Orca Conservation, Shark Ethics, and David Attenborough’s Ocean Film

1:00:00 [Music] Back again for another episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm trying out again two weeks in a row, recording it before I go live, trying out this live Ecamm software. But bringing you content a little longer of a show today, we're going to be talking about ocean conservation stories, about orcas. We're going to be talking about what not to do with the shark by looking at a TikTok video that I found. And of course, we're going to be talking about the new movie by David Attenborough or starring David Attenborough called Ocean. Haven't seen the movie yet, but I want to cover some of the aspects of it, especially there's a trawling scene that I think people are a little surprised up.

1:00:45 But it's going to be interesting to go over that. So let's start the show. What's up everybody? Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I am your host, Andrew Lewin. 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. On today's episode, we're going to be talking about a lot of different things going on. Three different stories. We're going to be talking about David Attenborough finishing off the episode with David Attenborough. We talk about what not to do with the shark by looking at a TikTok video. You can do more of those reaction videos. You guys find a lot of TikToks that are just like, it's a little weird to do. You know, I don't know what people are thinking about. And then of course, we're going to be talking starting off with, you know, an ocean conservation story.

1:01:28 Here's the thing. I did an episode last episode about conservation stories, especially near shore conservation stories and identifying heroes that are conservation heroes. People who are leading the charge for conservation along the near shore, along the coastline. Angela Villagomez, Alia Haidyat, or from the center of ocean progress, or from the center of American progress, sorry, talking about ocean conservation, going from area based offshore conservation to near shore conservation. Something that kind of surprises a lot of people, but also is so near and dear to our hearts. Because as I said in the episode, when you look out from the coastline, whether you're on a lake or river, when you're on the coastline of an ocean, you look out into the water.

1:02:15 You want to see clean water. You want to see maybe some wildlife out there. You want to see some waves. You want to see some habitats, maybe some seagrass, maybe a coral reef or something. But it's always fun to see something healthy. You don't want to see anything that looks green, like that's algae related or that smells, or you can smell like sometimes you can smell like diesel, gasoline and sea oil slicks. You don't want to see that. You want to see clean oceans. And to do that, we need people to step up. We need to focus on a lot of ocean heroes. We need to focus on those community leaders that want to help us save our coastlines. And so we're going to be talking about one today, one story that I want to cover in this episode.

1:02:56 Now, this is always interesting because we're going to be talking about something that is not necessarily an ocean hero as an individual. I'm going to be talking about that next episode. If you catch the Mondays episode, that will be with a local hero in the Maldives, looking to help with plastic pollution, single use plastic pollution and what she was able to do. But today we're going to be talking about orcas in the San Juan Islands in Washington state. We're going to be talking about something, a community B whale wise guidelines that was led by whale watch captains, naturalists, conservationists from the San Juan County.

1:03:38 And so we're going to be talking about some of the key outcomes and the conservation targets that they talked about. So here was the problem in the early two by the early 2000s, the southern resident whale orca population. They basically were declining in population due to a lack of food, which is an examine contaminants and of course, vessel noise distribution or disturbance. Before that, they were the target of capture in 1970s and they just never recovered. They lost about half their population. They haven't really fully recovered from that. I think it was 60 individuals. So this is a little less than half their population that went into captivity. And since then, they've never really recovered and it's never fun to be able to have to go through that. So that's what was going on in that.

1:04:22 And we want to make sure that people know what happens to these animals, right? Down to only about 73 individuals by 2024. That was the last estimate that was taken. And then, you know, they're spending less time foraging, you know, they're spending less time foraging. They're spending more time trying to just be safe, you know, be safe and enjoy life. And that's really hard. So spending less time foraging successfully due to boat mascots, their eco location. They are a very pod friendly. They're very like close family knit orca population.

1:05:02 As many of the orcas are, they communicate. They use noise to communicate with whistles, clicks and all that stuff. And that leads to missing feeding opportunities and miss deleting from like dangers around like ships or anything like that. So, you know, having that noise can really affect these this population. They feed together. They communicate when they feed. They communicate when they do everything and not being able to communicate really harms them. So not having always having boat problems or boats around them that causes noise can really affect them. So let's look at the local context here. Let's look at the San Juan Islands are a hub for whale watching tourism actually going out to Vancouver in a little bit in a couple of weeks, hopefully going to do some orca whale orca watching then.

1:05:45 This industry provides major local income but poses risks through noise pollution, too close approaches and uncoordinated boat traffic, especially when whales are present. Everybody gets excited. Everybody wants to see the whales. If you're paying to go on a whale watching ship, you want to see the whales when they're there. If you see orcas, I want to see the orcas when they're there, but so are other boats. So you have to be mindful of other boats and you have to make sure that these animals are not being affected. Now, who are the local hearers in this situation? It's not necessarily an individual. It's actually a collective of whale watching operators. Naturalists and marine educators from the San Juan Islands decided to take responsibility for the problem within their own industry. Rather than wait for government mandates, they voluntarily developed a code of conduct. Now, waiting for government regulations mandates doesn't always happen.

1:06:31 The wait can be very long. It could affect the whale population. So they decided to take it upon themselves since they are leading the charge anyway. And they said, you know what? We are going to put a voluntary code of conduct that we that we're going to develop together. They partnered with scientists, local governments, Parks Canada, NOAA and Fisheries and Oceans Canada, DFO for the federal government. So the key individuals of this group were the San Juan County Marine Resources Committee, the MRC, the Whale Museum from Friday Harbor, Sound Watch Boater Education Program, and the Pacific Whale Watch Association, the PWWA, the members of that association. So here was the conservation action. So this guideline turned into the B Whale Wise guidelines. So it launched in the early 2000s and continually updated based on science and regulation. The campaign encourages voluntary and regulatory best practices for all vessels around whales, including staying 400 yards away from orcas, speed restrictions within 1,000 yards, avoiding the path of whales as much as possible, turning off fish finders and eco sounders to reduce noise even further, using whale spotting networks to avoid accidental disturbances. And the guidelines were promoted through onboard education by naturalists. They were they were promoted by outreach, promoted through outreach to private boaters and kayakers and partnerships with marinas, ferry operators and dive companies. So you're probably

1:08:01 wondering like, okay, this is a lot of action and it worked. Why did it work? Because there was industry leadership, right? Always the industry always has to help and make sure that things are good. Whale watching companies led the charge, reducing opposition and building credibility, community engagement, the local pride in the whales and marine ecosystems fostered cooperation from boats and residences. If you've ever seen videos when orcas are found in an area, you'll see a lot of people that are just posting it and they're actually going to see it. They're taking time off of work. They're going out of their way, driving miles and kilometers to see these orcas. And when they do, they get emotional. There is a huge pride in the local community to not only protecting these orcas, but also making sure that they get to see them as much as possible and get to know them as much as possible.

1:08:52 If you saw the interview I did with Mark Laron Young, you can see how emotional he got when he talked about these orcas and just their characteristics and what they've been able to do in front of people and how people have been able to catch them doing some pretty amazing things. So something to check out. They've also had, were science-based. That's why it worked, these guidelines. The guidelines were rooted in acoustic and behavioral research on orcas. And then there's a cross-border coordination. You heard me say that there's fisheries notions Canada was involved. NOAA was involved. Parks Canada was involved. So since the Salish Sea spans the US and Canadian waters, collaboration was key. So B Whale Wise became a bi-national initiative.

1:09:35 That's a huge thing. That takes a long time to put together. And being able to put that together was really great for this. So the success is the SoundWatch program documented, reduce close approaches and increase compliance by commercial operators over the last 20 years. The initiative helped influence the US federal and Washington state legislation, including a mandatory 400-yard buffer zones for boats and orcas in 2021 and temporary closures of whale foraging areas during these times. Canada adopted similar laws for vessel distance and speed zones in British Columbian waters and tourists were educated on board amplifying conservation messaging far beyond the region.

1:10:15 This is a huge conservation success. There's only a certain amount of things you can do to help this population. And this is what they did. And it was industry led. It was science based. It was adopted. And then a lot of these measures were adopted by governments on both sides of the border. And that is cooperation. And again, industry led. It all started off with the industry. It all started off with the people. The government will follow what the people do. It may take them some time, but they will follow what the people want to do. Here are some of the challenges because no project is perfect. Some of the challenges is private boater compliance remains inconsistent, especially during peak tourism months. This is going to be a long-term educational process that will make sure that over the long term people will not only be compliant, but also be enforced by other community members. That will be interesting. And enforcement resources, speaking of which, are limited, especially across a wide marina area or marine area. So that's very difficult.

1:11:11 But you have people in the water all the time. You have people who are friends with other boaters and they make sure that they will behave over time. And as long as this continued with this approach, we'll see better behavior, hopefully over time. Noise pollution from commercial shipping and ferries remains a problem beyond whale watching industry. Now, there have been some projects, some pilot studies really that have worked with shipping industries to reduce noise within the San Juan Islands and other places like within Puget Sound. And so that is still something that needs to be determined even more. So something that we want to keep a close eye on, we want to make sure that we are working with all boaters, not just whale watching boats, but we want to work with all types of ships to make sure that we protect this very, very critically endangered population. So the legacy and the next steps for this conservation initiative and project, the B Whale Wise model is now studied as a template for community-led marine stewardship, which is great to see. The program continues to evolve with the input of scientists, indigenous nations, and the tourism sector. And then a growing number of kayak guides, drone operators, and paddle boarders are also being brought into this fold. And the whale warning flying system introduced more recently alerts nearby vessels to whale presence in real time. So the takeaway of this story is it shows that local stewards within an industry can recognize their impact, can mobilize their

1:12:41 peers, and can drive behavior change that spreads to a regional policy and political norms or public norms. This is something that it's a case of basically a voluntary action influencing legal frameworks and a small island communities protecting the giants of the sea. It can happen, folks. It can happen. And we are seeing it happen in front of our eyes. We know that this is something that needs to continue to be addressed, but it's something that we are going to look out for. And I want to make sure that we are documenting it, right? That's the biggest thing. Okay, let's move on to the next story. This one's going to be a quick one. I saw this on TikTok as I was scrolling through and I was like, look, I was like, you know, when you're in the ocean, you've got to be responsible and you've got to be careful.

1:13:29 There are a lot of videos of sharks out there that are beautiful videos of sharks, people keeping their distance, seeing behaviors of sharks that are non aggressive, might be avoiding sometimes swimming away. If they're swimming away, leave them alone. If they're swimming towards you, take precautions and so forth. This is not for everybody being around a shark. A lot of times when you see people in videos, they've been around sharks for a long time and they know the risks, but they also know how to behave around sharks in different types of behaviors that they exhibit. If they're more aggressive, they know what to do. They're less aggressive, they know what to do and they know not to prod and poke for most part. So you have to be careful if you're not somebody who's been around sharks for a long time to be careful and just stay away and don't touch.

1:14:11 Obviously, that's something that every scuba diver knows everybody should know as well. All right. I wanted to just kind of look at a video. There's no sound on this video. Well, there's probably music on it, but there's no sound. It says here shark attacks jet ski. And so when I see this, I'm already very curious of what's happening here. Sharks just don't go and attack jet skis on its own. Sharks will react to certain things. And when I saw this, when I initially saw this, I was like, I have a feeling this is not a shark attack or shark event. So let's just take a look and see what this is all about. And I want to I want to kind of talk about it right after just what not to do around a shark.

1:14:53 If you see a shark in the ocean, this is obviously a very shallow area in the ocean, very clear water. You can see that this is a shark. And here we go. So he's got a jet ski. He's in and around the shark. He's following the shark sharks trying to get away. It's pretty big shark and it goes after the boat or it goes after the jet ski and watch it again. Again, moving away from the ship or from the jet ski coming close. Yeah, you're annoying the shark. Let's watch it one more time. You know, don't annoy big sharks. Don't annoy sharks at all. You're following this with a loud boat and people just people don't like jet skis. And this shark definitely doesn't like the jet ski. So I want to share that with you of what not to do sharks.

1:15:33 And that's not a shark attack. This is a shark defending itself and just be better around around sharks. That's really what it comes down to is you just you just have to be better and act better and act more responsible when you're around sharks. OK, now we are going to go into I want to show the trailer. I don't know if I have the rights to show the trailer. So hopefully they don't take this down. But I wanted to show part of the trailer, at least for the David, the David Attenborough movie Ocean. He turned ninety nine this week. So it's pretty cool. So here we go. We're going to just kind of talk about it. We're going to see what this is all about. So here I'm actually not going to allow the sound plays.

1:16:14 I don't know if I'm allowed to play this, but this is just the trailer. You can go see it. I'll link to it in the show notes, showing a lot of beautiful images, talking about some of the problems here. And I'm going to stop here because I really don't think I'm allowed to play this, but we'll see. But anyway, what this talks about in this in the movie, a big part of this come out of the movie because it was originally aired May 8 in the U.K. Was really about trolley. There was a lot on on trolley. There was a there was an incident or a scene in the movie where the troll shows it actually functioning. And essentially, if you don't know what a troll is, it is a net, a huge net that has an opening and strings that are attached to the boat.

1:17:01 And then when it is laid out, it's got these boards on the bottom and those boards and then a chain along that is attaching those boards and those go along the bottom. So when it gets released, it goes to the on the bottom on the ground, the sea floor, usually in a shallow area, sometimes in a deeper area. And then essentially what happens is those doors give it weight, the chain. And as the boat moves, it just scrapes along the ocean and the ocean bottom. And it just destroys everything that's that's underneath it or that's in its pathway, ideally bringing fish into the net and is catching indiscriminately fish or fish indiscriminately. It can catch sea turtles. It can catch dolphins. It can catch a lot of things. And we just you know, you never know what you're going to catch.

1:17:42 There have been sea lions in there. There have been sharks in there, all different sizes, whale sharks, depending on the size of the net. And then it brings it up and then people sift through it and they get rid of what they don't want and what they call bycatch. And then they go and then they leave. They keep whatever they want and they leave. But a lot of stuff that they throw over the bycatch end up dying on either on the way up, depending on how deep it is or as they're just on the getting sifted through a way to get sifted through and thrown overboard. So it's very destructive fishing. It's something especially in the UK. They're trying to get banned because up until recently, trawling was allowed in the marine protected areas, which doesn't really protect anything in that area. If you're trying to destroy the bottom, it will take basically a swath of couple of kilometers.

1:18:22 That's maybe 20 feet wide, you know, something like that. Nine, nine meters wide, maybe a little, maybe a little less. And and it'll just take these strips out of the habitat. And if you continue to trawl over the same habitat, you're going to destroy a lot of things. It's not just going to be one pathway. It's going to be a lot of things. So that's something that we have to be careful of. And that really what's interesting about the movie is it showed exactly what happened during the trial. It had, you know, the opening and showed it in the water. And then you saw a trial actually working. We've talked about trials before, but this is really one of the first times that people in a large scale audience have seen this type of of incident. And people were not happy.

1:19:03 It was very emotional. Obviously, David Attenborough, Sir David Attenborough is a genius when it comes to communication, really pulling at the heartstrings when you see a scene like this and something that nobody wants to see. So I thought it was interesting to share. I will be watching the movie is coming out in my local area, Burlington, Ontario on the 24th of May. I'm hoping to go see it. I'd like to go see it. And I will do more review on the movie and what I thought of it when I when I come back from that movie. So that's what we have for today. That's the story. Wanted to just kind of let that, you know, let that sink in and hope you get to see the movie. You've seen the movie.

1:19:43 Let me know. Leave a comment in the in the YouTube or leave a comment if you're watching this on YouTube down below. And if you haven't left a comment before you want to contact me, you can hit me up on Instagram at how to protect the ocean. That's at how to protect the ocean. And that's it for today's episode. I really appreciate you watching. Let me know what you think of this type of episode, this format. I'm going to be going live. Assume I'm just practicing how to use this. I got to practice how to go live. So bear with me. Trying to get comfortable with this, trying to bring you more science information and more science stories more often, especially on YouTube. So I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Angelou, from the True North strong and free.

1:20:25 Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.