WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.800 Well good morning everybody it's it's nine  o'clock so we're going to go ahead and get   00:00:04.800 --> 00:00:11.760 started I just want to welcome you to the 2021 Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine   00:00:11.760 --> 00:00:17.120 Sanctuary Sanctuary research symposium. My name  is Eden Zang and I'm a research specialist here   00:00:17.120 --> 00:00:21.840 at the Sanctuary and I'm stepping in today I  know some of you expected to see Ed Lyman today   00:00:21.840 --> 00:00:28.240 but he had to step away for a family emergency so  I'll be the session chair this this morning   00:00:28.240 --> 00:00:33.360 or this afternoon wherever you're watching  from and so just wanted to kind of briefly   00:00:33.920 --> 00:00:38.640 introduce everybody to what we're doing the  over the next couple days so the symposium   00:00:39.280 --> 00:00:43.920 our goal is to introduce you to some of the  cutting edge research and conservation work   00:00:43.920 --> 00:00:50.320 that is happening in our Sanctuary waters here not  only by NOAA staff but also by our partners from   00:00:50.320 --> 00:00:55.360 the world of academia and our non-profit sector  and so there's a lot of really interesting stuff   00:00:55.360 --> 00:01:01.360 going on in our local waters here so I wanted to  let people know about it and learn a little bit   00:01:01.360 --> 00:01:06.000 more and have the opportunity to interact with  the researchers that are doing work here in our   00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:11.600 Sanctuary waters so this year's participants  are actually recipients of the National Marine   00:01:11.600 --> 00:01:18.000 Sanctuary Foundation's research mini grants and  those recipients include the Hawai'i Marine Mammal   00:01:18.000 --> 00:01:23.440 Consortium, the University of Hawai'i at Manoa,  the University of Hawai'i at Hilo and Whale   00:01:23.440 --> 00:01:28.480 Trust a local non-profit organization and so  we're going to kick things off today before we   00:01:28.480 --> 00:01:36.800 get into the nitty-gritty of anything we want  to introduce a Kalani Quiocho sorry Kalani Quiocho 00:01:36.800 --> 00:01:41.600 who Kalani actually serves as the cultural  resources coordinator for NOAA's office of   00:01:41.600 --> 00:01:47.520 National Marine Sanctuaries and overseeing  education policy research and indigenous   00:01:47.520 --> 00:01:51.920 and local community engagement for cultural  heritage management within the Pacific Islands   00:01:51.920 --> 00:01:57.600 Region for the National Marine Sanctuary and for  the National Marine Sanctuary of American Samoa   00:01:57.600 --> 00:02:03.920 and Papahanaumokuakea marine national monument  and of course for our local sanctuary here so   00:02:03.920 --> 00:02:08.480 he kind of does it all for the region and  we're very excited to have him with us and   00:02:08.480 --> 00:02:12.400 he's going to start things off today how we  we like to start off our meetings here with   00:02:12.400 --> 00:02:17.760 the tradition traditional Hawaiian oli so with  that I'm going to go ahead and pass it to Kalani. 00:02:17.260 --> 00:02:17.760 Mahalo nui Eden and Aloha mai kakou 00:02:23.360 --> 00:02:27.200 Greetings to you all wherever you come from  wherever you're tuning into and mahalo for   00:02:27.760 --> 00:02:32.720 gathering here in this time and space I'd  like to share with you two oral traditions.   00:02:32.720 --> 00:02:38.400 The first one here you see the translation  and I really want us to gather and think about   00:02:38.400 --> 00:02:43.680 on the intentions of our gathering as well as  the intentions of our individual and collective   00:02:43.680 --> 00:02:47.920 purposes that we are focusing on today  I mean health and well-being of not only   00:02:47.920 --> 00:02:53.280 the kohola, the humpback whale but all of  its relatives and its natural environment   00:02:53.280 --> 00:02:59.600 and maybe remember the resiliency and the  strength of this this being. The second one   00:02:59.600 --> 00:03:17.840 I'll welcome you with the traditional oli aloha  which is a greeting chant to all of you mahalo nui. 00:03:30.400 --> 00:03:31.840 E ho mai Ka ike mai luna mai e 00:03:31.840 --> 00:03:33.840 O na mea huna no'eau o na mele e 00:03:33.840 --> 00:03:35.840 E ho mai e ho mai, e ho mai e 00:03:41.920 --> 00:03:45.840 E ho mai Ka ike mai luna mai e, O na mea huna no'eau o na mele e, E ho mai e ho mai, e ho mai e 00:03:58.960 --> 00:03:59.840 E ho mai Ka ike mai luna mai e, O na mea huna no'eau o na mele e, E ho mai e ho mai, e ho mai e 00:04:49.120 --> 00:04:55.840 Aloha mai kakou, may you have a successful symposium to aloha nui you all mahalo 00:04:59.120 --> 00:05:03.760 Mahalo Kalani thank you so much for for starting  us off that way it's always nice to be able to   00:05:03.760 --> 00:05:10.400 set the intention for the day and and have that  mindset before we get started so just a few   00:05:10.400 --> 00:05:15.600 housekeeping things for the session today  just wanted to know that during the session   00:05:15.600 --> 00:05:19.920 all attendees will be in listen only mode  and you are welcome to type questions   00:05:19.920 --> 00:05:24.400 for the presenters into the chat and the  questions box in the I think it's the bottom of   00:05:24.400 --> 00:05:29.600 the control panel on the right hand side  of your screen and this is also the same area   00:05:29.600 --> 00:05:34.320 that you can let us know if you're having any  technical issues and we will be monitoring that   00:05:34.320 --> 00:05:39.280 throughout for the incoming questions and any  issues you may be having so feel free to use   00:05:39.280 --> 00:05:45.440 that to interact with us and hopefully if  we have time at the end of each presenter's   00:05:46.080 --> 00:05:50.800 talk if we have a couple of minutes we'll take a  questions then and then also we've left some   00:05:50.800 --> 00:05:56.560 time at the end for questions and then of course  I know there's always more questions that we have   00:05:56.560 --> 00:06:01.360 than we have time to get to live here so at  the end of the presentation if there's any   00:06:01.360 --> 00:06:06.480 lingering questions that didn't get answered we  will do our best to send those to the appropriate   00:06:06.480 --> 00:06:11.120 speakers and then have them address those and  then email those out after the presentation.   00:06:12.720 --> 00:06:15.440 So we're going to go ahead and get started   00:06:16.080 --> 00:06:21.280 first here with some opening remarks from John  Armor who is the Director of NOAA's Office   00:06:21.280 --> 00:06:25.520 of National Marine Sanctuaries and so we're very  excited to have him here with us today and he's   00:06:25.520 --> 00:06:30.080 actually served in that role for more than five  years now and the National Marine Sanctuary   00:06:30.080 --> 00:06:37.840 Foundation or sorry National Marine Sanctuary  system spans more than 620 000 square miles   00:06:37.840 --> 00:06:43.200 all the way from American Samoa to the coastal  to coastal Massachusetts and it's dedicated to   00:06:43.200 --> 00:06:48.240 protecting and conserving special areas of our  ocean and great lakes for future generations   00:06:48.240 --> 00:06:53.200 and John is very passionate about supporting  foundational science as well as indigenous wisdom   00:06:53.200 --> 00:06:58.480 to support making wise management decisions  so he's going to start us off today with just   00:06:58.480 --> 00:07:04.640 a couple welcoming remarks so go ahead John  over to you. Alrght Eden thank you so much   00:07:04.640 --> 00:07:11.200 really appreciate that and Kalani as always  really really good way to to set the tone for this   00:07:11.200 --> 00:07:18.240 meeting. Allen, I want to thank you also for inviting  me as well as as the whole humpback whale   00:07:18.240 --> 00:07:21.840 sanctuary team. Let me just start off  by saying I wish I was there with you   00:07:22.720 --> 00:07:26.880 I really do not just because of the weather  and because winter has started to set in here   00:07:27.440 --> 00:07:32.960 in the Washington DC area but because I  recognize that you know you know these kinds   00:07:32.960 --> 00:07:39.840 of meetings really are you know better to  do in person and so much more is is able to   00:07:39.840 --> 00:07:46.400 get accomplished but I really appreciate your  flexibility and your willingness to adapt and to   00:07:46.400 --> 00:07:51.360 make sure this really this really important  gathering is is pulled off so thank you   00:07:51.360 --> 00:07:56.320 for that thank you for taking your time. You know as Eden says science has always   00:07:57.120 --> 00:08:02.240 formed a really key part of the foundation upon  which the national marine sanctuary is built   00:08:03.040 --> 00:08:06.400 along with traditional knowledge  and wisdom and community engagement   00:08:06.400 --> 00:08:11.040 science really does form the basis  for how we carry out our mandate   00:08:11.040 --> 00:08:16.000 and and we conduct scientific research in  sanctuaries all across the sanctuary system   00:08:16.560 --> 00:08:22.240 for really three important reasons at least  in my mind we we characterize the places we're   00:08:22.240 --> 00:08:28.400 responsible for managing and survey what's there  you know gathering baseline data we have   00:08:28.400 --> 00:08:33.840 to monitor and detect trends and key resources or  changes that are part of larger global processes   00:08:34.400 --> 00:08:39.840 and then we have to give give scientific  basis for making important conservation decisions   00:08:41.120 --> 00:08:46.240 and and and you know in in Hawaiian Islands  Humpback whale sanctuary there's so many   00:08:46.240 --> 00:08:51.440 great research projects going on right now  through surveys acoustic monitoring and tagging   00:08:51.440 --> 00:08:57.280 as a community we really are carrying out  some cutting-edge research documenting trends in   00:08:57.280 --> 00:09:02.800 whales distribution and abundance studying their  behavior while they're there in sanctuary waters   00:09:02.800 --> 00:09:08.080 and monitoring potential human impacts the health  and risk assessment efforts in particular have a   00:09:08.080 --> 00:09:13.680 big impact as well as our disentanglement efforts  they go way beyond just cutting whales free   00:09:14.640 --> 00:09:20.400 there's a great deal of science behind that effort  as we try to determine what the entanglement gear   00:09:20.400 --> 00:09:26.240 is where it came from how we got the animal got it  tangled who gets entangled addressing broad-based   00:09:26.240 --> 00:09:32.800 risk reduction for animal industry ocean users etc  it's just so important and there's so much great   00:09:32.800 --> 00:09:39.840 work going on right now but I have to acknowledge  you know we have we have to realize that our need   00:09:39.840 --> 00:09:45.120 for good science and supporting this sanctuary and  all sanctuaries really for that matter cannot be   00:09:45.120 --> 00:09:51.360 addressed by any one entity NOAA can't do this  alone and we are a community of organizations   00:09:51.360 --> 00:09:56.400 and partner researchers all working towards the  same goal and in my mind that is to provide the   00:09:56.400 --> 00:10:02.800 best and most relevant information to making  smart decisions so let me I'll end it there Eden   00:10:03.440 --> 00:10:10.480 and again just thank you for allowing me to just  say a few words of thanks at the beginning of this   00:10:10.480 --> 00:10:17.280 I look forward to hearing the reports from  this workshop and I will turn it back over to you.   00:10:17.280 --> 00:10:23.840 So thanks alright great thank you so much John  I really appreciate you being here this morning   00:10:23.840 --> 00:10:29.440 and being part of the symposium so with that  we're gonna actually one more opening remark   00:10:29.440 --> 00:10:35.520 before we get into the first presentation and  that's going to be from Allen Tom and Allen is the   00:10:35.520 --> 00:10:40.560 Superintendent of the Hawaiian Islands Humpback  Whale National Marine Sanctuary so over to you   00:10:40.560 --> 00:10:47.920 Allen. So mahalo Eden. Aloha everybody so John  did a great overview of why we do research and   00:10:47.920 --> 00:10:52.880 for the humpback whale sanctuary I just kind  of want to go back you know 28 years or   00:10:52.880 --> 00:10:57.440 so because I'm looking at the attendees and I see  some names of people who were around at that time   00:10:58.000 --> 00:11:04.640 and they will remember that the sanctuary  designation at that time was not easy it was   00:11:04.640 --> 00:11:09.360 difficult people were saying why do you need to  protect the whale it's already protected so what   00:11:09.360 --> 00:11:14.400 is the sanctuary going to bring to the table and  one of the things that we would always say was   00:11:15.680 --> 00:11:21.360 that we would help support education and we would  help support research. So today's symposium is   00:11:21.360 --> 00:11:26.720 about that and I do want to make a quick shout  out to Miss Janice Sessing who I see on the   00:11:26.720 --> 00:11:33.840 line she is with NOAA she's the one who hired  me into this position and I'm still here 28 years   00:11:33.840 --> 00:11:38.960 28 years later. I am the superintendent of  your humpback whale national marine sanctuary   00:11:38.960 --> 00:11:44.480 and I also see Debbie Ferrari on the line she  was one of the original researchers out here   00:11:44.480 --> 00:11:48.800 and I remember at that time saying that  the humpback whale sanctuary will support   00:11:49.360 --> 00:11:54.800 other types of humpback whale research going on  within the sanctuary waters. So I'm glad that we   00:11:54.800 --> 00:12:01.440 were able to do that this year by providing some  mini grants through the Natural Marine Sanctuary   00:12:01.440 --> 00:12:08.320 Foundation to be awarded to the four speakers that  you will hear today and tomorrow that doesn't mean   00:12:08.320 --> 00:12:13.200 that there isn't still great research going on  within the marine sanctuary waters out here in   00:12:13.200 --> 00:12:19.280 Hawai'i as a matter of fact we had nine very good  applications and I hope that we were we will be   00:12:19.280 --> 00:12:25.680 able to fund them continually through the next  couple of years that we will continue this and we   00:12:25.680 --> 00:12:31.920 will also be able to continue this symposium.  So again this symposium is about getting them   00:12:31.920 --> 00:12:37.440 information out to the public on why we are doing  research. What is that research going to go for   00:12:37.440 --> 00:12:44.240 and I do want to make a note because Kalani's  opening was a culturally based opening is that   00:12:44.240 --> 00:12:49.520 cultural research is something that the sanctuary  also wants to look into in the near future   00:12:49.520 --> 00:12:55.520 so with that I just want to say mahalo to  all of you for joining us and a big mahalo   00:12:55.520 --> 00:13:01.760 to Dr. Marc Lammers, Eden, Ed Lyman and of  course Cindy Among-Serrao for really pulling   00:13:01.760 --> 00:13:07.760 this symposium together and I will turn it  back over to you Eden or is it going to Marc   00:13:09.360 --> 00:13:15.440 I will go ahead and take it briefly before  I pass it over to Marc. So hi there I am   00:13:16.400 --> 00:13:21.920 just the voice from the dark so remarkably which  never happens in the science world we're ahead of   00:13:21.920 --> 00:13:25.920 schedule which will be good because we might  have some time for some questions in there   00:13:25.920 --> 00:13:30.880 so first and foremost the first presentation  that we're going to be kicking off with today   00:13:30.880 --> 00:13:36.000 is actually Dr. Marc Lammers and myself as i  mentioned before I'm a research specialist   00:13:36.000 --> 00:13:41.360 here at the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale  National Marine Sanctuary and I managed several   00:13:41.360 --> 00:13:48.320 of the sanctuary's research projects including  vessel surveys and have been a big kind of   00:13:49.040 --> 00:13:54.000 leader with our Sancsound project which you'll  hear about more in our presentation so I wanted   00:13:54.000 --> 00:14:00.320 to introduce Dr. Mark Lammers though first and he is a research ecologist here at the Hawaiian   00:14:00.320 --> 00:14:05.600 Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary  and he's also an affiliate faculty member with the   00:14:05.600 --> 00:14:11.680 Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology and co-found  founder of Ocean wide Science Institute. He leads   00:14:11.680 --> 00:14:17.840 the sanctuary's research activities focused  on understanding the population ecology and   00:14:17.840 --> 00:14:24.080 behavior of Hawaii's humpback whales and today he  and I will be speaking about research the research   00:14:24.080 --> 00:14:29.840 activities that we're involved in here at the  sanctuary so with that I will pass it over to Marc. 00:14:31.040 --> 00:14:38.400 Okay aloha andwelcome everybody and so  yeah before I get started I want to acknowledge   00:14:38.400 --> 00:14:42.800 the rest of the research team here at the  sanctuary Eden who you've you already know   00:14:42.800 --> 00:14:47.840 and also Anke Kugler and Jesse Kittle and so  today I'll be talking to you a little bit about   00:14:47.840 --> 00:14:53.680 some of the research activities that we're engaged  in here at the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale sanctuary   00:14:54.400 --> 00:15:00.320 and we can basically divide those activities  into four four general categories one is acoustic   00:15:00.320 --> 00:15:06.400 monitoring the other is are the surveys that we  conduct both off from our vessel and from shore    00:15:06.400 --> 00:15:10.720 the whale tagging work we do to understand whale  behavior and then the various collaborations that   00:15:10.720 --> 00:15:15.280 we're involved in with partners in academia and  the nonprofit sector and other government agencies.   00:15:16.400 --> 00:15:21.040 So we'll be touching on all of these a little  bit so we'll start off by talking a little   00:15:21.040 --> 00:15:26.160 bit about the acoustic monitoring so we've  been involved in the country's been involved in   00:15:26.160 --> 00:15:32.240 acoustic monitoring now for for a number of years  beginning in about 2014 we began deploying   00:15:32.800 --> 00:15:38.080 acoustic bottom water acoustic recorders  known as ecological acoustic recorders off the   00:15:38.080 --> 00:15:44.560 West Maui coastline as well as South Maui in both  shallow waters and deeper waters and and we're we   00:15:44.560 --> 00:15:50.960 do acoustic monitoring because we're interested  in monitoring the the song of male humpback   00:15:50.960 --> 00:15:55.920 whales and for those of you who maybe are  not familiar with the humpback whales and   00:15:56.640 --> 00:16:07.840 humpback whale singing this is a  short clip of what that sounds like 00:16:18.560 --> 00:16:22.800 so we're interested in monitoring humpback  whale singing because it can tell us a lot   00:16:22.800 --> 00:16:27.840 about the comings and goings of of whales  in our Sanctuary waters so for example   00:16:27.840 --> 00:16:32.080 when when whales first start to you know come  to Hawai'i there's relatively few of them   00:16:32.080 --> 00:16:36.480 and there's relatively few whale singing so  that produces you know only a little bit of   00:16:36.480 --> 00:16:41.840 a hump you know of song in the background but as  more whales come in the volume of singing starts   00:16:41.840 --> 00:16:47.920 to increase and so we can use those patterns of  increase and decreases in in well-singing activity   00:16:47.920 --> 00:16:52.880 to basically monitor when when when whales  are first arriving when the season is peaking   00:16:53.440 --> 00:16:58.880 when when the whale starts to wind down and  if we monitor over multiple years we can start to   00:16:58.880 --> 00:17:04.160 look at trends from one year to the next in terms  of actual you know whale relative whale abundance   00:17:04.160 --> 00:17:09.280 and that's what this plot here is is showing you  here on the on the left this is showing you the   00:17:09.280 --> 00:17:14.960 the chorusing level so in other words all the mind  sum total of all the the whale song that we that   00:17:14.960 --> 00:17:21.760 we record on the uh on the vertical axis you see  decibel levels so the amount of acoustic energy   00:17:21.760 --> 00:17:27.520 that's actually in the water and on the horizontal  axis you see uh the time of the of the year and   00:17:27.520 --> 00:17:32.080 what you can see these are data now for the seven  years that we've been monitoring you can see that   00:17:32.080 --> 00:17:36.080 there's been quite a bit of variation from one  year to the next both in terms of timing but   00:17:36.080 --> 00:17:41.200 also in terms of the the actual acoustic energy  that we've that we've recorded from year to year   00:17:41.200 --> 00:17:44.880 and this matches up quite well with some  of the the trends that we've been observing   00:17:44.880 --> 00:17:51.280 in in terms of whale abundance so beginning  in about um 2015-16 we started to see   00:17:51.920 --> 00:17:58.080 a a decline in the number of whales that were  coming to the Hawaiian islands and and this was   00:17:58.080 --> 00:18:02.640 reflected in the chorusing levels that we that  we were we were monitoring that we're recording   00:18:03.280 --> 00:18:09.360 and and that trend persisted for for for  about three years and then beginning in 2018-19   00:18:09.360 --> 00:18:14.080 it started to go back up again and and if  you now look at the most recent data so that   00:18:14.080 --> 00:18:20.720 hatch line and you compare it to to the the  light blue line uh from 2014-15 you can see   00:18:20.720 --> 00:18:26.480 that the chorusing levels have have returned back  to to about what they were about about six years   00:18:26.480 --> 00:18:31.600 ago or so so you know showing kind of a positive  trend of you know recovery in terms of the whale   00:18:31.600 --> 00:18:37.120 numbers that we're seeing here and so if you're  interested in learning a little bit more about   00:18:37.120 --> 00:18:41.440 this this work and how we do it we published a  paper on this in the Journal Endangered Species   00:18:41.440 --> 00:18:46.000 research a few months ago so I would refer  you to that if you like to get more details   00:18:47.360 --> 00:18:52.160 but monitoring sound in our backyard so  to speak is is not the only thing we do   00:18:52.160 --> 00:18:58.080 we are also involved in acoustic monitoring of a  much larger geographic scale via what's known as   00:18:58.080 --> 00:19:02.480 the sang sound project and as Eden mentioned she's  very heavily involved in this project as well as   00:19:02.480 --> 00:19:06.320 some of the vessel survey work so I'm going to  hand it over to her to tell you a little bit more   00:19:06.320 --> 00:19:14.000 about these projects so Eden do you wanna go ahead ?  Great thank you so much Marc. So as Marc mentioned   00:19:14.000 --> 00:19:19.520 actually the Sancsound project has been a  big part of our work for the past several years   00:19:19.520 --> 00:19:25.200 and what it is is it's a multi-year effort to  oh can you go back to that there you go sorry   00:19:25.200 --> 00:19:31.040 it's a multi-year effort to monitor underwater  sound in our National Marine Sanctuary system   00:19:31.040 --> 00:19:37.440 and the goal of the project was to provide  some standardized baseline acoustic or data or   00:19:37.440 --> 00:19:43.200 information on the acoustic conditions within our  sanctuaries and the reason why this is important   00:19:43.200 --> 00:19:48.640 is because it helps us to contextualize and to  understand what sounds are being introduced what   00:19:48.640 --> 00:19:54.960 sounds are being produced in our Sanctuary waters  and by what sources and nationwide monitoring   00:19:54.960 --> 00:20:00.080 occurred at seven different national marine  sanctuaries and one marine national monument so   00:20:00.080 --> 00:20:04.480 the large map on the right upper right kind  of shows you all the sanctuaries nationwide   00:20:04.480 --> 00:20:09.840 and then the small inset of the Hawaiian islands  here it's kind of neat because you can see that we   00:20:09.840 --> 00:20:15.200 had a quite a bit of coverage in our archipelago  all of those red dots are the different monitoring   00:20:15.200 --> 00:20:20.160 locations that we had acoustic recorders  at and it spanned over 1400 kilometers so   00:20:20.160 --> 00:20:24.400 we really had some good coverage here in our  region which was exciting next slide please 00:20:26.480 --> 00:20:31.120 and so of course being the Hawaiian Islands  Humpback Whale sanctuary we were interested   00:20:31.120 --> 00:20:37.440 in how humpback whales were utilizing our waters  and the habitat in our region and so we we looked   00:20:37.440 --> 00:20:41.600 at the acoustic data to see and this is just one  of the many things that we looked at but one of   00:20:41.600 --> 00:20:47.040 the only things we can have time to get into today  but we looked at the acoustic data to see if any   00:20:47.040 --> 00:20:52.960 trends emerged what we could see from the data and  in fact we did see several trends from the data   00:20:52.960 --> 00:21:00.080 not only over time but geographic differences  and uh different trends based on that so the first   00:21:00.080 --> 00:21:04.160 Ill kind of direct you to that bottom left  slide I know things are kind of small probably   00:21:04.160 --> 00:21:09.760 on people's screen but that's data from the  Maui recorder that we have and unfortunately   00:21:09.760 --> 00:21:14.080 the third year data we had an instrument  malfunction so we don't have to compare to that   00:21:14.080 --> 00:21:19.440 but you can see that coursing levels like  mark mentioned before had quite a bit a   00:21:19.440 --> 00:21:28.000 big increase from the 2018-2019 season to the  2019-2020 season so we could see that over time   00:21:28.000 --> 00:21:33.840 the the whale song I'm in that frequency band  was increasing year over year and then over   00:21:33.840 --> 00:21:39.280 on the bottom right over at Hawaii island you  can see that actually the peak of the season   00:21:39.280 --> 00:21:45.600 was different from year to year so again that two  2020 breeding season it was a later peak in the   00:21:45.600 --> 00:21:50.800 season and then this past season that we had it  was a little bit earlier so there's difference in   00:21:50.800 --> 00:21:56.000 and when the whales are arriving and departing  our waters and then finally the the top three   00:21:56.000 --> 00:22:00.080 locations it's kind of interesting to see that  they're instead of just one peak in the season   00:22:00.080 --> 00:22:05.360 we're seeing multiple smaller peaks throughout  and so that suggests that these are areas where   00:22:05.360 --> 00:22:11.360 maybe the animals are just moving through and not  really hanging around like they do here and Maui   00:22:11.360 --> 00:22:15.520 as we're seeing off Hawaii island so very  different in how we experience it there so you   00:22:15.520 --> 00:22:21.360 can see we can get a lot of information from this  acoustic data and it's really valuable for us   00:22:21.360 --> 00:22:26.240 to be able to understand kind of  the behavior and the movement patterns   00:22:26.240 --> 00:22:32.880 everything that the whales are doing here so very  very interesting to see that next slide please and   00:22:32.880 --> 00:22:39.520 so the other project that I lead here are our  vessel surveys and the vessel surveys began to   00:22:39.520 --> 00:22:45.280 really complement our acoustic data collection  and so in 2018 we started these vessel surveys   00:22:45.840 --> 00:22:50.560 and they we wanted to be able to visually  validate the presence of the whales that we were   00:22:50.560 --> 00:22:57.280 picking up on the recorders and so what we do on  these transects is we go out and we you can see   00:22:57.280 --> 00:23:02.640 on that middle picture there that's our transect  lines so we follow those systematic transect lines   00:23:02.640 --> 00:23:08.080 and we count the whales along those and during  each season we are able to complete about eight to   00:23:08.080 --> 00:23:14.000 ten of those and so once that data is collected we  bring it back here to the office and then distance   00:23:14.000 --> 00:23:20.560 sampling methodologies are applied to that to help  us estimate what whale abundance and densities are   00:23:20.560 --> 00:23:26.480 here in our water so whale density meaning how  many whales are there per square kilometer and   00:23:26.480 --> 00:23:31.760 this is helpful to help us track and quantify  the whale numbers and in the abundance in   00:23:31.760 --> 00:23:39.280 our study area of West Maui within seasons and  between seasons next slide please so in total   00:23:39.280 --> 00:23:46.000 over the three years we were able to conduct 26  surveys and on the top there you're seeing   00:23:46.000 --> 00:23:51.440 density by day and on the bottom you're seeing  density by season so in general you're seeing   00:23:51.440 --> 00:23:58.320 that yes the the numbers are generally increasing  over these past three years however we are seeing   00:23:58.320 --> 00:24:06.720 fluctuations in that increase and so 2019 20  does have our largest or highest density of whales   00:24:06.720 --> 00:24:11.600 but that's probably attributed to the fact that  there was that later peak in the season and so   00:24:11.600 --> 00:24:16.000 it could have affected that you know it was  it was different from the the previous and the   00:24:16.000 --> 00:24:21.040 latter season so again this is just you know  super high level stuff but you're if you're more   00:24:21.040 --> 00:24:25.360 interest if you're interested in finding out more  about this um there is a report that we published   00:24:25.360 --> 00:24:32.560 this year and that is located in our conservation  series um for noaa and it goes into depth about   00:24:32.560 --> 00:24:36.640 more about this survey work so if you're  interested we'll either link it in the chat or   00:24:36.640 --> 00:24:46.240 send it out with the questions later and with  that i'll go ahead and pass it back to Marc. 00:24:46.240 --> 00:24:52.560 Okay great thank you Eden. So up just  a minute I gotta control my screen here 00:24:54.880 --> 00:24:58.800 okay sorry my screen is looking a  little little funny on my end but    00:24:59.520 --> 00:25:06.560 so the other the other another area  that we're heavily involved in is is doing   00:25:06.560 --> 00:25:11.600 tagging of humpback whales and so for  that we we use instrumented suction   00:25:11.600 --> 00:25:27.840 cup tags that we deploy on on the backs  of whales using a long pole as like this 00:25:29.200 --> 00:25:35.200 and these tags record a wide range of different  types of data they they obtain sound so not only   00:25:35.200 --> 00:25:39.360 but not only the sound that the whales make  also the sound that the whales are exposed   00:25:39.360 --> 00:25:44.320 to themselves they record the whale's movement we  are what are known as triaxial accelerometers and   00:25:44.320 --> 00:25:49.760 magnetometers they record the the whale's dive  profile and in some cases they also record video   00:25:49.760 --> 00:25:55.120 and I'll be showing you a clip of some some video  that was recorded from one of our tags at the end   00:25:55.120 --> 00:26:00.400 of the presentation and we use these data to study  a wide range of different types of whale behavior   00:26:01.040 --> 00:26:06.960 also communication the types of noise  exposure that they experience and also how they   00:26:06.960 --> 00:26:11.840 use the sanctuary habitat I'm just going to kind  of you know just give you an example or highlight   00:26:11.840 --> 00:26:17.760 you know one particular you know study that  we're we're engaged in and that is looking at just   00:26:17.760 --> 00:26:24.880 whale activity while while our whales are here  in Hawai'i so as many of you probably uh are well   00:26:24.880 --> 00:26:30.160 aware whale engage whales engage in a wide range  of activities while they're here on the breeding   00:26:30.160 --> 00:26:34.880 grounds you know that range from you know vigorous  competition between males for access to females   00:26:34.880 --> 00:26:39.680 to various types of displays to giving birth  and rearing their young to in some cases simply   00:26:39.680 --> 00:26:44.240 resting now it's important to keep in mind that  when when they're here they're doing all these   00:26:44.240 --> 00:26:49.200 activities while fasting and basically relying  on the stored energy that they've accumulated   00:26:49.200 --> 00:26:55.200 during the summer feeding months however we  know very little still about how whales manage   00:26:55.760 --> 00:27:00.800 these resources while they're in Hawa'ii so there  are some basic questions like for example you know   00:27:00.800 --> 00:27:06.720 how are periods of high activity balanced with  rest that we just don't know the answer to we   00:27:06.720 --> 00:27:10.640 also don't know simple things like you know  do daytime and nighttime activities differ   00:27:11.280 --> 00:27:17.040 and you know the the tag data are ideal for you  know examining such questions because these   00:27:17.040 --> 00:27:22.560 these instrumented tags basically go wherever the  whale goes so you know for example you know we can   00:27:22.560 --> 00:27:27.280 only observe whales from the surface and we can't  observe them at night so so we're not very well   00:27:27.280 --> 00:27:32.880 equipped to answer some of these questions but the  tags can can give us great insights into entities   00:27:32.880 --> 00:27:39.040 into these types of issues so just to sort of  highlight just some initial results that we've   00:27:39.040 --> 00:27:43.920 obtained so far that are you know already kind of  you know really showing some interesting patterns   00:27:43.920 --> 00:27:49.760 so over the past three years we've tagged 32  whales in various different types of social roles   00:27:49.760 --> 00:27:57.120 that's given us about 174 hours of of tagged  data and so we've we look at the the data and we   00:27:57.120 --> 00:28:03.120 use different types of proxies you know  for to estimate or to estimate whale   00:28:03.120 --> 00:28:09.600 activity levels and so we look at things like dive  duration the dive depth the breathing rates and    00:28:09.600 --> 00:28:14.800 quantity spectrodynamic body acceleration which  is basically a measure of the pitch yaw and roll   00:28:14.800 --> 00:28:20.000 of of the whale and and we can we can look  at all these things and basically infer   00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:24.560 you know what you know how active the whales  are so on these bottom graphs what you see   00:28:24.560 --> 00:28:31.680 are on the on the far left you see the number of  surfacings per per minute minute the whale spent   00:28:31.680 --> 00:28:38.080 spent diving and on the y on x-axis you see the  different hours of the day in the middle you see   00:28:38.080 --> 00:28:45.760 this this metric of VeDBA and then on the right  you see the minutes of diving below five meters   00:28:45.760 --> 00:28:50.880 and what you can see in all these three different  metrics is that there seems to be kind of a   00:28:50.880 --> 00:28:56.400 behavioral shift occurring right around sunset  and so so this is you know it's it's interesting   00:28:56.400 --> 00:29:02.080 for us because this is something that we you know  we hadn't seen before we couldn't see this before   00:29:02.080 --> 00:29:07.520 because you know we're not out in the evenings uh  or at night looking at a whale behavior and so   00:29:07.520 --> 00:29:11.280 you can see that these tags are already kind of  you know shedding some interesting light into   00:29:11.280 --> 00:29:15.200 what you know what whales might be doing  differently during the nighttime hours or at   00:29:15.200 --> 00:29:20.000 least during the the evening hours we can't really  speak to the hours after midnight because we just   00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:25.600 don't have a lot of data past midnight our tags  usually stay on for you know maybe six to eight   00:29:25.600 --> 00:29:30.880 hours in some cases they stay on for you know more  than 24 hours but but you know we need to   00:29:30.880 --> 00:29:35.360 collect more data to to be able to say more about  what's happening into the later night hours   00:29:36.560 --> 00:29:41.760 so I'll kind of leave the tagging work here  we'll go back to it a little bit towards the end   00:29:42.640 --> 00:29:47.040 but now I want to kind of switch over to talk  about some of the some of the collaborations that   00:29:47.040 --> 00:29:52.320 we're involved in with various partners and the  first one I'll talk about is the partnership that   00:29:52.320 --> 00:29:56.800 we have with the Nature Conservancy, the University of  Hawai'i and the State of Hawai'i as well as a number   00:29:56.800 --> 00:30:02.160 of different local non-profit organizations  and that is to conduct acoustic monitoring in   00:30:02.160 --> 00:30:08.800 two marine life conservation districts on Maui and  off of Lanai and so for this we've again deployed   00:30:08.800 --> 00:30:15.280 these our EARS off of Honolua bay on Maui  and then Manele bay and Hupolu bay off of Lanai   00:30:15.920 --> 00:30:20.960 and the goal here is to do acoustic monitoring  for both human activity in terms of like vessel   00:30:20.960 --> 00:30:26.880 traffic and so on but also monitor the presence  of spinner dolphins which use these these these   00:30:26.880 --> 00:30:32.400 areas these bays for for resting purposes and so  what we're interested in and understanding is how   00:30:33.120 --> 00:30:40.320 as the COVID restrictions lift and more commercial  activity is is starting to take place again and   00:30:40.320 --> 00:30:45.040 you know how this might be affecting the the  dolphins that are uh that are using these areas   00:30:45.040 --> 00:30:49.440 so COVID kind of presented this natural  experiment for us where we're able to   00:30:49.440 --> 00:30:54.240 look at you know what animals are doing  you know during restrictions and and um and   00:30:55.200 --> 00:30:59.120 and following the the lifting of these  restrictions if you're interested in   00:30:59.120 --> 00:31:03.600 learning more about how we're doing this acoustic  monitoring I would refer you to a paper that   00:31:04.480 --> 00:31:09.440 my PhD student Megan Mcgilligan and i  published just recently on some   00:31:09.440 --> 00:31:13.040 of the acoustic monitoring that's that's  been done in the past in the Maui region. 00:31:15.200 --> 00:31:21.440 Another collaborative effort that we engaged  in this summer was to characterize the acoustic   00:31:21.440 --> 00:31:26.640 signature of so-called e-foils and if you're not  familiar with what an e-foil is it's basically   00:31:28.560 --> 00:31:36.800 kind of a surfboard that has a hydrophobic and  a um and a small electric motor and people can   00:31:36.800 --> 00:31:40.640 you know ride these and you know kind of ride  them almost like a like a hovercraft basically   00:31:41.280 --> 00:31:44.720 and these have become quite popular here  in Maui there's a couple of companies that   00:31:44.720 --> 00:31:49.280 are renting these out to tourists and you know  not surprisingly you know some concerns have   00:31:49.280 --> 00:31:52.880 arisen about you know how these might affect  you know whales and potentially other you know   00:31:52.880 --> 00:31:59.280 other wildlife and so what we're interested  in doing is characterizing the the acoustic   00:31:59.280 --> 00:32:04.080 properties of these e-foils because we just didn't  know much about them they're pretty pretty novel   00:32:04.080 --> 00:32:10.240 and so we did is we conducted a kind of a simple  study where we deployed a temporary acoustic   00:32:10.240 --> 00:32:17.040 mooring off of Maaleaa Bay and then we we ran both  our own vessel the bus the research vessel and   00:32:17.040 --> 00:32:22.080 the efoil at sort of predetermined distances from  the acoustic mooring so that we could characterize   00:32:22.080 --> 00:32:27.440 what both of them sound like and so just to  kind of not to get into the details too much but   00:32:27.440 --> 00:32:32.400 you know the take home is that you know the or  the more traditional outboard driven vessel has   00:32:32.400 --> 00:32:35.760 a very broadband energy spanning  you know a wide range of frequencies   00:32:36.400 --> 00:32:43.120 whereas the efoil has much more narrow band  acoustic properties so it's much more tonal the   00:32:43.120 --> 00:32:50.000 acoustic this acoustic energy is focused in very  specific frequencies so they do sound different    00:32:50.000 --> 00:32:56.880 now whether efoils are somehow you know a problem  more bothersome to to to whales than than vessels   00:32:56.880 --> 00:33:00.400 that we don't know at this point yet so that  we'll have to take you know we'll have to do some   00:33:00.400 --> 00:33:04.560 follow-up studies or you know that'll have to be  looked at you know more closely down the road 00:33:06.640 --> 00:33:11.920 another collaboration that we've been  involved in for the past couple years is 00:33:12.800 --> 00:33:17.360 work working with our partners at the Scripps  Institution of Oceanography this is work led by   00:33:17.360 --> 00:33:25.200 Dr. Aaron Thoad and his recently graduated   PhD student Ludo Tenorio and also Greenwich   00:33:25.200 --> 00:33:30.400 sciences as well as some local partners that have  helped greatly with with logistics and here we   00:33:30.400 --> 00:33:35.520 are using what are known as DASAR's these are  directional autonomous seafloor acoustic recorders   00:33:35.520 --> 00:33:39.360 and they're very similar to the ears and that  they record they sit on the bottom and they record   00:33:39.360 --> 00:33:44.480 sound but in addition to recording sound pressure  they're also vector sensors meaning that they can   00:33:44.480 --> 00:33:50.160 provide the bearing or the direction of the sound  source and being able to have the the bearing of   00:33:50.160 --> 00:33:55.280 the source kind of opens up a whole new dimension  in terms of understanding um you know things like   00:33:55.280 --> 00:33:59.920 you know humpback whale singing which is what  we're interested in so we've deployed you   00:33:59.920 --> 00:34:06.000 know three DASAR's over the past two seasons  along the west Maui coast and what I want   00:34:06.000 --> 00:34:11.280 to show you is is sort of what we can learn from  from these types of from these types of data so   00:34:11.280 --> 00:34:16.240 in the middle there you see again a spectrogram  showing whale song so this is you know   00:34:16.240 --> 00:34:22.640 you have frequency on the on the vertical  axis time on the on the horizontal axis   00:34:23.200 --> 00:34:30.160 and the color of the of the of of the the song  units in the case sort of intensity and you know   00:34:30.160 --> 00:34:33.920 from this you can see that there's you know a  lot of whale song but you can't really tell you   00:34:33.920 --> 00:34:38.720 know how many whales are singing or or where they  really are relative to one another but because the   00:34:38.720 --> 00:34:44.880 destars provide bearing information we can create  what's known as an azigram so this is now the   00:34:44.880 --> 00:34:49.840 same data and the same song units except now the  color instead of you know revealing intensity   00:34:49.840 --> 00:34:54.240 reveal the bearing so the distance the  the direction sorry the direction from which   00:34:54.240 --> 00:34:58.560 the the the sound is coming from so  you can see on the right you see that   00:34:58.560 --> 00:35:02.960 that color that color scale it you know each  different color indicates a different bearing   00:35:02.960 --> 00:35:07.040 and so from this you can see that the the  from just looking at the different colors   00:35:07.600 --> 00:35:13.360 that there are about you know five or six whales  that are contributing to to this whale song now   00:35:13.360 --> 00:35:18.720 as I mentioned because these are vector sensors  and can you know provide bearings we can also   00:35:18.720 --> 00:35:24.320 use triangulation with these sensors and you  know if we deploy them in this array fashion like   00:35:24.320 --> 00:35:30.880 we have and when you do that you can you can  start to you know recreate you know the the   00:35:30.880 --> 00:35:36.000 same activity in in time of these humpback  whales so here you can see kind of 00:35:38.400 --> 00:35:45.520 an animation these are actually the real data  of of of how whales were singing in that   00:35:45.520 --> 00:35:50.720 area for for for you know for a certain period of  time and you can see from this that there are you   00:35:50.720 --> 00:35:54.640 know if they're five whale singing four of  them were relatively stationary which is pretty   00:35:54.640 --> 00:36:00.880 typical whereas one was was basically a traveling  singer he kind of traveled to the southeast and   00:36:00.880 --> 00:36:06.240 this this you know this kind of information  is is really you know is really amazing to us   00:36:06.240 --> 00:36:11.040 because it now is allowing us to look at you know  humpback whale singing behavior in a whole new way   00:36:11.920 --> 00:36:15.520 and so we have a lot of different questions that  we'll be interested in you know sort of asking of   00:36:15.520 --> 00:36:19.600 these data to try to help us understand you  know some of the dynamics of whale singing 00:36:22.720 --> 00:36:27.920 and then the last two collaborations that I'll  just quickly highlight are collaborations that   00:36:27.920 --> 00:36:35.280 are looking at just whale acoustic behavior  the first is a a project that we're involved in   00:36:36.640 --> 00:36:43.360 with a PhD student from Syracuse university and  her mentor Dr Susan Parks as well as Dr Adam Pack   00:36:43.360 --> 00:36:48.080 at the University of Hawaii Hilo and what we're  interested in here is to try to understand how   00:36:48.080 --> 00:36:55.360 juvenile males learn to sing so you know at  some point males begin to display for song   00:36:55.360 --> 00:36:59.600 and some you know often times that's before they  become mature but we don't know at this point   00:36:59.600 --> 00:37:04.240 whether you know one day the whale just you know  just starts to sing and knows how to sing and sort   00:37:04.240 --> 00:37:08.000 of it's ingrained in it or whether there's some  sort of a learning phase like there is for many   00:37:08.000 --> 00:37:12.560 other animals that are learning you know new  behaviors and displays and so on so so we're   00:37:12.560 --> 00:37:18.240 using tagging to to basically understand and  tagging of juvenile whales to understand what   00:37:18.240 --> 00:37:24.880 that acoustic learning process might be the other  study is looking at the social signaling behavior   00:37:25.760 --> 00:37:29.920 of different social groups and here this is a  collaboration with a master's student Jessica   00:37:29.920 --> 00:37:35.200 Carvalho at the University of the Algarve in  Portugal as well as Dr Adam Pack and here we're   00:37:35.200 --> 00:37:40.720 interested to understand you know how social calls  are used in different social groups and so she   00:37:40.720 --> 00:37:45.440 actually just submitted her master's thesis  and so you can see this plot on the lower right   00:37:45.440 --> 00:37:51.120 hand corner it these are the various different  types of calls social calls that she was able to   00:37:51.120 --> 00:37:55.360 to find in in the data and you can see the  different circles represent the different types   00:37:55.360 --> 00:38:01.280 of social compositions so dyads or pairs or whales  competitive pods and mother calf escorts and you   00:38:01.280 --> 00:38:07.600 can see that there are some calls that are that are shared among all you know three different   00:38:07.600 --> 00:38:12.240 social groups whereas others are only shared by  two or in some cases they're only produced in   00:38:12.240 --> 00:38:18.080 within one type of you know social pod so so these kinds of data are starting to kind of   00:38:18.080 --> 00:38:23.440 give us more insight into into types of signaling  these social calls which we know still very little   00:38:23.440 --> 00:38:26.960 about and it's starting to help us understand more  you know the context in which they're occurring   00:38:28.480 --> 00:38:32.960 and with that I just want to I'm going  to finish up by showing you a brief video   00:38:32.960 --> 00:38:38.240 as I mentioned earlier about some of the some  of the information that we're able to start   00:38:38.240 --> 00:38:44.320 gleaning from these video enabled tags and so I  just want to kind of go through you know just a   00:38:44.320 --> 00:38:47.840 few minutes of the deployment to kind of show you  some of the highlights and I'll kind of talk talk   00:38:47.840 --> 00:38:54.000 my way through it so here here the tag is still  on the pole and it's being deployed on the rail   00:38:55.040 --> 00:39:04.080 so here we go so this this was a tag deployed  on uh the primary escorts with a mother and calf   00:39:04.800 --> 00:39:12.720 there was a you can see the calf there in the  upper right there was a a secondary escort there   00:39:12.720 --> 00:39:19.760 and in fact here you'll see our our primary  escort is giving them some warnings to to   00:39:20.560 --> 00:39:27.040 to back away you can see them kind of you know  try to chase them off and the secondary escort   00:39:27.040 --> 00:39:33.920 there kind of you know beating a bit of a  retreat but that wasn't I guess enough   00:39:33.920 --> 00:39:40.080 of a warning and so now you see our primary  escort get more agitated starting to blow bubbles   00:39:41.360 --> 00:39:47.120 you can also hear some sounds social sounds  that I'll be described and and then he finally   00:39:47.120 --> 00:39:53.120 finally had enough and he just goes in and and  you can see this is this is not gentle touch   00:39:53.120 --> 00:39:59.920 this is you know these are pretty heavy body blows  that they're you know that you've given them   00:40:00.880 --> 00:40:08.400 and you know and eventually that was that was  enough for the secondary escort and he ended up   00:40:08.400 --> 00:40:14.400 you know on the peeling off and and  so then we were left with our our primary   00:40:15.040 --> 00:40:21.920 and in the mother calf you can see my sequence  here of them um swimming along the bottom   00:40:23.440 --> 00:40:28.160 and you can see that you know things are starting  to kind of you know mellow out they're still you   00:40:28.160 --> 00:40:32.080 know you know traveling and here this is  an interesting shot you can see the female   00:40:32.800 --> 00:40:39.120 actually kind of do this this little  past by the by the primary escort   00:40:39.120 --> 00:40:46.560 upside down and you know you know it could be  that the the female is passing this way and   00:40:46.560 --> 00:40:52.880 with her genitals basically pointing away from  the from the primary escort perhaps as a message   00:40:52.880 --> 00:40:57.840 to tell her that you know tell him that you know  she is just not receptive right now but that   00:40:57.840 --> 00:41:02.960 is of course you know open to interpretation  this is an interesting sequence that I  00:41:02.960 --> 00:41:06.400 wanted to show because this is when the animals  are resting and this is to illustrate the point   00:41:06.400 --> 00:41:12.880 that these whales are basically just floating and  swimming ecosystems you know they have a lot of of   00:41:12.880 --> 00:41:17.520 fish of these you know pillows and other types of  fish that are swimming along with them and these   00:41:17.520 --> 00:41:25.360 fish are are are eating the the whale's dead skin  and um and and so when you combine that with you   00:41:25.360 --> 00:41:30.240 know things like the the placenta that the females  produce you know when they give birth or you know   00:41:30.240 --> 00:41:37.120 um that can be then consumed by things like sharks  and so on it it it really kind of tells you that   00:41:37.120 --> 00:41:41.440 you know when these whales come to Hawaii they're  not simply just you know taking up space you know   00:41:41.440 --> 00:41:46.320 they're actually you know very much part of the  ecosystem and this is an interesting sequence here   00:41:46.320 --> 00:41:53.120 our tagged whales went to check out some kayakers  and and so these guys got a pretty pretty   00:41:53.120 --> 00:41:59.760 amazing view of this whale you know the rules of  why of course is that you're not allowed to   00:41:59.760 --> 00:42:04.880 close it closer than a hundred yards but in this  case these these tires are fine because the whale   00:42:04.880 --> 00:42:10.160 actually you know approached them and so they  weren't making any effort to to get closer   00:42:10.160 --> 00:42:15.040 to the whale and then the whale even came over  and sort of you can see me in the on the distance 00:42:26.240 --> 00:42:30.720 just kind of checking out the boat and so on and  this is the last sequence that I wanted to show   00:42:30.720 --> 00:42:36.960 it's it just kind of shows you just how  quickly things can sort of change in a way 00:42:36.960 --> 00:42:41.600 here we have another one of these situations  where there's just a lot of mellow behavior you   00:42:41.600 --> 00:42:47.760 know kind of resting type of behavior you can see  a nice shot of the the mother and the calf kind of   00:42:47.760 --> 00:42:54.080 just sort of cruising by and you know  everything looks you know looks just you know   00:42:54.080 --> 00:42:59.920 very mellow and and relaxed but then what you  see here all of a sudden just out of nowhere 00:43:08.960 --> 00:43:14.720 and and miraculously our tags stayed on so  you can see these suction cups are pretty good   00:43:15.520 --> 00:43:21.280 and then he does a few a couple more heads  and I just you know so this is really the   00:43:21.280 --> 00:43:26.320 end of it so I wanted to just show you this just  to illustrate you know the power of having video aboard 00:43:26.320 --> 00:43:34.160 these tags we can learn we can learn about  you know whale behavior of course by observing   00:43:34.160 --> 00:43:39.840 them from you know from vessels we can learn a  little bit more by putting tags on them without   00:43:41.200 --> 00:43:46.160 but boy you know being right there with  the whale and you know and having this video   00:43:46.160 --> 00:43:50.560 information kind of opens up a whole new dimension  so we're very excited moving forward about   00:43:50.560 --> 00:43:53.840 you know how we can use these tags to  learn about humpback whale behavior   00:43:55.040 --> 00:43:59.680 and with that I just want to finish  off by thanking a small army of   00:43:59.680 --> 00:44:05.600 people that basically make this work possible for  us we have our staff of course our vessel captains   00:44:06.160 --> 00:44:13.360 and then our scientific collaborators um that  we were very very grateful for working with us   00:44:13.360 --> 00:44:18.400 on these science projects and then and then a  whole bunch of volunteers that over the years   00:44:18.400 --> 00:44:23.040 have just made this work possible we would not  be able to do many of the projects that we do   00:44:23.040 --> 00:44:29.440 without their help and so we're just very very  grateful for for our volunteers and with that   00:44:29.440 --> 00:44:33.520 I want to say thank you to all of you for your  attention and let's see if we have a little   00:44:33.520 --> 00:44:39.040 time for questions now if not then we'll just  wait till until the end of the symposium. 00:44:41.680 --> 00:44:46.000 Alright great thank you so much Marc yeah  I think we have time let's do just a couple   00:44:46.000 --> 00:44:52.400 minutes of questions if we have any so Marc and I  will stay on the screen and then Cindy did any   00:44:52.400 --> 00:45:00.800 questions come in? Yeah so folks are probably  still thinking of questions after that amazing   00:45:00.800 --> 00:45:06.240 footage definitely a lot of praise for that  footage and research going on so thank you both   00:45:06.240 --> 00:45:12.800 one just kind of a logistic question folks are  asking if these sessions or the symposium is being   00:45:12.800 --> 00:45:18.880 recorded yes it is both days are being recorded  and eventually once we make it accessible it   00:45:18.880 --> 00:45:24.800 will be housed on our website in the future so  just give us some time to get it accessible   00:45:24.800 --> 00:45:32.400 other than that one question came in where do  the whales go if they don't come to Hawaii that's   00:45:32.400 --> 00:45:38.880 a very good question so there's there's  a couple of different possibilities of course   00:45:38.880 --> 00:45:44.400 now I think we'll hear a little bit later Dr. Adam Frankel  will talk about some of these trends   00:45:44.400 --> 00:45:49.360 as well and that occurred a few years ago  so I don't want to go into you know too many   00:45:49.360 --> 00:45:56.640 too many details there but you know one  of the possibilities is that whales simply   00:45:57.840 --> 00:46:03.520 decided not to come to the breeding grounds  and so spent more time feeding and perhaps just   00:46:03.520 --> 00:46:09.120 overwintered on the feeding grounds and this  may be due to the fact that they just need to you   00:46:09.120 --> 00:46:14.640 know spend more time feeding and replenishing  those reserves that they that i mentioned   00:46:14.640 --> 00:46:20.640 earlier in the talk you know if you don't have  enough fuel in the tank to make the migration   00:46:20.640 --> 00:46:25.440 then you know you just can't do it the other  possibility of course is that they're are going   00:46:25.440 --> 00:46:31.280 somewhere else and and breeding somewhere else so  you know if especially if they're having to look   00:46:31.280 --> 00:46:38.720 for food in other parts of the the feeding grounds  they may be making decisions about about   00:46:38.720 --> 00:46:44.160 perhaps going other places to to breed as well so  one of the areas that we've been very interested   00:46:44.160 --> 00:46:49.600 in in understanding whale presence is the  Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Eden showed some   00:46:49.600 --> 00:46:54.800 data from the sang sound project where we're doing  acoustic monitoring up there and and so there's   00:46:54.800 --> 00:47:00.640 the possibility of course that these whales may  be um you know choosing to go to other places to   00:47:00.640 --> 00:47:06.080 to breed but you know these are speculations  at this point so we can't say for certain   00:47:06.080 --> 00:47:11.280 exactly what they're doing it's a big ocean and  you know there's a lot of places they could go so 00:47:14.000 --> 00:47:18.960 excellent and more questions are coming in  now so one question is are the recorders   00:47:18.960 --> 00:47:25.440 recovered yes we have to recover the  recorders these are not streaming   00:47:25.440 --> 00:47:30.160 data you know that would be great if we  could get to that point one day that kicks   00:47:30.160 --> 00:47:35.760 everything up in terms of cost and logistics and  everything so these are recorders that we deploy   00:47:36.640 --> 00:47:40.080 usually at the beginning of the season and  then they recover and sometimes in some cases   00:47:40.080 --> 00:47:43.680 we keep them going year round so we have to  refurbish them you know every six months or so   00:47:45.680 --> 00:47:50.800 excellent and I think we have time for one  more question can you talk a bit more about   00:47:50.800 --> 00:47:55.520 the whale band is there a lead singer  are they reacting to one another 00:47:58.160 --> 00:48:05.760 the the the whale band well it's I've  never heard it put that way so that's a I'm gonna   00:48:05.760 --> 00:48:11.840 have to start using that you know we're listening  to the whale band um to our knowledge there aren't   00:48:12.400 --> 00:48:16.720 you know those kinds of relationship where you  have you know a lead singer and and backups   00:48:16.720 --> 00:48:25.120 and and so on you know they're they seem to be  displaying all sort of individually but that said   00:48:26.160 --> 00:48:30.720 it's been very difficult for us to understand  some of the dynamics that occur between whales   00:48:30.720 --> 00:48:35.840 because you know you know unless we're  working with instruments like these DESAR's 00:48:35.840 --> 00:48:42.080 that I mentioned you know for us the ability to  to know what one whale is doing versus another   00:48:42.080 --> 00:48:48.720 is very limited you know whale sound is such  that you know it it's very difficult to to sort  I 00:48:48.720 --> 00:48:53.680 of determine which whale is doing what unless you  have some of these types of sensors that I that I   00:48:53.680 --> 00:48:58.560 mentioned and other or other types of ways to  to localize the singer so so we don't have a   00:48:58.560 --> 00:49:05.200 lot of insight in terms of the the dynamics of you  know whale singing although I should mention that   00:49:05.200 --> 00:49:09.840 one of our next speakers Dr Adam Frankel he  did his dissertation work looking at some of   00:49:09.840 --> 00:49:14.720 these aspects and looking at spacing of whales  relative to each other and so on so you know you   00:49:14.720 --> 00:49:18.800 might have something else to say about it maybe  we can you know revisit during our discussion 00:49:21.200 --> 00:49:24.560 great well thank you for all those really  great questions and I see that there's a   00:49:24.560 --> 00:49:28.720 lot more we will send those out to  the speakers and try to get you some   00:49:28.720 --> 00:49:34.160 answers and send those out afterwards but we  do want to continue on with some of the the   00:49:34.160 --> 00:49:40.640 presentations that will be for the rest of the  day and so thank you mark thanks so much and   00:49:40.640 --> 00:49:46.880 right now I'm going to introduce Martin  van Aswegen and he is a third year PhD student   00:49:46.880 --> 00:49:52.640 at the Hawaii institute of marine biology's  marine mammal research program and since 2018   00:49:52.640 --> 00:49:58.560 Martin and his advisor Dr Lars Bejder have been  using drones to measure the size and condition   00:49:58.560 --> 00:50:04.640 of humpback whales off Maui and southeast Alaska  today he's going to be speaking to us about  d 00:50:04.640 --> 00:50:09.120 using aerial photogrammetry to  quantify humpback whale body condition   00:50:09.120 --> 00:50:14.560 across the breeding ground and the feeding grounds  so with that I will pass it over to you Martin. 00:50:17.040 --> 00:50:20.160 Sure thank you very much Eden I just  want to make sure you can see my   00:50:22.000 --> 00:50:31.040 my powerpoint presentation here yes we can see  it excellent so Aloha everyone I'm really 00:50:31.920 --> 00:50:35.440 excited to be here and present some of this  work some of it's fairly new and we haven't   00:50:35.440 --> 00:50:39.840 really shown too much of it just yet  because we've been so busy in the field but   00:50:40.560 --> 00:50:47.040 as I begin I just want to say a big thank  you to the Sanctuary and Foundation folks for   00:50:47.040 --> 00:50:51.200 providing us with these these funds it's not  a cheap thing to work in Maui as many people   00:50:51.200 --> 00:50:56.160 will know so every little bit counts and we're  hoping to continue this work into the future so   00:50:56.800 --> 00:51:01.760 this work is part of a massive collaborative  effort right so it's not just us at some marine   00:51:01.760 --> 00:51:07.920 mammal research program we have collaborators both  in Hawaii and southeast Alaska including Pacific   00:51:07.920 --> 00:51:14.480 Whale Foundation, Alaska Whale Foundation we have UH Hilo, Dr. Adam Pack involved we have Christie   00:51:14.480 --> 00:51:20.720 West Glacier bay folks University of Alaska  southeast and University of Alaska Fairbanks so   00:51:20.720 --> 00:51:25.440 I'd like to acknowledge all of these collaborators  who've really helped out with this work we   00:51:25.440 --> 00:51:28.640 couldn't have done it without them and also  the assistants who've assisted along the way   00:51:30.160 --> 00:51:33.680 so we'll present some of the preliminary  work that we've found but initially   00:51:34.400 --> 00:51:39.840 why are we doing this work so the   this Hawaii DPS was delisted in 2016.   00:51:39.840 --> 00:51:45.600 so following this at around the same  time there's actually a 76 percent decrease and   00:51:45.600 --> 00:51:51.520 Rachel Cartwright published on this showing  mother calf declines there's also a recent work   00:51:52.320 --> 00:51:58.240 showing a 50 decline in the non-calf abundance  so pretty major shifts in a species that's pretty   00:51:59.760 --> 00:52:04.160 somewhat stable they have pretty  predictable trends for the most part   00:52:04.160 --> 00:52:09.360 so troubling signs there but also in Glacier  Bay in the feeding grounds it was a 72 percent decline   00:52:09.360 --> 00:52:15.760 in abundance so both locations showing signs of  instability and certainly these have kind of   00:52:15.760 --> 00:52:22.800 been on and off since then so in response to  this questions were asked why was this happening   00:52:22.800 --> 00:52:28.320 right so one of the suspects at this point is  this trifecta of oceanographic conditions that   00:52:28.320 --> 00:52:33.920 happens around the same time between 2014 2016  including one of the largest marine heat waves   00:52:35.440 --> 00:52:40.960 ever to hit the north pacific this was linked  up with a very strong el nino phase and a strong   00:52:40.960 --> 00:52:45.680 shift in the pacific decadal oscillation so  essentially all of these came together and   00:52:45.680 --> 00:52:51.600 produced really hot really hot water and  this has affected the prey and the idea is   00:52:51.600 --> 00:52:55.840 that potentially the humpbacks were affected by  this so one of the questions that we ask is how   00:52:55.840 --> 00:53:01.200 do humpback whales respond to this how did their  prey respond to this at this stage we don't even   00:53:01.200 --> 00:53:07.120 know what normal variation and body condition is  in the humpback whale so this is kind of what this   00:53:07.120 --> 00:53:13.920 project is leading into so in the 2018 workshop  that was done there were a bunch of priorities 00:53:13.920 --> 00:53:20.960 listed to look at the trends in response to these  trends so everything from distribution to health   00:53:20.960 --> 00:53:28.240 demo graphic trends you have prey abundance  and environmental factors this work today we're   00:53:28.240 --> 00:53:34.160 looking at is primarily focusing on health metrics  so body condition would be the the one that we are   00:53:34.160 --> 00:53:39.440 focusing on and then potentially at the end of  the presentation we'll talk a little bit about how   00:53:39.440 --> 00:53:45.360 we aim to link these trends up with potential  environmental factors on the feeding grounds. 00:53:48.560 --> 00:53:53.440 Alight so as we know the hardback wales in  Hawaii it's a bit of a melting pot of animals from   00:53:53.440 --> 00:53:58.320 the entire north pacific right so you have animals  from Russia the Aleutians northern gulf of alaska   00:53:58.320 --> 00:54:04.560 southeast Alaska and British Columbia coming  and going from these Hawaiian islands at any um   00:54:04.560 --> 00:54:08.960 given time so it's this melting pot for the  north pacific and each of these locations have   00:54:08.960 --> 00:54:14.400 a different migratory distance involved  as well for this talk for our work we're   00:54:14.400 --> 00:54:21.920 essentially looking at the Hawaii animals as  well as southeast Alaska and this project we   00:54:21.920 --> 00:54:25.680 are looking at body condition across the  feeding grounds and the breeding grounds   00:54:26.880 --> 00:54:30.800 if we can we have the ability to access  feeding grounds and breeding grounds in   00:54:30.800 --> 00:54:34.080 the same year up to eight to ten months  of the year which is pretty awesome   00:54:35.040 --> 00:54:40.480 so for these whales and southeast it's about 8  700 kilometer round trip so one of the longest   00:54:40.480 --> 00:54:46.160 migrations out there and so again it comes with  a whole bunch of different stresses in both of   00:54:46.160 --> 00:54:51.840 these locations depending on if you're an adult  a mother with a calf a juvenile these kinds   00:54:51.840 --> 00:54:58.480 of things but today we'll pretty much talk about  mothers calves and adults just to keep it simple. 00:55:01.280 --> 00:55:06.080 Alright so for adults in Hawaii Marc touched  on this a little bit these whales are fasting so   00:55:06.080 --> 00:55:10.720 there's little to no prey resources for your  your typical non-lactating adults your adult   00:55:10.720 --> 00:55:15.920 that's not going to be giving birth or lactating  calf there's a long migration to and from these   00:55:15.920 --> 00:55:21.040 feeding grounds involved and there's also the  possibility of really intense competition that's   00:55:21.760 --> 00:55:27.760 quite energetically stressing on males and even  mothers and calves to some extent so all of this   00:55:27.760 --> 00:55:33.840 is happening while whales are fasting so in  terms of body condition data we would expect   00:55:34.960 --> 00:55:38.880 adults non-lactating adults to lose  mass while they're here in Hawaii 00:55:41.840 --> 00:55:46.160 back in southeast alaska these adults have one  thing in mind that's locating and consuming their   00:55:46.160 --> 00:55:52.000 prey and they need to be getting enough prey on a  regular basis to offset what they've lost during   00:55:52.000 --> 00:55:55.840 the breeding season and migrations so  at this point these whales have just   00:55:56.800 --> 00:55:59.840 trying to get as much food as  possible and if they are doing well   00:55:59.840 --> 00:56:03.280 if there are enough prey around  the data would suggest that   00:56:03.280 --> 00:56:07.520 they're going to be gaining mass this is what we  would expect to see in the body condition data 00:56:10.880 --> 00:56:15.360 for mothers they have a pretty tough time they  are pretty incredible animals and what they're   00:56:15.360 --> 00:56:21.600 able to do following in 12 months gestation  period there's they head to Hawaii they go   00:56:21.600 --> 00:56:27.600 through the same migration at the same time as  they're fasting they're also lactating or giving   00:56:27.600 --> 00:56:32.320 birth and lactating with this calf so we're  providing this calf with really nutrient rich   00:56:33.760 --> 00:56:38.960 content of milk and we would expect  to see the stresses on these females   00:56:40.160 --> 00:56:46.080 to be higher than the regular adult just because  of lactation and the costs associated with it 00:56:49.280 --> 00:56:53.360 back in southeast Alaska these mothers  and calves even though they are still   00:56:53.360 --> 00:56:58.000 lactating and they are still producing milk  and transferring energy from mother to calf   00:56:59.200 --> 00:57:06.480 we initially expected to see a an increase  in body volume on these mothers in southeast   00:57:06.480 --> 00:57:12.480 Alaska based on them getting enough food to eat  enough sufficient prey to offset these costs   00:57:13.040 --> 00:57:17.600 so in this case it's something we  would expect to see mothers to gain   00:57:17.600 --> 00:57:22.720 mass in Hawaii also in southeast Alaska but  we'll show you what the data suggests later on 00:57:24.960 --> 00:57:32.960 in calves they have a pretty short period of  time in Hawaii to gain body length and body   00:57:32.960 --> 00:57:38.880 mass so they need to basically get prepared for  this migration back to cooler waters they need   00:57:38.880 --> 00:57:44.960 to be able to avoid predators in case they come  about things like killer whales on route and back   00:57:44.960 --> 00:57:50.800 in southeast Alaska so they need to be somewhat  robust and this requires a lot of mass and size   00:57:50.800 --> 00:57:57.600 coming directly from the mother so these initial  few months that they're in in Hawaii if that   00:57:58.320 --> 00:58:04.000 we were expecting these carbs to be exploding in  length and mass essentially they are at their most   00:58:04.880 --> 00:58:11.520 accelerated growth phase at that point so this  is what um we would be expecting to see in Hawaii 00:58:14.880 --> 00:58:20.160 back in southeast these animals are starting  to shift diet after about six to ten months   00:58:20.800 --> 00:58:24.480 so we would expect to see some  slowing down on these growth rates   00:58:25.520 --> 00:58:30.800 but to some extent maybe not in body volume and  we'll show you what this looks like in the data   00:58:31.600 --> 00:58:36.000 as these animals become a little bit more  robust over time you'll see the body width   00:58:36.000 --> 00:58:41.920 to length ratio kind of changes a little  bit and we're hoping to see that in the data 00:58:45.600 --> 00:58:51.120 as you see here next one all right so  just to talk about what we've been doing   00:58:51.120 --> 00:58:56.400 we started this work in in Hawaii in  January of 2019. so we've been coming   00:58:56.960 --> 00:59:04.240 here to to Maui and hawaii since then a January to  April effort working with Pacific Whale Foundation   00:59:04.240 --> 00:59:10.800 Uh Hilo, Kristi West Shannon Atkinson  looking at body condition through   00:59:10.800 --> 00:59:17.520 drone work as well as biopsy so at this  point we have three months of the year   00:59:17.520 --> 00:59:21.040 across three years and we're hoping to  continue this work in the future as well 00:59:23.680 --> 00:59:27.280 in terms of our sample size  to date we've done over 1200   00:59:27.280 --> 00:59:32.880 drone flights at this point and just over 2 000  measurements have been collected on approximately   00:59:32.880 --> 00:59:39.680 1750 individuals from juveniles  calves lactating females and adults   00:59:41.520 --> 00:59:46.080 as an example you can see the plot there  shows our effort from the 2021 season   00:59:46.080 --> 00:59:50.880 approximately 1500 measurements and this spans  from beginning of January through to the very   00:59:50.880 --> 00:59:55.280 end of march so this is the kind of effort  we're hoping to replicate this coming season 00:59:58.400 --> 01:00:04.080 in southeast Alaska we started in july  of 2018 and the aim was to work across   01:00:04.080 --> 01:00:07.520 spring summer and four months during the  feeding season from the very beginning   01:00:07.520 --> 01:00:13.200 middle to end which is up to eight to ten  months of the year access to a feeding ground like   01:00:13.200 --> 01:00:18.800 that even though conditions can be tough they are  still relatively good compared to other places so   01:00:18.800 --> 01:00:21.920 an excellent opportunity to sample  the same population of animals   01:00:22.560 --> 01:00:26.320 across the breeding grounds and feeding grounds  and especially if we can do it for 10 out of the   01:00:26.320 --> 01:00:32.080 12 months of the year it's um that's pretty  neat so this work is with Alaska Whale 01:00:32.080 --> 01:00:37.840 Foundation Glacier Bay university of Alaska  southeast and university of Alaska Fairbanks   01:00:38.480 --> 01:00:45.200 and this work we typically start around april all  the way through to end of September and then we go   01:00:45.200 --> 01:00:49.360 back in November to continue sampling  just before animals migrate back south 01:00:52.000 --> 01:00:57.440 and the sample size here we've done just  about 850 drone flights in southeast Alaska   01:00:58.080 --> 01:01:07.680 It's just over 1100 whales have been measured  at this point just about 113 cars so a bit more   01:01:07.680 --> 01:01:13.360 difficult to find calves in southeast Alaska than it  is here here in Hawaii we sampled over 650 pairs   01:01:14.160 --> 01:01:21.120 but this is not necessarily the case in on the  feeding grounds so this is something we've been   01:01:21.120 --> 01:01:27.200 trying to continue on every single calf counts  and one of the neat things about this work is   01:01:27.200 --> 01:01:31.200 we've been able to sample the same individuals  across the feeding grounds of breeding grounds   01:01:31.200 --> 01:01:38.240 for example this year we had almost 44 of the  southeast Alaska animals we measured in Maui   01:01:38.240 --> 01:01:42.560 we re-measured in southeast Alaska a  few months later so that's pretty cool   01:01:42.560 --> 01:01:46.160 and something that's I didn't  think was possible but luckily 01:01:46.960 --> 01:01:51.840 every whale counts as I say and it makes up less  than one percent of our total sample size so   01:01:52.400 --> 01:01:54.960 there's something to look forward to in  the future as we get more measurements. 01:01:58.160 --> 01:02:03.600 Okay so using these drones that we have they have  these customized altimeters so we can fly over the   01:02:03.600 --> 01:02:09.440 whale with these customized altimeters we have  a resolution and accuracy of about half an inch   01:02:09.440 --> 01:02:13.680 and using that we can just hover over  the whale the whale doesn't know we're   01:02:13.680 --> 01:02:17.920 there we measure the length and body  width across the um the body length of   01:02:17.920 --> 01:02:22.720 the animal giving us around 20 different  width measurements using some fancy maths   01:02:22.720 --> 01:02:27.520 we can then convert these two-dimensional  images into three-dimensional cylinders   01:02:28.720 --> 01:02:33.840 and from that we can estimate a body volume for  every single animal based on its total length 01:02:36.880 --> 01:02:41.920 and then it's important to link this body  volume information this length information   01:02:41.920 --> 01:02:48.080 to known individuals so happy well as many  people here will know has been a revolutionary   01:02:48.080 --> 01:02:54.320 a thing for us saving us a lot of time matching  these flukes so by linking these measurements with   01:02:55.120 --> 01:02:59.120 known age sex reproductive status  we know that body condition varies   01:02:59.120 --> 01:03:04.960 greatly across these different classes so  it's important for us to know who's who 01:03:04.960 --> 01:03:11.360 how old is an individual is it a mature individual  and where are they coming from in terms of   01:03:11.360 --> 01:03:16.080 feeding grounds as you see the bottom left it's  about 500 whales we sampled this year in 2021   01:03:16.080 --> 01:03:19.600 the Happy Whale output and you'll  see the widespread there from Russia   01:03:19.600 --> 01:03:25.200 all the way through to British Columbia so this  is very important contextual information for us 01:03:28.000 --> 01:03:32.560 so in order to look at the body condition side of  things we need to first establish the relationship   01:03:32.560 --> 01:03:38.880 between length and body volume we need to  know what are these what's considered to be   01:03:38.880 --> 01:03:43.360 normal for an animal of a particular length just  because the there's a strong relationship here   01:03:43.360 --> 01:03:48.480 and we can't say well we can't just use body  volume purely because it is very strongly tied   01:03:48.480 --> 01:03:55.040 to length so what we do is we play we split this  up based on the demographic classes that we have   01:03:55.040 --> 01:04:00.080 as well as the locations you see here where  calves juveniles in both Hawaii and southeast   01:04:00.720 --> 01:04:08.080 adults and lactating mothers so just as an  example of this variation we see here in mother's   01:04:08.720 --> 01:04:14.960 an animal of about 12 meters in length right at a  given point in time can vary from 20 to 33 cubic   01:04:14.960 --> 01:04:21.120 meters and this can be normal so these humpback  whales undergo massive changes in body volume   01:04:21.120 --> 01:04:25.760 depending on what they're doing whether they're  lactating or if they're just regular adults  01:04:25.760 --> 01:04:30.480 it's something that that's quite  surprising and you'll see a bit later on   01:04:30.480 --> 01:04:35.680 what these females go through um to raise these  calves and how energetically taxing it can be 01:04:38.240 --> 01:04:44.400 so once we know what the length of an animal is  and what the expected body volume is we can then   01:04:44.400 --> 01:04:50.080 say does this whale that we just measured does it  have a body volume above or below what we would   01:04:50.080 --> 01:04:56.160 expect for this animal at this point in time in  Hawaii or southeast Alaska based on its length   01:04:56.880 --> 01:05:00.960 so usually using this line here we can  say anything above this line in the green   01:05:01.520 --> 01:05:05.200 is going to be considered to be above  average it's going to have a positive value   01:05:05.200 --> 01:05:09.760 anything below it didn't quite meet that  standard so that means it's an animal   01:05:09.760 --> 01:05:14.240 that's below average body condition and  you'll see this index being used later on. 01:05:18.560 --> 01:05:23.600 Alright so we're talking about how  females may be losing body condition 01:05:31.520 --> 01:05:37.120 I think we're good yeah so maybe considering  how females lose body condition right so in   01:05:37.120 --> 01:05:43.840 the Hawaiian breeding grounds we can say females  are losing about 0.9 to 0.18 cubic meters a day   01:05:45.040 --> 01:05:51.840 that's pretty substantial right so at around 0.9  cubic meters a day that's roughly my body weight   01:05:51.840 --> 01:05:56.640 that these lactating females are losing on  a given day um and if they're spending up to   01:05:56.640 --> 01:06:02.880 50 30 to 50 days on their breeding grounds  that's a pretty substantial loss in energy   01:06:02.880 --> 01:06:07.600 while these females are fasting so that's why they  have such a limited period here because they need   01:06:07.600 --> 01:06:12.160 to get back to the feeding grounds to replenish  these stocks that they're losing so quickly 01:06:14.960 --> 01:06:18.800 when you compare these two or these  losses to the non-lactating adults   01:06:18.800 --> 01:06:25.920 they're losing roughly a third to half that of  a lactating female on a given day so typically   01:06:25.920 --> 01:06:31.200 these will be males that are staying a little bit  longer so this is not a particularly surprising   01:06:31.200 --> 01:06:36.560 result but it's good to have these estimates at  this point so we can look at these in the future 01:06:39.120 --> 01:06:46.080 an example of this is a female that we sampled  in off Maui mid-February and then later again at   01:06:46.080 --> 01:06:52.800 the end of March and over that time that female  lost approximately 11.5 percent of her her body   01:06:52.800 --> 01:07:00.320 volume which is pretty drastic so she was losing  approximately I mean my body weight which is 01:07:03.360 --> 01:07:10.960 gonna be around 180 pounds so there's pretty  major changes there in body condition and this   01:07:10.960 --> 01:07:16.400 calf on the other hand it exploded in body length  and volume so it increased in body length by   01:07:17.280 --> 01:07:22.160 upwards of 46 percent but the body volume was  the really interesting one there it almost   01:07:22.160 --> 01:07:27.840 tripled in body volume over those uh  38 days between mid-Feb and mid-March 01:07:31.440 --> 01:07:39.600 now if you look at the non-lactating females  in southeast Alaska as expected these are   01:07:39.600 --> 01:07:44.720 non-lactating adults were gaining mass again  throughout the feeding season as expected   01:07:44.720 --> 01:07:50.400 that's that's their job and then what we  didn't expect to see was the difference between   01:07:50.400 --> 01:07:56.880 non-lactating adults and lactating adults so these  females were plateauing at best we saw very few   01:07:57.680 --> 01:08:01.520 females actually gaining weight with  the calf throughout the feeding season   01:08:02.800 --> 01:08:08.320 and this is over between may and the end  of September so a good chunk of the season   01:08:08.320 --> 01:08:12.960 almost five months if anything they were  still slightly decreasing in body volume 01:08:17.440 --> 01:08:23.680 here's an example of one of these females that  we sampled in Hawaii this year and then again 171   01:08:23.680 --> 01:08:30.560 days later in southeast Alaska a female called  Zero time she was sampled mid-February and then   01:08:30.560 --> 01:08:36.640 again early August which would be about mid-season  and over this period she was about 12 percent   01:08:37.600 --> 01:08:42.880 had 12 percent less body volume than she  initially had so this is actually a fairly modest   01:08:43.440 --> 01:08:49.920 reduction some of these females that we've  seen were about between 21 and 28 percent   01:08:50.640 --> 01:08:56.720 lighter than what they were four or five  months before that so many major changes in   01:08:56.720 --> 01:09:01.120 these body volume estimates that we're getting  here and the calf on the other hand you can see   01:09:01.920 --> 01:09:09.520 as expected at the uh 5.8 meters to 8.5 that's  roughly 46 but on top of that the body volume   01:09:10.080 --> 01:09:17.360 increased from 3.3 cubic meters just to over 11  cubic meters which is about 236 percent increase   01:09:17.360 --> 01:09:23.760 over the 171 days which is pretty neat and  you'll see the change in the the proportions of   01:09:23.760 --> 01:09:30.400 the animal size there so from skinny sort of long  lanky way calves down to these almost balloons   01:09:30.400 --> 01:09:35.680 with tails as you see them up there some of them  are so round that they struggle to maintain their   01:09:36.240 --> 01:09:41.680 level buoyancy it's pretty impressive um you can  see just visually the differences and the the   01:09:41.680 --> 01:09:47.280 body widths of both the mother and the calf there  so these kind of instances are quite rare but   01:09:47.280 --> 01:09:52.000 really important to have these to ground through  some of the modeling that we're doing to show   01:09:52.880 --> 01:09:58.000 that hey we can measure the same animals across  across both locations but also show you absolute   01:09:58.000 --> 01:10:04.480 changes over the same same year several months  apart it is a needle in a haystack situation   01:10:05.120 --> 01:10:09.520 we only have maybe five to ten  mothers and calves that we've sampled   01:10:09.520 --> 01:10:16.480 in both locations in the same year out of  over 700 so certainly not an easy thing to do 01:10:19.680 --> 01:10:26.560 now as expected carves in in Maui were rapidly  increasing in length and body volume so increasing   01:10:26.560 --> 01:10:33.120 at about two centimeters a day in total length  while in body volume they're increasing roughly   01:10:33.120 --> 01:10:40.400 0.03 or essentially one percent in their body  volume per day so this is pretty accelerated   01:10:40.400 --> 01:10:46.640 stuff so they must be drinking milk on a pretty  regular basis so as the calf is maintaining this   01:10:46.640 --> 01:10:52.480 high level of energy transfer the female on the  other hand is losing essentially all of this   01:10:53.120 --> 01:10:57.600 energy at the same time while fasting so that's  why we're seeing such a massive decrease in mother   01:10:57.600 --> 01:11:02.800 body condition while the calves are reaping  the rewards from this and as I said earlier   01:11:02.800 --> 01:11:07.600 it's important to note that these calves are on  the timeline to become robust enough for migration   01:11:07.600 --> 01:11:13.360 and for predator avoidance to make it back the  almost 3 000 miles just to get back to southeast   01:11:13.360 --> 01:11:21.840 Alaska so again fairly expected results and if  you look at southeast Alaska on the other hand   01:11:21.840 --> 01:11:27.920 we see a slowing down of almost 50 percent um  in the growth rate in carbs in total length   01:11:28.560 --> 01:11:33.920 however the interesting thing here is it  seems like body volume the rate of change   01:11:33.920 --> 01:11:41.040 of body volume stays fairly constant so this  is why we're seeing carbs almost 400 percent   01:11:41.680 --> 01:11:48.080 heavier than what they were in Maui which  is pretty cool so it seems to be in in Hawaii   01:11:48.080 --> 01:11:52.880 the calves are roughly three and a half to  four and a half meters in length at birth   01:11:52.880 --> 01:11:57.120 and by the time we sample them in  southeast Alaska they're almost   01:11:57.120 --> 01:12:01.840 eight eight and a half meters in length so  certainly increasing at a very strong rate 01:12:05.120 --> 01:12:09.600 now just to illustrate these points I'm going  to show you a female that we sampled in March   01:12:09.600 --> 01:12:16.640 of 2020 a female with a calf off Maaleaa we sampled  them she was looking pretty good in pretty good   01:12:16.640 --> 01:12:22.880 body condition at around 13 above average we were  lucky enough to find her again her and her calf   01:12:22.880 --> 01:12:30.400 again in Maui this year almost about 10 months  later and had you asked me beforehand I would have   01:12:30.400 --> 01:12:36.400 said she would have gained most most of that  weight back that she spent on lactating the calve   01:12:36.400 --> 01:12:44.000 so instead what we found was a 24 decrease in body  volume even though she went through a full season   01:12:44.000 --> 01:12:49.680 of feeding in on the feeding grounds we're not  sure where she came from but you can certainly see   01:12:49.680 --> 01:12:57.440 the difference in the body proportions there even  a full year after that calf was was born and this   01:12:57.440 --> 01:13:04.160 will explain why this calf absolutely rocketed  in size it went from 3.6 cubic meters to over 17   01:13:05.280 --> 01:13:09.680 and in terms of length it went from about  6 meters to almost 10 meters in length   01:13:10.560 --> 01:13:14.560 in less than a year so all of that energy  was transferred from the mother to the calf   01:13:14.560 --> 01:13:19.440 and you can visually see that not only in the  numbers but at the same time and the images here   01:13:20.880 --> 01:13:27.680 so it's a 375 percent increase in body volume and  roughly 60 bigger increase in the total length of   01:13:27.680 --> 01:13:32.960 the animal so really interesting stuff  that we didn't necessarily expect I believe   01:13:34.160 --> 01:13:39.280 Adam Pack will be talking about some of this in his  presentation tomorrow we'll be linking different   01:13:39.280 --> 01:13:45.840 stress hormones to these kinds of situations  to see what the stress is like on these females. 01:13:49.200 --> 01:13:54.400 Okay so the other part of this is to look  at body condition variation across years   01:13:54.400 --> 01:13:59.840 in both Hawaii and southeast Alaska on  the left hand side you'll see Hawaii there   01:14:00.880 --> 01:14:07.040 with the body condition index on the left axis  and it shows 2019 was the relatively worst   01:14:08.080 --> 01:14:12.640 year in terms of body condition for almost  all of the different classes that we have   01:14:12.640 --> 01:14:17.760 so this is likely a reflection of what was going  on in the feeding grounds the previous summer   01:14:19.120 --> 01:14:24.000 and this is something that we want to be tracking  over time spending enough time there not only to   01:14:24.000 --> 01:14:29.600 see the differences between or within the season  but also between years because we know not every   01:14:29.600 --> 01:14:34.720 single year is the same there's different timings  different things going on so this is one of the   01:14:34.720 --> 01:14:39.200 other aspects that will be really powerful once  we start to get a few more years under the belt   01:14:40.720 --> 01:14:47.120 for the right hand side is southeast Alaska  and here we show the blue which is 2021   01:14:47.760 --> 01:14:54.320 was almost consistently the worst year for most  of these different classes the more data we put in   01:14:54.320 --> 01:15:00.720 i was thinking it was going to change the  signal but we kept on seeing by August and   01:15:00.720 --> 01:15:05.840 September animals were not nearly in the same  condition as what they were so I'll point out   01:15:06.880 --> 01:15:11.920 both of these plots were done in one month  only so Hawaii was in March and southeast   01:15:11.920 --> 01:15:18.720 Alaska was under august so mid-season so as you  can see there the adults for southeast Alaska   01:15:19.600 --> 01:15:25.840 by the end of august which is towards the latter  side of the feeding season animals were still   01:15:25.840 --> 01:15:31.120 below that that zero line that average line for  body condition whereas in previous years they were   01:15:31.120 --> 01:15:37.680 five six seven eight percent above average and  then if you look at the lactating females it's   01:15:37.680 --> 01:15:44.800 it's telling the same story so it's important to  get these um different variations and to see how   01:15:45.600 --> 01:15:50.880 things can change year to year but also showing  us what is a normal variation for a humpback whale   01:15:50.880 --> 01:15:55.680 over that period of time especially right now  where things are still not really quite stable yet 01:15:58.480 --> 01:16:02.800 so with this in mind we now  know that body condition varies   01:16:02.800 --> 01:16:09.600 across different classes in Hawaii and not every  single animal we sample in Hawaii is from the   01:16:09.600 --> 01:16:15.040 same feeding ground so we have animals as I said  from Russia across the Aleutians northern gulf of   01:16:15.040 --> 01:16:20.800 Alaska southeast Alaska and British Columbia so  one of the next steps here is to see if we can   01:16:21.520 --> 01:16:25.680 assign feeding grounds to specific  individuals using Happy Whale information   01:16:27.040 --> 01:16:32.720 utilizing these long-term data sets and citing  histories to then assign age or sex as well   01:16:33.440 --> 01:16:39.600 and then to say can we compare body condition on  individuals across feeding grounds because we know   01:16:39.600 --> 01:16:45.840 in hawaii we've compressed the animals in terms  of time and space the whales are all there roughly   01:16:45.840 --> 01:16:51.760 the same time over those three months from various  points in the north pacific so the idea here is to   01:16:51.760 --> 01:16:57.280 compare body condition across these  groups but also can we then look at   01:16:57.280 --> 01:17:02.960 different environmental factors to explain any  variation we may find so looking at things like   01:17:02.960 --> 01:17:09.840 biometrics chlorophyll A is a proxy for  productivity phytoplankton fisheries data but then   01:17:09.840 --> 01:17:14.560 the abiotic as well so I mentioned earlier how sea  surface temperature was heavily affected by a heat   01:17:15.520 --> 01:17:20.480 El Nino and Pacific Decadal oscillation so  looking at all these different things as well as   01:17:22.000 --> 01:17:25.760 climatic data this is going to tell us a  little bit about potentially why we're seeing   01:17:25.760 --> 01:17:31.280 variations in body condition across the different  demographic classes so this is something that's   01:17:31.280 --> 01:17:35.200 going to take some time there's a lot of data  involved but I'm really excited to explore this   01:17:35.200 --> 01:17:42.160 and another season in Hawaii should give us  roughly 3 500 measurements to utilize and hoping   01:17:42.160 --> 01:17:46.400 to find animals that we can assign to different  feeding grounds it'll make it a lot more powerful 01:17:54.720 --> 01:17:59.600 otherwise that's that's that's my  talk thank you very much for listening. 01:18:03.600 --> 01:18:07.680 Great thank you so much Martin that's it's  always interesting to hear and I need to see   01:18:07.680 --> 01:18:12.240 some of that new stuff that we hadn't seen yet  so very cool stuff that you guys are working on   01:18:12.240 --> 01:18:16.720 and excited that you have some more  funding now to continue this great work   01:18:16.720 --> 01:18:21.920 so awesome we probably can take about  maybe one or two questions Cindy and then   01:18:21.920 --> 01:18:27.120 we need to move on to Dr Frankel's  talk so just maybe one or two questions   01:18:28.880 --> 01:18:34.800 Alight so we did have a few questions come in  one question I think we could answer is do you   01:18:34.800 --> 01:18:39.840 think lactating females should be expected  to lose body volume during feeding season   01:18:40.400 --> 01:18:46.720 or could this be a heat wave slash abnormal  ecological effect yeah good question   01:18:47.280 --> 01:18:52.320 so this is as I was saying earlier we don't  necessarily understand these dynamics well   01:18:52.320 --> 01:18:58.000 enough to say what is normal so at the moment we  started this work following this massive decline   01:18:58.000 --> 01:19:04.400 that we saw in 2014-16 so I wish this work was  started earlier it would be really informative   01:19:04.400 --> 01:19:09.360 but unfortunately at this point we're just  starting to see what is the new normal if it   01:19:09.360 --> 01:19:14.880 has changed we don't know what the baseline was  before that so at this point it's going to take   01:19:14.880 --> 01:19:19.600 a few more years to tell us if other years  females are actually improving in condition   01:19:20.560 --> 01:19:25.680 in years where prey resources are more abundant  but at this stage it's way too early to say   01:19:25.680 --> 01:19:29.920 and there's it's probably more complex than  than what I'm making it out to be at this point 01:19:34.160 --> 01:19:40.320 good question okay so if you guys don't mind  I think we can go ahead and transition to Adam   01:19:40.320 --> 01:19:45.440 right now and then we'll have Martin if  you're able to stick around at the end of   01:19:45.440 --> 01:19:49.440 Adam's presentation we'll have about 10 minutes  and even a little bit more people want to stick   01:19:49.440 --> 01:19:55.040 around to kind of discuss more questions so with  that I want to introduce thank you again Martin.   01:19:55.840 --> 01:20:01.120 I want to introduce Dr Adam Frankel and  he is a senior bioaccuisition for marine   01:20:01.120 --> 01:20:06.880 acoustics and also the vice president and  scientist for the Hawaii Marine Mammal Consortium.   01:20:07.520 --> 01:20:13.040 He has conducted research in the field of marine  bioacoustics for nearly 30 years and has helped   01:20:13.040 --> 01:20:18.480 teach undergraduate and graduate level courses and  workshops on the topic for the past 20 years he   01:20:18.480 --> 01:20:24.880 was speaking today about the decades of data  that he has off of the for humpback whale   01:20:24.880 --> 01:20:30.080 distribution and abundance off the Kohala coast of  the Big Island so with that I will pass it to you   01:20:31.600 --> 01:20:39.680 thank you thank you very much and thank you  all for showing up the choice of a title   01:20:39.680 --> 01:20:47.120 was sort of apropos I'll be talking about  oh by the way the QR code that's shown here   01:20:47.120 --> 01:20:52.720 will be on the final slide but it's a link to  the paper I'll be discussing in detail today 01:20:55.680 --> 01:21:02.880 if we are of course in Hawaii but more  specifically on the north Kohala coast   01:21:02.880 --> 01:21:08.880 and we've been working there  since 1985 and in response to   01:21:11.200 --> 01:21:15.280 Marc's comments I'd quickly  drug up a couple of old figures   01:21:16.160 --> 01:21:24.240 to try to speak to the things he was asking  or mentioning again many many years ago we did   01:21:24.800 --> 01:21:28.160 put in our own hydrophone array and  these were real-time broadcasting 01:21:30.400 --> 01:21:36.800 sono buoys that were anchored and we were using  not the kind of technology in the DESAR's but   01:21:36.800 --> 01:21:44.160 something called time of arrival differences to  locate whales and track them as they sang and 01:21:46.400 --> 01:21:53.760 one of the things we came across was again these  animals swimming you know four animals singing   01:21:53.760 --> 01:22:00.800 and swimming at the same time changing direction  and as I made the point a long time ago some of   01:22:00.800 --> 01:22:05.200 these animals could be drifting but with this  many different directions some of them have to   01:22:05.200 --> 01:22:13.280 be actively swimming at the same time and mark  also mentioned and someone had been asking about   01:22:14.240 --> 01:22:20.240 differences between individual humpback whale  singers and one of the things we're able to do   01:22:20.240 --> 01:22:29.040 because we can we're able to track individual  singers for hours at a time was actually do   01:22:29.040 --> 01:22:35.920 comparisons of the units of the song between  different animals within a two week period   01:22:35.920 --> 01:22:42.320 and were able to show that yes indeed there  are significant measurable differences between   01:22:43.360 --> 01:22:50.000 the sound production of animal a animal b  and animal c and so on so with that just   01:22:50.640 --> 01:22:58.880 in response to Marc's very gracious um  suggestion let me move on to the topic of   01:22:58.880 --> 01:23:05.840 or what I had planned to talk about again  everyone has should be aware by now that our   01:23:06.720 --> 01:23:12.560 north Pacific population and Martin showed  this in his slides a minute ago are moving   01:23:12.560 --> 01:23:19.200 between the summer feeding grounds and winter  breeding areas in Hawaii and as we've seen   01:23:19.200 --> 01:23:24.560 before or as Martin has shown us very nicely  they spend a lot of the summer time feeding   01:23:25.920 --> 01:23:32.720 building up resources or trying to build up  resources um so that they can come down and make   01:23:32.720 --> 01:23:41.680 little babies which will help with the population  in general so what we have been doing is   01:23:42.480 --> 01:23:49.760 for the last 20 plus years now we have  been doing scan sampling estimates   01:23:49.760 --> 01:23:56.240 I'm trying to look at local distribution and  abundance and this particular shot shows three of   01:23:56.240 --> 01:24:03.200 my co-workers and co-authors Chris Gabriel, Suzanne  Yen and Susan Rickards as well as her daughter 01:24:05.280 --> 01:24:13.280 and again we've been going up to that  same shore station and using very precise   01:24:14.960 --> 01:24:21.360 scan sample methods where only one observer scans  in that case the behavioral observer in this case   01:24:21.360 --> 01:24:27.760 Chris Gabriel in the pink shirt and only that  one observer can identify a whale and that's   01:24:27.760 --> 01:24:35.040 done to fix the amount of effort because it would  make sense or it does make sense that if you have   01:24:35.040 --> 01:24:42.320 more observers you're going to see more whales  so we fixed the amount of effort we fix the   01:24:42.320 --> 01:24:48.080 of observation efforts so that these samples would  be comparable within the year and across years   01:24:49.120 --> 01:24:54.480 and that gets us our counts and then we also  fix the animals when possible with the theater   01:24:54.480 --> 01:25:00.720 light to try to look at distributions and  we've been aiming for four samples a week   01:25:00.720 --> 01:25:06.640 or 20 samples per year and again we've got  19 years of data that i'll be presenting here 01:25:09.840 --> 01:25:16.960 so it should come as no surprise at this point  that yes I'm going to talk about climates and what   01:25:16.960 --> 01:25:23.280 ha what has happened to our beloved population  but I want to go ahead and introduce what some of   01:25:23.280 --> 01:25:30.160 these climate indices are there's something called  the north Pacific gyre oscillation and that's very   01:25:30.160 --> 01:25:37.200 strongly correlated with chlorophyll in the Gulf  of Alaska and I should mention that we are looking   01:25:38.320 --> 01:25:45.440 only at climate indices in the summertime for that  area in Alaska because we're really trying to use   01:25:45.440 --> 01:25:53.840 these as a proxy for prey availability the north Pacific index again is a measure of   01:25:54.640 --> 01:26:01.360 atmosphere to ocean heat transfer and generally  and this will come up again cooler waters   01:26:01.360 --> 01:26:06.080 tend to be more productive because you  have better circulation from the bottom   01:26:06.080 --> 01:26:10.960 up to the surface so you're bringing  that upwelling or circulation brings 01:26:13.040 --> 01:26:17.120 the nutrients up into the photic zone  which gets phytoplankton which makes   01:26:18.160 --> 01:26:24.480 which are then available for zooplankton and  finally the the last one the Pacific Decadal   01:26:24.480 --> 01:26:29.360 oscillation is something that Martin mentioned  and again that's very strongly tied to ocean   01:26:29.360 --> 01:26:37.600 surface temperature again on the gulf of Alaska  and as an illustration over on the left you've got 01:26:40.160 --> 01:26:48.720 you know a cold zone which are you know cold up in  the middle of the gyre but actually up in Alaska   01:26:49.440 --> 01:26:57.280 you've got a very reddish warmish area and over  here you've got a green blue which is fairly cool   01:26:59.280 --> 01:27:03.040 and so the warmer colors are positive   01:27:03.040 --> 01:27:08.800 and the negative colors are or the cooler colors  are negative for Pacific Decadal oscillation 01:27:10.880 --> 01:27:19.440 so now that we've met the players what have we  seen and this is a story kind of in three phases   01:27:20.240 --> 01:27:28.560 and this includes um a data point from 1988 which  was taken from DaveHellweg's master's thesis   01:27:29.200 --> 01:27:34.560 and he started doing scan samples as part  of that part of his degree and we picked   01:27:34.560 --> 01:27:40.000 up that methodology and have carried it  forward but from 88 through 2001 through   01:27:40.000 --> 01:27:46.000 2010 these are the happy years things  are just going up and up and up and up   01:27:46.000 --> 01:27:51.520 and over this time period you did not need  statistics to see the increase in animals 01:27:54.640 --> 01:28:02.000 and then for the next couple of years it was sort  of stable a little more of variation especially   01:28:02.000 --> 01:28:14.080 between 2010 and 2012 but nothing particularly  dramatic and then as you've heard before   01:28:14.080 --> 01:28:20.880 we have the blob from 2014 to 2016 this  huge heat wave throughout the north Pacific 01:28:22.960 --> 01:28:31.440 and as I mentioned before when we have warm waters  that sort of cuts off the circulation of water up   01:28:31.440 --> 01:28:39.600 to the surface water doesn't go up as far so less  nutrients reach the top layer and that makes for   01:28:39.600 --> 01:28:47.360 less primary productivity less plant life  in the waters which reduces the foraging   01:28:47.360 --> 01:28:52.400 a bit you know forage for the zooplankton  which then works its way up the food chain   01:28:53.040 --> 01:28:58.160 and as a result of this there were fish die-offs  there were bird die-offs and whale die-offs 01:29:00.880 --> 01:29:05.040 and you know it extended all the way  through the north Pacific so this   01:29:05.040 --> 01:29:13.200 led to what we saw and what everyone saw  in 2016 was a dramatic drop in numbers   01:29:14.560 --> 01:29:23.840 um just a stunning drop and our numbers dropped  to levels that we had not seen since 2001. 01:29:24.560 --> 01:29:31.280 and from 2016 to 2019 hints of  a recovery and we'll get to that   01:29:32.240 --> 01:29:40.000 further in a bit but again not only was it the  number of animals that was dropping this is    01:29:40.000 --> 01:29:45.680 here it's labeled calf proportion it's also  called crude birth rate basically it's the   01:29:45.680 --> 01:29:53.200 number of calves you see divided by the number  of animals you see and again from 88 through   01:29:54.240 --> 01:30:00.400 2015 it's you know remarkably constant it look  doesn't look like there's very much of a change   01:30:00.400 --> 01:30:09.200 at all but again in 2016 it just plummeted  to the lowest value ever observed and as   01:30:09.200 --> 01:30:16.720 of 2019 we still have not got anywhere close  to what our calf numbers were prior to these 01:30:16.720 --> 01:30:23.760 events so having seen all this  can we explain this can we use   01:30:24.320 --> 01:30:32.640 what we the other data we've collected to try to  explain or predict the calf numbers or the whale   01:30:32.640 --> 01:30:40.960 numbers so with that since we're going to get into  statistics we have statistics for non-scientists   01:30:42.720 --> 01:30:47.840 so most of us are probably familiar  with the idea of a linear regression   01:30:48.800 --> 01:30:55.600 that's where you have some sort of dependent  measured variable on the y-axis and some sort   01:30:55.600 --> 01:31:02.080 of predictive sorry predictor variable  or independent variable on the x-axis and   01:31:02.080 --> 01:31:08.480 you're looking for a linear relationship  between those two a good example might be 01:31:10.800 --> 01:31:15.600 let's say non-lactating  whale length to non-lactating   01:31:15.600 --> 01:31:20.160 body volume there's probably a nice  linear relationship between that 01:31:22.320 --> 01:31:29.840 not necessarily but not to get it you know 01:31:32.080 --> 01:31:37.840 if you can accept that and that's got some  statistical assumptions the next step up is   01:31:37.840 --> 01:31:44.080 something called generalized linear models which  sort of loosens up the restrictions on what this   01:31:44.640 --> 01:31:50.320 area distribution of your variables can be  and we won't worry about that for the moment   01:31:51.040 --> 01:31:54.400 but the next step after that is  something called a generalized   01:31:54.400 --> 01:31:58.720 additive model which is what I'll be  talking about and I'll be presenting   01:32:00.000 --> 01:32:07.200 and what that allows is a non-linear relationship  between those two sets of variables so all of   01:32:07.200 --> 01:32:15.040 these tests are trying to find a relationship it's  just that generalized additive models or a gam   01:32:15.040 --> 01:32:20.080 will allow a non-linear relationship  instead of a simple linear relationship 01:32:22.240 --> 01:32:22.740 so 01:32:24.720 --> 01:32:29.920 the first thing we did was to establish  the base model and what we did was   01:32:30.720 --> 01:32:36.800 again sorry if numbers of whales and sorry  crude birth rate is what it should say there I   01:32:37.600 --> 01:32:43.840 apologize and we asked how much can year day  of the year which who you know who's observing   01:32:43.840 --> 01:32:51.200 what's the visibility of that day and the time  of the day can any of those explain or how much   01:32:51.200 --> 01:32:58.000 of the variability in our observed whale numbers  and birth rates can we see that it's explained   01:32:58.000 --> 01:33:05.680 by these variables and when you look run the tests  and then asks well which ones are significant   01:33:06.880 --> 01:33:12.880 for wales it's year day of the year an  observer for calf birth rate it's just year 01:33:15.360 --> 01:33:22.480 so to that we then added those the values  of those three different climate predictors   01:33:23.120 --> 01:33:32.240 the north pacific index the north pacific gyre  oscillation and the pacific decadal oscillation   01:33:32.240 --> 01:33:39.520 and since we are interested basically in a food  based hypothesis we lagged those either six months   01:33:39.520 --> 01:33:50.480 or a year and a half or one and a half years  and used a keiki information criteria to select   01:33:50.480 --> 01:33:58.160 which of those nine or actually twelve well nine  best nine models has the best explanatory power   01:33:58.960 --> 01:34:03.920 and the one in green is the winner  negative numbers are good in this case so   01:34:03.920 --> 01:34:11.120 what it's telling us is that the pacific decadal  oscillation is explaining more of the variability   01:34:11.120 --> 01:34:18.800 in our whale numbers than just those base  local variables so what does that tell us   01:34:20.480 --> 01:34:26.000 and this is why I went into statistics for  non-scientists because the shape of these curves   01:34:26.560 --> 01:34:33.120 are important they tell us things and these are  this you know these are statistically significant   01:34:33.120 --> 01:34:39.840 curve fits so not surprising from  everything we've seen before whales   01:34:39.840 --> 01:34:44.480 well numbers go up and then they come  down and within the day of the year   01:34:46.320 --> 01:34:51.600 anyone who knows about humpbacks in Hawaii  we start off low we have a seasonal peak   01:34:52.640 --> 01:34:57.440 usually in late February to early March at  least off the big island and then it drops down 01:34:59.680 --> 01:35:06.480 okay it all makes sense that I'll make  you know measures up exactly with what   01:35:06.480 --> 01:35:10.240 what one would expect and what one  can see with their very own eyes   01:35:11.840 --> 01:35:17.600 but this very boring looking slide is perhaps the  most important slide in the entire presentation   01:35:17.600 --> 01:35:24.880 because it's showing a very believe it  or not a very strong relationship between   01:35:24.880 --> 01:35:32.960 negative pdos in the summer and a half years ago  before the time in Hawaii and increased numbers   01:35:32.960 --> 01:35:43.120 of whales so what this is telling us is that when  you have a good cold some summer you should have   01:35:43.120 --> 01:35:48.640 high productivity and a year and a half later  you should have good numbers of whales in Hawaii 01:35:51.360 --> 01:35:58.080 and when you look at crude birth rate you get  the same pattern for a year but the pattern for   01:35:58.720 --> 01:36:03.360 day of year is completely different and  again this makes perfect sense because   01:36:04.000 --> 01:36:08.560 as whales females show up  they're having calves and so   01:36:08.560 --> 01:36:12.560 the percentages of calves should  increase over the course of the season 01:36:15.120 --> 01:36:20.800 and when you look at the climatic effects on  crude birth rates these are the three best models   01:36:21.760 --> 01:36:28.640 and north specific index the statistics  tell us this is the best model but i can't   01:36:28.640 --> 01:36:32.960 make much of that pattern so i'm going  to the second and the third best models   01:36:33.680 --> 01:36:42.720 both of which are telling us that in this case  higher values is cold waters for npgo and here   01:36:42.720 --> 01:36:49.440 we have higher number of higher birth rate with  negative pdo numbers both of these are telling   01:36:49.440 --> 01:36:55.760 us birth rate should be higher a year and a  half after a good cool summer up in Alaska 01:36:58.480 --> 01:37:00.560 so what's next 01:37:04.000 --> 01:37:11.120 we have continued this work scan samples were  collected in 2020 as normal they were collected   01:37:11.120 --> 01:37:18.560 2021 by very brave and physically but not socially  distanced folks who either lived locally and were   01:37:18.560 --> 01:37:23.280 not and were willing to fly before vaccines  I was not one of them I am not that brave   01:37:25.280 --> 01:37:29.840 we need to include those two years  of data in to the data set and redo   01:37:29.840 --> 01:37:37.280 these analysis bottom line is those were  better years than 2016 through 2019 so our   01:37:38.480 --> 01:37:43.600 you know the early look at the data jibes  with what people have said before today   01:37:44.800 --> 01:37:52.240 that in 2019 and 2020 we've seen a continued  recovery and next year and thanks to the   01:37:52.240 --> 01:37:59.120 sanctuary we're going to be adding an acoustic  recorder or monitoring to augment our visual   01:37:59.120 --> 01:38:06.560 monitoring so we're going to be deploying a bottom  mounted acoustic recorder very much like an EARS   01:38:07.200 --> 01:38:12.720 that Marc described earlier and one of the nice  things about acoustic monitoring is it's a lot   01:38:12.720 --> 01:38:19.200 easier to do than visual monitoring you can simply  place a recorder at the beginning of a season   01:38:19.200 --> 01:38:25.280 leave it there pick it up at the end and  hopefully you've got the entire season's data   01:38:26.880 --> 01:38:32.720 and then we want to compare our acoustic data  with our visual scan samples and we'll be doing   01:38:32.720 --> 01:38:39.280 that in a couple of different ways we'll be doing  a hand analysis in RAVEN which is a traditional   01:38:40.000 --> 01:38:47.680 spectrogram analysis program that will give  us very fine resolution and time and we   01:38:47.680 --> 01:38:54.640 you know a trained analyst aka me will go through  it and try to count how many singers are on those   01:38:54.640 --> 01:38:59.600 recordings and see how well that matches up  with the numbers of whales that we've seen   01:39:00.640 --> 01:39:08.400 and the idea is that if there's a relatively fixed  percentage of whales that are singing that we can   01:39:08.400 --> 01:39:13.840 come up with that relationship between numbers  of whales heard and numbers of whales seen 01:39:16.160 --> 01:39:20.880 and if that relationship comes  true or is found to be true   01:39:21.600 --> 01:39:28.960 then it opens up the possibility of being able  to perhaps add some additional interpretation   01:39:28.960 --> 01:39:35.760 to the larger data set of recorders that  Marc described earlier in the symposium   01:39:37.680 --> 01:39:44.880 we'll also be using a program called Manta which  does long term spectral averages and this is an   01:39:44.880 --> 01:39:50.560 automated program that just does these minute  by minute spectrograms and spits it out 01:39:52.160 --> 01:40:01.200 for your statistical and analytical pleasure  and this is one example this is one day of a   01:40:01.200 --> 01:40:07.600 sound trap we had in the water a couple years ago  and not only do we have the full ltsa spectrogram   01:40:07.600 --> 01:40:11.120 and you can clearly see where all  the humpback whale singers are and   01:40:11.840 --> 01:40:17.360 something very interesting happening here perhaps  a storm and then it gets kind of quiet here   01:40:19.360 --> 01:40:27.440 at the same time we can also integrate this  energy to reproduce the same metric that Marc was   01:40:27.440 --> 01:40:35.360 describing and for the sound sanc project where  they're looking at the 20 hertz to 1500 kilohertz   01:40:35.360 --> 01:40:43.120 or 1500 hertz band and for the same time we've  got that exact same band plotted minute by minute 01:40:45.520 --> 01:40:52.000 so our potential outcomes that we're  hoping for again is the a meaningful   01:40:52.000 --> 01:40:59.280 relationship between visual counts and acoustic  counts and that's been established in some other   01:40:59.280 --> 01:41:07.120 studies this is a comparison of of the number  of whales seen in aerial surveys compared to   01:41:07.120 --> 01:41:14.400 numbers of up calls for northern right whales  and these data also will be available for   01:41:15.040 --> 01:41:20.960 visual and acoustic density estimations and we  can compare between those as well as soundscape   01:41:20.960 --> 01:41:31.600 characterization so in summary the 19-year time  series have shown us the rise fluctuation and fall   01:41:31.600 --> 01:41:37.440 of humpback whale numbers and then hopefully the  re-rise and I think we've been able to show that   01:41:38.560 --> 01:41:46.000 again cool productive waters in the Alaska regions  will lead to increased numbers in whale numbers   01:41:46.000 --> 01:41:51.440 in Hawaii and we're hoping that the addition of  acoustics thanks again to the Sanctuary Foundation   01:41:52.080 --> 01:41:59.840 will increase our ability to interpret these data  as well as look in between our scan samples our   01:41:59.840 --> 01:42:03.360 little point samples because we'll have  a continuous record from the acoustics   01:42:04.160 --> 01:42:07.680 and we may be able to do more with  those data as well and finally 01:42:09.920 --> 01:42:15.520 again there's the QR code I promised for  our paper and I'd be delighted to have   01:42:16.080 --> 01:42:20.800 take any questions now that  I've overrun my time thank you. 01:42:26.560 --> 01:42:30.400 So actually yeah you're you're actually early  so that's good so we have some more time for   01:42:31.440 --> 01:42:38.400 yeah so okay Cindy if you want to hop on you  can see if there's a any questions for Adam   01:42:40.320 --> 01:42:43.280 yeah so one question that came in was   01:42:44.000 --> 01:42:49.840 how will whale populations be impacted due  to climate change more specifically any   01:42:49.840 --> 01:42:56.960 comparisons based on a business as usual climate  model versus limiting warming to 1.5 degrees 01:42:59.120 --> 01:43:05.040 well I again would argue that  our data are telling us that cool   01:43:06.640 --> 01:43:14.240 oceans especially in high latitude regions where  most of our whales feed are very good for primary   01:43:14.240 --> 01:43:20.320 productivity and secondary productivity  in making food for whales and when we have   01:43:22.320 --> 01:43:31.920 warming oceans like the blob we get a decrease  in productivity we have observed die-offs across a   01:43:31.920 --> 01:43:41.280 wide variety of taxa again birds, fish, seals, whales  in 20 you know during the blob week that's when   01:43:41.280 --> 01:43:46.400 we had literally California Sea lions crossing  the highways and going into restaurants looking   01:43:46.400 --> 01:43:54.640 for food I'm not making that up and i would  predict I think our data are telling us that   01:43:55.600 --> 01:44:02.480 the that climate change matters to whales  and that the more we can do to limit the   01:44:02.480 --> 01:44:08.160 impact of climate change the better it will  be for whales and if we do business as usual   01:44:08.880 --> 01:44:14.000 it will be very bad for humans for whales and  probably just about everything on the planet 01:44:18.560 --> 01:44:21.920 you actually feel very yeah  i think we have to start   01:44:21.920 --> 01:44:27.120 doing more and doing it now all of us  every one of us to do what we can to help 01:44:30.240 --> 01:44:34.320 I'm buying an electric car. 01:44:34.320 --> 01:44:41.600 Alright another question came in are ocean  temperature variations likely to affect metabolism 01:44:43.920 --> 01:44:50.880 it we know that that affects metabolism  in pokilothermic or cold-blooded animals   01:44:52.160 --> 01:44:59.440 for example you can look at the frequency of fish  calls and they increase in frequency as the water   01:44:59.440 --> 01:45:07.840 warms up because the fish is able to metabolize  better but with humpbacks being homeothermic or   01:45:07.840 --> 01:45:15.440 warm blooded i really don't think it's going to do  much to affect metabolism because they're sort of   01:45:15.440 --> 01:45:19.280 keeping you know they do all they're pretty  good at keeping their internal temperature   01:45:20.240 --> 01:45:26.800 fairly constant and one of the ways that they do  that is they have this counter current system  01:45:27.360 --> 01:45:35.120 where the arteries in the veins and they're in  the basis of their fins um run back run right past   01:45:35.120 --> 01:45:44.560 each other and so if an animal needs to keep heat  it can sort of close those down and you know it   01:45:44.560 --> 01:45:50.400 will the heat of the arterial blood will transfer  to the venous blood coming back to the body   01:45:50.400 --> 01:45:57.520 whereas if an animal needs to dump eat like say  it's a nice rotund calf in Hawaii then it can   01:45:57.520 --> 01:46:03.120 open that up and just let the warm blood flow out  to the flippers and then the flippers turn into   01:46:03.120 --> 01:46:09.120 effectively radiators so I think it's not  metabolism i think it's really more the prey   01:46:09.120 --> 01:46:13.360 that we need to worry about  but again all good questions 01:46:16.080 --> 01:46:21.920 and we have another question would  you recommend quiet marine parks to   01:46:21.920 --> 01:46:31.120 study marine life in Hawaii nothing  would make me happier and again 01:46:33.440 --> 01:46:39.520 we I think we're very lucky in that over in  Kawaihae bay we have very little commercial   01:46:39.520 --> 01:46:44.800 traffic just a few barges very little whale  watching traffic we have much less boat traffic   01:46:44.800 --> 01:46:52.080 than you find off of Maui and so you know that  sets up some very nice potential for comparisons   01:46:52.880 --> 01:46:56.240 but also the Sancsound project has got   01:46:57.360 --> 01:47:04.400 recorders all throughout the island chain and  up into the leeward islands so again that also   01:47:04.400 --> 01:47:10.240 offers the ability to do comparisons between  noisy environments and quiet environments 01:47:13.040 --> 01:47:15.440 but you know these animals evolved   01:47:17.360 --> 01:47:22.720 with that propeller noise and I I'm sure they would be happier and   01:47:24.400 --> 01:47:30.480 without propeller noise and something  that I'm sure Adam Pack will mention tomorrow   01:47:31.600 --> 01:47:38.000 much like covid 19 offered an interesting  opportunity there were some folks up in the   01:47:38.000 --> 01:47:42.960 Bay of Fundy studying studying right whales and  looking at stress hormones in the right whales   01:47:44.000 --> 01:47:49.840 and they had measurements before  and after 911 and that you know   01:47:51.040 --> 01:47:55.520 of course right after 9 11 basically everything  shut down vessel traffic shut down air traffic   01:47:55.520 --> 01:48:00.800 shut down everything shut down and the stress  hormone levels in those right whales dropped   01:48:00.800 --> 01:48:07.680 very quickly after 9 11 I think that very  clearly shows that anthropogenic activity   01:48:07.680 --> 01:48:13.760 and anthropogenic noise do does cause stress in  at least some marine mammals and probably almost 01:48:13.760 --> 01:48:27.280 all did I answer your question but it was again a  very good one yeah that that covers it I think   01:48:27.280 --> 01:48:34.400 that's all the questions that are currently coming  in for Adam thank you but I'll pass back to Eden   01:48:36.080 --> 01:48:40.240 okay thank you so much cindy and thank you  adam for that it's always so cool to see   01:48:40.800 --> 01:48:46.080 that historical record of the data that you  guys have collected over there so excited that   01:48:46.080 --> 01:48:51.040 you'll be able to keep collecting it and adding  some of that acoustic work as well so look forward   01:48:51.040 --> 01:48:55.440 to seeing all the results and good work that you  guys are doing over there and continue to do so   01:48:55.440 --> 01:49:00.800 thank you thank you very much yeah and so you  know real briefly we're just kind of going to be   01:49:00.800 --> 01:49:06.640 wrapping it up here in a little bit I did want  to just thank again all the presenters today   01:49:06.640 --> 01:49:11.040 Marc for giving us you know a great overview  of some of the activities that we're conducting   01:49:11.040 --> 01:49:16.480 as NOAA staff in our Sanctuary waters and then  highlighting some of our collaborations that we   01:49:16.480 --> 01:49:24.080 we work with or work on and then also Martin. I with his information sharing his work using drones   01:49:24.080 --> 01:49:29.200 to understand the body conditions not only here  in Maui but in the feeding grounds off southeast   01:49:29.200 --> 01:49:33.120 Alaska. I think that's really cool work and  I think really valuable to be getting   01:49:33.120 --> 01:49:38.000 that baseline information and hopefully even  when he graduates hopefully somebody else will   01:49:38.000 --> 01:49:42.240 take it on and keep that record going and  then of course like I just mentioned with   01:49:42.240 --> 01:49:48.240 Dr you know Frankel and and his team over at  the Hawaii marine mammal consortium they've   01:49:48.240 --> 01:49:53.440 been doing work over on the Big Island for for  many many years and uh really fortunate to be   01:49:53.440 --> 01:49:59.200 able to partner with them and to have that  that really great data set for so long and   01:49:59.200 --> 01:50:03.760 so great to hear from all the different  partners and these mini grant recipients from   01:50:03.760 --> 01:50:08.400 the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation so we  thank you guys for applying and for being able to   01:50:09.520 --> 01:50:13.840 continue to doing this kind of cutting edge work  and conservation work in our waters it's really   01:50:13.840 --> 01:50:19.120 important so thank you for that I did want to  just put in a quick plug we are continuing our   01:50:19.120 --> 01:50:24.800 symposium tomorrow so if you can join us it's 9  a.m Hawaii standard time again and we'll be going   01:50:24.800 --> 01:50:31.440 to 11 a.m and tomorrow um we have speakers lined  up from Whale Trust Haley Rob and then we also   01:50:31.440 --> 01:50:36.960 oh thank you Cindy for putting that up there and  she'll be talking about assessing female humpback   01:50:36.960 --> 01:50:42.800 whale reproductive status and then Dr. Adam  Pack we'll be talking about the pressures of   01:50:42.800 --> 01:50:47.280 humpback whale motherhood in Hawaiian waters and  so it's nice because a lot of these these talks   01:50:47.280 --> 01:50:53.520 are building on one one another and giving us some  context as to why we're studying this and then   01:50:53.520 --> 01:50:58.560 hopefully Ed will be able to join us and talk  about some of his health and risk assessment   01:50:58.560 --> 01:51:04.320 monitoring efforts here in the Sanctuary and then  we'll have we also be joined from Kris Sari from   01:51:04.320 --> 01:51:10.240 the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation and then  some opening remarks from Uncle Sol Kaho'ohalahala 01:51:10.240 --> 01:51:15.920 from our Sanctuary Advisory Council and a kupuna from the island of Lanai so very excited to have   01:51:15.920 --> 01:51:21.040 those folks on deck for tomorrow and we hope  that all of you guys can join us and even if   01:51:21.040 --> 01:51:26.400 you can't like we said it'll be recorded so you'll  be able to watch it at a later time so for all   01:51:26.400 --> 01:51:31.920 of you that do have to leave we really appreciate  your time and your attendance today all the great   01:51:31.920 --> 01:51:38.160 questions that coming in we are going to stay  on and we have this until 11 so we can go ahead   01:51:38.160 --> 01:51:43.440 and take questions for any of the speakers and  then at least Marc and I will be able to stay   01:51:43.440 --> 01:51:48.880 on at least a little after 11 if there are some  more questions after that so but like we said   01:51:48.880 --> 01:51:53.920 we'll anything that doesn't get answered today  we'll send out and send it to the speakers   01:51:53.920 --> 01:51:59.200 and then send out to the registrants with  the email that you registered with so mahalo   01:51:59.200 --> 01:52:03.920 everybody and Cindy any other questions that that  came in that we didn't get a chance to get to 01:52:06.880 --> 01:52:12.560 yes so we did get a lot of questions  earlier as well let me shuffle through   01:52:14.160 --> 01:52:20.000 there were a few questions on hydro  foils for example are there any   01:52:20.000 --> 01:52:25.440 precautionary rules for the hydrofoil  board using use during whale season   01:52:27.200 --> 01:52:31.840 yeah Marc if you want to jump on and then I also  I forgot to mention tomorrow Jeannine Rossa from   01:52:31.840 --> 01:52:36.880 DLNR is going to be on she's our Sanctuary   co-manager from the state of Hawaii and she's   01:52:37.440 --> 01:52:42.640 been working with Marc on this but she'll she'll  be on tomorrow too and she's she can probably   01:52:42.640 --> 01:52:49.040 provide some insight on that as well but Marc, I'll pause pass it to you yeah sure so you know the   01:52:49.920 --> 01:52:56.400 you know the effect of e-foils on on whales or any  other kind of type of marine life is really still   01:52:56.400 --> 01:53:02.720 kind of an unknown for us right now so we are to my knowledge there are no efforts to kind of   01:53:02.720 --> 01:53:09.200 take sort of you know precautionary measures to to  to regulate them any differently than than other   01:53:09.200 --> 01:53:14.320 types of vessels there's been a fair bit of you  know community outreach and communication with   01:53:14.320 --> 01:53:20.560 them so that you know they're aware of of  course all the rules associated with operating   01:53:20.560 --> 01:53:27.920 around whales and are informing their customers  that rent these e-foils uh but it is something   01:53:27.920 --> 01:53:33.040 that we are you know we're very interested in  trying to understand better and so as you know as   01:53:33.040 --> 01:53:38.560 time progresses we'll be you know we'll be keeping  an eye on on the effects that e-foils as   01:53:38.560 --> 01:53:44.560 you know as well as other vessels may have on on  humpback whales so it's we're still very early   01:53:44.560 --> 01:53:49.520 on they've only been around for for a couple  years and so for now we've just been trying   01:53:49.520 --> 01:53:55.120 to understand you know acoustically speaking you  know what they what they produce and the next step   01:53:55.120 --> 01:53:59.920 would be to try to understand if there's really  an actual effect on on on whales potentially   01:54:01.920 --> 01:54:07.120 thanks Marc and another question that I  believe was during your presentation how   01:54:07.120 --> 01:54:12.640 far out can you triangulate whale position  from your vectored acoustical sensors   01:54:14.240 --> 01:54:18.080 yeah that's a that's a good  question it really depends on the   01:54:19.120 --> 01:54:24.320 a number of different factors including sort of  the the aperture of our array meaning that the   01:54:24.320 --> 01:54:30.960 distance that these these different recorders  are spaced apart and because they they   01:54:30.960 --> 01:54:39.360 kind of send out um sort of bearings you get  to a certain point where the the error becomes 01:54:39.360 --> 01:54:44.720 you know the the ambiguity of it becomes  too great to really make a a very 01:54:45.520 --> 01:54:50.400 you know very accurate localization so if you if  you remember the little animation that I showed   01:54:50.400 --> 01:54:56.400 with the the different singers moving there was  one that was kind of moving across the array and   01:54:56.400 --> 01:55:01.440 as it got to one end you saw some circles and they  turn into kind of ellipses because that's the the   01:55:01.440 --> 01:55:07.040 area of uncertainty and you get to a certain point  where you know you can get a localization but   01:55:07.040 --> 01:55:12.240 you just don't have really very much confidence  in it so so it really kind of comes down it's   01:55:12.240 --> 01:55:19.360 not just how far but also the angle away from you  know from the sensors that that matters but you   01:55:19.360 --> 01:55:23.520 could see that you know you know I didn't have a  scale on the map but you know we could localize   01:55:23.520 --> 01:55:29.680 whales out to you know multiple kilometers out but even even if you go straight out there's going   01:55:29.680 --> 01:55:35.120 to come a point where the bearing lines start to  kind of you know join you know and almost parallel   01:55:35.120 --> 01:55:40.480 one another and then they and then the accuracy of  the localizations just becomes you know just very   01:55:40.480 --> 01:55:45.040 questionable so it's not a hard sort of distance  it's sort of a little bit more qualitative in the   01:55:45.040 --> 01:55:50.960 sense that becomes a certain point where where  um the accuracy just you know becomes unreliable 01:55:54.880 --> 01:56:02.720 Thank you Marc. Okay another question and I believe this one was during Martin's presentation   01:56:04.240 --> 01:56:09.360 so how did you go about deriving the  relationship between width and volume   01:56:09.360 --> 01:56:12.480 at each particular segment of a measured whale   01:56:12.480 --> 01:56:17.120 are there differences in the proportions  of animals depending on sex and age 01:56:19.280 --> 01:56:25.920 yeah good question so the way we did it was we  assumed a circular cross-section of the whale   01:56:27.120 --> 01:56:31.680 now there is some work that's been done by Dr  Pedro Christensen looking at the height and width   01:56:31.680 --> 01:56:37.920 ratio of the animal so you can kind of naturally  compress the cross-section to a more true state   01:56:37.920 --> 01:56:43.680 but for us we're using at this point a circular  cross-section to go from the two-dimensional to   01:56:43.680 --> 01:56:51.920 the three-dimensional and at this point we know  for sure calves initially for the first six   01:56:51.920 --> 01:56:59.200 months the head length is fairly short and  this skull kind of starts to extend over um   01:57:00.080 --> 01:57:07.360 month six to twelve I would say where you  see more adults kind of the eyes are 25   01:57:07.920 --> 01:57:14.560 from the rostrum whereas for carbs it's around 20  so in terms of proportions based on age certainly   01:57:14.560 --> 01:57:22.080 things like head length I would say is  is a key one that we can look at in trying   01:57:22.080 --> 01:57:28.560 to derive how old a calf is we also look at the  relative width or the relative length of the calf   01:57:30.240 --> 01:57:36.560 versus the length of the mother so if an animal is  30 of the length of its mother it's fairly young   01:57:37.680 --> 01:57:42.000 and as it gets to the end of the breeding  season it's approaching 55 percent   01:57:42.560 --> 01:57:49.200 45 to 50 percent and then in Alaska it goes  from 55 through to to about 70  percent 01:57:49.200 --> 01:57:53.360 by the time animals come back as yearlings  so those would be the key ones for sure. 01:57:56.800 --> 01:58:00.160 Mahalo Martin and another  question that was sent during your   01:58:00.960 --> 01:58:08.080 time period drones have been fitted with thermal  infra red cameras to test thermal properties of   01:58:08.080 --> 01:58:15.280 whales related to their body condition in Stellwagen Banks National Marine Sanctuary by Gina of   01:58:15.280 --> 01:58:19.840 the University of New Brunswick have you thought  about incorporating this into your research   01:58:21.520 --> 01:58:26.560 we've certainly discussed it as I think  the technology is getting better and better   01:58:26.560 --> 01:58:31.520 every year and getting cheaper too at this  point we've looked at it to some extent but   01:58:31.520 --> 01:58:35.920 we haven't had the opportunity to to  purchase that equipment or test it out   01:58:35.920 --> 01:58:40.160 in the field it would be really powerful  to link up with these custom altimeters   01:58:40.160 --> 01:58:45.040 to give us a little bit of extra information so  definitely not ruling it out at this point   01:58:45.040 --> 01:58:50.160 but certainly something we're thinking about  as we continue with this work in the future 01:58:54.720 --> 01:58:58.800 excellent and I think I had one follow-up  question from our previous question 01:58:59.520 --> 01:59:07.120 is there an average of how much  body weight a lactating female loses   01:59:07.120 --> 01:59:10.080 per pound of gain in the body weight of her calf 01:59:13.520 --> 01:59:15.840 um 01:59:16.560 --> 01:59:22.080 I mean I haven't looked at that specifically  yet we know the length of a calf is kind of   01:59:22.080 --> 01:59:25.120 dictated by the length of the mother as  well and the condition of the mother so   01:59:25.840 --> 01:59:31.680 essentially we're seeing a half a meter increase  in a calf's length so every meter increase in the   01:59:31.680 --> 01:59:36.880 female when she gives birth so at the moment  we haven't looked at the actual mass side   01:59:36.880 --> 01:59:43.840 of things yet but that's something that i will be  exploring with the dissertation good question 01:59:47.840 --> 01:59:51.200 Alight thank you looks  like you're oh sorry Cindy   01:59:52.160 --> 01:59:56.560 no no go for it you know I was gonna pass  it to you oh perfect okay so yeah it looks   01:59:56.560 --> 02:00:01.120 like we're at our 11 o'clock Marc so again  I want to be respectful of everybody's time   02:00:01.120 --> 02:00:05.680 and just say mahalo nui loa to everybody  for joining us today if you want to stick   02:00:05.680 --> 02:00:09.760 around and we can stick around for another  you know 15 minutes or so if you'd like   02:00:09.760 --> 02:00:25.840 but for those of you that have to take off we'll see you hopefully tomorrow have a good day 02:01:02.560 --> 02:01:06.640 Alright Eden so there are some other  questions that you guys can probably tackle   02:01:07.440 --> 02:01:15.840 one in particular is what is the status of the  monitoring plan for the humpback whales with such   02:01:15.840 --> 02:01:21.840 poor body conditions and continued climate  stressors it seems logical they be realistic 02:01:24.400 --> 02:01:27.520 let's see Marc would you feel  comfortable tackling that question   02:01:29.440 --> 02:01:36.480 sure I can I can certainly try so when the  humpback whales were delisted at least I 02:01:36.480 --> 02:01:40.560 should say that the Hawaii distinct population  segment was de-listed from the endangered   02:01:40.560 --> 02:01:46.800 species list there was also a post-de-listed  monitoring plan that was that was you   02:01:46.800 --> 02:01:53.760 know required basically as part of that process  and so you know we are you know in the process   02:01:53.760 --> 02:02:00.320 of of engaging in that post enlistment monitoring  plan it took a little while to to get going   02:02:00.960 --> 02:02:06.560 I think as as Martin mentioned we in  partnership with the NOAA's pacific island   02:02:06.560 --> 02:02:12.720 regional office held a workshop in 2018 to to  discuss some of these trends that were happening   02:02:13.760 --> 02:02:20.720 you know because because there's been you  know a kind of period of fluctuation so we   02:02:20.720 --> 02:02:25.360 saw you know trends kind of you know numbers in  Hawaii and other places going down but then you   02:02:25.360 --> 02:02:32.400 know coming back up there hasn't been any  you know any real serious discussion about re   02:02:32.400 --> 02:02:39.520 you know re-listing this population because the  the numbers even though they are fluctuating    02:02:39.520 --> 02:02:46.800 they are you know they're not you know  continuing to go down and so so there's   02:02:46.800 --> 02:02:51.760 there's of course a lot of interest in in  following the trends and in understanding   02:02:51.760 --> 02:02:58.160 what the trajectory is but to some extent you  know the population kind of going up and down   02:02:58.800 --> 02:03:05.040 is especially after a period of you know of of  increase you know is somewhat to be expected 02:03:05.600 --> 02:03:10.960 regardless of whether you know things like climate  change and so on are are having an effect and so   02:03:12.000 --> 02:03:15.600 so you know that's all to say that I think you  know right now there's just going to be continued   02:03:15.600 --> 02:03:20.800 monitoring of the situation and and if certain  triggers are triggered you know relative to   02:03:21.680 --> 02:03:27.760 you know to to you know numbers you know  proportional you know calf mortality and you know   02:03:27.760 --> 02:03:32.000 and so on and so forth then then those kinds of  discussions I think could really pick up steam but   02:03:32.000 --> 02:03:37.040 for the time being I think we're we're sort of in  a wait and see mode as far as that's concerned. 02:03:39.360 --> 02:03:46.240 Thanks Marc and then I believe one  other question is there any evidence of   02:03:46.240 --> 02:03:53.520 adjustment of whale song in the frequencies  generated by watercraft in the frequency   02:03:53.520 --> 02:03:56.880 generated by watercraft so like noise 02:04:00.000 --> 02:04:06.160 yeah okay so yeah so I mean that's a it's it's  an interesting question in terms of you know   02:04:06.160 --> 02:04:12.640 whether there's an adjustment in frequency so  animals can respond in a few different ways   02:04:12.640 --> 02:04:17.200 to increases in noise I think what the  question is asking whether it's whether   02:04:17.200 --> 02:04:23.840 whales are somehow shifting the the song  frequencies either up or down to kind of avoid   02:04:25.360 --> 02:04:29.040 noise of you know interference  from from vessel noise 02:04:31.120 --> 02:04:36.000 we don't see any direct evidence of of anything  like that vessel at least the vessel noise that   02:04:36.000 --> 02:04:43.440 these whales tend to be exposed to in here  or from relatively small vessels that's fairly   02:04:43.440 --> 02:04:50.400 broadband so it covers a wide range of frequencies  um you know whales can also adjust not just by   02:04:50.400 --> 02:04:57.680 shifting their frequencies but by also maybe  producing their song louder so to try to overcome   02:04:57.680 --> 02:05:04.960 the masking effect of noise we currently don't  have any evidence that that is taking place but    02:05:04.960 --> 02:05:09.840 it certainly could it would be you know  it would be very interesting study to look   02:05:09.840 --> 02:05:15.120 at to see whether whales adjust their  the amplitude of their of their singing   02:05:15.760 --> 02:05:22.400 in different acoustic environments there is  some evidence though from different   02:05:22.400 --> 02:05:25.920 you know parts of the world and we've seen  some of that here locally as well that   02:05:26.480 --> 02:05:35.280 noise can you know interrupt or interfere the  whale's singing to some degree and you know one   02:05:35.280 --> 02:05:40.320 of the ways that animals deal with increased noise  is just to simply stop singing so if it's if it   02:05:40.320 --> 02:05:44.000 you know reaches a certain point and they can't  compensate by either increasing or decreasing the   02:05:44.000 --> 02:05:50.640 frequency or canning can increase the amplitude  of their singing then then they just stop so   02:05:50.640 --> 02:05:54.960 that is certainly something you know another  adaptation that can that can take place   02:05:56.240 --> 02:06:00.880 and I don't know you know if Adam  is still on perhaps he has some additional   02:06:00.880 --> 02:06:05.680 thoughts about this you know he's he's a very  experienced marine bio acousticians and   02:06:06.320 --> 02:06:13.040 knows whale song very well if you're still  on do you want to say anything about this    02:06:14.720 --> 02:06:18.720 trying to think of what I can add you've  done a very good job of covering the   02:06:19.280 --> 02:06:22.720 kinds of compensatory  mechanisms that animals can use   02:06:23.920 --> 02:06:33.280 and one of the things that complicates us trying  to look for evidence of changes in frequencies   02:06:34.000 --> 02:06:40.880 that have been seen in other whale species that  have stereotyped calls is because humpbacks keep   02:06:40.880 --> 02:06:46.240 learning they're called you know the song year  after year after year and it's constantly changing 02:06:48.400 --> 02:06:52.960 that constant change sort of  makes it hard to look for a simple 02:06:55.520 --> 02:07:05.440 increase out of the noise the other point that  and again sorry thinking on my feet here the other   02:07:05.440 --> 02:07:12.400 good point that mark made was that again most of  the outboards are very very broadband so they're   02:07:12.400 --> 02:07:18.800 noisy in all the frequencies that humpbacks are  typically using whereas right whales which for   02:07:18.800 --> 02:07:26.480 example have been shown to increase their calls  are more typically exposed to large vessels which   02:07:26.480 --> 02:07:33.360 are predominantly low low frequencies and so there  it seems like they're very clearly shifting upward   02:07:33.360 --> 02:07:39.360 out of the noise band and the other thing  that's very curious is a lot of the open   02:07:39.360 --> 02:07:46.000 ocean whales like blue whales and fin whales  seem to be shifting their frequencies downward 02:07:49.200 --> 02:07:55.280 so yep things are going on in the ocean  and things are changing but it it may be   02:07:55.280 --> 02:08:03.440 that the simple near constant production of sound  allows them to overcome the relatively low levels   02:08:03.440 --> 02:08:10.960 of vessel noise we have here in Hawaii yeah I think it's a very good point and you know    02:08:12.400 --> 02:08:19.600 from all the acoustic recordings that have been  made uh by us and and and you Adam and others   02:08:20.320 --> 02:08:25.760 it's pretty evident that you know humpback  whales are by far the the largest or the most   02:08:25.760 --> 02:08:30.320 significant sources of acoustic energy during  the winter months they kind of swamp everything   02:08:30.320 --> 02:08:37.120 out and so although there are of course  contributions from vessel noise they tend to be   02:08:38.080 --> 02:08:42.720 you know more sort of temporary or you know  instantaneous where a vessel is going by   02:08:43.600 --> 02:08:50.960 the even the contribution of all the vessels in  an area like Maui tend to be sort of masked by   02:08:50.960 --> 02:08:54.960 all the whale chorusing that we pick up and that's  what we're exploiting basically when we're looking   02:08:54.960 --> 02:09:00.880 at the the temporal trends right we're actually  looking at just how much the you know the the   02:09:01.440 --> 02:09:08.720 the volume of singing is changing and so because of that it's very difficult to try to you   02:09:08.720 --> 02:09:13.680 know pick apart you know any you know any either  you know especially very subtle kind of changes   02:09:13.680 --> 02:09:19.840 that that might be resulting from you know  from things like bustle noise because like I said   02:09:19.840 --> 02:09:24.400 and like Adam mentioned whales or humpback whales  are constantly changing their song or year to year   02:09:25.200 --> 02:09:31.840 and and also they're just they're the ones that  are producing the most acoustic energy of all 02:09:33.040 --> 02:09:38.240 yeah and I just wanted to say too it's kind of  a tangent on this as well but for the Sancsound   02:09:38.240 --> 02:09:43.520 project you know of course our recorders  are recording everything in the soundscape   02:09:43.520 --> 02:09:48.640 within the frequency range that we sample in  and so you know it's just a matter of what 02:09:48.640 --> 02:09:52.720 you have time to parse out of that but we are  in addition to looking at humpback whale song   02:09:52.720 --> 02:09:58.160 we are looking at other factors as well we  have done some vessel detector work to kind   02:09:58.160 --> 02:10:05.200 of quantify the presence of the vessels in our  on our sites as well as other detectors for    02:10:05.200 --> 02:10:11.520 other species like dolphins things like that so   there is additional work we just today only could   02:10:11.520 --> 02:10:17.520 do the very high level on topic theme of back  whale chorusing but the great news is that that   02:10:17.520 --> 02:10:28.320 data is there and that we can continue to look  at that for different things that interest us. 02:10:28.320 --> 02:10:34.400 Excellent thank you guys. I think our  incoming questions have kind of come to a halt   02:10:34.960 --> 02:10:43.360 so maybe we can wrap it up for today perfect  okay well yeah I think everybody great questions   02:10:43.360 --> 02:10:47.520 thank you for being so attentive and sending  those in and being patient while we got to those   02:10:47.520 --> 02:10:55.840 we'll go ahead and wrap it up and hopefully  we will see you tomorrow so have a great day aloha