you know, watching and do like whale watching surveys. These are so important to understanding not only the size of the population, especially when they're endangered, but understanding what's affecting them. There are organizations that are there just dedicated to untangling whales. Do you know how hard it is to untangle whales?

8:09 It's actually quite dangerous to untangle a whale while it's swimming at its speed, which is usually faster than you want it to be, and people trying to untangle. People have actually passed away because of it. It is tragic, but they have spent their time to make sure that these animals are protected as best as possible. And this is why it's so important, whether you're a scientist, whether you're a conservationist, whether you're somebody who just wants to help, is to support these projects. There are people who volunteer to help bring awareness for the Vaquita. There are people who volunteer down in Mexico to go into the villages and convince the villagers who are out there fishing, who are trying to feed their families to find alternatives to using gillnets 'cause gillnets are banned in the area, but they use them anyway.

8:55 And that's what kills the vaquita and the totoaba, which is also endangered. And they try and work their way and work within the community, work within the village to be like, Hey, we don't want you just to stop and not make money. We want you to be understandable and to be like, Hey, you know what? We want you to not only stop fishing for these and start using these gear, but we want you to be profitable. We want you to help, and they're doing whatever they can to help. And work with the fishing villages that need their money to feed their families, to have their kids go to school and be happy. It's not an easy thing to do. This is not something that is easily done, and this is to save a porpous that could go extinct anyway, but they're fighting as much as they can tooth and nail just to get the species up by one individual at a time.

9:37 That's the important thing. This is what makes conservation so great, is there are people who are so passionate and you don't have to be a scientist. You don't have to know much about the ocean. You just have to be dedicated to protecting nature and have a passion for it. And people are out there doing the work, whether it's on the front lines, on the ocean, on the coastlines, or if it's in the workshops, in the hotel conference rooms, making sure that policies are going forward that will protect these species and continue to protect these species. Because I don't know if you've ever watched but there are some governments that are in power these days that are stripping those protections away. It happens a lot. It doesn't matter what party you're from. If they want something specific, they will strip those powers away.

10:19 Those protections away that people work so hard to be put in place, including government officials, elected government officials that want to protect these areas. We've seen it in the us, we've seen it in Canada, we've seen it all over the world, and it's something that we have to protect. And there are people out there who are protesting, who are lobbying, who are speaking to the right people and saying, Hey, you know what? We need to protect these animals. And so when people come to me and they say, Hey Andrew, how do I protect sea turtles. How do I protect sea grass habitats? How do I protect sea birds, or how do I protect sharks, or how do I protect a coral reef or whatever I like to protect whatever you're interested A kelp forest is that you look up these organizations and you say, Hey, I wanna support you.

11:01 I wanna donate to this organization. There are individuals who are on Patreon who do a fantastic work to educate not only individuals, but educate villages, educate people who are gonna take over and monitor like on small island communities that don't have the capabilities to learn how to use specific technologies. These are the people you can support individually. You can support studies that help scientists understand the environment more. You can go on experiment.com or patreon.com. experiment.com. You can actually fund studies. These are the things that you can look out for that you may not have a direct effect, but you might be supporting somebody, a student, a vet in the industry like a scientist or a conservationist, or a policy maker, or a lobbyist, or somebody who's in charge of an organization or works for an organization.

11:47 You can be supporting them like $20 a month or $60 one time donation. You can do that, and you can say, I'm helping support this organization. Then you can share whatever comes outta that organization, whether they're sharing studies or they're sharing call to action. You can share that online and you can feel like you're a part of something because what you do, whether you're watching this episode or you're listening to this episode, what you do is important. And you may not see it right away. You may not see it six months from now. You may not see it tomorrow, you may not see it a year from now. You may not see it 10 years from now. You may not even see it within your lifetime, but supporting these projects, supporting the people who are working to do this stuff, these organizations will help forward conservation.

12:29 There are so many people who are on the front lines and working in stranding networks to ensure that if we see a marine mammal stranded, they're the first ones out there. They have protocols, they've been trained to do certain things. They've been trained to put them back out or float them or doing whatever you can for marine mammals to get them out there to understand what's happening to these animals as they wash up, whether it's something that we should be concerned about. whether it's something that, you know, just they're old and they ended up passing away, whether they're entangled and how to get rid of the entanglement, to get the ropes off and the lines off. These are all things that people do and you can support those organizations through a donation. And it's so good. If makes you feel so good, trust me, from somebody who does it, like just these bracelets here that I have. This is from Fahlo.

13:10 F-A-H-L-O. It's an app that I found that somebody told me about. And you can help tag an animal. And so what they do is that through these braces as they sell, it's a for-profit company, they sell these bracelets. A portion goes to the organization that is tag the animals. So if you wanna protect the dolphin, a shark, a whale shark, a penguin, a polar bear, you wanna do a land animals like gorillas, sloths even. They do a lot and they show you the animal that you're sponsoring to put a satellite tag on. These are all important to conservation. And they're small and they may not feel as if they are gonna be big, but they are big. And it's something that's important. And it's something that I want you to think about. When somebody says, Hey, climate change is rearing its ugly head again or We see a storm, you can do something by protecting the environment, not even just a specific animal, by protecting the environment.

13:57 That's what you can do. Donate your time, donate your money, whatever it might be, small project, big project, it doesn't matter. It all helps in protecting sea turtles, in protecting whales, in protecting porpoises, coral reefs, seagrasses, everything. That's the message today. That's it. Short and sweet. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what you work to protect. Let me know in the comments below if you're watching this on YouTube. If you are listening to this on your favorite podcast app, let me know by DMing me at how to protect the Ocean. Or you can go to speak up for blue.com/contact. Fill out the form. It goes right to my email. I'd love to hear what you're doing or what you want to do to protect the ocean. And if you have information, let me know. I wanna thank you so much for joining me on this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.

14:41 I'm your host, Andrew Lewin from the True north strong and Free. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.