- Welcome today to the National Marine Sanctuaries webinar series
and, Hannah, if you get it working, just go ahead and interject. Okay.
We welcome you. This is a webinar series that we host with the NOAA office of
National Marine Sanctuaries.
And we offer this series primarily targeting formal and informal educators.
But we also have lots of other interested parties that
join our monthly webinars.
We have over 265 direct registrants for today's
webinar about blue whales and ship strikes and blue skies.
So, Hannah, go to the next slide and I'll do a quick introduction here.
We, the system, the National Marine Sanctuary system,
we manage over 600,000 square miles of ocean
and you're looking at a map here of the National Marine Sanctuary System
Hannah, myself, and Jess and others are trustees of 13 National Marine Sanctuaries
and the papahanaumokuakea and the Rose Atoll marine national monuments
so those little blue dots represent the national marine sanctuaries within the system
the triangles, which you can see in the South Pacific, near
American Samoa and in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands
are our two marine national monuments.
and we have these sort of yellow boxes one in Wisconsin
and one in the Potomac River called Mallos Bay and these are proposed
national marine sanctuaries being considered for designation.
So on the next slide,
these areas in the ocean you can kind of think of them like underwater parks.
But they've been set aside by Congress primarily because
these are special ocean areas that we want to conserve for now and for future generations.
There's recreational value such as
fishing and sustainable uses like kayaking and photography
and other fun things you can do, standup paddleboard and such on the ocean.
We set them aside for ecological and cultural and historical reasons and just aesthetic qualities.
So, just think of a National Marine Sanctuary like an underwater park.
We also call them living classrooms.
These are places that you can actually
go to see touch and feel and learn about these underwater parks,
these National Marine Sanctuaries.
This photo here is actually of a father and a daughter
kayaking and enjoying and recreating in the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary.
So, with that I wanted to do a quick introduction.
We've got two staff here supporting today's webinar.
Unfortunately, we've got an audio issue
with Hannah McDonald but she'll give you a quick wave.
She's our telepresence and virtual reality education specialist and she's
based in Silver Spring, Maryland.
and then I, myself, am Claire Fackler and I am the national education liaison
as my one of my hats and I am based here in Santa Barbara, California.
So, Hannah and I will host today's webinar
and if you have any questions
or any technical issues, go ahead and put them into the question box
in your control panel. And Hannah and I will work on the backend with you
You have all come in as atten--- as a listen-only attendees
and...
when we get to Q&A
we will see if any of you want to raise your hand in the control panel and
then we can unmute you.
I got to pull up. Let's see a second. Jess' bio.
so let me tell you a little bit about our main presenter today.
We have Jessica Morten
and she is a contractor with NOAA's Channel Islands and our Cordell Bank
National Marine Sanctuaries.
She, her title is resource protection specialist.
She has initially served in 2016 as a California Sea Grant fellow working for
the Channel Islands sanctuary
and she was able to be kept on as a contractor
to serve as a project coordinator and data analyst
for resource protection efforts across our West Coast National Marine Sanctuaries
which there are five.
Four in California and one in the Pacific Northwest
so she focuses on helping to reduce the threat of ship strikes on endangered whales
and enhancing sanctuary enforcement efforts
through the piloting of new tools and technology.
So prior to working with our West Coast national marine sanctuaries
and being a sea grant fellow,
she spent time working in the Marine Mammal field
doing research and monitoring
assisting with projects around the country that focused on evaluating the health of Humpback,
North Atlantic Right, and Killer Whale populations.
She later spent time as as a center for the blue economy fellow at the Environmental Defense Fund
where she conducted independent research examining the effects of fishery
management strategies on local food security.
and also in her past,
she has worked for Wildlife Trust,
Ocean Champions, and the University of Washington.
she has the Bachelor of Arts and environmental studies from Skidmore
College in Saratoga Springs, New York,
and a Master of Arts in international environmental policy
from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.
So, with that robust introduction of our presenter, Jess,
we'll go ahead and switch it over to her.
So that she can start her presentation.
and actually, Jess, go ahead
and put on your camera and unmute yourself and I will launch your poll
question while you're pulling up your slides.
So Jess wanted to do a quick sort
of audience assessment.
And she wants to understand everyone that's participating
today what your familiarity level with the issue of ship strikes is.
So go ahead and register your vote.
"I have never heard of ship strikes" as one option
oops the second option got cut back a little bit
but "I have heard of ship strikes before but I'm not very familiar"
and then the third option is
"I'm very familiar with the issue"
so we're collecting responses, we've got 70, 80 percent of you that have voted.
so let's give you another 5 seconds to get your vote in.
All right.
Oh nearly everyone's voted so I'll go ahead and
close the poll, share the results.
So, Jess, just so you know we've got 63 percent of our audience on
today's webinar that's actually very familiar with the issue.
and then 33 percent of them have never heard or have heard of a ship strike before but are
not very familiar.
And only five percent have never heard of it before.
so with, that we'll get it
to your presentation.
all right, go ahead, Jess.
- Okay, cool.
I'm hoping everybody can hear me and maybe you can see me too.
- [Claire] We can see your slides you're good to go!
- Thank you so much, Claire and Thank you, Hannah
for setting up all of the admin and logistics for this webinar today.
I'm not really used to webinar style presentations so bear with me.
And know that I'm probably gonna be awkwardly gesturing to this empty room.
but like Claire said I'm Jess Morten.
I am a resource protection specialist contractor for NOAA's Channel Islands
and Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuaries.
I've had the privilege of working for and with NOAA sanctuaries
for about three years now.
As Claire mentioned I was lucky enough to get
placed as a California sea grant fellow at Channel Islands in 2016
and then, since then, through the help of really great foundations and with some great
projects that I've gotten to continue on,
I've been able to stay on and help with
some resource protection efforts,
including what I'm going to be discussing today.
And specifically today we're gonna focus on protecting blue whales and blue skies.
And that's really just a nice title for an umbrella
for all of NOAA's west coast efforts to reduce the risk of ship strikes on
endangered large whales in California.
So, there's a lot to cover here and this is
definitely a labor of love for me this topic.
So, lots to say, but I'll do my best
to try to keep it compressed to our 30 to 35 minute time period
so we have plenty of time for questions and follow-up.
And then as Claire mentioned and as you guys already participated in,
there should be some poll questions scattered throughout.
Some of them are just helpful for me to be aware of what people are aware of.
But, please jump in, and join in if you can and you'd like to.
So to start, hopefully my slide will move forward for you guys.
Let's see. There we go.
Claire gave a nice overview of sanctuaries at large.
I wanted to give some background and some context on the beautiful places
that I'm going to be talking about today,
and that I have the privilege of working with.
And I guess if you're registered for the webinar there's probably a good
chance you're familiar with the sanctuary system and maybe California sanctuaries.
But just to give a brief overview,
California is home to four sanctuaries, as Claire mentioned.
If you look to the slide that you have on the screen, right now,
you'll see those four sanctuaries up there.
Starting from the North, you have greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary
and that's located off of San Francisco.
And includes the beautiful and very remote Farallon Islands.
and then if you keep going down the map, north to south,
you'll hit Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary.
That is an offshore site that contains
really unique, rocky marine habitat.
It serves as home to abundant numbers of invertebrates, fish, algae,
certainly marine mammals that we're gonna be talking about today.
Then you have beautiful Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.
And that is famous for
the Big Sur landscape, that I think most people are familiar with,
and kelp forests and urchins and sea otters.
And then down south off of the coast of Santa Barbara where I'm currently located, right now,
you have the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary.
And that's comprised of five really beautiful islands that are managed in
partnership with Channel Islands National Park
and, again, is home to a really wide number of incredible and endangered species
and really comprises a unique habitat not seen elsewhere in the world.
And so all of these sanctuaries within California make up roughly 12,000 square miles
of marine protected areas.
And the primary goal of these places is to
protect these special and unique cultural and natural resources that fall within them.
And so to get to the main point of today's conversation.
One thing that makes California particularly unique and special, certainly to me and
lots of other people,
is that it's home and habitat to a wide number of marine mammal species.
And so today we're going to talk about the largest category of
those marine species
the large whales or the baleen whales that frequent the California coastline.
And so I think when people think about California whales
probably likely that gray whales come to mind.
People know them pretty well since
they have a predictable and set migration pattern
that takes them from Mexico, where they calve
and then go north to the Arctic, where they feed.
But in terms of endangered baleen whales,
since the gray whales have actually recovered,
to a pretty sustainable population level at this point
there are really three main species of whales that we see most often
in our waters and that we focus most heavily on for our policy efforts.
And so the first species that I'll mention that we're going to talk about today are blue whales
And you'll see them on the left side of the screen and the image up there that's a photo
taken by our colleague Sean Hastings during an aerial survey flight.
And blue whales I think are pretty famous and well-known since most people know
they are the largest animal on earth at 80 to 100 feet long.
they are typically in California waters
between May and November
is when we expect to see them.
They come here to feed in those months.
And then the population estimate for the eastern Pacific
stock of blue whales that we have here in California
is estimated around 2,000 individuals.
So that's actually one of the largest aggregations of blue whales in the world but
that population is lower than we would like it to be, certainly.
And we're not seeing signs of
recovery as quickly in the blue whale population as we would like.
Certainly compared to some of the other species that we have frequent the waters.
So we have a very careful eye on the Blues.
The second species that I think is important to focus on today are fin whales.
More overlooked I think since they're the second largest animal on Earth, not the first.
but they are regular visitors to California waters.
We're seeing them in higher numbers more recently than we have in the past.
But in general they follow a very similar pattern to blues
in terms of their seasonal arrivals and departures.
We see them May through November typically
within California.
And with fin whales, with all whales,
we really have a limited understanding of where they go
and how many there really are.
But with fin whales in particular we have
a limited understanding since they tend to be a much more offshore species.
But our best guess for the population of fins that frequent California's around 9,000
individuals for all of the west coast of the United States.
And then the third species that we focus heavily on
here thats endangered in California is the humpbacks.
And humpbacks I think are pretty universally loved.
They're very charismatic, they do lots of aerial activities.
They're roughly 40 to 50 feet in length.
They prey on anchovies and baitfish more than we see them preying on krill.
So we see them in different areas than we see the blues and the fins.
And one thing that's tricky with humpbacks is that
they are split up into distinct population segments.
And so some humpbacks have recovered
fairly well and then have been taken off the endangered species list
and designated as threatened. But we do still have
a population segment that comes up from Central America
and it's still endangered that we really
are concerned about and place a lot of policy attention on.
And so those are the three species that I'm gonna be focusing on today,
at least on the whale side.
And then on the other side of the screen is the other part of this story.
And that's the world of shipping.
And the species being humans, of course.
And so with shipping or maritime transport
it's still the most cost effective way for us
to move goods around the world.
It's the backbone of global commerce
and estimated 80 percent of everything we rely on gets moved to and from
destinations by ship.
And so,
there are a lot of impacts associated with relying on
all of this traffic.
And California is home to a number of really busy port complexes
LA and Long Beach just down south here from Santa Barbara being the
busiest, followed by Oakland, near San Francisco,
and then San Diego has its own port
and then there are smaller specialized ports
like Port Hueneme or Port of Richmond
also scattered along the California coastline.
And so, like I said, these busy ports and shipping traffic contribute to
a lot of great things. It means
healthy Commerce in our national economy
and we certainly rely on the goods that these ships are carrying.
But, unfortunately, there are impacts associated with all of this traffic .
And one thing that I am thankful for is it seems
the world is starting to pay a little bit more attention to the impacts associated with this traffic.
- [Claire] All right, with that, Jess, let me go ahead and launch.
This is just to make sure everyone's awake, right?
Because you just went through this.
Go ahead and vote on what species of endangered baleen whales
do we commonly see in California sanctuaries?
So, pop quiz! Hopefully most of you were
engaged in Jessa's presentation and can easily answer this.
So over half of you have voted. I'll give you a few more seconds here.
(singing) do-do-do-do-do
Get the little Jeopardy song going.
All right, register your vote 'cause I'm going to close the poll.
All right, now.
Okay and sharing the results here so for your knowledge, Jess.
Many, many people particularly 81% have
been paying attention and say all of the above.
So, yes, all three blue, humpback, and fin whales are endangered baleen whales
that we commonly see in our California National Marine Sanctuaries.
Okay, so go ahead and continue on with your presentation.
- Okay. Thank you, Claire.
All right, so
now we're gonna specifically focus on ship strikes as an issue.
And talk about the impacts associated with all of this shipping traffic.
But before I dive into the ship strikes aspect of the shipping story,
worth mentioning that there are also other impacts that I won't be focusing
quite as heavily on for this presentation.
But worth noting and definitely mentioning for future research.
One is air mission impacts that are associated with all of this traffic
we know that from the combustion process
of the fuel used to actually power these ocean-going vessels.
And that they emit some harmful air emissions.
And so that includes sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter,
and certainly carbon dioxide.
And so one piece of this puzzle is understanding all of the harmful air
emissions from the shipping traffic.
But what you see on the screen right now and
what we've been most focused on at NOAA in terms of impacts for marine transportation
is the issue of ship strikes,
or these ships colliding with whales.
And so ship strikes is not something that we are unique to have.
It is a global issue that is certainly gaining increasing attention.
It's sited as a top source of mortality for a variety of endangered whale species
not just blues, fins, and humpbacks.
But at least in California,
it's considered to be a major contributor to
or an obstacle in preventing these populations from recovering as quickly as we'd like them to.
So worth knowing that these
ships definitely don't mean to be hitting whales.
It's not like container ships are going out into the open ocean and
putting down the throttle and hoping this happens.
In fact, with container ships these are such big vessels 1,300 feet, plus long.
Most of the time we find that they either didn't notice that it happened
or maybe it's possible they never reported that it happened but we
we find it pretty often that the ships are coming into the ports with whales on
the boughs of the front of the vessel
and they had no idea one or where that happened.
And so the issue has definitely gotten more attention.
It's become more conspicuous in the last decade,
particularly in response to a lot of ship strikes occurring on the East Coast,
related to the North Atlantic right whale population.
And then here on the west coast in 2007,
we had a particularly rough year for blue whales
and we had an unusual mortality event where four blue whales were hit
in the span of six months in 2007.
and so one thing that makes ship strikes a particularly tough problem to solve
is, as I shared, ships often don't know if and when they've hit a whale.
and so many of the species of whales that are at risk for this issue
also sink after they've been hit.
And so it's a huge challenge for us for natural resource managers
to quantify exactly how often this is happening and come up with steps
to address it.
But what we do have, thankfully,
is we do have some record of
at least observed strandings that have occurred within California associated
with vessel collisions.
So if you look to the screen on the left
you'll see a graph that tracks whale strandings in California that are
attributed to vessel collisions.
And you'll see it broken down by the species type.
If you look to the colors on those bars.
and worth noting here that this is just endangered whales
that you're seeing listed on this graph
so this won't include gray whales
that have also been hit by vessels which we definitely see a pretty high number this year
just in northern California we've had at least five in San Francisco Bay.
But, as I said, this is focused on the endangered population
so not including gray's today.
And then, on the right, you'll see a map that actually lays out where
these endangered whale strandings have occurred since the year 2000.
And you'll see, if you look at the map, some pretty obvious trends emerge
and generally you're gonna find whales stranded and
showing signs of vessel collisions.
It's most likely you'll find them near major port complexes.
And so you see a lot of fins over near la Long Beach, that big red dot.
and then we have a lot of fin whales, as well, up in the San Francisco area.
And so that's another example of a tough data point for us to look at and
try to learn from. We are not totally sure if fin whales get hit more
or if they are more prone to getting stuck on the bow of the ships coming in.
So we just see signs of them being hit more.
And those sorts of things are sort of unclear for us, still.
But one thing. along with the strandings data that we thankfully have,
and we're working actively to improve upon: our models
And so we work with researchers to actually try to quantify how much we think that
this is happening. And so the best estimates suggest that
roughly 80 endangered whales are hit each year on the U.S. west coast,
so whole U.S. west coast not just California.
but they estimate around 80 whales hit.
And if you look to the graph you'll see
that's compared to very low numbers that we actually observe
in terms of carcasses that wash on the beach.
So major challenge for us in trying to address the impacts of shipping
and then another thing I should mention before
I heard that topic is just acoustic disturbance
in general associated with all the marine transportation
not just a concern to have the ships hitting the whales but
also concerned that these vessels are masking some of the acoustic behaviors of the whales.
And so there are a lot of really great minds working to try to
reduce the adverse impacts of that, as well.
I see a poll open though so I'll leave it.
- [Claire] Yeah, sorry I jumped the gun on you
and but people this is speeding up the process here
So we've got over the half of the folks that have voted.
So we're you paying attention closely?
Researchers estimate that roughly
how many whales are killed by ship strikes on the U.S. west coast each year?
so log in your vote.
- [Hannah] at 3/4 of you voted already?
- [Claire] Oh, excellent. Thanks, Hannah
glad that you've got your audio back.
so I'm gonna let you run the race from here.
I'll go ahead and close the poll and Hannah will walk you through it.
- [Hannah] Awesome!
So, Jess, we have 80 whales killed per year
and 70% of people think that that's the right answer.
What do we think?
- Excellent news. People are listening that's good.
- [Hannah] (laughing) Great'
Okay, so
Now to talk about what we are actually doing to counteract all of these adverse impacts
that I've been mentioning.
So NOAA sanctuaries in partnership with NOAA's Office of National Marine Fishery Service
has focused on five different methods in trying to tackle this problem.
The first is reducing the co-occurrence of whales and ships by adjusting the traffic separation schemes
The second is establishing some voluntary
seasonal whale advisory or vessel speed reduction zones
the third is an incentive based program to encourage container ships and car carriers
to slow down in those zones.
Fourth is supporting ongoing related research.
And the fifth is engaging and working with industry stakeholders.
I'm going to spend most of the time for the rest of the presentation today
on one through three of this list.
But just worth pointing out that there are other
methods going on to address ship strike risk.
I'm going to talk about speed reduction mainly, today.
But there's a lot of work going on and a lot of smart people
focused on trying to reduce this problem.
So starting with co-occurrence
it's I think pretty undeniable that the best way to try to avoid
having ship strikes occur is to just reduce the co-occurrence of whales and ships
so separate whales and ships all together
and they are very unlikely to hit each other
so wherever and whenever possible NOAA has worked with the Coast Guard
and the international body that regulates shipping
which is known as International Maritime Organization
And we've worked to relocate or readjust shipping lanes
to be farther away from where we know whales tend to aggregate.
So on the screen you'll see examples of some of those changes that have occurred in California.
On the left, you'll see some amendments done in the San Francisco Bay Area
and the former lanes, you'll see in black ,they were narrowed and extended.
And then on the right in the Santa Barbara Channel the same concept applies
You'll see some blue whale data, some probability of occurence data,
on that map. But I'm just showing you that, once again,
the shipping lanes were narrowed and moved away fromwhere we know whales tend to aggregate.
And so this is a great solution, whenever possible.
Unfortunately, in California in and in a lot of other places,
it doesn't offer a perfect solution,
since different whale species occupy different geographic areas within
these regions. And so
unfortunately we found that moving the shipping lanes
one area might reduce the risk to one species but increase the impacts to another
And so, it has led us to explore some other options to address ship strike risk
And so the second method that NOAA has really focused on
is voluntary slow speed zones.
And this is done largely because studies have been done that demonstrate that
whales have a much higher percent chance of surviving
of avoiding and surviving a ship strike
if they, if the vessel is traveling at ten knots or less.
And so as I was mentioning before
on the East Coast with right whales this is aproblem that is really prevalent
for a very critically endangered population.
And so for years now they've had
slow speed zones put into place and they actually have regulations today that enforce them.
And so here in California, same concept applies.
We do not have regulations. This is a completely voluntary slow speed request.
But for several years now in both regions in California
we have an established and announced voluntary whale advisory zones.
And that goes out to all vessels, 300 gross tons or more, so really big ships.
And we broadcast it weekly to the shipping industry through the Coast Guard
and through some of our shipping industry channels and listservs.
And so on the screen right now, on the left,
you'll see an example of the San Francisco Bay Area slow speed zones.
And then on the right, and that's the Southern California zone for 2019.
And these zones do change a little bit year to year depending on
where we know impact might be higher where we know whales tend to be aggregating
but, in general, this these are the zones that we've been using for VSR purposes in
California for the past few years.
and despite all of this great work going out to try to reduce these impacts
we don't unfortunately yet, and I will say yet,
see a high level of voluntary cooperation with these requests.
On the East Coast, as I was mentioning, they have regulations
they're seeing about 75% or more
compliance rates with those regulations that they've put out.
Here in California, we see roughly 45% cooperation levels
with our Northern California slow speed zones.
And then we get roughly 23% cooperation with Southern California zones. So
a lot of room for improvement.
Honestly, kind of disappointing that industry isn't
responding more positively to our request to have them slow down,
which prompted us to then seek yet another method
to try to get them to be more involved.
So similar concept but recognizing that we weren't seeing
a lot of cooperation with this voluntary NOAA request.
In 2014, NOAA Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary
and partners from local County air district offices
worked together to create an incentive based vessel speed reduction program
that essentially provides incentives for
certain categories within the big ship traffic that's taking place.
So that they will cooperate with these voluntary slow speed requests. So
incentive in this case means small financial payments. So we pay shipping companies
small checks, certainly compared to what they're making on an annual basis,
originally, to slow down vessels on a transit by transit basis.
Since 2017, we have scaled up to more of a fleet approach where we actually
slowed down the entire fleets of any company that
is involved in the program. And if they hit a certain percentage of cooperation,
we give them credit not just in financial payments but also through really positive press
that we try to generate through the sanctuaries and through our partners in the effort.
And so the maps on the screen should look
pretty similar to what you were seeing before for the voluntary effort.
But this is just for container ships and for car carriers
for this incentive program, since those are the ship types that on average
are going fastest in these areas and they comprise
the majority of traffic taking place in both regions in California.
So quickly just
to show you how the incentive program has scaled since its
our origins in 2014.
I guess it's just an optimistic slide I like to share
and the first year you'll see we worked with seven companies
and we only slowed 2,700 nautical miles.
In 2018, that number went way up
and I'm really excited that this year
we have 15 big companies big container line companies and car carrier companies
who've come to the table and agreed to cooperate with this program.
And so, hopefully we can see numbers increase in 2019 and
it will have an effect on that voluntary request that we put out, as well.
So I mostly have been focused on vessel speed reduction for this presentation, but
I definitely wanted to also focus on some of the other methods of addressing the issue of ship strikes.
And so obviously ongoing research is a really big piece
important piece of this puzzle.
Having a better understanding of where whales are actually going to be
is a really important part of us trying to determine
how best to manage the issue.
And so for us at the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary site
that means flying monthly aerial surveys of the shipping lanes here in Southern California.
So we get in small planes on a monthly basis
and fly the tracts that hopefully you can see on the left side of the screen.
There's some white lines that actually show where the planes fly.
But, in general, just trying to keep track of trends we're seeing
in certain species distribution and density
in the region to inform the VSR efforts that are ongoing.
And same concept for on the right side of the screen. There's boat based surveys,
they're access surveys that are done with a great group called point blue conservation research.
And they periodically do these boat based surveys for the same purposes
trying to understand where whales have been historically
so we can better inform where we think they're going to be in the future.
And then continuing with that thought,
on the bottom right of the screen is
an example of some of the models that have been put out there.
We're constantly working with really really smart modelers within NOAA within
research organizations to try to create these prediction tools and forecasting tools
and hopefully at a fine enough scale level that we can
really use the information to inform other policy efforts like
moving the traffic separation scheme
and determining where we're going to put those vessels speed reduction zones.
And
Oh! more thing I want to mention is that we also do keep in pretty close contact
with local whale watch companies
since those are the guys who are out on the water every day really looking for whales.
And they provide great information in terms of what species we're seeing at certain times of year
and what the seasons are that we should expect for the species in the area.
So in addition to the slow-speed policy efforts and the research that's going on,
another really important piece to trying to tackle the issue of ship strikes is
industry outreach
and engaging stakeholders from the shipping industry.
And so for that, at least within the west coast NOAA sanctuaries effort
that has meant organizing some stakeholder working groups.
We've had marine shipping working group processes in both regions in California
that invite various stakeholders to discuss these issues and try to come up with solutions
for the future.
We have held awards ceremonies for
the companies that seem to cooperate at a high level with our VSR policy efforts.
So you'll see right now on the screen,
those are images from some of those awards ceremonies that we've held
where we invite the companies to come and receive their plaque
and not just make them feel good, but also
generate some positive press from these events.
So these photos went out in press releases and
we know that's really valuable to the big shipping companies.
Another thing we do,
the northern region has done this for several years in Southern California.
We just did this for the first time this year.
But we do report card monitoring and outreach with the shipping companies.
And so at the end of the season after we've
put out these slow-speed requests
we take a look at all of this AIS data this ship data that comes in.
That actually tells us how fast the ships are going when they're transiting.
And we take a look and see how each company is doing and we write them a letter now
that outlines the cooperation level and
just lets them know that we are paying attention.
and we'd love for greater cooperation in the future.
And then, in addition to that, we also organize focus groups with the shipping industry
just to get their feedback on ideas that we're thinking of piloting for these types of things.
New geographic zones we might be drawing on the maps that kind of thing.
And then we try to partner wherever possible with
industry representatives
to raise awareness in general. Whether that means working to get
icons on some of their nav charts
put into place that they can more easily
understand when they are in a VSR zone
or just taking their recommendations on how to get
crew members on boats more involved with collecting whale sightings data.
So big piece of the puzzle is
just working directly with these companies and
it's something I have been doing at least
for the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary for a couple years now
interfacing with the companies directly.
and I have to say that it seems as that as soon as they do understand and engage on the issue,
we usually see a much higher level of compliance with the company
following those conversations.
So I'm hopeful that with
greater engagement with them we will see higher cooperation in the end.
And so just in this example of the industry outreach
just 'cause I think this is really cool.
And this is a pretty old example.
We still get lots of photos and
good stuff from companies.
But this is an example from I think 2017
from one of the container ships
we ask these guys to voluntarily provide sightings data
of any of the whales that they see on their transits.
And occasionally we get a ship and crew and captain that's really enthusiastic.
And so these guys actually set its sightings data forms
which we give them and then they also sent
a whole bunch of pictures and apparently they drew all over the map, which is really cool.
Those that they were really excited and they cared.
So that's really great. I love to see that kind of stuff.
Definitely hopeful that we can get more of the container ships that are transiting out there
collecting whale data. Since they're out there in places that are really costly
for researchers to try to survey.
So it's very helpful if they can help us become scientists and
supply some whale data to the effort.
So to try to wrap up, since I think I'm close to running out of time.
Next steps when thinking about VSR work
and ship strike worked for West Coast sanctuaries,
the research piece that I was mentioning is honestly such a big piece of the puzzle for us
going forward.
It's so important for us to try to quantify the issue.
As I was mentioning earlier,
it's so difficult for us to get a really good understanding of the frequency of ship strikes
in California. We think we have a general understanding of
how much the actual occurrence is
versus the observed instances that you saw on that strandings graph.
But we really do need more research done to better understand the frequency of the issue
so we can respond to the problem better.
So whatever that means to get that done I mean
I'm a huge supporter as I said of some of the forecasting models that are being put together
to help us better predict where whales are going to be.
I'm also hearing murmurs in the background of people trying to create sensors to
put on vessels. They can understand how often whales are getting hit that way.
But more research to better understand these things is very crucial for us.
The second thing is just continuing to raise awareness on the issue at large.
I've talked a bunch about increasing awareness within the shipping industry community
and that's obviously incredibly important from
the standpoint of getting their cooperation going forward.
But another important piece that I would love to see and I know others would love to see
is public awareness on the issue. Since
I don't know if that many people beyond those who spend time worrying about whales
actually know that marine roadkill is a thing.
And it is a problem.
And it's not impossible for a public concern to actually drive behavior going forward.
And so I think it'd be really great to see some more public campaigns out there to raise awareness
with consumers. Just have people start paying attention to the ways that they're receiving the
goods that actually come to their doorstep.
Try to raise awareness also within the big retailer world.
We know from conversations with some of the shipping companies that
the decisions made by the Walmarts and Targets of the world is
a huge driving force behind all of their decision-making.
And so trying to get awareness within those really big corporations to get them
to be more selective about who they actually target as their shipping companies
would be a really important part of this.
And then another thing we want to do is continue to look into
other spatial approaches wherever possible.
So, as I was saying, reducing co-occurrence and actually separating ships and whales
is really our best method to ensure that it's not going to continue to happen.
And, like I said, that's really hard to do but there are
still some other improvements that we can make
including expanding areas to be avoided which are
spatial areas on these NOAA charts that ships know to avoid
and really have a high level of compliance with.
So just looking into future options for expanding those areas
and finding ways to separate which ships and whales whenever possible.
And then, the last option for us is just to continue to explore
other options for the VSR policy that we're already doing.
Whether that means expanded zones from what you saw on the map, before,
to capture larger areas where we think whales tend to be
or potentially it could mean discussing regulations down the line.
Like I was saying, the East Coast does have regulations in place for right whales,
since they are so critically endangered. And we've had
plenty of evidence of ship strikes in the past to that population.
At the moment, we're trying to avoid going to any regulatory approach
and the voluntary approach is certainly the most ideal method for us.
But given the fact that we are seeing an increase
in the number of strandings associated with vessel collisions
it is an off the table and it's certainly something that internally we're discussing.
So those are the four main next steps for all of the ship strike work.
In the meantime, like I said, it's a lot of interfacing with these shipping companies
trying to make sure that they are disseminating information to
their crews and their captains and their vessel masters.
And it's a really big and confusing world that honestly doesn't
typically get a ton of scrutiny.
It's only recently that the global community has started to pay attention
to the carbon emissions associated with these vessels.
So we're hoping that with all of this added attention to marine transportation
across a whole bunch of environmental issues that we can try to raise awareness
on the impacts to the whale species, as well.
And so with that, I will close with this wonderful image from our colleague Bob Schwimmer
thank you Bob.
And I will take any questions.
-[Hannah] Yeah! We'll also have one final poll question to kind of test your knowledge.
So ship strikes are challenging issue to address as
are challenging to address as an issue and impact because
select one of the following,
the whales and their prey are dynamic and always on the move,
shipping lanes and wells occupy similar geographic areas,
most ships strike instance go unrecorded or unreported
or all of the above.
And it looks like we have 70% of you have voted.
Give it a few more seconds.
Oh, and it looks like everyone's out of consensus, too.
(laughing)
All right, I'm going to close the poll.
Jess, how did they do?
- Oh, I can't see it, can I?
-[Claire] It's but it's behind her presentation
so she's got we didn't get a good look at her.
-[Hannah] All right, I'll I will read the answer to you.
96% of people said all of the above.
So how did they do?
- They did great.
96% of you did great.
I don't know about the other four.
(laughing)
- And we do have a
large number of questions in about five minutes to get through them.
So I wanted to say.
Please feel free to submit any questions in the question box on the control panel.
And anything that we don't get to you in the next five minutes,
we'll try to have just answer over an email and we'll send that back out to you.
But we have a question coming from North Carolina
and this person is wondering if there's some sort of electro sonic pulse
that ships could use to repel the whales.
He's thinking something like a deer warning attachment that people use
to put on their car bumpers.
- It's a really question and a really good idea and such a good idea that it has been tried
and unfortunately whales do not seem to respond the way that we want them to like deer do
in that instance. They actually seem to surface more.
At least with we, we call them "Pingers" as they've been used for this purpose and
Yeah as I was saying that
typical response that people are recording is that whales are surfacing
rather than actually leaving the area.
Which unfortunately increases their risk of getting hit.
So at least, for now, that approach is not one that we're finding to be very optimistic.
And I will also add that I didn't focus much on the acoustic disturbance side of shipping,
but there is a lot of noise being emitted in the ocean and it definitely has impacts. And so
from that perspective to introducing more sound to try to counteract these other issues is
probably not method for us going forward.
- And we have a recorded webinar in our archived series
on ocean noise and the impact on whales.
That you're interested in that topic you can check that out there
Wwe have another question coming from Brian
who's asking if there's any knowledge on if whales are trying to move out of the way
and if we know that they're trying to move out of the way.
I see that this is a question of other people, as well.
Yeah. So good question.
I don't have a definitive answer
and I certainly don't have one that crosses all the different species that we talked about today
But I do know that there are really great researchers who are
working right now to answer that question.
I think that there are different behavioral responses
to vessels across the different species type.
At least that's what people are seeming to find.
But as far as I know, there really isn't one example or behavior that seems to be associated
with whales when a ship comes into the area.
These guys are really hungry when they come to California.
For a lot of them they might they've migrated a really long distance.
And so their first priority is trying to find their prey and even though we think
a huge container ship barreling down towards them is obvious,
it most evidence suggests that they're just going to be focused on tackling
the task at hand and that's getting their bellies full
of whatever prey they're after,
regardless of whatever big container ship is coming their way.
- That makes sense. When you're hungry, you're hungry!
Okay so this is a combination of a few questions about the voluntary slow zone.
So could you review how they have been impactful?
And then is there any effort to make them mandatory from voluntary.
Do we have any way to prove if they've been impactful, okay
s,o from the whale side,
it's a really tough answer.
Since I don't have great evidence as I've been talking about
that proves you know we've reduced the number of ship strikes that have occurred.
our best way of trying to measure that currently
as I was sharing, is just looking at the strandings that happen each year
that we can attribute to vessel collisions.
And we can see trends
on that graph that I was showing you guys earlier it does show
trends in the number of observed collisions that we're seeing
But it really, as we've talked about, is not necessarily the best indication of how
often this is really happening
since it's probably a major under estimate of total occurrence
So trying to prove that the vessel speed reduction policies have had an impact is really tough.
our best way to do it is with the modeling experts that we've been working with.
nNt just to do some of that fine scale distribution and density modeling
to prove or to try to forecast where whales are going to go.
uBt these guys are also other researchers and some of the same researchers
are working to estimate mortality.
Risk reduction associated with some of these vessels speed reduction policies.
So we don't have actual data that says we slowed down vessels
and six whales were saved.
but we the best available thing that we have
our models that show us when you slow down a certain percentage of traffic in these zones
we get this estimated reduction in mortality
to these populations. And so
that's the numbers that we're really trying to work with right now.
But it is a little frustrating. On the air emissions side,
much easier for our friends at the Air Pollution Control District offices who
it's a little simpler to model the reduction
and air emissions from a vessel if you know all the specs of the ship.
And so we can certainly prove that there are air emission benefits to all of this work.
But still trying to get that magic number in terms of measuring success on the whale side.
- Great, that seems to be all the time that we have for questions
in person on the webinar.
But there's quite a few that have gone unanswered. So we'll be sure to send them to Jessica
to have answered, if she can.
And so I'm going to take over and share my screen
and do a little bit of a wrap-up
Are you guys seeing my screen?
-[Claire] Not quite yet. Yeah, I'm seeing you but not your screen.
- Are we good now?
- We are. Awesome! - Awesome.
Great so I'd like to first of all thank you for attending the webinar series today.
As I mentioned earlier or Claire mentioned earlier, we welcome any feedback
further questions and suggestions for topics that you're interested in.
If you would like to submit those you can send them to the email below
or respond to the emails that are listed on Claire or my contacts
as well as the respond to the email that you'll receive with the evaluation link after this.
So we'll also share a recording of this webinar and any associated the education materials
on the archive page. So you can go to the web link that's located on this slide to see those.
The ocean noise webinar that I mentioned as well is located on that link.
Following this webinar all attendees will also receive a copy of attendance.
So this was requested from a suggestion made from the webinar that
they would like proof of professional development. So we send this out as well.
And so we do take your feedback into account and love to hear it.
We also have an evaluation that we'll send out immediately after the webinar.
It takes about three minutes to complete.
So if you're able to complete it, it would be really great.
It helps us align with what we want to see with the webinar series moving forward
and your feedback is greatly appreciated.
There will be one more-- not one more-- many more webinars to come. But
another great one on large whales.
This one is called "Catch and Release"
It's about large whale entanglements and response efforts to mitigate the threat.
It focuses on the global issue of entanglement
and bycatch of large whales.
Participants will be able to learn more about the threats to marine mammals
and the current response effort.
This webinar will take place on July 10th at 6 p.m. Eastern, 3 p.m. Pacific.
So in about one month you can learn more about large whales.
And thanks again, Jessica, for the great presentation on
the vessel speed reduction
and learning more about the West Coast National Marine Sanctuaries.
And I want to thank you all again for joining us
and please don't forget to take the brief survey
about three or four minutes south pop up at the conclusion of today's webinar.
It's very important to our team.
Thank you forwatching this concludes today's webinar.
-[Claire] All right, thanks everyone, thanks Jess, Hannah.