WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.240 Right. Welcome everybody we're so pleased that  you're here to join us today for our National   00:00:06.240 --> 00:00:11.360 Marine Sanctuaries Webinar series. We used  to do these just once a month and here we're   00:00:11.360 --> 00:00:16.400 doing three or four months now or sometimes  even two in a week. But we're super excited to   00:00:16.400 --> 00:00:23.040 have a great presentation today. Let me tell you  a little bit about the webinar series. This is a   00:00:23.040 --> 00:00:30.320 distance learning program that's hosted by the  National Marine Sanctuaries, our office here and   00:00:30.320 --> 00:00:36.400 it's a great way for us to connect to formal and  informal educators as well as now during this time   00:00:36.400 --> 00:00:42.960 of sheltering at home, we're also connecting to  students and even families. So welcome to all of   00:00:42.960 --> 00:00:49.200 you, if you're new to our webinar series, we hope  you enjoy our program today, Studying dolphins   00:00:49.200 --> 00:00:54.400 and whales in the Hawaiian archipelago. If you've  been coming to these, we have the same opening   00:00:54.400 --> 00:00:59.840 slides that introduce you to our National Marine  Sanctuary System, but by now you're all old pros. 00:01:02.000 --> 00:01:07.600 So just a little bit of background. Today  all attendees will be in listen only mode.   00:01:08.160 --> 00:01:14.000 There will be an opportunity for Q and A after our  lead presenter's presentation has concluded.   00:01:14.000 --> 00:01:19.120 There'll be several ways to ask your question,  you can use the raise hand feature in the Go To   00:01:19.120 --> 00:01:24.480 Webinar control panel and that indicates that you  would like to be unmuted and that you don't have a   00:01:24.480 --> 00:01:29.200 lot of background noise and you would like to ask  your question orally. Of course, if that's not going   00:01:29.200 --> 00:01:34.400 to work for you, you can type in your question to  the question box. So the question box is the same   00:01:34.400 --> 00:01:38.880 place you can let us know if you're having any  technical difficulties, audio issues we'll try   00:01:38.880 --> 00:01:45.120 to walk you through any of that. So super excited  because with the current circumstances and the   00:01:45.120 --> 00:01:52.160 pandemic we continue to see a surge of interest in  our distance learning programs. Today we have over   00:01:52.160 --> 00:01:59.440 830 registrants which is exciting. We have  lots of attendees from the Hawaiian Islands, so   00:02:00.240 --> 00:02:07.520 aloha, welcome. We have other people from New Jersey,  California, New Hampshire, Montana Tennessee, Wyoming,   00:02:07.520 --> 00:02:12.560 South Dakota, I could go on and on so welcome  to all of you. We have many countries being   00:02:12.560 --> 00:02:19.760 represented today. People are attending from Canada,  Portugal, Mexico, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Taiwan   00:02:19.760 --> 00:02:24.880 and others. So welcome to all of you, some of those  people in other countries will be watching the   00:02:25.440 --> 00:02:30.000 recording of our presentation today because  the time zones don't work out so well for them   00:02:30.000 --> 00:02:34.800 but we're glad that they're interested in this  topic and joining us. All right let me talk just   00:02:34.800 --> 00:02:40.640 for a second about our National Marine Sanctuary  system. The map you're looking here shows you all   00:02:40.640 --> 00:02:46.880 of these special underwater parks that are managed  by NOAA. Each of those blue dots represents one   00:02:46.880 --> 00:02:51.920 of these National Marine Sanctuaries and we have  two triangles on the map, one in the South Pacific   00:02:51.920 --> 00:02:58.880 which is our National Marine Sanctuary of American  Samoa and the Papahanamokuakea Marine National   00:02:58.880 --> 00:03:05.520 Monument, so, well I should say Rose Atoll is the  triangle in American Samoa, the Monument there.   00:03:06.800 --> 00:03:13.520 Anyway, the National Marine Sanctuary System, it  protects over 600,000 square miles of ocean and   00:03:13.520 --> 00:03:20.640 Great Lake treasures, so we protect these areas  from Lake Huron to American Samoa, the Florida Keys   00:03:20.640 --> 00:03:27.760 up to our newest site in the Potomac River, the  Mallows Bay. So these sites are so special that   00:03:27.760 --> 00:03:35.760 often times Congress has us set them aside for  reasons of ecological or conservation value,   00:03:35.760 --> 00:03:43.040 in some cases for recreational reasons, historical,  cultural, archaeological, etc. so there's a whole   00:03:43.040 --> 00:03:48.480 wide variety of reasons to set aside these  places to protect the ocean and the Great Lakes   00:03:48.480 --> 00:03:54.720 now and for the future. We also like to consider  them our living classrooms, it's a place where   00:03:54.720 --> 00:04:00.240 people like yourselves, if you have the luxury of  being in any of these beautiful coastal locations   00:04:00.240 --> 00:04:04.400 that you can see, touch and feel  these underwater parks and these   00:04:04.400 --> 00:04:10.080 treasures of America. So with that let's go  ahead and dive into today's presentation.   00:04:10.880 --> 00:04:15.440 Studying whales and dolphins in the Hawaiian  Archipelago. So I'll start with introducing myself.   00:04:16.000 --> 00:04:21.280 My name is Claire Fackler and I am the  National Education Liaison for the NOAA   00:04:21.280 --> 00:04:27.520 Office of National Marine Sanctuaries. I'm sitting  outside on my patio in Santa Barbara, California.    00:04:27.520 --> 00:04:35.360 I'm also joined by Andy Collins, who's in Papaiko,   no not Papaiko sorry Ahualoa on the Big Island,   00:04:35.360 --> 00:04:40.880 he's the Education Coordinator for the  Papahanamokuakea Marine National Monument. 00:04:40.880 --> 00:04:48.800 Welcome Andy as my co-host. I did want to make note,  that today's presentation is actually an extension   00:04:48.800 --> 00:04:55.200 of the First Friday events that normally occurs  at our new visitor center, it's at the Kauai Ocean   00:04:55.200 --> 00:05:02.560 Discovery in Lihue, so we're now bringing those  first Friday speaker series to everybody remotely.   00:05:03.520 --> 00:05:07.600 And let's talk about our presenter a  little bit. So we are so pleased to have Dr. Robin Baird   00:05:08.240 --> 00:05:14.560 with us. He is the Research  Biologist with Cascadia Research Collective.   00:05:14.560 --> 00:05:19.600 This is a non-profit research and education  organization that's based in Olympia, Washington.   00:05:20.240 --> 00:05:26.960 He first began studying whales and dolphins in the  mid-1980s in British Columbia, Canada. He received   00:05:26.960 --> 00:05:34.880 his PhD in 1994 from Simon Fraser University. He  was studying at the time the foraging behavior   00:05:34.880 --> 00:05:41.920 of mammal-eating killer whales, so after spending  time working and living in Mexico and Nova Scotia   00:05:41.920 --> 00:05:48.480 he made his way to the Hawaiian Islands in 1998,  and he has continued his research there ever since.   00:05:48.480 --> 00:05:55.120 He primarily focuses now on toothed whales and  dolphins. He has published numerous scientific   00:05:55.120 --> 00:06:01.440 papers on his research, all of it's available  on the Cascadia Research website which we will   00:06:01.440 --> 00:06:07.760 be pulling up a link later on, as well as the book  entitled "The lives of Hawai'i''s dolphins and whales,   00:06:07.760 --> 00:06:13.280 natural history and conservation". This was  published by the University of Hawai'i Press   00:06:13.280 --> 00:06:20.000 in 2016. And although he works in Hawai'i  for up to a few months each year, he still   00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:25.360 lives in Olympia, Washington and he'll be giving  today's presentation from Olympia. And I have   00:06:25.360 --> 00:06:31.520 to let you know Dr. Baird, (Andy go ahead and  switch the presentation to him), Dr. Baird, I   00:06:31.520 --> 00:06:37.440 had a couple emails come in saying like "You  have Dr. Robin Baird as your presenter today ?!"   00:06:37.440 --> 00:06:42.160 So there's a lot of excitement that we we  caught a big fish that's presenting on our   00:06:42.160 --> 00:06:48.320 webinar series today, so we appreciate your time,  thank you so much and we'll let you take it away. 00:06:57.440 --> 00:07:02.880 Great well, thank you very much. Thanks to  Claire and Andy for hosting this event and   00:07:02.880 --> 00:07:10.480 the Sanctuaries Program for hosting this webinar.  Before I get started I want to mention that the   00:07:10.480 --> 00:07:15.760 the work I'm going to talk about involves a  lot of different people. We have a big team of   00:07:15.760 --> 00:07:21.600 folks with Cascadia Research that work with  photo catalogs or tag data in the office   00:07:21.600 --> 00:07:27.600 and we have people that are playing a  major role in the field. Some that do both.   00:07:28.400 --> 00:07:34.400 We also have a lot of collaborators that work  with our genetic data sets or our tag data sets   00:07:34.960 --> 00:07:40.720 and then a lot of contributions from citizen  scientists. And this presentation is going to   00:07:40.720 --> 00:07:44.960 be comparing what we're learning in the  main Hawaiian islands to what's known about   00:07:44.960 --> 00:07:49.440 some of these same species in the Northwestern  Hawaiian Islands and the work in the Northwestern   00:07:49.440 --> 00:07:55.440 Hawaiian Islands is really the results of  efforts by folks from the Pacific Island Fisheries   00:07:55.440 --> 00:08:00.160 Science Center and the Southwest Fisheries  Science Center of NOAA fisheries. And I'm also   00:08:00.160 --> 00:08:05.280 going to present some work by Marc Lammers of  the Sanctuary and some other folks as well.   00:08:06.960 --> 00:08:13.440 So just to put the presentation in context,  the Hawaiian Archipelago is the most isolated   00:08:13.440 --> 00:08:19.600 archipelago in the world. And this google earth  image shows the the 200 nautical mile exclusive   00:08:19.600 --> 00:08:26.080 economic zone surrounding the Archipelago, that blue line. Now if you look at it from an   00:08:26.080 --> 00:08:33.040 oceanographic perspective, measures of productivity  come from chlorophyll A in the water column and   00:08:33.040 --> 00:08:38.640 chlorophyll A is is produced by phytoplankton.  Phytoplankton are the base of the oceanic food web   00:08:39.200 --> 00:08:45.520 and these ocean color maps basically show  chlorophyll A levels. The bright red areas   00:08:45.520 --> 00:08:51.840 are highly productive areas up in the high  latitude areas and along the the coastline of the   00:08:51.840 --> 00:08:58.480 continents and the bluer waters are relatively low  productivity areas and the Hawaiian Archipelago is   00:08:58.480 --> 00:09:02.240 located right in the middle of this  large blue patch in the Central Pacific.   00:09:03.680 --> 00:09:10.080 Now if we zoom in on the Archipelago, you  can see that up to the north there is a   00:09:11.040 --> 00:09:16.000 a band of fairly highly productive water,  it's a transition chlorophyll front.   00:09:16.800 --> 00:09:22.000 And that chlorophyll band moves  south during the winter and north   00:09:22.000 --> 00:09:26.560 during the summer and at least during the  winter it actually envelops some of the   00:09:26.560 --> 00:09:31.760 northernmost of the Northwestern Hawaiian  Islands, Kure, Midway and Pearl and Hermes.   00:09:32.960 --> 00:09:38.720 Now most of the other islands and atolls you can  see that there's this increase in chlorophyll, 00:09:38.720 --> 00:09:49.920 the ocean color are right around the islands  themselves and that basically reflects that the the islands through disruption of ocean currents  and upwelling increase the productivity right   00:09:49.920 --> 00:09:53.920 around them. And if you look around the  main Hawaiian Islands you can also see an   00:09:53.920 --> 00:09:59.200 increase in productivity around the main Hawaiian  Islands although it's to a much, much lower extent.   00:10:00.800 --> 00:10:04.720 Now there's a number of differences between  the main Hawaiian Islands and the Northwestern   00:10:04.720 --> 00:10:08.560 Hawaiian Islands that I want to, I want to  talk about because these have important   00:10:08.560 --> 00:10:12.720 implications for the different species of  whales and dolphins that use those areas.   00:10:13.840 --> 00:10:18.640 With the exception of Mokumanamana and Nihoa,  the Northwestern Hawaiian islands are all   00:10:18.640 --> 00:10:23.680 relatively low islands, so they're coral  reefs and atolls and small sand islands.   00:10:24.240 --> 00:10:30.080 Whereas the main Hawaiian islands are high  islands and those high islands actually have quite   00:10:30.080 --> 00:10:37.840 an influence on the surrounding atmosphere. This  is a wind model that that shows just a snapshot of   00:10:37.840 --> 00:10:43.680 the winds around the Hawaiian Archipelago and you  can see that the main Hawaiian Islands actually   00:10:43.680 --> 00:10:50.960 divert the wind and create these calm lees to the west of the islands. And these lees are are   00:10:50.960 --> 00:10:55.600 really important because they are effectively  what allow us to do the work that we're doing   00:10:55.600 --> 00:11:01.120 going out on small boats. We do most of our  work on the leeward side of the island because   00:11:01.120 --> 00:11:07.040 that's where it's it's calm enough to safely and  and effectively work. And the Northwestern   00:11:07.040 --> 00:11:12.960 Hawaiian Islands really don't have those lees and that that really influences both the type   00:11:12.960 --> 00:11:16.560 of research that's being done up there and the  amount of research that's been done up there.   00:11:17.920 --> 00:11:23.680 Now the the winds that are diverted around  the islands also change the the current   00:11:23.680 --> 00:11:29.680 patterns around the islands and in particular  the Island of Hawai'i generates a lot of eddies   00:11:29.680 --> 00:11:35.040 that that basically spin off the western  or leeward side of the island. And these include   00:11:36.640 --> 00:11:42.000 cyclonic eddies that actually bring cold,  nutrient rich water up to the surface which   00:11:42.000 --> 00:11:48.320 increases productivity. It includes anti-cyclonic,  clockwise eddies that are downwelling eddies that   00:11:48.880 --> 00:11:56.080 basically concentrate all of the phytoplankton  along the edges, in the center and these eddies   00:11:56.080 --> 00:12:03.200 are really important for a whole variety  of ocean organisms whether it be   00:12:04.800 --> 00:12:10.480 small myctophids, things that are coming  up associated with a deep scattering layer or   00:12:10.480 --> 00:12:15.760 or large game fish like Billfish. And there are  a number of species of whales and dolphins that   00:12:15.760 --> 00:12:22.640 are also responding to these eddies and taking  advantage of them as ways of finding food. So these   00:12:22.640 --> 00:12:27.360 eddies occur a lot in the main Hawaiian Islands  and are much less so in the Northwestern Hawaiian   00:12:27.360 --> 00:12:33.200 Islands. Now another difference between the main  Hawaiian islands and Northwestern Hawaiian islands   00:12:33.200 --> 00:12:40.240 is rainfall. Average rainfall at Midway is about  39 inches, whereas along the the windward sides,   00:12:40.240 --> 00:12:46.080 the east sides of the main Hawaiian islands,  rainfall can exceed 300 inches and that rainfall   00:12:46.640 --> 00:12:55.200 has a, plays a role in how much nutrients are  put into the water through runoff and that   00:12:55.200 --> 00:12:59.920 that increase in nutrients also increases the  local productivity around the islands themselves.   00:13:01.760 --> 00:13:07.760 Now another difference between the main Hawaiian  islands and the Northwestern Hawaiian islands   00:13:08.560 --> 00:13:14.800 are the relatively, the relatively greater amount  of of shallow water habitat in the Northwestern   00:13:14.800 --> 00:13:19.440 Hawaiian Islands. The islands themselves are  very small but they most of them are sitting on   00:13:19.440 --> 00:13:26.000 these large pedestals, which are effectively sunken  volcanoes that create a lot of habitat for shallow   00:13:26.000 --> 00:13:33.840 water species, things like bottlenose dolphins and  humpback whales. Now switching a little bit, I   00:13:33.840 --> 00:13:40.240 first started working in Hawai'i in December  of '98 and when I moved to Hawai'i, I there were   00:13:40.240 --> 00:13:45.200 a lot of researchers already working there.   Those that were working on on whales with the   00:13:45.200 --> 00:13:51.440 exception of Dan McSweeney in Kona, were focusing  on humpback whales and those that were working on   00:13:51.440 --> 00:13:57.760 dolphins were really focused on spinner dolphins.  So I didn't want to overlap with those researchers   00:13:57.760 --> 00:14:02.720 or or compete with them, so instead of focusing  on either humpback whales or spinner dolphins.   00:14:03.520 --> 00:14:08.720 Right from the beginning our work has focused on  some of the lesser known species of odontocetes 00:14:08.720 --> 00:14:14.000 and that includes bottlenose dolphins, false  killer whales and spotted dolphins these are   00:14:14.000 --> 00:14:20.400 three species that use the shallow waters off  of Maui quite regularly. And first couple   00:14:20.400 --> 00:14:25.840 years the work was concentrated off Maui and  Lanai and we'd get out into deeper water and   00:14:25.840 --> 00:14:29.840 started working with some of the deeper water  species, west of Lanai, things like pilot whales.    00:14:31.760 --> 00:14:39.520 Now the work is done with, from small boats that  have ranged in length from about 14 to 29 feet.   00:14:39.520 --> 00:14:44.560 This boat here is a 24 foot rigid-hull  zodiac and is one of the boats that we've   00:14:44.560 --> 00:14:50.000 used over the years. Cascadia doesn't own any  boats in Hawai'i, so we we end up chartering them   00:14:50.640 --> 00:14:55.920 but this this type of boat a 24-foot rigid  hull zodiac with the bell pulpit that we add on   00:14:56.880 --> 00:15:02.960 has is basically our standard, best case  scenario for boat operations it allows us to   00:15:03.760 --> 00:15:10.000 get fairly far offshore safely and comfortably  and and from a very stable platform that we can   00:15:10.000 --> 00:15:16.400 accomplish our goals. Now the most of the work  in the Northwestern Hawaiian islands has   00:15:16.400 --> 00:15:20.400 actually been done for much larger vessels and  that goes back to the the point I brought up a   00:15:20.400 --> 00:15:25.840 couple minutes ago about the lack of a good lee  in the Northwestern Hawaiian islands. This is one   00:15:25.840 --> 00:15:32.720 of the NOAA vessels, the Seti, and these vessels  have been used for longer trips so we go out   00:15:32.720 --> 00:15:39.120 on day trips in the main Hawaiian islands, the NOAA  cruises typically are three to five weeks long   00:15:39.760 --> 00:15:44.960 with a big crew of people as well as visual  observers they do have the potential to launch   00:15:44.960 --> 00:15:50.480 small boats when the conditions are good and most  of these surveys are towing hydrophone arrays   00:15:50.480 --> 00:15:55.840 so that they can acoustically monitor whales  and dolphins as well as visually document them.   00:15:57.360 --> 00:16:02.720 Now I'm going to show a little video that gives  you an example of some of our different research   00:16:02.720 --> 00:16:08.720 methods, this a couple things you'll see in  here there's three different photographers   00:16:08.720 --> 00:16:14.240 on board so we've got lots of people trying  to get photographs. This particular camera that   00:16:14.240 --> 00:16:22.400 you can see has two lasers or green dot lasers,  mounted on this housing on on top of the camera   00:16:22.400 --> 00:16:28.000 and they project two green dots onto the dorsal  fin of the animals, we can measure the animals from   00:16:28.000 --> 00:16:33.520 the lasers and then you'll also see someone  standing in the bow of the boat with an air rifle   00:16:33.520 --> 00:16:39.360 and this will show deployment of one of these  limpeted satellite tags onto the dorsal fin   00:16:39.360 --> 00:16:44.880 of a false killer whale. Now I'll play the video  and and talk a little bit about what's happening.   00:16:46.560 --> 00:16:51.200 So this is a false killer whale off the  southwest side of Kauai, there you can see the   00:16:51.200 --> 00:16:56.880 the tagging, this is the species that I'm going to  talk more about later but they're they're often   00:16:56.880 --> 00:17:02.880 very interested in boats. This one comes right over  the boat, goes under it. The nice thing about these   00:17:02.880 --> 00:17:07.440 tags and you're going to see a tag deployment  in in just a second as it comes up on the other   00:17:07.440 --> 00:17:12.640 side of the boat, is even though we're restricted  to working in the leeward sides of the islands,   00:17:14.480 --> 00:17:20.080 once we get a tag on an animal those tagged  animals can go and roam around the islands,   00:17:20.080 --> 00:17:26.480 they can roam offshore, these tags stay on in false  killer whales, they stay on an average of about 45   00:17:26.480 --> 00:17:32.640 days but we've had them on as long as 200 days on  a false killer whale, even longer on a pilot whale.   00:17:32.640 --> 00:17:37.760 So they give us quite a good picture of what the  animals are doing over longer periods of time   00:17:37.760 --> 00:17:44.320 and unconstrained by where we're able to work  due to sea conditions. Now this has been a   00:17:44.320 --> 00:17:50.480 long-term study over the last 21 years, we've had  survey effort off all the main Hawaiian islands.   00:17:51.120 --> 00:17:59.840 19 years in a row now off of Kona. 12 different  years off of Kauai and Niihau. Six years off of Oahu   00:17:59.840 --> 00:18:07.760 and eight years off Maui Nui. The days really  add up over 1100 days and 8 000 hours on the water.   00:18:07.760 --> 00:18:15.040 144 000 kilometers of survey track line and in  all of that time we've had over three thousand   00:18:15.040 --> 00:18:21.360 encounters with tooth whales or dolphins, odontocetes of 18 different species of odontocetes.  00:18:21.360 --> 00:18:26.080 And then, three different species of baleen  whales. So it's it's a fairly long-term   00:18:26.080 --> 00:18:31.600 and and rich data set to start to understand  how the animals are using the islands.   00:18:32.880 --> 00:18:38.640 Now this shows the entire Hawaiian Exclusive  Economic Zone and and it includes our effort   00:18:38.640 --> 00:18:43.280 around the main Hawaiian islands but it also  includes the survey effort from the larger NOAA   00:18:43.280 --> 00:18:50.240 vessel surveys. And each one of these squiggly  yellow lines that are basically running through   00:18:50.240 --> 00:18:54.960 typically represents one day of effort. The vessel  will be coming along and then at night they'll   00:18:54.960 --> 00:19:00.640 go off effort for visual observers and then  continue back on effort again. If the lines are   00:19:00.640 --> 00:19:06.400 straight they probably didn't see much and if they  deflect a bit that often represents that the the   00:19:06.400 --> 00:19:12.480 boat is turning to approach a group of animals to  confirm the species and confirm the the group size.   00:19:13.760 --> 00:19:20.400 And these surveys have been run in a number  of different years this map shows through 2016 but   00:19:20.400 --> 00:19:28.720 but NOAA had a another large vessel survey in 2017 and another one earlier this year as well. Now   00:19:29.280 --> 00:19:34.560 many of the sightings from these large vessel  surveys are fairly distant sightings and   00:19:34.560 --> 00:19:40.640 are usually relatively brief. This happens to  show one of those rare calm days up offshore in   00:19:40.640 --> 00:19:48.720 offshore waters but most days are are quite rough  as well and the large vessels do have the option   00:19:48.720 --> 00:19:53.520 of launching small boats when the conditions are  right and when they encounter a high priority   00:19:53.520 --> 00:19:59.280 species. So they also do a lot of the same kinds  of things that we do from our small boat surveys   00:19:59.280 --> 00:20:05.600 which include photo identification, collecting  biopsy samples for genetic studies and satellite   00:20:05.600 --> 00:20:09.760 tagging and some of the satellite tagging results  that I'm going to show you are are combined   00:20:09.760 --> 00:20:14.240 our tag deployments and tag deployments  through Pacific Island Fisheries Science Center.   00:20:16.000 --> 00:20:22.640 Now for those of you who've seen my presentations  in the past, typically I spend most of my time   00:20:22.640 --> 00:20:28.480 talking about toothed whales things like false  killer whales and other species and I'm going to   00:20:28.480 --> 00:20:32.640 end the presentation with that but I'm actually  going to talk about a couple species of baleen   00:20:32.640 --> 00:20:38.240 whales first, And I picked two species one you may  never have heard of before and the other one which   00:20:38.240 --> 00:20:43.520 is is the focus of a lot of attention in Hawaiian  waters. And I picked these species because   00:20:43.520 --> 00:20:48.000 information from the Northwestern Hawaiian  islands and the main Hawaiian islands are showing   00:20:48.000 --> 00:20:55.040 different things or or creating some interesting  stories. Now the first species is a poorly known   00:20:55.040 --> 00:21:00.160 species but it's the only species of baleen whale  that's resident in Hawaiian waters year round and   00:21:00.160 --> 00:21:05.760 this is the Bryde's whale. Bryde's whales are about  the same length of a humpback whale but much more   00:21:05.760 --> 00:21:12.480 streamlined, they're closely related to blue whales  and fin whales and sei whales and minke whales.   00:21:12.480 --> 00:21:17.760 They are a bit difficult to tell apart  from one other species from the sei whale   00:21:17.760 --> 00:21:23.120 and to confirm species often you need to  get a good photograph of the head. Bryde's 00:21:23.120 --> 00:21:28.400 whales have three of these ridges on the head,  whereas sei whales just have a single ridge.   00:21:29.280 --> 00:21:34.880 So there are some sightings of this species  in Hawai'i that are never confirmed to species   00:21:35.520 --> 00:21:39.120 simply because people didn't get a good look  at the head or a good photograph of the head.   00:21:40.480 --> 00:21:46.320 Now if you look at sightings from all sources, so  this includes all those NOAA vessel surveys, it   00:21:46.320 --> 00:21:52.320 includes our efforts and some published published  reports, there's an interesting pattern here   00:21:52.960 --> 00:21:58.720 most of the the sightings of Bryde's  whales are not around the main Hawaiian   00:21:58.720 --> 00:22:02.640 islands even though there's been a tremendous  amount of effort around the main Hawaiian islands.   00:22:02.640 --> 00:22:07.840 They're in offshore areas, they're through  throughout the Monument and the sightings   00:22:07.840 --> 00:22:12.320 that are around the main Hawaiian islands are  now all off the northern sides of the islands   00:22:12.320 --> 00:22:19.040 where where we really have almost no effort. And  that reflects what one of the things I   00:22:19.040 --> 00:22:23.680 mentioned there they're resident Hawaiian waters  year-round and so they're feeding in Hawaiian   00:22:23.680 --> 00:22:28.640 waters and so they tend to be feeding in the more  productive areas and the more productive areas 00:22:28.640 --> 00:22:34.800 tend to be further north and as you saw in  that ocean color map the chlorophyll A map.   00:22:34.800 --> 00:22:38.640 The the waters around the northwestern  Hawaiian islands are more productive than   00:22:38.640 --> 00:22:43.760 the waters around the main Hawaiian islands. It's  fairly abundant species estimated abundance from   00:22:44.400 --> 00:22:52.240 NOAA survey in 2010 was over 1700 individuals and  that didn't include individuals that were either   00:22:52.240 --> 00:22:56.400 Sei whales or Bryde's whales that couldn't  be confirmed for one species or another.   00:22:57.920 --> 00:23:03.760 Now this is a species that was hunted by both  Soviet and Japanese whalers in Hawaiian waters   00:23:04.400 --> 00:23:08.880 in the early 1970s until whaling  was excluded from U.S. waters.   00:23:09.440 --> 00:23:13.440 There were over 300 individuals killed  up in the very northern part of the   00:23:14.000 --> 00:23:19.920 Hawaiian exclusive economic zone and if you, if  you look at this distribution of sightings   00:23:19.920 --> 00:23:26.560 in the inset of animals that were killed, in the  inset, you'll see that basically maps that   00:23:26.560 --> 00:23:32.320 high productivity area that I showed you earlier,  so it reflects that the abundance up in the highly   00:23:32.320 --> 00:23:38.080 productive waters is probably a lot greater than  it is lower down in the less productive waters.   00:23:38.880 --> 00:23:43.280 Now we've never seen a Bryde's whale  in any of our work although there have been   00:23:43.280 --> 00:23:49.360 a couple reports of of groups of small baleen  whales. Bryde's whales sometimes are found in   00:23:49.360 --> 00:23:55.520 groups of 20 or 30 individuals and those reports  have been off of Kona but the people finding them   00:23:55.520 --> 00:24:01.200 or observing them never got photographs to confirm  which species so it's something that folks   00:24:01.200 --> 00:24:06.160 who are spending time on the water in Hawai'i at  any time of the year should be on the lookout for   00:24:06.800 --> 00:24:12.480 don't assume that any baleen whale that you see  off shores is just a humpback whale it could be   00:24:12.480 --> 00:24:16.480 it could be a Bryde's whale or one of the other  species that are that are found in Hawaiian waters.   00:24:17.760 --> 00:24:21.360 Now the other species that I'm going to talk  about of course is the humpback whale and   00:24:21.360 --> 00:24:26.720 and obviously it's the most well-known species  of baleen whale in Hawai'i and one of the most   00:24:26.720 --> 00:24:33.680 well-known in the world. Hawai'i has been a center  of research on humpback whales since the 1970s   00:24:34.480 --> 00:24:41.040 and more known about humpback whales in Hawai'i  than in most other populations of whales   00:24:41.040 --> 00:24:47.520 or or most other populations for humpbacks in  other areas. Now I mentioned earlier that the   00:24:47.520 --> 00:24:53.920 Northwestern Hawaiian islands have a lot of relatively shallow water and a modeling exercise   00:24:53.920 --> 00:25:00.720 published in 2007 by Dave Johnson and colleagues  looked both at the prevalence of shallow water in   00:25:00.720 --> 00:25:06.240 the in throughout the Hawaiian Archipelago and  warm waters because humpback whales are show a   00:25:06.240 --> 00:25:12.000 preference for warm shallow water for for breeding  grounds and found that about two-thirds of the   00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:16.960 suitable habitat for humpback whales in Hawaiian  waters are actually in the Northwestern Hawaiian   00:25:16.960 --> 00:25:22.240 islands. So suggesting that even though we we know  and have known for a long time that the the main   00:25:22.240 --> 00:25:27.280 Hawaiian islands are extremely important breeding  area. The Northwestern Hawaiian islands could have   00:25:27.280 --> 00:25:32.480 a large number of animals as well and potentially  even more than in the main Hawaiian islands.   00:25:33.520 --> 00:25:39.280 Now a few years later Marc Lammers and colleagues  published a paper using acoustic recorders these   00:25:39.280 --> 00:25:44.880 are called EARS: Ecological, Acoustic Acoustic  Recording Systems they deployed these on the   00:25:44.880 --> 00:25:50.640 bottom at French Frigate Shoals, Maro Reef,  Lisianski, Pearl and Hermes, Midway and Kure.   00:25:51.360 --> 00:25:57.360 Left them out for a period of time, then recovered  them and the acoustic recordings revealed humpback   00:25:57.360 --> 00:26:03.280 whale's songs throughout throughout this area  although there was a lot more consistent song   00:26:03.280 --> 00:26:09.920 activity between Lisianski and French Frigate  Shoals. The pattern of humpback's singing in    00:26:09.920 --> 00:26:16.000 in these areas basically was the same as the the  pattern off of Oahu, suggesting that the whales   00:26:16.000 --> 00:26:21.520 were arriving early in the season and and a lot  of singing activity throughout the season and then   00:26:21.520 --> 00:26:27.760 dropping off afterwards. So further evidence that  the Northwestern Hawaiian islands may be a very   00:26:27.760 --> 00:26:34.480 important humpback whale breeding area. And then  most recently the Pacific Island Fisheries Science   00:26:34.480 --> 00:26:40.560 Center had a winter cruise in a very short winter  cruise in the Northwestern Hawaiian islands in   00:26:40.560 --> 00:26:49.200 April of 2019 and in just in a very short period  had sightings of about 180 individuals spread out   00:26:49.200 --> 00:26:57.600 between Middle Bank and part of French Frigate  Shoals. They also detected whales singing   00:26:58.160 --> 00:27:03.840 quite regularly throughout that area as well and  and these three different lines of evidence are   00:27:03.840 --> 00:27:09.440 all showing that that the Northwestern Hawaiian  Islands are probably a really important breeding   00:27:09.440 --> 00:27:15.680 area for humpback whales, the fluke matches from  this is from a presentation last December by   00:27:16.320 --> 00:27:22.480 the Science Center, fluke matches were found  between those animals to British Columbia to   00:27:22.480 --> 00:27:29.040 Washington state to Russia to Alaska as well  as matches among the the main Hawaiian islands   00:27:29.040 --> 00:27:34.880 or with the main Hawaiian islands. So the whales  and the Northwestern Hawaiian islands may be doing   00:27:34.880 --> 00:27:40.800 similar things in terms of their migratory routes  to whales elsewhere in the main Hawaiian islands.   00:27:42.720 --> 00:27:48.400 Now if you remember that chlorophyll front  that's up in the northern part of the area   00:27:49.120 --> 00:27:52.560 means that there's a lot more productive  waters and there's always been questions   00:27:52.560 --> 00:27:56.320 over the years about how much feeding  behavior occurs by humpback whales and   00:27:56.320 --> 00:28:02.240 Hawaiian waters. The answer is that probably not  very much because if if animals eat they also   00:28:02.240 --> 00:28:07.200 poop and defecation behavior is  not something that's seen very often   00:28:07.200 --> 00:28:13.040 although there are examples of it. But one  of the predictions that if you look at both   00:28:13.040 --> 00:28:18.080 the humpback whale habitat and the productivity  of that habitat in the Northwestern Hawaiian   00:28:18.080 --> 00:28:22.960 islands, one of the predictions that follows is  you're likely to see a lot more feeding behavior   00:28:22.960 --> 00:28:26.640 in the Northwestern Hawaiian islands than is  ever being documented in the main Hawaiian   00:28:26.640 --> 00:28:31.200 islands. And that's something that could be  tested by even monitoring defecation rates.   00:28:33.200 --> 00:28:40.480 So now I'm going to switch to odontocetes.  This includes the tooth whales and the dolphins.   00:28:40.480 --> 00:28:45.360 There's actually 18 different species of odontocetes that have been recorded in Hawaiian waters   00:28:45.360 --> 00:28:50.080 and there's at least a couple more that are  probably present based on acoustics that have   00:28:50.080 --> 00:28:56.160 just never been visually documented. I'm obviously  not going to talk about all 18 species although   00:28:56.160 --> 00:29:00.400 I'd like to and then and instead  I'm going to focus just on some of the resident   00:29:00.400 --> 00:29:06.000 species. There's actually 11 different resident  species of tooth whales and dolphins in the   00:29:06.000 --> 00:29:11.440 Hawaiian archipelago and I'm not going to talk  about all 11 of those as that would take up a   00:29:11.440 --> 00:29:17.840 lot more time than we have, but I'm going to focus  on on five different species. That includes two   00:29:17.840 --> 00:29:24.000 relatively poorly known species, Pygmy killer  whales and melon head of whales. One extremely   00:29:24.000 --> 00:29:29.120 well known species bottlenose dolphin which  means studied in many areas around the world.   00:29:30.400 --> 00:29:34.640 The Cuvier's beaked whale which is  a deep diving species that there's a   00:29:34.640 --> 00:29:40.960 resident population off of Kona. And lastly false  killer whale which is is my favorite species. So   00:29:41.840 --> 00:29:45.200 now just a little bit  about the first four species.   00:29:46.080 --> 00:29:50.640 Pygmy killer whales are actually one of the least  known species of oceanic delphinids in the world   00:29:51.200 --> 00:29:57.120 but the population in Hawai'i is the best known  of all. It's the only only area where pygmy killer   00:29:57.120 --> 00:30:02.400 whales have been have been the subject of a  long-term photo identification study we've also   00:30:02.400 --> 00:30:07.920 tagged some individuals and collaborating  with researchers at Southwest Fisheries Science   00:30:07.920 --> 00:30:14.320 Center on a genetic study. You can see in this map  that there's a lot of pygmy killer whale sightings   00:30:14.320 --> 00:30:20.480 in particular off of Hawaii island and Oahu  and we actually know from photo ID that there   00:30:20.480 --> 00:30:25.680 are resident animals, two different resident  communities, one off Oahu and one off of Kona.   00:30:26.640 --> 00:30:33.280 But a relatively lack of sighting in  offshore waters and throughout the Northwestern   00:30:33.280 --> 00:30:38.560 Hawaiian islands. Now this is a species that  that based on this lack of sightings and and   00:30:38.560 --> 00:30:45.120 I'll show you some other examples in a few  minutes, that show that the contrast is probably   00:30:45.120 --> 00:30:49.600 only resident to the main Hawaiian islands  and not to the Northwestern Hawaiian islands 00:30:49.600 --> 00:31:00.560 with the caveat that even though we have a  resident population there are very cryptic species. They are typically in fairly small groups  and they're they're not very active during the   00:31:00.560 --> 00:31:03.840 day they spend a lot of time just just  floating at the surface during the day   00:31:04.480 --> 00:31:10.320 so they're easy to miss. So there's still  potential for for being a lot more of them   00:31:10.320 --> 00:31:15.920 up in the Northwestern Hawaiian islands but the  lack of sightings suggest they're not resident. Now   00:31:15.920 --> 00:31:20.320 on the lower half we have melon head  of whales. We've tagged a lot of melon head   00:31:20.320 --> 00:31:25.520 whales in the main Hawaiian islands. You can  see the tracks here moving into offshore areas 00:31:25.520 --> 00:31:38.080 these are the only sightings through  2016 of melon head of whales in offshore waters through those NOAA cruises. And there's no  sightings in the Northwestern Hawaiian islands. So   00:31:38.960 --> 00:31:44.560 we do know for example that off of Kohala  on Hawai'i island, there is a relatively small   00:31:44.560 --> 00:31:50.400 resident population with a very restricted range  but this lack of sightings suggests that there may   00:31:51.280 --> 00:31:58.240 not be the only resident populations in the  Hawaiian archipelago maybe the one around Kohala.   00:31:59.680 --> 00:32:04.640 Now keep in mind the relatively small number of  sightings of each of these two species as we as   00:32:04.640 --> 00:32:10.320 we move on to bottlenose dolphins. And you  can see here in the map that in the Northwestern   00:32:10.320 --> 00:32:15.120 Hawaiian islands there are a lot of bottlenose  dolphin sightings. You can see the bottlenose dolphin   00:32:15.120 --> 00:32:20.720 sightings around the main Hawaiian islands, we  know from a combination of genetics and photo ID   00:32:21.280 --> 00:32:26.240 and satellite tagging that there are small  resident populations of bottlenose dolphins   00:32:26.240 --> 00:32:31.760 around the the various main Hawaiian islands.  There's a resident population off Hawai'i island.   00:32:31.760 --> 00:32:37.920 Maui Nui resident population. A Oahu  resident population and a Kauai, Niihau one.   00:32:37.920 --> 00:32:41.840 Each numbering between perhaps one  and three or four hundred individuals.   00:32:42.560 --> 00:32:47.680 And even though the photo ID and tagging  work hasn't hasn't really been done in the   00:32:47.680 --> 00:32:53.040 Northwestern Hawaiian islands, if you look at the  large number of sightings and the concentration   00:32:53.040 --> 00:32:58.160 in these very shallow water areas this  to me provides pretty good evidence that   00:32:59.200 --> 00:33:04.480 once more data is available that it it'll  demonstrate that there are also probably numerous   00:33:04.480 --> 00:33:09.440 small resident populations of bottlenose dolphins  in the Northwestern Hawaiian islands. So if you're   00:33:09.440 --> 00:33:12.880 if you're looking for graduate school projects  and you have access to a big boat, I think that   00:33:12.880 --> 00:33:20.720 would be a great project to to work on. Now the  next species that I'll talk about is a Cuvier's   00:33:20.720 --> 00:33:26.240 Beaked whale and for those of you who have   seen Cuvier's Beaked whales or read about Cuvier's 00:33:26.240 --> 00:33:30.800 Beaked whales, you know that they're much harder to  spot than something like a bottlenose dolphin. They   00:33:30.800 --> 00:33:35.120 this species has the longest dive duration  of any species of whale or dolphin.   00:33:35.120 --> 00:33:41.040 They regularly dive over an hour at a  time and they can die for up to two hours.   00:33:41.760 --> 00:33:48.480 They're typically found in very small groups. So to  have this many sightings from the relatively small   00:33:48.480 --> 00:33:54.240 amount of effort in the Northwestern Hawaiian  islands and in offshore areas. But this cluster of   00:33:54.240 --> 00:33:59.600 sightings throughout the Northwestern Hawaiian  islands really suggests that there are probably   00:34:00.640 --> 00:34:05.840 resident populations in the Northwestern Hawaiian islands. And if you look down at the the far   00:34:05.840 --> 00:34:11.040 eastern part of the chain to Hawai'i island   there's a lot of sightings we've tagged a number   00:34:11.040 --> 00:34:17.920 of individuals and the tagged individuals have remained strongly associated with Hawai'i island   00:34:17.920 --> 00:34:24.720 and and the the southeastern part of Maui Nui so  we know there's a resident population off Hawai'i   00:34:24.720 --> 00:34:31.280 island and and yet with far less effort there's  a really a tremendous number of sightings up here.   00:34:32.000 --> 00:34:38.160 You'll see this big gap in in sightings of  Cuvier's Beaked whales we have no sightings from   00:34:38.160 --> 00:34:45.680 our work off Kauai, Niihau we've had one now off  of Oahu that was prior or it was after this map   00:34:45.680 --> 00:34:51.680 was produced and none in the Maui Nui area and so  there's a lot of habitat there where there's just   00:34:51.680 --> 00:34:58.000 no Cuvier's Beaked whales or they're extremely rare.  And I actually think that that reflects that   00:34:58.000 --> 00:35:04.080 this species is is quite susceptible to  anthropogenic disturbance. It's the species that's   00:35:04.080 --> 00:35:11.360 most likely to strand in response to Navy sonar. It's a species that moves away from areas that   00:35:12.000 --> 00:35:17.840 when sonar is being used. And a lot of the Navy  sonar activity in Hawai'i is concentrated around   00:35:17.840 --> 00:35:24.240 Kauai, Niihau and Oahu and I think that this  this may reflect or may be responsible for   00:35:24.240 --> 00:35:28.640 for why Cuvier's Beaked whales are just really  not seeing around those areas or just avoiding   00:35:28.640 --> 00:35:35.920 those areas because of the the Navy sonar. Now  the last species I'm going to talk about is   00:35:35.920 --> 00:35:39.040 the false killer whale. I'm going to spend  a bit more time with false killer whales.   00:35:39.600 --> 00:35:44.080 They are they were given the name false  killer whale not because they look anything   00:35:44.080 --> 00:35:50.560 like killer whales they different body  shape different pigmentation but they were   00:35:50.560 --> 00:35:56.480 originally described from a sub-fossil skeleton  and in particular a skull and teeth and there's   00:35:56.480 --> 00:36:00.480 tremendous similarity between the skull and  teeth of a false killer whale and a killer whale.   00:36:01.360 --> 00:36:07.360 So all that although they don't look, alike they  do actually share a lot of other traits. They're   00:36:07.360 --> 00:36:13.600 both long-lived and slow to mature, females  first give birth around 10 years of age   00:36:14.160 --> 00:36:24.480 they may live probably into their 60s or 70s. They  only reproduce very irregularly. The calving   00:36:24.480 --> 00:36:30.880 rate or inter-birth interval is thought to be six  or seven years. So over their lifespan they may   00:36:30.880 --> 00:36:36.960 only have four or five calves and the calves  stay strongly associated with their mothers in   00:36:36.960 --> 00:36:42.160 the same way they do with killer whale calves. We  have genetic evidence and photo ID evidence that   00:36:42.160 --> 00:36:47.600 suggests that these bonds are probably permanent  between a false color whale mother and her calf.   00:36:49.040 --> 00:36:54.480 Now they share another trait with killer whales in  that they're they're both top predators. False   00:36:54.480 --> 00:36:59.200 killer whales are in the Hawaiian ecosystem with  the exception of killer whales which are pretty   00:36:59.200 --> 00:37:04.480 rare. False killer whales are at the top of the  oceanic food web they're feeding on a lot of other   00:37:04.480 --> 00:37:11.680 predatory fish. So these photos show one eating  an opah. In the upper left an ono. In the upper   00:37:11.680 --> 00:37:18.720 right a very large mahi mahi. In the lower left  and a broad build swordfish in in the lower right.   00:37:19.280 --> 00:37:26.240 And as well as these pelagic game fish they  also feed on reef associated game fish. So they're   00:37:26.240 --> 00:37:32.160 one of the few species that really bridges the coral reef ecosystem and the pelagic ecosystem in   00:37:32.160 --> 00:37:40.480 Hawai'i. This is a giant trevally, an ulua, one  being consumed off of Kona and they also feed on   00:37:40.480 --> 00:37:45.280 species like bonefish and various  other jacks, uluas in Hawaiian waters. 00:37:48.400 --> 00:37:55.120 Now if you look at the distribution of sightings  of false killer whales throughout the entire   00:37:55.120 --> 00:38:00.880 Exclusive Economic Zone again this is from a  combination of our small vessel work and the large   00:38:00.880 --> 00:38:07.840 vessel surveys of the Fisheries Science Center.   The sightings are both near shore and offshore and   00:38:07.840 --> 00:38:12.720 both around the main Hawaiian islands and around  the Northwestern Hawaiian islands. So they're   00:38:12.720 --> 00:38:19.680 widely distributed species. All of these sightings  so obscure the the strong population structure   00:38:19.680 --> 00:38:24.560 that's been documented through a combination  of photo ID genetics and tagging.   00:38:25.360 --> 00:38:30.960 The first population of false killer whales  that was recognized in Hawaiian waters was the   00:38:30.960 --> 00:38:37.840 main Hawaiian islands insular population. This was  recognized over 10 years ago and was estimated to   00:38:37.840 --> 00:38:44.240 number more than 400 individuals in the 1980s. The  most recent estimate based on photo identification   00:38:44.240 --> 00:38:49.280 is the collaborative project with the Science  Center and a lot of citizen science contributions.   00:38:49.280 --> 00:38:54.960 The most recent estimate is just about 167  individuals. So evidence of a large population   00:38:54.960 --> 00:39:01.760 decline. They were, NOAA Fisheries was petitioned  by the Natural Resources Defense Council to list   00:39:01.760 --> 00:39:07.600 this population as endangered in 2010 and they  were listed as endangered in 2012. So this is   00:39:07.600 --> 00:39:13.360 this is the most endangered population of whales  or dolphins in Hawaiian waters. And the reason why   00:39:13.360 --> 00:39:18.560 they're endangered, goes back to what they  were feeding on. I showed you all of these 00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:26.480 high trophic level game fish that they're feeding  on. This photo here shows a juvenile big eye tuna   00:39:26.480 --> 00:39:32.480 being consumed by this false killer whale. These  fish both are high on the food web themselves   00:39:32.480 --> 00:39:39.440 so they false killer whales accumulate high levels  of persistent organic pollutants things like PCB's   00:39:39.440 --> 00:39:45.840 and flame retardants. But they also are species  of fish that are consumed by humans and    00:39:45.840 --> 00:39:51.040 and fishery interactions is thought to be  the main threat facing this population.   00:39:51.040 --> 00:39:57.120 Animals getting accidentally hooked and  potentially drowning or dying from hook ingestion.   00:39:58.480 --> 00:40:03.280 Now we've been satellite tagging false killer  whales throughout the main Hawaiian islands   00:40:03.280 --> 00:40:07.600 and this just shows one individual that  was tagged over a hundred day period it was   00:40:07.600 --> 00:40:15.520 tagged off of Kauai in 2014 and this shows that  even though it was tagged off Kauai, it moved   00:40:15.520 --> 00:40:21.840 around Oahu, around Maui Nui and around Hawai'i  island and this reflects really well   00:40:21.840 --> 00:40:26.640 that the range of the main Hawaiian island  population. Individuals in the population   00:40:26.640 --> 00:40:32.880 move throughout the main Hawaiian islands. Now  this map which is zoomed out to show the entire   00:40:33.520 --> 00:40:37.840 Exclusive Economic Zone, so I can compare the  the ranges of some of the other populations.   00:40:38.640 --> 00:40:44.400 Shows 38 different groups of false killer whales  that we've tagged over the years and the Science   00:40:44.400 --> 00:40:49.120 Center has tagged over the years around the main  Hawaiian islands and you can see that they're   00:40:49.120 --> 00:40:54.880 they're basically they obscure the islands there's  so much so many records. They do move occasionally   00:40:54.880 --> 00:41:01.120 as far off shores about 120 kilometers but  those are appear to be relatively short   00:41:01.120 --> 00:41:07.040 excursions. Now by comparison four groups from the  Northwestern Hawaiian island population have been   00:41:07.040 --> 00:41:13.920 tagged. This group has been found to be closely  related to the main Hawaiian island population,   00:41:13.920 --> 00:41:21.040 genetically although there's no interchange  between them and and they range at least from Kauai 00:41:21.040 --> 00:41:28.960 Niihau, up to Gardner Pinnacles and this shows  the track of of one of those individuals   00:41:28.960 --> 00:41:34.080 I think actually this is the one that I showed  you the video of that was tagged off of Kauai.   00:41:34.080 --> 00:41:39.920 It moved from Kauai, up to Nihoa, Necker, French Frigate Shoals and Gardner Pinnacles which basically   00:41:39.920 --> 00:41:44.800 covering the whole known range at this point  for for the Northwestern island population.   00:41:46.320 --> 00:41:51.520 Now the third population that's been identified  in Hawaiian waters is a pelagic population.   00:41:51.520 --> 00:41:58.720 We know from genetics as well as photo ID that  the this population rarely or if ever   00:41:59.680 --> 00:42:04.320 interbreeds with the insular populations, there's  some evidence that they interbreed more with   00:42:04.320 --> 00:42:08.240 the Northwestern Hawaiian islands population  than with the main Hawaiian islands population.   00:42:08.800 --> 00:42:14.560 This is just four different groups tagged by  the Science Center and and ourselves and shows   00:42:14.560 --> 00:42:20.080 their movements are are extremely different  compared to either those insular populations.   00:42:20.080 --> 00:42:25.280 So they're ranging broadly offshore thousands  of kilometers offshore and even though   00:42:25.280 --> 00:42:31.280 these animals spent the majority of their time  inside Hawaiian waters are also trans boundary,   00:42:31.280 --> 00:42:36.400 they're spending a lot of time in international  waters. And this is the population that's received   00:42:36.400 --> 00:42:41.680 a lot of attention because of their bycatch in  the longline fishery in Hawai'i. There's a good   00:42:41.680 --> 00:42:47.200 observer program on the Hawaii-based longline  fishery so we know what the bycatch levels are.   00:42:48.000 --> 00:42:52.000 But the Hawaii-based fishery once you get out  of the international waters represents just a   00:42:52.000 --> 00:42:57.120 small proportion of the total fishing effort and  the observer coverage on those other vessels is   00:42:57.120 --> 00:43:03.920 minimal. So inside and outside the U.S.  waters these animals are subject to a lot   00:43:03.920 --> 00:43:12.160 of interactions and and bycatch with with longline  fisheries. So just to sum up some of the species   00:43:12.160 --> 00:43:16.640 like Bryde's whales that are found in Hawaiian  waters are actually much more likely to be   00:43:16.640 --> 00:43:21.040 found in the Northwestern Hawaiian islands and  around the main Hawaiian islands and that reflects   00:43:21.040 --> 00:43:26.320 that they're here year round to feed, rather than  just like humpback whales are are here to breed.   00:43:26.960 --> 00:43:33.040 So they're they're spending more of their time in  highly productive areas. Some odontocetes that are   00:43:33.040 --> 00:43:37.360 resident to the main Hawaiian islands are likely  not resident in the Northwestern Hawaiian islands   00:43:37.360 --> 00:43:41.600 like pygmy killer whales and melon headed whales  and keep in mind I mentioned there's 11 species   00:43:41.600 --> 00:43:46.480 of resident dolphins and whales around the main  Hawaiian islands and I only talked about five   00:43:46.480 --> 00:43:52.880 so there are others that may fall into this  category. Some species likely have resident   00:43:52.880 --> 00:43:57.760 populations in both areas but more research is  needed and that includes Cuvier's Beaked whales   00:43:57.760 --> 00:44:03.600 and bottlenose dolphins and and a couple of others  that I didn't cover. And and that's a difficult   00:44:03.600 --> 00:44:08.240 thing to do because of the logistics of working in  the Northwestern Hawaiian islands, they have very   00:44:08.240 --> 00:44:14.640 productive waters but but not very calm waters  and that really influences the ability to to do   00:44:15.680 --> 00:44:20.880 the types of detailed small boat work. So if anyone  who's watching happens to have a large vessel   00:44:21.520 --> 00:44:25.360 and is looking to do a trip up there where  we could launch a smaller vessel from then   00:44:26.000 --> 00:44:32.000 please contact me. And false killer whales have  island associated populations in both the main   00:44:32.000 --> 00:44:36.720 Hawaiian islands and the Northwestern Hawaiian  islands. We know from the genetics that this   00:44:36.720 --> 00:44:43.280 these two populations probably originated from  the same colonization event in the islands. 00:44:43.280 --> 00:44:49.120 They all share or most of them share the same  mitochondrial haplotype even though they're   00:44:49.120 --> 00:44:55.600 differentiated with nuclear DNA. So at some  point in the distant past false some oceanic false   00:44:55.600 --> 00:45:01.840 killer whales basically found and decided to  make the the main Hawaiian islands their home   00:45:01.840 --> 00:45:06.880 and and there appear to be isolated  from those pelagic false killer whales.    00:45:08.240 --> 00:45:14.480 I also want to mention as I did before we we  get a lot of information on different species from   00:45:15.040 --> 00:45:21.040 citizen scientists, folks who fish on the water  or play on the water or work on the water in some   00:45:21.040 --> 00:45:26.160 way. So if you've got some free time in your  hand and and photos on your computer that you   00:45:26.160 --> 00:45:32.480 can go through and and and see if if you have  something that may be useful please contact us.   00:45:32.480 --> 00:45:37.600 We have photo ID catalogs of two different  species of baleen whales, fin whales and sei whales 00:45:37.600 --> 00:45:47.200 and eleven different species of  odontocetes, so a lot of different a lot of different species. Also if you're  interested in more information on our work   00:45:48.080 --> 00:45:53.600 this QR code that mentions publications will take  you to our publications page. We put all of our   00:45:53.600 --> 00:46:01.280 reports and publications online as PDF's so folks  can can get the the the details if they'd like   00:46:01.280 --> 00:46:06.320 and when we do go out in the field we post  field project updates every few days with   00:46:06.320 --> 00:46:10.560 with photos and and information on what we're  seeing on more on a day-to-day basis and all of   00:46:10.560 --> 00:46:17.680 those are archived if you're if you're interested  in seeing those. So I think I think that's it   00:46:17.680 --> 00:46:24.160 for my presentation and and I guess we'll  we'll see about time for some some questions.    00:46:26.000 --> 00:46:30.880 Great thank you Dr. Baird we appreciate it  lots of comments, lots of questions coming   00:46:30.880 --> 00:46:35.520 in. People are really impressed with some  of those photos of the whales eating large   00:46:35.520 --> 00:46:40.960 pelagic fish, so thanks for sharing that. We thought maybe we would run one quick poll   00:46:40.960 --> 00:46:47.040 question the last one Andy, at the end to  just reiterate how people can get involved   00:46:47.680 --> 00:46:54.800 with helping cetacean research  in Hawai'i. So we'll go ahead   00:46:55.760 --> 00:47:02.240 so that poll question is launched up go ahead  Andy. How can I help cetacean research in Hawai'i ?   00:47:03.760 --> 00:47:08.560 Go for it. Answer your questions. If any of you  happen to be in full screen mode you're probably   00:47:08.560 --> 00:47:12.960 not seeing the quick poll, so hop out of full  screen mode and it'll show up and you can register   00:47:12.960 --> 00:47:20.480 your your vote. Yeah my apologies I didn't I did I I forgot to mention the the other poll question so.   00:47:22.240 --> 00:47:25.280 It's no problem we want to have time there's  lots of questions that have come in that   00:47:25.280 --> 00:47:29.680 are really intriguing so once we're done  with this we'll go into the Q and A session so   00:47:30.320 --> 00:47:36.560 gives us more time for that. Okay we got  about half it's coming in slow I think   00:47:36.560 --> 00:47:40.640 people are digesting all  the information you gave them. 00:47:43.280 --> 00:47:54.800 All right we got about half. I say close it and  we'll move on. Yeah so about most people did say   00:47:54.800 --> 00:48:02.320 Both. 96 percent said they can help with both  taking pictures and sending photos to 00:48:02.320 --> 00:48:09.920 researchers. All right great let's  go ahead and get into some of our   00:48:09.920 --> 00:48:16.720 questions so Andy if you want to keep your  web camera on we can just tag team. Sure let's   00:48:16.720 --> 00:48:21.680 let's see lots of good  ones have come in yeah. So 00:48:24.320 --> 00:48:26.400 the first question that came in    00:48:27.520 --> 00:48:34.320 was: Have any changes been made to the main  Hawaiian islands False Killer whale survey methods   00:48:34.320 --> 00:48:42.080 since the 2018 publication by Bradford, you and  others indicating it was a small population ? 00:48:44.320 --> 00:48:50.160 Yeah well the abundance estimation for  main Hawaiian island False Killer whales is done   00:48:50.160 --> 00:48:55.440 through photo identification versus the pelagic  population which are coming from line transect   00:48:55.440 --> 00:49:04.080 methods from the large vessel surveys and really  how effective those or how precise, how accurate   00:49:04.080 --> 00:49:09.280 those abundance estimates are really comes it  depends on how many photos are obtained each year.   00:49:09.920 --> 00:49:14.320 The methods haven't really changed  other than that over the years we have   00:49:15.280 --> 00:49:21.440 learned to find false killer whales  more effectively so when when we have   00:49:22.880 --> 00:49:27.040 funding that's targeted for false killer whales, we  can go and work in areas where we know we have a   00:49:27.040 --> 00:49:32.240 much higher probability of encountering  them but we've also spent a lot of effort   00:49:32.240 --> 00:49:36.800 trying to encourage citizen scientists  to take photos and contribute photos because   00:49:37.520 --> 00:49:43.040 as part of that publication that came  out in 2018 it showed that the estimates   00:49:43.040 --> 00:49:46.400 were a lot better including all of  those citizen science contributions.   00:49:48.240 --> 00:49:54.000 Yeah that follow-up question this is  from so this is from Sharon, Shannon Barber. I   00:49:54.000 --> 00:50:00.080 can't see your whole name, Barbara Mayer. Any  notable recent change in their population ? 00:50:02.160 --> 00:50:08.480 Yeah the population well it's there's too  much variability associated with the estimates   00:50:08.480 --> 00:50:16.080 in recent years to say whether or not it's stable  or increasing or decreasing. So we can't we can't   00:50:16.080 --> 00:50:23.120 really say we we know there was that large decline  from the 1980s to the 2000s and 2010s but we   00:50:23.120 --> 00:50:26.960 can't really say with any confidence whether  it's increasing or decreasing at this stage   00:50:27.600 --> 00:50:35.360 I will say that they seem to be reproducing fairly  well when we we do see a fair number of calves   00:50:36.400 --> 00:50:42.320 and the calves that we see tend to be fairly  robust and that's obviously a good sign it means   00:50:42.320 --> 00:50:48.000 that there's there's enough fish for them to catch.  You know you compare that to southern resident   00:50:48.000 --> 00:50:52.640 killer whales in in Washington state and British  Columbia and that population is declining because   00:50:52.640 --> 00:50:57.920 there's not enough fish and and that's reflected  in the low calving rates and and in animals   00:50:57.920 --> 00:51:03.360 that are emaciated so so even though we don't  know the trend we can we can say that some   00:51:03.920 --> 00:51:12.080 things are probably not really affecting the  population. So. Great. I have an interesting one   00:51:12.080 --> 00:51:17.840 Andy This came in on the early side so, many  people saw that there was big news report about   00:51:17.840 --> 00:51:23.040 killer whales or orcas spotted off of Kona,  on the island of Hawaii a few days ago   00:51:23.600 --> 00:51:28.320 and so there's kind of a couple questions related  to that. Is your group able to study them right now   00:51:28.320 --> 00:51:33.360 how many orcas actually reside around the Hawaiian  islands ? Do you have some information on that ?   00:51:34.320 --> 00:51:41.760 Yeah. So so killer whales are rare but  regular visitors to the Hawaiian archipelago.    00:51:41.760 --> 00:51:47.440 They're they're probably in Hawaiian waters if you  if you include that whole exclusive economic zone   00:51:47.440 --> 00:51:52.320 they're probably in Hawaiian waters all the time  but around the main Hawaiian islands they probably   00:51:52.320 --> 00:51:58.000 visit the main Hawaiian islands and and I'm just  guessing here but probably every month whether or   00:51:58.000 --> 00:52:03.200 not they're spotted on the other hand is another  question. Sightings in Hawaiian waters tend to be   00:52:03.200 --> 00:52:10.400 in deep water so they they rarely ever go close  to shore or through any of the narrow shallow   00:52:10.400 --> 00:52:17.520 channels and there's obviously a lot less boaters  offshore than there there is near shore.   00:52:17.520 --> 00:52:22.720 We've tagged, satellite tagged one group in the  Pacific Island Fisheries Science Center. Satellite   00:52:22.720 --> 00:52:32.240 tagged one group and the group we tagged over I  think a 28 day period moved almost 2000 kilometers   00:52:32.240 --> 00:52:38.720 west of Hawaii island, past Johnson Atoll and  we're about halfway towards Wake when the tags   00:52:38.720 --> 00:52:44.960 stopped transmitting, so the tag data tend to  suggest that killer whales and Hawaiian waters   00:52:44.960 --> 00:52:51.440 are using a broad area of the Central Tropical  Pacific. That said the the encounter the other   00:52:51.440 --> 00:52:58.160 day that was was reported, we have got video  from the folks that saw them were able to get   00:52:58.160 --> 00:53:04.160 screen grabs from the video and and identify the  individuals and and a couple of the individuals in   00:53:04.160 --> 00:53:11.200 that group having have matched to our catalog   from a group that was seen both in 2016 and 2017   00:53:11.760 --> 00:53:16.560 so so even though they're not around very often  they do come back to the islands even though they   00:53:16.560 --> 00:53:22.720 may be covering a huge area. I will say if people have the option of if they see animals   00:53:22.720 --> 00:53:30.720 getting above water photos with a digital SLR  is much more effective than in water video or from   00:53:30.720 --> 00:53:37.920 a GoPro, you know water clarity really in really  influences your ability to see the subtle markings   00:53:37.920 --> 00:53:42.240 on on any animals so if someone if someone's  on the boat even if they're going to get in   00:53:42.240 --> 00:53:46.880 the water if they have an opportunity to get  photos above water first that'll be a lot more   00:53:47.440 --> 00:53:55.440 valuable for for comparing to our catalogs.  Great and we can take one question from somebody   00:53:55.440 --> 00:54:05.520 on audio. I'm going to unmute Rick Gaffney. Hey  Rick. If you want to ask your question. You there Rick ? 00:54:09.040 --> 00:54:13.200 We always run the risk right so if your  hand is raised in the control panel that's   00:54:13.200 --> 00:54:17.040 indicating to us that you would like us  to unmute you so you can ask your question   00:54:17.040 --> 00:54:25.440 maybe try another name on that list. I'm going to  try Larry Raymondi and I'm going to unmute you.   00:54:25.440 --> 00:54:32.320 Larry do you have a question ? Larry so Larry you're  supposed to okay there you go. My question   00:54:32.320 --> 00:54:37.840 is you know I've we've been I've been studying  a lot on whales and I've noticed a lot of the   00:54:38.560 --> 00:54:44.240 information about shipping sounds which  are bouncing off whales and causing   00:54:45.680 --> 00:54:52.720 migrations to be not on the same path of  their normal paths. Is there an issue going   00:54:52.720 --> 00:54:58.240 still on with these kind of noises and  issues especially around the Hawaiian islands ? 00:55:00.480 --> 00:55:07.760 Yeah if you if you compare shipping traffic around  the Hawaiian islands compared to a lot of other   00:55:07.760 --> 00:55:14.320 areas it's actually relatively limited and  and that that can be done with the AIS tracks   00:55:14.320 --> 00:55:20.000 from the vessels. If you compare to the West  Coast of North America you know the tanker and   00:55:20.000 --> 00:55:25.920 freighters they're just probably several orders of  magnitude higher than what's happening in Hawai'i.   00:55:26.720 --> 00:55:32.160 That said certainly the large shipping traffic   00:55:33.600 --> 00:55:39.360 produces a lot of very low frequency sounds and  those vocabulary sounds probably influence the   00:55:39.360 --> 00:55:48.640 stability of the whales communicate over large  distances so it means they have to vocalize louder   00:55:48.640 --> 00:55:54.160 or or it reduces their range of which they'll  be able to hear con specifics, vocalizing so it   00:55:54.160 --> 00:56:00.640 probably affects their communication. So it's  I think it's it's definitely an issue but    00:56:00.640 --> 00:56:06.480 probably not one of the more important issues in  Hawai'i compared to some other some other areas. 00:56:08.640 --> 00:56:17.440 Yes. Ok. Claire are we going in time ? Yeah I think  you know we are actually out of time for questions   00:56:17.440 --> 00:56:22.160 but I tell you what, there's probably another 20  or 30 questions that have come in so we're gonna   00:56:22.720 --> 00:56:28.320 graciously ask Dr. Baird to spend some time if  it's okay in the next week or so to respond to   00:56:28.320 --> 00:56:33.680 those questions and you'll get a response over  email so anyone that's asked a question that's   00:56:34.240 --> 00:56:39.520 something that Dr. Baird can handle, you'll see the  question the response it'll all come out of her   00:56:39.520 --> 00:56:47.520 email. So sorry to have to cut Q and A short when  there's so many interested folks but let's go   00:56:47.520 --> 00:56:54.640 ahead I'm going to take over control and show  the last few slides to wrap us up for today 00:56:54.640 --> 00:56:58.800 so with that. 00:57:02.880 --> 00:57:08.400 Let's see get my screen up all  right, so for those of you that    00:57:09.520 --> 00:57:14.320 are always asking if there's recording we  do record our webinar presentations they are   00:57:14.320 --> 00:57:19.680 found in the archive page, not to worry that's  a long government URL which is typical for us   00:57:19.680 --> 00:57:22.480 but you'll get that linked  directly in a follow-up email.   00:57:23.520 --> 00:57:28.480 If you have any questions the sanctuary.education@  noaa.gov is a great way to reach out to us.   00:57:29.840 --> 00:57:35.840 We also do send out a certificate of attendance  for all attendees that participate live in our   00:57:35.840 --> 00:57:40.560 series. For those that watch the recording of this  if you got to this point in the recording and you   00:57:40.560 --> 00:57:45.200 would like to request a certificate, go ahead  and send an email to the sanctuary.education@   00:57:45.200 --> 00:57:51.840 noaa.gov we'll get that typed into the box for  you. Now I'm really excited we're trying to now   00:57:51.840 --> 00:57:57.040 cross promote some of our other live interactions  and distance learning programs that are available   00:57:57.040 --> 00:58:02.240 through NOAA, so my colleague Hannah  Mcdonald, who often is a co-host with me   00:58:02.240 --> 00:58:08.000 she's now starting these live interactions with  Exploring by the Seat of your Pants, which is super   00:58:08.000 --> 00:58:12.960 exciting there's three next week I'm just giving  you a snapshot of one of these and we will put   00:58:12.960 --> 00:58:19.840 that web address into the box for you to make  a direct link but these are interactions that   00:58:19.840 --> 00:58:25.440 are appropriate for anyone interested in the topic  but also specifically students. This will be diving   00:58:25.440 --> 00:58:31.280 into our Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary  which is known as Shipwreck Alley in Lake Huron.   00:58:32.480 --> 00:58:38.720 Also excited to let you know that another part  of NOAA, these are our partners at the NOAA Ocean   00:58:38.720 --> 00:58:44.880 Today, so our video group as well as the Ocean  Exploration and Research group they're doing some   00:58:44.880 --> 00:58:50.880 new distance learning programs and they have great  hands-on activities for children and students. They   00:58:50.880 --> 00:58:57.040 have a watch party next week so every full moon  is a series that as you can imagine once a month   00:58:57.040 --> 00:59:02.880 comes out and so they're going to be hosting  this free webinar for all who love the ocean and   00:59:03.440 --> 00:59:10.000 there's going to be more information there on the  link that we send May 7th at 11 a.m Pacific time.   00:59:10.560 --> 00:59:15.360 And then the next in our actual webinar series  the next one that's scheduled for right now is   00:59:15.360 --> 00:59:22.960 May 14th where we're gonna have our videographer,  Nick Zacker and Shannon from the Sanctuary team   00:59:22.960 --> 00:59:28.800 coming to debut a bunch of our great Earth is  Blue videos. This is about your National Marine   00:59:28.800 --> 00:59:33.600 Sanctuaries, these underwater treasures that  are protected now and for future generations.   00:59:33.600 --> 00:59:39.440 So they're the next presenter on our series  and then for those of you that are new to our   00:59:39.440 --> 00:59:45.440 webinar series, we do ask that you take about  one minute to answer four quick questions   00:59:45.440 --> 00:59:51.440 that help us evaluate today's program. We take that  information seriously, calculate all the data after   00:59:51.440 --> 00:59:56.320 every webinar to get a good sense of any lessons  learned or ways we can improve so please do that   00:59:56.320 --> 01:00:01.360 when you close out of the webinar and for those  of you that are formal or informal educators we   01:00:01.360 --> 01:00:07.120 do have a more detailed survey that we would love,  if you haven't already done this the link is in   01:00:07.760 --> 01:00:13.200 the short survey that comes with our webinar  series but it's this multimedia distance learning   01:00:13.200 --> 01:00:18.960 survey we want to hear from you our target  audience: teachers and informal educators on   01:00:18.960 --> 01:00:23.760 like what kinds of materials do you want from  NOAA to bring into your classroom or facility   01:00:24.400 --> 01:00:30.560 down the road. So with that thanks everyone.  Thanks Andy for being co-host. Dr. Robin Baird   01:00:30.560 --> 01:00:35.680 it was a pleasure to meet you virtually and have  you as one of our great presenters in the series.   01:00:35.680 --> 01:00:40.160 Thanks to everyone that participated live  and with that this concludes today's webinar.