- All right. Welcome, everybody, to our National Marine Sanctuaries webinar series.
I wanted to start with a few little logistical things. During today's presentation,
all of you, as attendees, will be in listen only mode.
You're welcome to type in questions to the presenter
or any issues technical issues you might be having with the webinar into your control panel
on the right hand of your screen.
This is the same area that you can put in those technical questions, like I mentioned.
We'll be monitoring these questions and any issues you have as soon as we can.
We will be recording today's session
and we I'm excited to share that we have 257 direct registrants for today's webinar
that are representing about 326 participants.
And I thought I'd give a little shout out to some of the the larger groups that are participating today.
We have Save the Whales from Hudson Falls, New York.
We have a group participating from France, as well as another group in British Columbia.
The Santa Barbara Sailing Center has put a group together.
The Living Classrooms Foundation and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
So welcome to all of you.
And now we'll go ahead and share a little bit about our webinar series.
So this series is hosted by the NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries
and we find that it's a great way for us to connect with educators and other interested parties
to provide you with the educational and or scientific expertise,
as well as resources and training to help support ocean and climate literacy
and sometimes even conservation in your classroom or your facility.
So let me start with our obligatory introduction to the National Marine Sanctuary system.
Each of these blue dots on this map of the United States
shows you one of America's underwater treasures.
So me, as an employee of NOAA and the National Marine Sanctuary system,
I am a trustee with my other colleagues of this 600 000 square miles
of protected ocean and Great Lakes areas.
And so this network goes from Washington state, you can see there at the Olympic Coast,
down to the Channel Islands off Santa Barbara,
into the south Pacific at our in American Samoa,
and then all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, the Florida Keys, and
and up into our Sweetwater Sanctuary Thunder Bay in Lake Huron.
And so this network includes a system of 13 national marine sanctuaries
and the Papahanaumokuakea and the Rose Atoll National Marine--
sorry, Marine National Monuments.
I do also want to share some very exciting breaking news.
Well let me go back. There's two boxes on here that are white:
Mallows Bay and Wisconsin. And these are proposed National Marine Sanctuaries.
and the exciting news is that our mallows Bay-Potomac River National Marine Sanctuary
is very close to being designated.
So there's been significant movement on that
and it'll likely be our country's next National Marine Sanctuary and the first one in nearly 20 years.
Mallows Bay-Potomac river protects more than a hundred abandoned steam ships and vessels
that were built as part of America's engagement with World War One.
And this is, as you can see in the map, board in Maryland and near Washington DC.
So with that, a little bit more about National Marine Sanctuaries.
These are these special ocean areas that are set aside for a variety of reasons.
You can see them listed, here, in some cases, ecological, historical, cultural and aesthetic.
We also like to call our National Marine Sanctuaries living classrooms.
This is where people can see, touch, and learn about these treasures and recreate.
Now, quick introduction to ourselves as webinar support.
My name is Claire Fackler and I am based in Santa Barbara, California
as the national education liaison for NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.
And today I'm excited to let you know that we have Jezella Paraza, who is joining us,
and she is an intern as part of the NOAA Educational Partnership program with minority serving institutes.
And this is an undergraduate scholarship program that Jezella is a part of.
And she's helping out with today's back end administration
and running our poll questions for the webinar.
Now let's get to the good stuff.
I would like to introduce you to our speaker today.
We've got Ed Lyman, who is, I believe, on Maui.
You can correct me if I'm wrong, momentarily,
but he's going to be presenting a webinar titled Catch and Release: Large Whale Entanglements
and Response Efforts to Mitigate the Threat.
So Ed currently works for the NOAA Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale
National Marine Sanctuary.
He's the natural resources management specialist
and the large whale entanglement response coordinator for the National Marine Sanctuary system.
He works closely with NOAA Fisheries
and under their Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response program.
For more than 25 years, Ed has worked with NOAA, with state agencies and others
to better understand the animals and to address the threats that impact them,
especially ship strikes and whale entanglement.
So his efforts have taken him to Alaska, the East Coast, West Coast, Hawaii and other countries.
He's participated in over 110 disentanglement efforts
and helped free more than 50 large whales, 30 of which were off the Hawaiian Islands.
So it's impressive, yet sad, that this many whales are needing disentanglement.
But he assists NOAA in coordinating a community-based network to provide safe
and authorized response to entangled large whales.
However, the ultimate goal of what Ed is doing is
to work with the fishermen, the scientists, managers and others in the community
to gain valuable information that may reduce the entanglement threat, in the future.
A little bit about Ed's background. He graduated from the University of New Hampshire,
where he received a Masters of Science studying semi-aquatic mammals and island biogeography.
He worked for the Shoals Marine Laboratory and the Sea Education Association,
where he gained a strong marine background.
Ed has studied whales since 1994 when he worked with the Provincetown center for coastal studies,
which was a non-profit whale research and rescue organization on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
He's also worked for the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries,
where he worked with fishermen to reduce entanglement impact.
So we are talking to a major large whale response entanglement response expert.
So with that, I'm going to pass the controls on to you, Ed,
and we'll go ahead and get started with your presentation.
And don't forget, Ed, to unmute yourself and turn on your web camera, please.
-[Ed] Okay.
I'm unmuted, so aloha, everyone, Claire and let's see... Show that.
See how I do, here.
- [Claire] Things are looking good for your presentation once you get it in play,
but we do want to see your face, when you have a chance to hit that webcam.
- [Ed] I'll hit it again.
Here it goes. - [Claire] All right.
- And the presentation is up and running?
- [Claire] Yup. Kick it into your play mode and then i'll give my final confirmation.
She's in play and again, thanks, Claire and and Jezelle, and great introduction.
That was a lot of information. One thing this is a team effort
and I like acknowledging as many people as I can.
Okay, that's what part of what you were doing with that introduction, showing the team.
If we're good to go we're up and running on duran.
- [Claire] We're not we're seeing the slides on the side, so...
See if you can press that
key note play button again and pop you into the presentation mode.
Okay, let's try it again, boom, and...
- [Claire] Of course, we always work on this in advance and it's seamless
- Yeah, We're okay, we're okay.
Let's try...
- [Claire] Okay, perfect.
We're on your second slide of the Hawaiian islands.
I will mute myself and move ahead. Thank you, Ed.
- Okay, thank you, guys.
Well I want to talk to you guys about something very dear to my heart.
So I've been doing for actually a couple decades, now,
and that is this large whale entanglement response effort.
A very broad topic, by the way.
So I'm going to do is I'm going to bring it a little close to home.
I want to add a little bit more to what Claire was talking about and that is
my work at the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary.
Want to give you a little bit more detail there
because, again, we're going to kind of focus here around the Hawaiian Islands
and dip our toe into the other areas in that broader topic of
how this affects other large whales in other areas, like those North Atlantic right whales,
the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary,
five marine protected areas, essentially, around the main Hawaiian Islands.
About 1400 square nautical miles.
Typically the shallow areas less than 600 feet.
These are the areas where the humpback whales are found.
Very important environment for them.
Claire mentioned a special place the National Marine Sanctuaries and that is indeed very true
of the Hawaiian Island Humpback Whale National Sanctuary
because it is the primary breeding category
for a majority-- more than 50 percent-- of the humpback whales in the north Pacific.
They're not going to make it down here every year,
but they're going to make it take advantage of this environment-- the clear blue waters,
warm waters, give birth to the young, nurse those calves and breed.
I also want to show you, on the right there, is the population growth over time.
Many researchers contributed that data. You see their references on the bottom.
See, generally speaking, the humpback whale population has increased over time.
when it comes to the entanglement threat, what I want to point out here
is that it is least not for humpback whales in this central north Pacific stock
that part of the population-- one of 14 distinct population segments--
it's not overtly affecting the populations.
I want to give you that background there, as well. But for other species,
like the north Atlantic right whale, is a different story.
So here's what i'd like to cover for you, today.
Give you a little bit more background on the threat. Just kind of set the stage.
And very important to me and to many of us to do this type of work, is the goals and objectives.
Again, it's not just about cutting the whale free, there's much more to it than that.
So give me a little broad brush stroke there.
You wanna-- I do want to address that catchy title that we gave you,
Catch and Release, and tell you how do we cut the 40 ton, or in the case of a right whale 60 70 ton, animal free.
It's likely free swimming, doesn't know you're there to help it, very dangerous task.
How do we do it? Give you a little bit of an overview, there.
In doing so, I'll give you a couple case histories
and again, you can see, we're going to focus on mostly humpback whales,
central north Pacific stock and around Hawaii, here.
but give you some examples of the technology, the tools and some of the mitigating measures.
Remember, well don't remember, but I'm going to tell you and emphasize it,
this is about prevention, or going towards prevention, reducing the threat, overall.
We will not solve the problem by trying to cut every whale free.
And a little summary there in our accomplishments at the end.
Okay. So a little background, here.
Global threat, I mean, again, this is even though i'm going to focus on Hawaii for the most part,
at least north Pacific, it is global issue.
Okay, it affects all kinds of marine animals and animals in general.
So many species impacted it involves a variety of gear.
Everyone always thinks it's fishing gear,
but I will tell you that the majority of the gear, at least on the reporting that we can figure out,
is indeed fishing gear.
And we tend to know more about this the smaller animals that are entangled
and the reason is more likely the entanglement threat is more immediate.
^ They will drown in the gear more times than not
and they're there to be counted.
So we can we can gather more information. It's kind of a good news/bad news kind of thing.
so
And I think there was a poll question real quick.
- [Jezelle] Let's do our first poll question for the audience.
So our question is around what percent of the gear entangling large whales reported in the U.S.
is believed to be fishing gear?
Less than 25 percent, between 25 and 49 percent, between 50 percent and 74 percent,
or greater than 75 percent.
So we have 70 percent of you voted. I'll give it a couple more seconds and then I'll close the poll.
And these are the results.
Two percent of our audience say less than 25 percent,
nine percent of our audience said between 25 percent and 49 percent,
33 percent said between 50 percent and 74 percent,
and 57 percent said greater than 75 percent.
And our answer was greater than 75 percent.
- Yep, exactly. Most people got it right there
And indeed now there's a couple things here is there is a lot of fishing gear out there,
so it's just a matter of probabilities.
And also the fishing gear is well marked. It makes it easier for scientists, managers
to identify that gear. So there's some surprises in the science,
but that's what we're looking at.
So thank you everyone for that. Wanted to also look at the impacts at the individual levels.
So it's going to be obvious, but there's the physical trauma of lines cutting through flesh
at the Chris Gabriel's image there at the top of the tail wrap.
This also shows you where the whales get wrapped up, by the way.
Then there's general deterioration of health,
next image to the right you know you see the rough skin, a little lighter colored,
the whale lice covering the side of the bodies, indicators,
the animals can compromise by an entanglement.
And there's chronic and systemic infections.
That is by the way Dr. Sterling Mayo, one of the pioneers in this field,
We're-- that's a right whale, unfortunately it didn't make it.
It had some wraps on the right flipper, there.
I'm going to show you that image a little later when the whale was alive.
But that was a systemic infection that ended up killing that whale.
And there's associate factors, like ship strikes.
Just as an example, you see the prop scars and the head rope there from the gill net.
Two can be linked. In fact, all these can be associated or linked together.
It's a starvation that's a big one for the large whales. Again, impacts are typically not immediate.
And then it but it can be the last one I put there is drowning.
In some cases, whether it builds to that as they get weaker, leaner, more compromised or
a more-- in this case the lower right image --a very compromising entanglement in a juvenile whale.
The two combined, the animal did drown in the gear pretty quickly.
Those are the individual impacts.
Quickly, I want to give you the population or at least some population level impacts ,
This is a rather old number. It's over a decade old but standard read and others.
You know the number using our-- in that our being the U.S.'s stranding data and our reports in the U.S.
and extrapolating it worldwide
and came up with a number for all cetaceans.
This is the dolphins, the porpoises, of the large whales of 308,000 whales, again, all whales,
dying each year due to entanglement, worldwide.
So, it's a very quantifiable, very scientific based number and it's an underestimate.
We know that. It still is.
However it's still considered entanglement,
a one of the largest, severest anthropogenic human caused threats
And pulled up some of the national data. Again, we work as a team.
All the different response networks combining our efforts.
And it looks like for humpback whales, about two-thirds of the reports, at least,
end up being humpback whales.
And again there could be some biases here. We do like watching humpback whales.
Very that's the acrobat of the whale world,
so we tend to look for them and find them whale watching and so on.
So but still a lot of the whales are humpback whales they're found entangled report.
But I want to mention other species.
This is a current event, by the way, because there's it was late last week,
three entangled right whales reported up in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
There's already been six fatalities there in month of June, in Canada, back East, maritimes. So,
So for some species like the north Atlantic right whale the impact is significant.
That population curve is not increasing. In fact, it's dropped now to around a little high above 400 animals,
we think.
Scar rates, when it gets to the scar rate analysis,
because it's another way we can get at the magnitude of the threat.
Right whales it's it can be as high as 87 percent of the population showing scars,
indicating they've been recently entangled.
And that doesn't tell us the whole picture
because those are the only those are the ones we either cut free or that we that have freed themselves
and have just been around to be seen afterwards.
And also right whales, and I do need to move on here,
but they're the urban whale. This is a turn that Scott Krauss and others applied.
They're on the East coast and around the areas overlapping the gear
and that's obviously going to increase their threat, as well.
So again, it can be other species.
But I want to get back to the fact that that impact is typically not immediate for these large whales
and 40 60 70 tons in weight, maybe up to 65 feet, threat still remains.
You know the impacts now, but here's the kind of silver lining of sorts.
Okay, and that is it buys them time, and as a result, can buy us time.
Authorized responders, these networks around the country.
there's David Matilda by the way on the bow the inflatable another pioneer here on the effort,
myself, a sanctuary boat, support boat, working together to try to free the whales.
At least free some of them. It can be difficult, it can be dangerous.
They're not always-- certainly we don't think they're aware--
likely not aware of the fact that you're there to help them.
They may not be gentle giants.
This is an entangled whale we're working on. Somebody breached in front of us.
We've got to be aware of these dangerous risks involved.
okay
And for that reason because the risk to the animal from the response and the risk to the responders.
These authorized responders that are trained and well-equipped and all that.
You can see the criteria there on the bottom bullet.
And you want the experience level you want people know whales, know gear.
You want trainings involved, the availability and the right resources, tools, tool use,
and all that.
And that all falls under NOAA Fisheries Marine Mammal Health and Strain Response program.
They're the overall overseer and trying to keep everyone safe and doing a good job here.
So we give them acknowledgement credit.
But with all those risks, as difficult as it is, okay, why why should we respond?
I mean, what's and here's my goals when I got to them, but we want to increase awareness,
it's always you know outreach and education foundational in so many ways.
Public safety.
Now, the sanctuaries or NOAA fisheries and others our mandate isn't public safety,
but it's part of what we do and we're going to increase public safety by having the right people
mount these responses. People that are equipped, trained, authorized.
And we do hope to release some whales from life-threatening entanglements
and we've done really well. Give you some accomplishments at the end, there.
And here's the big one. You probably already know it.
We want to gather information towards reducing the threat.
That's why the title there and made these title slides. You don't see this disentanglement listed,
you see it as entanglement response. That's how broad this effort is.
It's not about cutting every whale free.
Okay. So,
But here's the other thing. I mean it's difficult to cut the whale free,
it's also challenging to get the information from some of the many many reasons same reasons.
They're large animals, that's, they're challenging, they're needles in a haystack out there,
we don't get that many data points out there.
I already said we underestimate, so we've got to pour resources and build that data set up.
A lot of reporting is opportunistic in nature. We're relying on our whale watch
and fishermen and others that they have another job.
But they're they help us out and report this information in which, again, it's great.
There's challenges in identifying gear. It could be just a piece of line
and you can't just check the box. You've got to figure out what it is, where it came from,
what part of the gear it was, so we can get that information towards a prevention.
And a lot of times these cases for the large whales are removed in time and space.
And what I mean by the that, and we'll give you some case histories,
a whale that is reported say off of a Santa Barbara there may have gotten caught off of Mexico
and carried the gear more than a thousand miles northward.
So there's an example. And, of course, you got a big ocean, big animals and they're mobile.
These whales are typically not anchored by the gear in many many cases.
Okay.
And I said i was gonna emphasize Hawaii and there was a good reason.
And that is there's many advantages.
One of them is just it's an increase in scope of our effort.
There's really not too many efforts out there
that are focused on the breeding calving grounds for humpback whales.
Not to the degree that we are focused, here in Hawaii.
So it's a scope of effort you're asking different questions you're going to get different answer
or you're going to get broader or more data towards answering your questions.
It's increasing our effort. It's a filter.
I mean it's a 2,000 2,500 nautical mile filter of what happens to the animals
when they carry it let's say from Alaska or British Columbia to Hawaii.
What's the impact of that distance in time?
Things of that nature.
If the whale is reported we can respond behind one of the mountains in the league of the Hawaiian Islands.
One of the islands and we've got some generally calm water, it's warm, the water's warm,
clear water. All that safety out is a good core safety of the operation.
And then the assessment, gaining information, or was that clear water.
I know a lot of the other responders are jealous of our efforts here,
in that we get this clear water to get good imagery and figure out the information in that regard.
And i'll be showing you some of those images more soon.
And then there's, lastly, there's the aloha spirit. I've worked many places and everyone's great,
but I have to give points to more so it's just Hawaii, Hawaiian culture
and everything lot of spirit people working together. There's that.
I'll give you some data here.
And I'm just sorry. I'm moving along. I want to give you guys a lot of information.
But for Hawaii here,
- [Jezelle] We have another fun poll question for the audience.
- I'm holding, Miss Jezelle.
- [Jezelle] (laughing) The objectives of large whale entanglement response are?
Free whales from gear, have trained experience well-equipped and authorized people,
increase awareness as to reduce threat and increase reporting,
gain info to better understand and ultimately reduce threat,
or all the above.
So about 70 percent of you have voted I'll give it a couple more seconds and then I'll close the poll.
So the results are 99 percent of our viewers said all of the above
and one percent said increase awareness as to reduce threat and increase reporting.
And the answer is all the above.
- Exactly, Jezelle. Yeah, I mean it was a bit of a maybe a bit loaded,
but I wanted to emphasize the objectives again.
That was one way we could do it.
So it's very important to us that we have those broad-based objectives.
Thank you, everyone.
Well, I'm going to give you some of our data from Hawaii, here.
And there's two things i'm showing you, here. One is just the overall number of reports.
Lots of reports come in but a lot of them you can't confirm.
You've got to do your homework even at this stage of bedding it
and getting the additional information. Is it truly an entangled whale, for instance.
So then you drop 50 percent of your data is dropped, right there.
And then you try to filter out, well, how many whales does that actually represent?
And our best guess here on that data is 141 different cases of different animals.
And again it's all underestimated. We know we're we're not getting all the information.
As good as that community on what community is.
The chart, the bar graph shows you the reports per season for us.
It's more of a season. Our season runs more kind of November through April into May.
Our breeding calving season you see the numbers aren't very big.
So if you're thinking, gosh, he said it was a big threat, but remember we're not getting them all.
And you see some cycling there. You've seen changes for some variation over the years.
Then in the background, the image shows where those reports are coming in.
Those, for the most part, almost all those are not where the whale got entangled.
So it's showing you the effort base more than anything.
And then I wanted it, again, I know it's a broad issue and I said I'd stay close to Hawaii, but
I wanted to point out that, again, the efforts of many knowledge, everyone's efforts,
Here are some of the other regions. You see the southeast in yellow at the bottom.
You know, some lower numbers that's basically where they're at by the way too.
And then you've got kind of above that the blue and the gray Hawaii and Alaska,
cycling along and in the middle.
California's down there early on and, suddenly, that darker blue jumps up pretty high.
You know, four or five years ago it spiked.
And you see the northeast, also generally very high and cycling variation,
here at a much higher level than all the other regions in that regards.
Kind of give you a general picture there.
And, obviously, just focus on the U.S. at this point.
And then I want to give you another means of getting a sense mentioned earlier.
The scar analysis can be done for many species.
For the humpback whales we tend to focus on the tail region.
Okay.
And what we've found and others have found-- you know, there's I showed some other references there--
Duke Robins, Dave Matilla, Janet Nielsen up in Glacier Bay,
they've done these analysis generally got around 50percent for humpback whales.
But these values can run from 30 to 70 percent, even outside those ranges.
It shows that the threat is pervasive.
I mean everywhere we go we find there's entangled whales.
And here we're only seeing the scar analysis,
just shows us, again, those that survive those likely through the gear
and are just leaving scars behind to give us that indication.
So it does say many animals throughout the gear by the way.
Some of the work in the Gulf of Maine,
if you were to test me based on this the fewer than 10 percent are actually reported.
There's your needle in your haystack.
Our scar analysis here. We were just crunching these numbers.
I think it's this season it's 17.3 is our is our kind of a midline, best estimate.
That value has been slowly decreasing-- not specifically significant--
and you see the range there. About one in six, one and five of the humpback whales here
that we're documenting have scars, indicating they've been recently entangled.
Now you do want to get-- I promise you this-- that that title of Catch and Release.
How do we cut-- - [Jezelle] So Ed, we have one more fun poll question coming up.
(laughing)
who has seen one of the Moby Dick or initial Jaw movies or TV series Wicked Tuna?
Yes or no?
- Simple, easy question.
So over 70 percent has voted. I'll give it a couple more seconds.
88 percent of our viewers said yes and 12 percent of our viewers said no.
Okay,
okay. Thank you, Jezelle,
because that's that helps me because those 88 percent,
in a sense, they know the kind of the main technique, already.
Okay, because the Jaws movie, you know, not three barrels, not the three barrels you can't,
and the Moby Dick movies, the old keg technique, let me hit the next slide,
because that essentially is the main part of our technique of you've got this large whale,
doesn't know you're there to help it. It's likely free swimming with that gear
or even if it's anchored, it's probably got some scope and it's moving around.
And you need to constrain the animal a little bit and rein it back, maybe to get access to it
and to better assess it.
And we're basically using a modification, let's use the Moby Dick one as an example.
The great fish, right? It's fishing and you're trying to use this old technique of whaling,
which-- let's go through it--
the old whaling technique was, you know, launch the wooden skiff from the tall ships,
grow out after the whale, throw a harpoon to get a hold of the whale-- not kill it--
well in our modification, we're throwing a grapple hook to get ahold of the whale via de-entanglement.
Okay then you're gonna take the ANTSA rod, you know, both parties, here. okay.
You whale dives, you don't want to hold on, you've got to let go.
But you leave a barrel in the old whaling technique, the kegging, okay, hence kegging.
In our technique we don't use wooden barrels we're using the polyballs. We're actually adding more gear
to hopefully get the gear off, in controlled manner.
So those polyballs, those red buoys you see in the image there,
and then instead of the lance at the end, like the whalers did to bleed the whale out,
we're using hook knives you see it on the lower image there on the end of long poles.
We're going to keep our distance, stay safe and cut the whale free, very methodically.
Okay.
So there's the general technique. I'm going to show you. We'll get some videos in here,
and here's one of them, hopefully, cross our fingers,
okay.
You see the grapple in the upper left, if it's working, I hope.
And there's whale and there's the throw. Gonna get a hold of the whale,
not onto the whale itself, but there is trailing gear on that animal.
This is helmet cam footage.
And it's already jumpy by the way because when you're getting Nantucket sleigh ride,
it may not be a smooth ride. So now we're getting a Nantucket sleigh ride,
You add the polyballs, the whale stops diving, hopefully slows down to maybe two knots,
nice thing as whales don't go in reverse, you pull it behind the whale, maybe two or three hours later,
reach out with a long pole. let's show you that, and make the cut.
And this part might be literally 10 seconds.
There is that was the last cut of four cuts to a female humpback whale that had five wraps around her tail.
And that was the last cut and the whale was free.
This is that whale, by the way.
This is a couple years ago. Five wraps around her tail
and what I want to do is use her as an example of some of the technology.
She was first seen off the Big Island, off the northeast corner of the big the Hawaii Island,
and what we did is we didn't have responders there,
so but they had we had teams there that could put a tag on the entangling gear.
So in the upper right corner, you see the buoy and the tag itself, it would be held in that buoy,
and then the rest of that white line going around the island in a counterclockwise matter
is her track around the island. Then she hops over to Maui and we're sitting there waiting for her
because at this point we know her speed and we can estimate when she'll arrive
in the league of Maui, in the calm water and take advantage of it.
Here we are, right behind her. Someone's holding on to the inflatable
and the other guy is reaching out with the hook knife to make the cut.
And there is a still image of that cut being made. That's what you just saw on the video clip
and there's the last wrap coming off of her.
Yes, I want to give you another case history, here. This is just last season.
I think this is a sub adult male humpback whale.
This is a mouth entanglement instead of a tail wrap.
It also giving us some sense of the parts of the body to get entangled
and it's got a long bridle, I think this is like 450 or more of line-- graded line-- traveling behind the animal.
okay.
I'm going to show you another tool that we've been using, for a number of years now,
and this is all under the permit and this is our drones, our UAS's, okay.
And this is some drone footage. We've already done some assessment,
but now the drone is used to help us on the assessment of the operation.
And we're getting ready, by the way, see how much that whale is kicking its tail, to stand down.
They're not going to take any risk there.
So this would be a stand down operation
and we tag the whale, we let it go for the night and the next day--
let's jump to this next video clip- if they're working-- I'll cross my fingers.
And that is our whale that has just been freed
and we have, literally, just just kind of pulled up above it and just pulled the line right from his mouth.
Didn't have to pull on it, keg it or anything.
We worked with the whale's behavior, got a sense of it from the day before, didn't like being kegged.
And now we have an animal that's free of gear
and got all and mouth entanglements are very challenging, by the way.
One last case here on this team.
This is a sub-adult humpback whale, this year-- this season-- sorry.
Kind of a hog tie, mouth and tail,
but here's the unique nature of this.
There was a crab pot, a dungeness crab pot, hanging about 100 feet below the tail.
And that line goes straight down. It's going to a pot that you see in the lower left, there.
First time we've had the whole the entire pot with the animal.
And what I want to point out is-- I think in the upper right-- you see a little disc
that buoy system of this gear that was recovered had a chip in it
and we worked with Division Fisheries Oceans in British Columbia.
They've been tagging some of their gear, working these little chips, some pit tag chips,
and we were able to give that back to them, they scanned it for us and gave us a wealth of information.
This is back to gaining information towards prevention
and we found out that the gear had been set or last hauled January-- you see the date there-- so January 2nd
in the northeast corner of the Queen Charlotte Islands in British Columbia.
So a wealth information, the location and everything.
And what I want to get to is, all those cases I just showed you,
where entanglements or efforts,
at the end, when we covered the gear, we found out the gear had come from the feeding grounds.
They carried it thousands of miles down to Hawaii.
And there was a couple cases-- the other case I showed you was from Lunac Pass,
several now from British Columbia.
And I also want to get to something here and that is-- well first, gear types.
Give you a sense of what all the gear that we're recovering and documenting.
This pie diagram will show you kind of two things.
One it's everything and anything, okay.
We've learned that it tends to be fixed gear, gear that's set and left.
Some of which is, again, the majority of which, is indeed fishing gear.
Okay, pot is trapped, here, by the way. See marine debris, there.
And some other other things.
Okay, so give you a sense of the gear type. This would hold for many regions, by the way.
Many other areas.
And then we're seeing changes in those gear types.
We're seeing whales getting caught more in anchor lines or anchored ropes, cables, chains,
we're seeing FADs.
This is the fish aggregating devices, out there.
The picture here shows a humpback whale sub-adult with cable through its mouth,
embedded in the back of its mouth for that matter.
It's coaxial cable.
There's the deceptive image of i,t the lower right hand corner.
So you can see it's a communications type cable.
What it was doing-- best of our knowledge-- we think it was part of a FAD.
And basically FADs are throwing anything and everything back into water column to create an ecosystem
for small fish which attracts the larger fish.
So as fish stocks decrease, fishermen are using these kind of things to help them fish.
A lot of these changes, by the way, and I'm only going to be able to kind of just touch upon this subject,
by the way,
may be due to environmental changes.
Environment changes, changes food resources changes whales behavior,
which may change their threat level.
I just want to point out here-- you guys are probably aware of this--
is there have been some changes last four years.
North Pacific, it's the blob is the big one. I think it's made the news the most.
It's some kind of a mid upper latitude warm water cell.
It's built again over the last couple years.
A longer cycle, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation,
plus cycle by the way is when warm water is on the east side of the higher latitude north pacific and
then you got El Nino, I think everyone knows the El Nino, La Nina.
You have that. We had all three of them a couple years ago. Kind of all line, perfect storm, environmentally.
And we think it did-- well, we're seeing effects the humpback whales
and those effects may change the threat levels, like entanglement, as well.
Let me show you, again, plots here of the reporting for different reasons.
Hawaii there first, there's Alaska, you see some cycling there changes maybe
maybe environmental factors coming into play, remembers small sample sizes.
So we got to be careful. Then you see the West Coast.
I mean their their numbers have spiked. They were down towards Hawaii and Alaska
But around 2013-14 changes occurred.
And we know that a lot of humpback whales have come in closer to shore
in areas around San Francisco Bay and places like that further south along the coast.
And that puts them in not only the effort side of things, being seen and reported,
but overlapping the gear that much more.
So just introducing that.
I'm doing a time. Okay.
And...
That's showing you the vertical lines are showing when the environmental changes are occurring.
And then I wanted to point out some of these are obvious, maybe,
but the more whales in the West Coast net that was also British Columbia
and they were getting more entangled reports up there over that time frame .
and lo and behold, this is showing that we got more reports than we had been getting.
I got four year bins there. I got that vertical line showing the change, environmental change
showing you before our reports and after our reports.
Big change in the number of reports. Again, small sample size.
So more mouth entanglements.
I got the bins again, before on the vertical line, okay, and then after as well on the vertical line
showing it twice as many mouth entanglements.
And...
Okay, there we go.
And then I want to give you another case history, here.
This is a a calf. We've only had six calves, so far,
onthe entanglements down here in Hawaii.
And we'll give you another video clip if it'll work here.
- [Claire] Hey Ed, while you're doing that, there's something on the screen. The drive pulse log in.
Is that not easily...
- I can just jump out for a second, right, and and get rid of that, I believe.
- [Claire] Yeah, sure. Go ahead and give that a try
- Yeah. - [Claire] Fingers crossed, right?
Ignore and boom.
Let's hope this doesn't mess everything up. I'm trying to bring it back up, again.
Oh, please do this.
Okay, hold on.
- [Claire] Yup, we have your screen back up.
- Okay, we may lose the calf being safe because i'm not oh there goes.
Okay, sorry about that guys. A little warning there on my screen.
here's a humpback whale calf, wrapped up pretty tight some monofilament line, here comes the cut.
These are very challenging, mothers are protective,
and there's the cut to free the whale. This is obviously an animal we did not tag.
So the technique does differ. We need to make a special knife to this animal, by the way. So,
Okay and I just want to point out, I showed you some young animals, there, because
not so much the calves, but for the juveniles, it's definitely a high predominance of youngsters
getting caught in the gear out there. It might be a matter of their experience levels.
And this would hold for Alaska and many other regions would give you similar data.
So experience might be a factor.
Here's our accomplishments in Hawaii.
We've mounted more than 180 responses, we've removed gear from 32 whales.
Now, 28 of those we think we've made a difference.
And again most of those have been humpback whales.
They've had one sei whale, here in the region.
About a 43 percent success rate, more than 12,000 feet of measurable gear removed
and over 70 sets of gear identified.
There's that I want to give you a sense of the information side, as well.
Okay and I promise you, it's all about gaining this information.
I've given you some ideas of how we might use it in increasing our understanding.
But here's some examples I've broken up the two categories. Mitigating measures.
The first one is about reducing the frequency. Trying to avoid it.
Avoid the animal from hitting the gear.
And some of these are obvious. It's time area closures.
It might be reducing the scope of the gear, the amount of line, the slack line up to that buoy.
If they're using a buoy.
Or having sinking line between the traps.
If they have a troll or a line of traps, you see an image on the lower part of the screen, there,
to give you a sense that, you have sinking line, it's laying on the bottom. It's not up in the water column.
Ropeless gear. It's something that's really been pushing lately for.
It's been around for over a decade. Trying to figure this out.
We're trying to get rid of all those buoys you see in the upper image by having the buoy line be at the bottom
and the fishermen have a transponder that would call up the buoy line,
so they could be then harvested. The trap could be then hauled to surface.
Folks that knowing aquarium and others have talked about colored line to make it more visible.
to speak to the whales, acoustic alerts to actually let the whale know that the gear is there.
And, however, I will say any of these there are downsides, so it's not an easy solution.
There's another whole topic, by the way.
On the another slide, here, I'm going to give you some mitigating measures that reduce the severity.
The whale's going to get in it, make contact, but maybe we can help it get out of it.
things like weak lines, weak links. You know, it breaks away.
It takes less gear with it and unwraps.
The reduced scope again on lines, the tighter lines, let's reduce scopes, make it tighter,
more detectable,
stronger anchoring. Let's get we'll have a purchase to work against.
And tended fisheries.
I know Canada was-- the Maritimes-- was talking about you know they have some right whales, nowadays.
They're stepping up and doing much more.
That they would shut down and stop some fisheries in certain areas, there in the gulf of St. Lawrence.
I'll skip the imagery there because I want to get down to just wrapping up here, now.
Give us some time for questions, but what is a success on disentanglement?
Well to get potentially all the lethal gear off the animal,
minimal injuries to the whale, none to the rescuers.
We have had a fatality and we don't want to repeat that. Lesson learned, there.
^ We increase awareness number foundational and we want to gain information.
There's a lot of science here, behind this. And I've only just touched upon that topic in many ways.
And some conclusions, here. Many I'm just reiterating some points.
You know the response efforts, again, in Hawaii,
it just in many ways it's just a an increase in the scope of our effort
as many have done, many regions.
The entanglement threat continues to be very dynamic.
I mean we always do that and I think it's even more so, nowadays.
Changes is an example.
This changing the animal's environment, the ecology, is likely to affect the threat level.
The full extent of the threat, the impact, we're still trying to figure it out.
Okay, we're still trying to piece this puzzle together.
And meantime, though, we can cut some whales free, save some animals,
help some individual animals, the animal welfare side of things.
At the same time, we've all got to do this.
Gaining information, working together to try to reduce the threat, overall.
And lots of people to acknowledge.
And I had to group people. It's very much team effort.
I'll move on because I also wanted some resources here for people that have download the PDF
afterwards or have access to this.
Some web links, some materials, and lastly, again, mahalo to everyone.
and there's one of our teams after we've cut some gear off of a sub-adult mount.
So thank you guys and any questions.
- Awesome, Ed. Thank you for a great presentation.
Love all the videos, glad they worked out.
I do want to point out that there's a one pager on whale rescue that Ed passed along
that you can download, right now, from the handouts in the webinar.
And it will also be in our webinar archive, online.
Any of those other resources, I'll work with Ed to make sure they're put into another little one pager
that'll make it easy for people to access.
And then, with that, we're-- Jezelle and i are ready to take questions
and pass them along to our expert.
So I see that we have one question poised and ready to go.
Oh, and in the meantime, Ed, can you go back to the slide with the educational or with the web links
because some people do want to jot things down, right now,
before we get them out to them in the archive.
So I'll start with this question. Okay, perfect.
How often are they able to retrieve the entangling lines and material?
That is-- the way to answer it-- hmm. It depends on how you look at it.
If we get me-- put it this way-- if we get on a whale, okay. So if we get a report
and someone stands by long enough, so we don't lose the needle in a haystack,
okay, that's how critical that standby effort is.
Then and we can get to that whale,
then I'd say we have about a 50 percent chance of getting--
a little bit more-- but somewhere around 50 percent in Hawaii--
and it's going to vary for different regions and they have different conditions and all
of getting that animal free and getting the gear.
We get the animal free, almost always, we get the gear.
That's in a few cases, remember the calf, when we cut that calf free, that gear exploded off that calf.
It had been growing around it and we never found it. Was like monofilament line. We couldn't find it.
And we almost always get the gear. Hopefully that answers your question.
- Excellent and so for others um you can type in your question to the question box.
There is another way of doing this. If you feel bold, you can raise your hand in the control panel,
which will alert Jezella and I to unmute you.
And then you can actually ask your question directly to ed and have that engagement.
So sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't, but if you're feeling brave and bold,
go ahead and raise your hand and we'll just try the unmute strategy.
And, actually, there's a few hands raised, so I'm going to give people another 30 seconds
to go to the control panel and if it truly is a raised hand, leave it there, if not, click on that button, again.
It'll go away and we won't unmute you.
But in the meantime, why don't you, Jezella, ask that, start going down--
Well we have lots of questions coming in, Ed, so go ahead Jezella.
- So next question for you, Ed.
Are there response teams outside of Hawaii that are responding to entanglements?
- So because it was, that was, are there response teams outside of Hawaii, right? Is that what I heard?
- Yes.
- Okay, yes there are.
And those are boy, I mean let's start with the U.S., first.
I mean there are there's teams across the Alaska from zodiac down through southeast.
Yes, British Columbia has their teams. I'm gonna throw British Columbia right in
run it coast. West Coast, right on down Mexico has teams.
So you're getting into the international side.
And that's just the pacific and of course out in Hawaii and East Coast and South Africa and New Zealand.
It's a global effort. We have, actually, a global team of people we meet together and share information,
work together to figure out what's best.
So it's many many places. Many countries and across our in the U.S., again, going back to that,
throughout the U.S.
- Great. We have a question here that's a little further down on the list,
but I thought it was an interesting one.
After the fatality occurred that you mentioned,
this person heard that all the rescue efforts were halted.
So how has that incident changed your response protocol, since we don't want to have another fatality?
- Well it was it-- I mean, yeah, we all knew Joe. Different, many ways and
and that hit home and he's doing the same thing we're all doing as as whale entanglement responders.
And it was a good thing to stand down and kind of
look at, you know, risk assessments what it was.
And we stood and we all did our own risk assessment. We did it again to the U.S.
and for, you know, under the NOAA Fisheries marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program
did that risk assessment and, of course, slowly ramped back up, as need be.
We do realize even those with those risks, that again, there's the value, there, the information gained
and, even though we may be taking more risk, we are reducing risks elsewhere.
That's there's that balance there, as well.
- Awesome.
What do you think, Jezella? Should we unmute somebody here and see how it goes?
- Yeah, let's do it. (laughing)
- All right. Let's go with Judith.
I'm going to go ahead and unmute you, Judith. You can ask your question. Are you there?
Judith, you're unmuted.
Judith Weiss.
All right. See yeah, sometimes this doesn't quite work.
All right. We'll go back to one of the typed in questions.
Fire away, Jezella.
- I thought this question is pretty interesting.
Since these are confirmed entanglements, has the effort and funding been the same across all years?
Okay, effort in funding.
That's a big picture question and it's in some ways,
it's something I may not in the big broad picture, I probably do not have my fingers on the pulse.
I mean I know in my own little realm Hawaii and trying to get, you know, and the north Pacific a little bit.
No, I think funding has changed over the years, but I cannot speak for the broad picture of say, you know,
with true NOAA Fisheries Oversight and Marine Mammal Health Training Response Program
for like over the decade. And I certainly cannot speak for Canada.
I think, lately though, I can safely say they've definitely stepped up.
They're doing more effort, and of course,
you've got the right whales now up in the gulf of St. Lawrence, especially.
It's bringing that effort on.
It's demanding it in many ways.
So just examples, guys. It's all I can give there, I suppose. - Yeah.
Okay, thanks for that.
So, Lisa is asking what efforts have been made to regulate fishing gear, especially lines and buoys,
so that it's more easily identifiable to the industry or to the specific boat it is from?
- Gotcha.
Well, the examples there, some of which you saw on the presentation, like British Columbia,
for some of the fisheries having little chips that the fish fishermen the fishing industry puts into their buoys.
So as they bring that aboard, it can be scanned and sent off to management.
There is West Coast use a lot of they're almost like, well they're cattle ear tags, tags,
on a kind of attached to the top of the buoys, surface marking system.
There's the U.S. applies elsewhere too is fisherman required to put their permit number,
their license number-- sorry-- on the buoys.
So, you see, that's an identifier. By so if we get certain parts of the gear,
and it really does help us figure out what the gear is.
And there's the thing here, though, is because many fishing industries mark the gear in that regard,
It there can be a bit of a bias, in that that gear is more identifiable,
in that regard and certainly even changes-- notice think back to the graph of gear coming from Alaska
and the white lines, I point them out, going from Hawaii to Alaska, vice versa.
Hawaii gear is not as robust. It may not last as long.
It's maybe more challenging to find Hawaii gear in Alaska, whereas Alaska gear
in many areas, is very robust. It's meant to hold up to Bering Sea storms.
You know, remember Deadliest Catch and it might hold up and be more identifiable.
And I went on for a long one. That's a long answer, but hopefully that helps.
- Thank you.
The next question.
Have you broken out the gear source analyst further, to help target fishery outreach?
For example, the 19 percent long line,
do you have a sense of how much of that is from state near shore fisheries?
We've done some of this and we do, you know, we've done fisherman's workshops
and that is to work with the fishermen, to work together, to gain information, to look at preventative measures.
You know, can we make gear more whale safe.
Things of that nature.
On the long line one, that is a subset that we're only really getting a good grasp of-- or more so of a grasp--
more recently, especially in Hawaii, and this long line here being what's fished north of the islands now
and south of the islands, not generally right around the islands.
This is the tuna and the swordfish and things of that nature.
There's more offshore pelagic long line fisheries.
And this has been a challenge for us because the effort outside, that far abroad, out in the open ocean,
unless they bring it right to us in the Hawaiian Islands,
has been more of a challenge to gather the information.
It's been some of the observer programs the fishermen, themselves,
and the fact that maybe they bring it to where the effort is, where we can get the reports, gain information.
- I think we have time for about one more question and I like this one.
Has the use of citizen science
with the use of apps, such as whale alert or currently being used at the
Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary ocean alert been helpful in getting information for
entanglements and prompt response?
- We have pursued that. I mean, some of the different apps we've asked them to add,
you know, add in the hotline numbers and the different regions and things like that.
Of course, you can have a geocentric now, so you know where the app lies
and I'll call the right hotline number bring it up right hotline number.
We haven't gotten that many reports through the apps. I can't actually think of one, right now,
that have gotten through an app,
but we are pursuing every avenue you know first thing you need to do is reporting.
Again, small-- large needle in a very large haystack.
And we need to get the effort out there to get, in any way possible, get those reports in. So.
- All right well we do have several other questions. If it's okay with you,
we will email them as follow-up and maybe within the next few days or a week,
you can respond to the email and send it out to all registered attendees.
So thanks, everyone, for the great questions and engagement.
I did reach out to the folks that had their hand raised in the control panel. I didn't hear back from anyone.
So I wasn't willing to try that one again, but let's go ahead. I'll take back the presentation
to do a quick wrap-up
and then we'll be on our way
Okay, so,
for those of you that are concerned about all of these URLs,
quickly write them down, don't worry, fear not.
We'll have the the web links that were just up on Ed's screen into a document
available for download ,along with the handout that you can take now through the webinar
or come to the archive space later.
And then, of course, a recording of today's presentation will be made available.
It generally takes us about a week or so to make it available online.
That link will come to you in a follow-up email, so no need to jot it down.
For all of you that are registered attendees, we send you a certificate of attendance
and it gives you one contact hour of professional development.
So for some of you that are collecting hours for continuing education, you can use this as a source.
And I do want to mention that we are taking a break from our webinar series in August.
We will be coming back in September, towards the end of the month
with a presentation by Dr. Richard Coleman
and it's going to be focused on native Hawaiian fishing communities.
So with that, we'll see some of you back in September, after a little break.
Thank you so much, Ed Lyman, for being a engaging presenter, today.
We learned a lot about the whale entanglement issue and the response efforts
and how to build community and and reduce the issue.
And thanks for all of you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to join us on today's webinar.
Thanks, Jezella, for being back in support and with that, it concludes today's presentation.
Thank you so much.