WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:06.040 --> 00:00:08.000 I'm Jan Roletto and I'm the research 00:00:08.010 --> 00:00:09.450 coordinator at Greater Farallones 00:00:09.450 --> 00:00:11.790 National Marine Sanctuary. We're here on 00:00:11.790 --> 00:00:14.000 the ACCESS cruise this week which is a 00:00:14.160 --> 00:00:16.900 joint partnership between Point Blue 00:00:17.070 --> 00:00:19.100 Conservation Science, Cordell Bank National 00:00:19.260 --> 00:00:22.080 Marine Sanctuary and Greater Farallones 00:00:22.080 --> 00:00:25.400 National Marine Sanctuary. The focus of our 00:00:25.439 --> 00:00:27.720 ACCESS cruise this week is really 00:00:27.720 --> 00:00:31.380 looking at the middle of the upwelling 00:00:31.380 --> 00:00:36.059 season. We typically try to sample in 00:00:36.059 --> 00:00:39.510 early upwelling season, during 00:00:39.510 --> 00:00:40.920 upwelling season which is what we're 00:00:40.920 --> 00:00:42.980 doing this month and post upwelling 00:00:42.989 --> 00:00:46.020 season and what we're really 00:00:46.020 --> 00:00:48.660 experiencing this week is the peak of 00:00:48.660 --> 00:00:53.039 baleen whales in our area. We have blue 00:00:53.039 --> 00:00:55.829 whales as well as humpback whales and 00:00:55.829 --> 00:01:00.390 today we have probably anywhere from 75 00:01:00.390 --> 00:01:04.860 to a hundred animals feeding in a very small area. 00:01:04.860 --> 00:01:08.790 That area happens to coincide with the 00:01:08.790 --> 00:01:11.850 inbound northern shipping lane. One of 00:01:11.850 --> 00:01:15.119 the uses of the ACCESS data 00:01:15.119 --> 00:01:18.420 really is to look at abundance and 00:01:18.420 --> 00:01:19.950 distribution of sea birds and marine 00:01:19.950 --> 00:01:22.650 mammals throughout the Cordell Bank 00:01:22.650 --> 00:01:24.810 sanctuary, the Greater Farallones as 00:01:24.810 --> 00:01:26.460 well as the northern portion of Monterey 00:01:26.460 --> 00:01:29.280 Bay sanctuary. Those shipping lanes all 00:01:29.280 --> 00:01:32.250 come together and cross each of those 00:01:32.250 --> 00:01:35.640 sanctuaries in different fashions and so 00:01:35.640 --> 00:01:38.400 we're always interested and really aware 00:01:38.400 --> 00:01:41.280 of where the whales are in 00:01:41.280 --> 00:01:43.140 relationship to the shipping lanes and 00:01:43.140 --> 00:01:45.390 so today when we saw that there 00:01:45.390 --> 00:01:47.790 could have been up to a hundred whales in 00:01:47.790 --> 00:01:50.610 that inbound shipping lane, we did notify 00:01:50.610 --> 00:01:52.829 vessel traffic that there were feeding 00:01:52.829 --> 00:01:54.300 whales in the area 00:01:54.300 --> 00:01:57.600 and to ask the vessels to slow down. 00:01:57.600 --> 00:02:00.060 That's one of our responsibilities as a 00:02:00.060 --> 00:02:04.980 sanctuary management system. 00:02:04.980 --> 00:02:07.620 This project is really a multi-prong 00:02:07.620 --> 00:02:10.410 project; it really is interdisciplinary. 00:02:10.410 --> 00:02:15.420 It looks at ocean acidification, it looks 00:02:15.420 --> 00:02:17.520 at abundance and distribution of 00:02:17.520 --> 00:02:20.280 breeding birds and a lot of the time 00:02:20.280 --> 00:02:22.980 that's related to food and food resources. 00:02:23.000 --> 00:02:25.200 So with work between the three 00:02:25.200 --> 00:02:27.270 sanctuaries as well as Point Blue 00:02:27.270 --> 00:02:29.940 Conservation Science we get a holistic 00:02:29.940 --> 00:02:31.800 picture of everything that is going on 00:02:31.800 --> 00:02:35.190 within the marine ecosystem here off of 00:02:35.190 --> 00:02:39.690 central and northern California. Today we 00:02:39.690 --> 00:02:42.690 did one of our oceanographic lines and 00:02:42.690 --> 00:02:44.850 it's one of our core lines that we 00:02:44.850 --> 00:02:48.780 have been sampling since 2004. We did a 00:02:48.780 --> 00:02:51.960 Tucker trawl and then we went further 00:02:51.960 --> 00:02:56.460 even further offshore and looked at, we 00:02:56.460 --> 00:02:58.290 deployed a couple of different types of 00:02:58.290 --> 00:03:00.900 nets. So between the several different 00:03:00.900 --> 00:03:02.850 types of net, we're looking at abundance 00:03:02.850 --> 00:03:05.760 of krill, we're looking at abundance of 00:03:05.760 --> 00:03:10.110 marine invertebrates. All of those are food 00:03:10.110 --> 00:03:14.700 resources for salmon, for whales, for 00:03:14.700 --> 00:03:17.940 dolphins, on up the food chain. 00:03:17.940 --> 00:03:19.860 We're also looking at ocean 00:03:19.860 --> 00:03:21.750 acidification: we took several different 00:03:21.750 --> 00:03:24.540 types of water samples today, one of 00:03:24.540 --> 00:03:27.390 which will look at the pH but will also 00:03:27.390 --> 00:03:30.510 look at how the oceans are 00:03:30.660 --> 00:03:34.440 acidifying and potentially thinning the shells 00:03:34.440 --> 00:03:37.110 of marine invertebrates. We also took 00:03:37.110 --> 00:03:39.570 water samples today to look at nutrients 00:03:39.570 --> 00:03:41.820 and nutrient loads. Nutrients are just 00:03:41.820 --> 00:03:43.890 like the fertilizer that you would put 00:03:43.890 --> 00:03:46.080 in your garden: sometimes too much 00:03:46.080 --> 00:03:49.200 fertilizer will cause damage to your 00:03:49.200 --> 00:03:51.390 garden just as too much fertilizer here 00:03:51.390 --> 00:03:54.900 will cause a large bloom 00:03:54.900 --> 00:03:58.500 and potentially a die-off of the 00:03:58.500 --> 00:04:00.900 animals that need the oxygen that's in 00:04:00.900 --> 00:04:04.140 the water and so we want to always look 00:04:04.140 --> 00:04:05.939 at those nutrients. We're also looking at 00:04:05.939 --> 00:04:08.730 nutrients and the influences that 00:04:08.730 --> 00:04:10.860 San Francisco Bay has on this entire region 00:04:10.860 --> 00:04:14.200 because it can be very influential. 00:04:14.370 --> 00:04:16.739 One of the other things that our little net 00:04:16.739 --> 00:04:20.430 tows show us is phytoplankton and we 00:04:20.430 --> 00:04:21.750 work with Department of Public Health 00:04:21.750 --> 00:04:24.840 Services in the state of California in 00:04:24.840 --> 00:04:27.720 looking at harmful algal blooms and what 00:04:27.720 --> 00:04:30.419 is happening offshore is often a 00:04:30.419 --> 00:04:33.840 precursor to potential harmful algal 00:04:33.840 --> 00:04:37.979 blooms inshore, so the oyster farms and 00:04:37.979 --> 00:04:40.560 the closures of shellfish fisheries 00:04:40.560 --> 00:04:43.350 are sometimes coming from data that we 00:04:43.350 --> 00:04:46.440 can send in to the Department of Public 00:04:46.440 --> 00:04:47.640 Health Services.