Right whale baby boom: The fragile hope that could decide the future of a species

0:00 Alright folks, I have some fantastic news for you. 21. That's right. 21 North Atlantic right whale calves have been born so far in this season. This is the highest number for several years and we are seeing a huge turnaround or maybe potentially, possibly the beginning of a huge turnaround, but we're not anywhere close to increasing to the point where we need to. But this is actually a big turning point for a fragile species. But like I said, at the end of this, I'm gonna tell you why we're not out of the woods yet, but we're gonna talk about on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. Let's start the show. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.

0:42 I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, Marine biologist and science communicator here to tell you 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 I'll be honest guys. I'm not feeling the best today. I think I finally succumbed to a cold, maybe a little bit of a flu. I'm doing this because not only is it great news, but we need to put an episode out and I don't want you to go a day of the three days of the week that I post without an episode. So I'm putting this episode out, so excuse if my voice starts to go. But I was at a hockey tournament this past weekend. My voice started to go, then I started to get sick. So I apologize, but this is great news. The North Atlantic white whale, a critically endangered species, has had 21 calves so far.

1:23 Now for a species with only about 360 individuals remaining, every calf that's born matters. So the question remains, is this a turning point or is this a fragile moment of hope? This is a very interesting and positive outlook on what we're seeing for a critically endangered species. It's a species where the number of calves actually outweigh sort of the population replacement. Every year, if you think about it, there are a number of calves that will pass away just because of old age or something that happened. So with North Atlantic, right whales, you end up seeing, you know, just from old age, they pass away. You see it from entanglement in fishing gear. They pass away or ship strikes they pass away, which are the two that we're trying to control the most to make sure that they don't pass away from those things.

2:07 But 21 calves actually helps replace more than any of the lost animals that we saw, or individuals that we saw in the previous year. So this is great to see that. Now the calving season runs roughly November through April. This is only the beginning of February. There's still time to get more calves or be able to discover more calves that are being born. Recent years saw fewer than 10 calves that were born and some years as low as zero calves born. So each calf represents a measurable population boost, not just a symbol of hope. Every year, you're probably wondering how these animals get discovered. It's very difficult. You don't actually see the births a lot of the times. You're very lucky if you are even to see it. I don't even know, to be honest, if a North Atlantic right whale birth has been witnessed in person.

2:50 It's a very difficult thing to see 'cause they might do it underwater. They'll probably go down below over the surface. They may not do it at the surface, but eventually they wanna do it close 'cause they want to get that calf up to the surface and help it breathe for the first time. It's very difficult to see. But when you see the calfs born is usually when you start to see them as they migrate north or even south. In this case, because it's winters, they're probably migrating a little bit south and you start to see them in their calving area, usually around Jacksonville, Florida. And so you'll see aerial surveys off the southeastern United States, photo identification of mother and calves, long-term individual whale tracking will happen. And this is kind of interesting because the population is so low, 360 individuals in and around there.

3:30 We tend to know each and every whale. You can identify them by scars or any kind of unique formations on their body. When you have a population of individuals that's critically endangered, you only have about 360 in and around individuals. You tend to know each and every individual. There have been aerial surveys. There've been photo identifications, long-term individual whale tracking because they're able to identify unique markings, whether they're scars of anything, whether it be from entanglement or just maybe it be from just living in the ocean. It can be rough in the ocean. You be able to identify them. People who are taking photographs from aerial photos, people who are taking photographs from boats, from land. And so what you're able to identify them area, they'll piece it all together.

4:12 And when you do these types of aerial surveys or from boats or even from land, you're able to see individuals pop up and new individuals pop up. These little calves that are small-ish compared to the rest of the North Atlantic right whale, the adults. And so you're able to see the mothers kind of look after those calves. When you see one pop up, you're like, oh, this is new. We haven't seen this calf before, because there's a database. And so when you put those pictures in the database, they just rifle through. Identify and line up the unique markings. There's programs that look up and predict which of these animals they are. They attach 'em to either a number or a name or both, and they're able to say, Hey, this individual's here and this mother is now a mother for the first time or the third time or the fourth time, and they're able to go back and forth and look at that, which is pretty cool.

4:54 So the interesting part about all of this is that more calves are being born obviously. But that means the mothers are probably healthier than before. Even the fathers to be able to create these beautiful calves, they have to be in a particular manner where they have to be healthy. They have to be well fed. They can't be tired from swimming all this time. They have to be in a pretty good body condition to feel like reproducing. And the fact that they're doing this indicates that there's some potential short-term success of protections, like these protections are working. So the fact that there are slowing down vessels in and around certain areas like the Gulf of St. Lawrence up in Canada and even down south in the US where there are natural ranges and now they're going into the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

5:37 With climate change, it's getting warmer so they can go more north than they normally do. And so you're seeing, you know, changes during seasons when they're around and you're starting to see some success in that where these animals are not damaged, they're not hurt. They're able to actually be healthy enough to reproduce. So you're starting to see more and more. A couple years ago, like even last year and the year before, the year before that, we started to see some increases in calves, but we were still fairly cautiously optimistic about it. And same with this. We saw a big rise in the number this year. Still cautiously optimistic 'cause we just don't know if this is just a one-off or if this is the start of potentially a new thing where we're starting to see the recovery of this animal. So this is hope, but it's not recovery.

6:20 I'm gonna say it again. This is hopeful but it's not signs of recovery just yet. If we start to see a number of years put together, 2, 3, 4, 5, then we're gonna start to say, Hey, you know what? We have some recovery happening. And now that'll be really great news. I hope we get to that point. I just don't know if it's gonna happen. We still have some major threats. I wanna bring back the reality of the situation. There are ship strikes where these animals, as they migrate and feed in busy shipping lanes, there's certain times of the year where these animals are in these shipping lanes. And they could be busy times, you know, for those transport ships, right? As they go across, these animals tend not to get outta the way very quickly, and they're very hard to see because they'll stay just below the surface of the ocean.

7:04 And they'll just kind of hover there. They don't come up often for air and they're just kind of coming and they staying just below the surface where they're more vulnerable to getting hit. So ship strikes and collisions are often a result in fatal injuries. And so to see less of those is great, like just showing by the fact that we have a healthier adult. But it doesn't mean it's gonna stop. That's a big problem. And of course we have fishing gear entanglement. So fishing gear entanglement happens when you have these lobster pots or crab pots. They're down at the bottom of the ocean, but there's a line that goes up to buoys that are at the surface so that the fishermen can come back and grab those buoys. So those fishers will come back. They'll use those buoys, they'll grab it, they'll pull up the crab pots or lobster pots, and then they'll take whatever they caught outta there.

7:45 Unfortunately, when those lines are going through, these whales can't really see the lines, you know, the actual fishing lines or the lines that prop up the buoys and keep the buoys up straight, or keep the buoys attached to the crab pots or the lobster pots. The whales will actually swim through and they'll get caught. They'll get caught between theyre flipper and like just inside their pectoral fin. And so they'll get it caught there and it'll just keep going. And what happens is that line will actually cut through. As they're moving through the water, it's causing friction and it's causing like the buoy and the crab put on the each side to be dragged around. That line will kind of sever into the pectoral fin causing infection and it's hard to recover when you can't get it cleaned, you can't bandage it up, obviously. And so animals can die from those types of wounds.

8:28 So we see this happen all the time. In fact, unfortunately a 4-year-old whale passed away. It was, you know, very hopeful that it was gonna do well. But it wasn't the first time that it had been entangled. I think it was like the third or fourth time that had been entangled in his four year life. Because it died of that, we're still seeing problems with entanglement, and we're gonna see problems with entanglement until we get rid of these types of fishing pots where they need a line and a buoy. We're working on solutions for that. There's a lot of fisheries that are going through experimental fisheries where there's no line. It's just like you press a button and these balloons pop up and the crab pots or lobster pots will just float to the top and they have to go and retrieve them. They're not perfect technology yet, but they're working better than originally expected.

9:09 It's better than it was and it's gonna be better in the future, but we're still seeing loss of animals life because of this. The human cause there response to is still the vast majority of the known right whale deaths. Not just natural causes or beaching 'cause of a mystery. It's usually just because of these two things, ship strikes and fishing gear entanglement. So the fact that we're seeing solutions in slowing down ships so that it gives a chance of the whales to move or it gives a chance for the ships to react if they do see this whale, even though it's difficult to see that is helping. If they slow down from 20 knots to 10 knots, that's shown to help, which is really great. Also, like I said, the ropeless fishing gear really helps. We've seen increased cooperation between Canada and US agencies.

9:50 I know that's difficult to think about at this point, but we're also seeing that, which is really great. And then we're also seeing real time whale alert systems for mariners happen at buoy systems. So we know when these whales are in the area, they're able to alert different ships that there's whales in the area. They can slow down. And so that's great. So adoption is growing but it's not universal and it's not fast enough. So what you need quicker experiments happening, more starting to use ropeless gear, starting to slow down ships like voluntarily from transport ships, not just making them do it. And then of course enforcement is gonna be huge when it comes to that. So there's been a lot of progress in that. And look, fishermen and fishing communities are working with scientists to help, which is great to see.

10:34 And you see some shipping industry working as well 'cause they don't want to hurt a whale. They don't want run into a whale. It doesn't look good for them. It's not good for their captains, but it's also, you know, something that they don't wanna have to go through. So I think it's really great. So the, the big thing is 21 calves is real progress. It's really great to see. Species are still critically endangered. They're still dying in recovery will depend on what humans do next. How are we going to make things better through innovation like ropeless gear through slowing down ships to reduce any incidences or chances of ship strikes. And then just more technology for alert systems and being able to detect whales when they're in and around a specific area is gonna be really, really great. I think it'll be a good future for them. I think we're gonna be able to save them.

11:15 There's still enough individuals, even though they're critically in danger, there's not a ton of reproductive females left. I think there's less than a hundred. If we can see an increase and we can see these calves get to adulthood, that's even better. And more and more calves every year is great. I'm hopeful, but like I said, it's not recovery. We can still have hope, but it's not recovery. We still need to do more. And we still need to like have you guys not only learn about this, but make sure that your government officials are making sure these policies are being stood right up to it and people are abiding by it and we're enforcing it. ' cause that's a huge thing to do. So it depends on not only us, but our governments. Our fishing communities, our shipping communities. This is all happens to work well in our favor. So hopefully we can see the recovery of these species soon, and we're hopeful right now, and hopefully later we'll see the recovery.

11:59 So if you have any questions or comments or concerns, please let me know in the comments below if you're watching this on YouTube. And if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast app, the audio version, which I always love 'cause it started off in audio. I'm always gonna be with there in audio. Let me know what you think by going to speak up for blue.com/feedback. So all one word. And I wanna thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. 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.