Alright. Aloha mai kakou and welcome. We're pleased to have you join us for the Insights into
humpback whale use of entire ocean basins gained through two large international studies webinar.
This series is hosted by the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries and as a way to learn about
some of the exploration, research and discoveries occurring in sanctuaries. During the presentation
all attendees will be in listen only mode. You are welcome to type questions for the presenter into
the questions box in the bottom of the control panel on the right hand side of your screen.
This is the same area you can let us know about any technical issues you may be having. We will
be monitoring incoming questions and technical issues and we'll respond to them as soon as we can.
Now we are recording this session and we'll share the recording with
registered participants via email when it is available on the ONMS website.
So I am Cindy Among-Serrao, one of your hosts for this webinar. I am contracted by the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation as the Hawai'i Island program coordinator
for the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary. My fellow hosts for today is Ed Lyman,
the Natural Resource Specialist for the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary
as well as Allen Tom, our Superintendent of Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary.
We greatly appreciate any feedback you may have that will help us improve the
experience, so please take a few minutes to complete a short evaluation following this
webinar. Alright, so the Office of National Marine Sanctuary serves as the trustee for a network
of underwater parks encompassing more than 600 000 square miles of marine and Great Lake waters
from Washington State to the Florida Keys and from Lake Huron to American Samoa.
The network includes a system of 15 marine national marine sanctuaries and Papahanamokuakea
and Rose Atoll Marine National Monuments there is currently a proposed Lake Ontario
National Marine Sanctuary and here is a map just showing you where all of them are located.
So the NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries
is mandated to conduct research, monitoring, resource protection, education, outreach and
of course management of America's underwater treasures to preserve them for future generations.
National Marine Sanctuaries are living classrooms where people can see
touch and learn about the nation's Great Lakes and ocean treasures.
One moment as the slide loads
Okay so the next year is very exciting as the National Marine Sanctuary system turns
50 on October 23rd 2022, so please join us throughout the next year as we celebrate
the history, accomplishments and beauty of these incredible
underwater parks across the U.S. I will put in the chat the website where you can learn more.
Alright and then so kind of narrowing down on our Sanctuary who's hosting this webinar
today. The Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary was designated in 1992
and is jointly managed between NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries and the State
of Hawai'i through the Division of Aquatic Resources. More than half of the humpback
whales in the North Pacific seasonally use the waters around the Hawaiian Islands
as their principal breeding and calving wintering grounds. The bottom left is a map of the Hawaiian
islands and the areas outlined and shaded are the sanctuary boundaries. The sanctuary's
mission is to protect Hawai'i humpback whales and this extremely important habitat, through
closely aligned education, research and resource protection efforts the sanctuary works with the
community and our other partners to reduce threats to humpback whales including through enforcement.
Alright so I want to put a little plug in tomorrow and Friday, we are hosting a virtual
Hawaiian Island Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary research symposium. So folks that
are interested to learn about some of the projects and research that are going to be happening in the
upcoming season, feel free to register and you can view the agenda and more info via the registration
link that I just put in the chat and now I will pass it on to Ed Lyman to introduce our speaker.
Thank you Cindy, and Aloha everyone well I have the great honor of working with Dave
Mattila for many years. Both at the Sanctuary, he was the Sanctuary's first research coordinator
and elsewhere and as such I can say Dave Mattila is one of the leaders in the field
of not only better understanding the animals but also the threats understanding the threats
and responding to the animals in that regard. He is actually I think one of the pioneers as far as
large whale entanglement response and working with ship strikes and especially entanglement response.
I will say in that regard he's got over 45 years of experience literally covering the
world's oceans on those topics. He is currently the technical advisor focused on human impact
reduction for whales under the Secretariat to the International Whaling Commission
and remains a scientist for or at the Center for Coastal States. That's where Dave and I first met.
Okay where we got our start, where I got my start yep
thumbs up there. He is also a great speaker and a teacher and you're gonna find that out today
increasing an all-important outreach towards making us all better stewards protecting the
animals, the planet and getting people together is one another one of David's strong points, he's
great at getting people to work together at networking. So in short David's footprint here
I'm going to do a little analogy in the field of whether it's whale research, the response,
the outreach is as well figuratively as broad and powerful as a whale's flukeprint. I for one consider
myself very lucky to have worked with him, he is like I said he's been one he's been my co-worker
but he's much more than that, he's my mentor. He's been my mentor. He continues to be so
he's a dear friend and as such is with great pleasure to introduce Dave Mattila, today's speaker
for the Sanctuary's Hu'i Kohola, Return of the Humpback whales for the month of November events,
which as Cindy just mentioned is just the start Dave is kicking us off here in many ways
even just tomorrow and the next day we have a series of talks on research as well
through a research symposium but let's get back to David's talk on collaborative research.
His title is the title of his talk his insights into humpback whale use of entire ocean basins
gained through two large international studies. So please everyone welcome Dave Mattila.
Thank you David. Okay, well, Mahalo Ed and Cindy. Thanks so much and and well you said I have
leave a large footprint you're talking about kicking it off I'm thinking oh boy you know
well let's I'll try to do what I can here that you you've set the bar pretty high. So I'm
going to well and Aloha to a lot of old friends that I think may some people may be on here
maybe some someday we'll all get together again in Maui or and reminisce but for now
let's get right into this presentation that the sanctuary asked me to give and let me see here.
Cindy or Ed you can tell me if I'm if we're not seeing the first slide but
(looks good) I'm gonna as Ed said I'm gonna talk about two large studies that I've had the
really good fortune to be to participate in to be one of the the instigators of and but they
they really were carried out by really literally hundreds of people and these are
I'm talking about the YoNAH project which is Years of the north Atlantic humpback
and the SPLASH project which is a structure of populations levels of abundance and status
of humpbacks and some of the key steering committee are listed here.
But basically I think most of you know that humpback whales are are found in all oceans
of the world. Generally from the subpolar regions to the tropics and the YoNAH project
occurred in the north Atlantic in 1992 and 1993 and then the SPLASH project was 2004 through 2006.
The two projects had a common organizational structure that is they had a steering steering
committees that were made up of experts in particular disciplines like genetics
and statistics, modeling but also regional coordinators for regions
that were identified as being the key regions around the the ocean basins.
Both studies were built on existing data from long-term studies in the north Atlantic that was
the catalog of multiple contributors to a a collaborative catalog curated by Allied
Whale at the College of the Atlantic and but it also we took advantage of
at the time I was working at the Center for Coastal Studies and we took advantage of
some very detailed information on long-term studies of whales of the Gulf of Maine
and I put the plug here for the Stellwagen Bank Sanctuary which
as it was a key one of the key habitats for this this ocean basin study of the north Atlantic.
And the data in the I don't know for the north north Pacific of course a lot of it was from
the the history of great research done in Hawai'i but also a couple of key places
in the in other areas of the ocean of the north Pacific ocean basin up in southeast
Alaska centered around Glacier Bay National Park. Also the West coast of the U.S. work of
Cascadia Research Collective and others a lot of that taking place in the sanctuaries
along the West Coast. Then work in in long-term studies of off Mexico in the Revillagigedo islands
and the and Baja and also work in Ogasawara but so we had a a foundation of data on
humpback whale use of particular key habitats in both both oceans. We also both studies use
similar methodologies that is photo ID and I think most of you know the the taking photographs
of the underside of the humpback whale's tail, it's like a fingerprint and each one is distinct and
unique to each individual but we also collected small biopsy samples with a crossbow and a
dart that for genetic analysis and and other analyses as you'll see. Those were
common the fundamental methodologies but in SPLASH we also added a bit of looking at
taking photographs for assessment of human impacts of the whales and that was something
new and something that back in the days of YoNAH in 1992 and 93 we didn't even think about to try.
Both studies also used a few big ships but very few really to get to some of the areas
that up in the you know the Bering Sea around the Aleutians or off offshore British Columbia
and up in Norway and around Iceland and what not using big ships but most of it
was conducted by small boats working from either from a bigger boat or from land
some of them quite amazing like in the lower right there the the work of
Joe Assab is in in the Philippines. But again it was hundreds of people
some of you if you if I leave this on long enough might see yourself on there but
it couldn't have been done without a really cooperative spirit from
from I think in in the North Pacific we figured 400 researchers from from 10 different countries.
So in the North Atlantic for the YoNAH project we decided based on the existing
data that we would try to sample in Iceland Norway Greenland Labrador as well Newfoundland
Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Gulf of Maine. Those were the feeding areas that we would try to get
photo IDs and and biopsies and then also in the West Indies breeding ground. Down around the
Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. We did think about the Cape Verde Islands which historically
were a a place where humpback whales were hunted and they're at that the time we were designing
the study there were some people just beginning to work there but they were only finding a handful of
whales and so the statisticians told us that in a in a winter if we only could get 10 IDs that photo
IDs that wasn't going to make a dent and wouldn't was not of wasn't important to sink a lot
of resources to try to get samples from there so we were mostly focused on these areas in yellow
and these were the raw results basically we identified.
Overall in 1992. 1375 whales. In 1993, 1468 and then the unique animals biopsied
were about a thousand each year which was unheard of at the time at that time. I
think most most genetic studies and that were getting biopsies were getting you know 10- 20
samples so this was a a very intensive project to to get this kind of sample size
and then we did the the main thing that I should say NOAA was a was a major
organizer and supporter of both projects and one of the main things they wanted to know was and
we all wanted to know was how how many are there and I was I don't know if all of you know how
a simple marker capture works but basically if you have a population say that's those black dots of
the North Atlantic humpback whales and you photo ID the number of whales in that little dotted
rectangle. Then they are technically tagged then if you come back the next year and you photograph
again some whales the basically the ratio of the tagged ones to the ones you hadn't seen before
is going to give you an idea of the population size. So if you photographed 100 whales
in the first year and 100 in the second year and all 100 were the same then your population's
100 but if it's you photograph 100 and 100 again and only ten of them are the same then
the population is roughly a thousand that I'm over very oversimplifying but because
you have to take into sampling considerations animals being born animals dying all that kind
of thing but that's way was way above my pay grade that's why we had the the expert statisticians.
So the the results for the YoNAH project were
basically the best estimate we figured based on our we in the YoNAH project we actually tried
to gather a lot of information about how much time we spent with each sighting
how how many times they fluked or didn't fluke and what was our likelihood of of getting a photograph
and that kind of thing we were really trying to see what kind of bias there might be and in the
end we felt that the best estimate was was to look compare the animals photographed
and the feeding ground to those photographed in the breeding ground and get your mark recapture
that way and the best estimate was 10 600 but what we we also did was to thanks to our
geneticist Paraparesbo. At the time was this was the first time that anybody was with whales
was looking at microsatellites and really getting individual being able to identify
individuals genetically for whales and you know it took forever back then there weren't any other
robots doing it and we were all pulling our hair going what is this graduate student doing damn it
but in the end what it meant was that we were able to do a mark recapture using genetic
tags not the photo ID and that was interesting because we were able to look at and compare
the differences between males and females because we could identify the sex genetically and
and what that meant was that the the best estimate for the West Indies breeding ground was
to actually just estimate the number of males and then multiply it by two because we knew from our
sampling everywhere else that the sex ratio is 50 50. So and I'll get into that in a second
we start to examine why was that happening and this slide if you look at this number here
the estimate for females in the breeding ground was much lower than males and we were
wondering well what is that all about and so we looked at the behavior differences between
the males and the females and I you probably can't see this I apologize for this but the upper
graphic is the timing of females that were seen in each in both winters and as it turns out
the ones that were on these on right on or near the line were were seen almost to the day the
the following winter they were seeing you know say January 10th on one winter and then January
close to January 10th the next winter so there seemed to be a significant trend there while
the males that's the lower graphic we're more random and some of that has to do with males
we we do believe based on historical data stay in the breeding grounds longer than the females
and so the females seem to show up for a short time and that that short time they showed up was
kind of tended to be close to the same time each year we also look by the way at the how
whales from different feeding areas came through in the breeding area and I
apologize this this graphic isn't exactly may not be very helpful for you but what this shows
is that the the whales that were coming from further away like coming from Greenland
and Iceland and Norway tended to come through later in the season in the winter breeding
season than the whales that were coming from the from Stellwagen Bank and from Canada.
So these were some biases in the in the the use of the area that we had to take into consideration.
So what what did we end up with? Well we found
that genetically there was a genetically distinct population a different population in
up in the Eastern North Atlantic and that these whales did not seem to
be going to the West Indies breeding ground we didn't know where they went but we assumed
it was to Cape Verde islands and to the off the West Coast of Africa this had implications as
you'll see for both the Atlantic and the Pacific this has implications for management when you
have whales that are genetically distinct mixing with other whales in in the same area.
That information did feed into the recent or well not not so recent anymore biological review
of the status of humpbacks to help identify the most likely distinct population segments which
is what the US choose that's how they manage the the species is by distinct population segments
and so we basically have two breeding the the data suggests is or is most
consistent with two separate breeding stocks and some mixing on the on the feeding grounds.
Some other things that happened because of this this international work is that
not only did we learn about the interconnectedness of the whales and their use their use of the
waters of many different countries but we also learned of the interconnectedness of humans
and so we it helped to foster a spirit of cooperation which inspired and
eventually motivated the sister sanctuary agreement between Stellagen Bank
and Silver Bank, which Silver Bank is off the north coast of the Dominican Republic and is the
principal breeding area for Western North Atlantic Humpbacks. That has since grown into
a cooperative or a an agreement between several places in besides Stellwagen Bank
also the Agoa sanctuary and the French Antilles also they're the Dutch
Caribbean and Bermuda as a as a way point between the breeding and the feeding areas so there's a
an agreement a partnership between those areas.
And I think I'm going to Cindy if what I was going to do is pause after
three times two two times in the middle and once at the end if anybody had any questions and
I don't know Cindy has anybody typed in any questions in the chat or about the YoNAH project
Or yeah basically about the YoNAH project. Yeah Hey David we did get a couple questions.
So one question is: Given that the worldwide population has risen since these studies were done
is the basic premise of where they go and what they're doing still the same?
That's a that's a good question I think the I think we're learning that or it
appears that they are beginning to re-colonize habitats at least that's what the data is most
consistent with as as you know the obviously YoNAH was done now 30 years ago practically
the whales are starting to repopulate areas like for instance off the coast of New York City
and they're showing up in some other places as well so but
by and large the this the main feeding areas still seem to be the same as are the main
breeding areas so there there's also some more complicating factors that we're learning for
instance there is movement of humpback whales between the Cape Verde's and the Caribbean
so we don't you know you always ask the geneticists well how do they maintain their
genetic distinctness and they go well you know they mumble and we don't know but it
may be time maybe an issue of timing they just there may be something it's something that's
happening with a number of humpback whale populations throughout the world where they
genetically distinct breeding populations might swim through the breeding grounds of another group
and yet not intermingle but that's that's for you know someone now starting out can can discover
why that is I think we're that's a that's a tough one and another another question Cindy ?
Yeah so next question. To what extent do prevailing ocean currents or gyros
tend to isolate distinct humpback populations is that a common reason for genetic isolation
or etc? I don't think we know that. I'm trying to think of anywhere in the world
where we could say that that was the cause there are certainly physical barriers and
I'll show you in a moment or in a while towards the end here
some of this work in the North Atlantic has allowed looking into the past and how whales
have adapted to periods of glaciation and climate change and there's it's certainly
the evidence from that is that it can make it can make a difference about
there are environment environmental factors that make a difference other than the water the water
temperature things like physical boundaries and the either the homogenous
homogeneousness of or the homogeneity excuse me of the of the of the food or the if there's a
of a great variety of food but so I don't think I can point to any any place where we
say yeah this current kept this this group isolated but they do have
it in they do have an influence in the big picture I think that's maybe safe to say.
Okay any others or I should probably move on there are a few other questions but I think we'll try
and save them for the next Q and A period. Okay okay so the SPLASH project was really
instigated by the the Sanctuary, the Hawaiian island sanctuary when I was there we we thought
hey let's I we knew that that the researchers in the North Pacific wanted to do something
similar to the YoNAH project to to get a handle on what was going on in the big picture and so
in 2003 we invited what became this the steering committee for the
for the SPLASH project to Kihei and that's where we planned the project
the at the time the
the the conventional wisdom was that there were three basic stocks. The
Eastern pacific, Central pacific and Western pacific and that was about the
extent of it at that time. We did these are the areas where we established sampling along the
coast of Mexico, Central America Mexico US, Alaska and Russia and the Philippines and
Japan and these are the raw results even more impressive than the YoNAH project 10
000 individuals identified and over 5500 skins skin samples for genetic genetic analysis.
And what we got was a this is the this is a arrow showing some of the major movement by
identified individuals photographically identified individuals and it as you can see it sort of
looks like what we thought but it's actually more complicated some of the whales off of Mexico
we're going way over to even to either Eastern Aleutians excuse me Western Aleutians in Russia
and so it was it was a complicated picture
and what we also realized is that some of the whales that were being photographed
here in the Bering sea were not showing up anywhere anywhere in the in the winter
and the best explanation for that was that there's some breeding area between Hawai'i
and Japan and the Philippines that housed this or hosted a significant number of whales
maybe spread out over a lot of little seamounts and and islands but
but a distinct breeding breeding ground that that we didn't know about.
So anyway the the mark recapture results
for the North Pacific all came in at around 20 000 at that time
and
and it also based on existing previous data seem to be increasing at about somewhere
between five and seven percent which is a the the highest documented has been on the coast
of Australia both I think both the east and west coast where they're they've documented ten percent
but it five to seven as much is more is a more common population growth rate documented in
most popular in most of the populations. So then the question was well okay if we put together the
genetic analysis done by Scott Baker and his group that's these colored pies showing the haplotype
composition of the of the of regions along with the movements.
I put this here to intentionally show you that it's kind of kind of difficult and complex
but in in looking at it the group felt that there were basically a
unique Central American population down here in the lower right there was Mexican whales
that were breeding off Mexico Hawai'i and then the Western Pacific Japan and that's Okinawa
and Philippines but Ogasawara was slightly different which is a more of an offshore island
but that's was what the the data was suggesting was our distinct
population segments based on the SPLASH data and that basically was used
by NOAA in in the the status review of humpbacks and those were agreed as the distinct
population segment Central America Mexico Hawai'i Western Pacific and then this this sort of
mix of unknown breeding area of Ogasawara and then going to these these feeding areas.
So that's the basic population results in a you know very quick and dirty in a
summary. But there were other things that came out of out of these projects
that I think well all of it is has I think I think helps stimulate further questions and
further studies and and greater insights into what's going on and one of those we had
a graduate student that at the time Christina Else who looked at toxins for
the for the Pacific from the SPLASH samples that's here on the right and we were able to
get her some samples from the Gulf of Maine in the Atlantic and you can see the
those were those are had higher toxic loads to put it give you a reference these this dotted
line is where PCB's affect immune function in river otter and then up here is where it affects
the reproduction. Nobody's been able to look at that that I'm that I'm aware of
the effect on baleen whale reproduction that's just out of our capability at this point
but you can see that the Pacific populations were were fairly low at least based on those thresholds.
Right there also this the YoNAH samples have been used to stimulate a study of looking into
the past and the population basically looked looking at population changes growth and shrinkage
of populations of of eight baleen whale species over a time per period of thirty thousand years
through the last period of the great of great glaciation and I'm not going to go into this
in detail because it's kind of still embargoed but however just actually now an hour and a half ago
I got an email that said that the paper's been accepted for a publication. So you can keep an
eye out for this but it did we were able to look this is Per Pausible and his students
primarily looked at seven different types of prey and their genetic diversity and
and looking at their past through the genetics and comparing that with the with the whales and
found that I think the take-home messages are that actually with the during the period of the
of glaciers this light blue the populations were smaller because there was
less habitat and to some degree and there was other environmental factors at the
time but when they melted during what this period of eight point two thousand years ago the
was in a a warming of sort of rapid warming trend it did stimulate the growth of
food populations and therefore growth of of the baleen whale populations but that the take
home from this is that the the changes are very long lasting and take a long time. The other
take-home message is over here on the right that there was quite a difference between the North
Atlantic and the Southern Hemisphere. The Southern Hemisphere is much more homogenous mostly just
krill-based ecosystem while the North Atlantic is is more their greater diversity of currents and
prey and what have you so it gets a little bit of the question about currents isolating and and
and I so when this comes out it's going to be in Global Change
Biology you can take a look at it and see what you think.
Also in the SPLASH project as I mentioned we it was we decided that we were going to
try to look at through photographs look at other impacts to human caused impacts to the
whales. The humpback whales of the North Pacific and one of those was to look at the wounds from
entanglements which is was something that had just been starting to happen in the here in
the Gulf of Maine with right whales and humpback whales and basically we asked all the researchers
to take lateral photographs of the tail stock as the whale as the humpback whale dove
and looking for notches and wrapping scars to get a sense of how many of them had
gotten into entanglements and survived and so this was an attempt to do a systematic
view of this across an entire ocean basin these kinds of studies so far have found
that the interaction of humpback whales with ropes and nets in the water is much greater
than and had previously been known and was greatly underestimated most of the studies show
anywhere from 20 to 80 percent of populations are scar have scarring in the Gulf of Maine it's
somewhere between somewhere around now about 15 percent of the animals get new wounds every year
less than 10 percent of those reported reported to any kind of rescue or or reporting network
and Dr. Jouke Robbins was able to take this
and look this the animals getting new scars every new wounds everywhere year
and estimated a an annual mortality due to entanglement of about three percent which
if your population is growing at five to seven percent that's a significant issue.
So it it did appear that it's the primary threat to most stocks and so from the SPLASH project
Dr. Robbins did a analysis of the
photographs that we had and basically these pie charts or these pies
the size of the pie is the size of the sample of good photographs and then the black is the
percentage in that area the percentage that showed scars from entanglement and so you can
see there is nowhere where they didn't show significant entanglement scarring
and so for the that U.S, the status review of humpback whales
fish entanglement in fishing gear was highlighted as the the most urgent or the
most significant immediate threat anyway to all of the different populations really around the world.
So i think I'm going to pause again Cindy and that's kind of the end of
the SPLASH project and see whether people have questions about that.
Yeah so there are a lot of great questions coming in thanks everyone keep them
coming in but for now let me just kind of filter through them all.
So one question is: So SPLASH occurred around 15 years ago is there any progress on finding the
missing breeding ground and kind of merging that with another question: Has there been any telemetry
work to determine the missing breeding ground ? Well of course I skipped town right after the
SPLASH project and and started working and kind of left the North Pacific but I
and I'm sure there's some people who are watching this I think Alan Ligons on here
I believe he's been working and in one of those areas that might possibly be a
that part of that missing breeding ground I'm not aware of tagging
and you know what if I'm wrong about that I'll send out an email with a correction
and a link to whoever might be tagging I'm not aware of people tagging in the Bering sea
and the and the Western Aleutian islands it's tough place to tag that might that those would
be the animals that you'd want to try to tag to see where they go in the Winter I don't know
Ed if Ed is there do you are you aware of anybody tagging whales that are going
somewhere between the Hawai'i and the Japan ? No David , I'm not aware of anything. Okay
well we may just be showing your ignorance but i think if if somebody if we do hear of it I'll
make sure Cindy can circulate it to people as far as there's there's an attempt now
to do a a a kind of a follow-up to SPLASH to get to get a a trend of what's going you know what's
happened since then that's part of what will be a comprehensive assessment of
North Pacific Humpbacks for the International Whaling Commission. Any other question Cindy ?
Yeah so there are several of them sorry I'm filtering through them now.
All right one easy one is so what is the North Pacific population currently? Well that's not that
easy because. Well I guess you could figure it out if you if it was 20 000 in 2005 and it's
if it has continued to grow at five five to seven percent let's say six percent I'll let somebody
else do the math but that might give you a potent that would give you a ballpark figure of what
it might be I'm not aware of anyone that has done a a recent mark recapture estimate to you
know on its own standing on its own to be able to compare with that done by SPLASH. I think that's
they may be trying to do that with what they're calling the SPLASH 2 project but I
don't I'm I'm not sure I don't think they don't have those results yet they're working on that.
Actually that's great for mentioning SPLASH 2 because I know some folk there was a question
regarding SPLASH 2 and of course others were wondering if they're going to be same projects
similar to SPLASH or YoNAH in the Southern Hemisphere I know that was another question.
Well there actually there was a or there is a something that the Australian government
started called the SORP project, a Southern Ocean Research Partnership and there's also
the South Pacific Whale Research Consortium and this so the with regard to humpback whales,
the South Pacific Whale Research Consortium has been a collaborative effort to
get market capture and genetic information of humpback whales throughout the South Pacific
and that has come up with like boy I think the most recent official estimate is not
that new at probably five to ten years old about three thousand whales and that's people working
in like American Samoa and Samoa and Tonga and New Caledonia and Tahiti and French Polynesia
they did attempt by folding that into the Southern Ocean Research Partnership
they did attempt to get some photo ID and biopsy of humpback whales around Antarctic in the summer
time but I think it was I don't know the status of that I know the first season was pretty tough
that's a tough place to work and but there is there are efforts to do
similar oceanic collaborative projects in the in the South Pacific and also actually well
they're definitely in in the Arabian Sea which is a whole nother a whole nother issue that's
a separate population that doesn't migrate and there's a very passionate and well sort of
coordinated or or well complementary work work being done in the in the Arabian
Sea. Awesome and I think we'll have just one more question and then we'll move forward with
your presentation since you have the slide up on the severity of current or imminent threats
to humpback whales by DPS. So one question is How they're curious to know how is whale
watching a threat and also curious as to why whaling is only a one threat? Because this
was obviously if whaling were actually occurring it would be a higher threat but it's it's
only there's only aboriginal subsistence whaling in the West Indies and so it's
that's why it's good that's why I believe that's why it's a low threat if it were if it were
planned to start up again then I think that then it would obviously be a two or three.
I hope that answers that .Okay so I'll finish up here with some other outgrowths of these
two studies and some of that is related to the International Whaling Commission what I've
been working on the the International Whaling Commission is a it's a treaty of 89 countries
to to manage whale populations globally and the mission is a
both conservation but also obviously to manage whaling but given that that
out of all both of these projects we were seeing that entanglement was a major threat to
populations of humpback whales and other whales around the world. The IWC in 2010 we we hosted
a workshop in Maui at the at the time it was the new Center there and we had folks from around
the world who had information about the scope and impact of large whale entanglement we reviewed
the data at the time that was being submitted to the International Whaling Commission and saw that
that all species of of large whales have been reported entangled in man-made ropes
and nets at some time but the most reported are Minke and Humpback whales
as you can see here on this. As to what type of gear if you've talked to Ed you know that it's
that he pulls all kinds of stuff off of these whales and with regard but probably
90, 98 percent of it is is fishing gear either actively fished or or some of it
derelict but the majority is actively fished gear whoops whoa and this this here
I don't know if you can see the FAO gear type this is gill net and drift kill net those are the that
and fish pots around the world are the are the dominant entanglement risk to humpback whales.
And as far as where it happens unfortunately it can it seems to be
it can happen anywhere from in the feeding ground where there probably is more likely to
run into gear but they can also run into gear while migrating or even on on the breeding grounds.
So because we realized that this was a a severe threat and a number of countries asked
for capacity building we held a second workshop here in Providencetown, Cape Cod at the Center for
Coastal Studies to come up with some principles and guidelines for responding to entangled whales
and also we developed a strategy and a curriculum for training and so that's what I've been doing
a fair amount since really for the last 10 years is helping to build capacity around the world
to respond to reports of an entangled large whales
and doing that with with the help of folk great folks like Ed. Those courses are two days the first
day in the in the classroom and on land and the second day with simulated trainings on the water.
And so far that this initiative which is a partnership initiative between the International
Whaling Commission and the Center for Coastal Studies here on Cape Cod has trained about 1200
people from 34 different countries including some that may surprise you. Countries like I've
done trainings in Greenland to where I trained some of the whalers to how to release whales and
trapped in fishing gear. Also in Norway and in Japan we've done a training but a awful lot in
Latin America very very passionate requests there this is these little stars are are the
ones with the yellow cores are ones where we've done the training the the other dark cores are
where our teams that already existed but we all communicate and and help each other work together.
The other thing that I mentioned that has come out of these studies for the International
Whaling Commission is a comprehensive assessment of North Atlantic humpback whales
this was back in 2001 after the results of the the YoNAH project were available and
what the scientific committee of the IWC realized is that for Iceland which wanted to potentially
start hunting humpbacks they had a population of genetically distinct a very small population of
genetically distinct animals that were feeding in the same area with the other with a with a larger
population. The larger population would goes to the West Indies but this genetically distinct group
goes to the probably the Cape Verde in Western Africa and so unless they could tell them apart
then the management advice at the time was you know if you can't tell them apart you shouldn't
hunt because you might be taking some from this very small genetically distinct population.
There's also now an ongoing comprehensive assessment of North Pacific Humpbacks. I
won't go into that in in great detail but it's mostly based on a awful lot of the
is based on the SPLASH data taking a look at at the structure and the numbers of
for each each population or each distinct population segment. And then and then finally
one of the unique linkages and one of the another one of these curious
situations is that the the breeding population off Central America
is genetically distinct small may actually be a place where there's some overflow from
the South Pacific some genetic overflow so it's a very important population but it goes
up to the West Coast of the United States and feeds off of California and off the West Coast
and there it mixes with the population of whales that are breeding off of off of Mexico
that's a that's a healthier population so I not sure exactly how Fisheries is dealing with it I
believe that they have to take into consideration that you know if 20 humpback whales are killed by
entanglement and fishing gear they have to assume that a certain percentage of those may be from
this highly not highly endangered or or this small unique population so they have to manage the
population and manage the fishing taking those things into consideration and so that's been a
I know that was a real headache for Fsheries but it is that's the reality of the these
population the what these humpbacks are doing these sort of almost like overlapping herds of distinct
populations and another thing coming out of this because of the uniqueness of this
population is that the governments of in particular it's it's being advanced by Mexico
are working with Guatemala, El Salvador Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and the U.S to
develop a concept an IWC conservation management plan for that population which would mean a
an agreement between those those range states to try to manage cooperatively to take into
consideration what's going on in each country for this population to help it recover.
So that's I think that's yeah that's some of it some of what has come out of these studies
and so I guess Cindy we're open to final questions and you're and you're summing up.
Excellent. Alright so Mahalo folks for submitting all those questions. We'll get to if we have a
few minutes for a couple and then I'm going to do some wrap-up slides as David has mentioned. So one
question that we have is: How does IWC support tech development to reduce whale entanglement
an example ropeless pot systems, real-time alerts etc.?
Actually thank you for that question or Mahalo for that question. Sorry. The
the IWC is evolving to take a to take what I think is safe to say is a more holistic view
of its management responsibilities and you know it was mostly for several decades focused on
just the whaling but if you read the the language of the agreement there is a mandate
for conservation for helping any helping recoveries help helping populations recover.
The scientific committee has determined that entanglement is probably the major roadblock to
most populations recovery not a not necessarily a insurmountable roadblock but it's an it's a
it's probably the biggest immediate issue for them and so
a couple of countries proposed a by-catch mitigation initiative and so there is a we
now have Belgium heads up a standing working group on by-catch and the secretariat has hired
an amazing coordinator Marguerite Tarzia who coordinates the by-catch mitigation initiative
and that she's putting in proposals now for hopefully large sums of money to help
demonstration projects studies of exactly what the the question was about what you know
to help determine what are the what are the greatest risks and and what are the what
can help mitigate those and I can tell you from my work going around the world training
people to respond to entangled whales a lot of the fishermen are desperate especially in
in countries where it's subsistence fishing for instance in in Peru the the fishermen
came to me said we you know we're losing gear, our livelihoods what can we do
to help to prevent whales from getting into our nets and so there's a there's a a very
there's a there's a both a there's a conservation need for the populations, there's an animal
welfare need it's a horrible way for an animal to die and there's there's a socio-economic need for
for fishermen around the world to be able to put you know put food on the table
for their families. So it's a and that's what Margarites working on with a little help
from me but mostly that she's doing that and there is an expert panel
of experts from around the world who can advise on projects and and on technologies. I hope
that helps answer it a little bit oh if you go to the IWC website that's www.iwc.int
and you look for the by catch mitigation
initiative you'll get a little bit of information there anyway thanks. Cindy?
Alright Mahalo David.
So to be cautious of everyone's time we will be kind of wrapping up today's presentation.
So hopefully my slides will shift alright so thank you for attending today's webinar.
As I mentioned earlier we welcome any feedback or further questions you can submit input by replying
to the follow-up email you'll receive or by email emailing us at the emails listed on the slide.
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links currently. Alright there's a few several links that I just put in the chat for you folks.
Following this webinar all attendees will receive a PdF copy of a certificate of attendance
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Please complete the survey immediately after signing off the webinar it will likely take you
three minutes to complete we greatly appreciate any feedback you are willing to share
and then we do have a couple of upcoming webinars as I previously mentioned we are hosting a virtual
Research Symposium tomorrow and Friday and as Ed mentioned it is kind of kicking off
this month's Ho'i Kohola the return of the humpback whales to the Hawaiian islands
and that link was also shared once again in the chat
and then another webinar we have next week Wednesday that we are hosting is titled Every
calf counts Hawaii's humpback whale mother and calf pairs in a time of changing climate with Dr.
Rachel Cartwright and yeah hopefully you folks can all join I also put in the chat where the upcoming webinars
will be able to where you can register and view this webinar and with that thanks again to David
for a great presentation about the insights into humpback whale use of entire ocean basins
gained through two large international studies and Mahalo to all of you for taking the time
to join us and this will conclude today's webinar Mahalo everyone. Thank you Cindy