WEBVTT
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Good evening, everyone.
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We're pleased to have you join us for our annual
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Seaside Chats Speaker Series about ocean topics associated
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with Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary
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and the Gulf of Mexico.
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This year we are also part of the National Marine Sanctuary
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webinar series hosted by NOAA's Office
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of National Marine Sanctuaries, as well as
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the NOAA Science Seminar Series.
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During the presentation, all attendees
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will be in listen-only mode.
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You're welcome to type questions for the presenter
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into the question box in the bottom of the control panel
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on the right-hand side of your screen.
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This is the same area you can let us know
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about any technical issues you may be having.
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We will be monitoring incoming questions
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and technical issues, and we'll respond to them
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as soon as we can.
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We are recording this session and we'll post the recording
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to the National Marine Sanctuaries and Flower Garden Banks
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National Marine Sanctuary websites.
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We will notify registered participants via email
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when these recordings are available.
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And for those of you who are interested,
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we have a document of links to additional resources
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on today's topic in the handouts pane of the control panel.
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Simply click on this item to download it.
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The Seaside Chats Speaker Series began as a way
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for Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary
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to share current research and management efforts
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in the Gulf of Mexico in an informal setting.
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These chats started in 2012 with presentations
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in the gift shop of the Galveston Fishing Pier.
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From one year to the next, we moved around
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the Galveston community, hosting presentations
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at Moody Gardens, Texas A&M Galveston, Texas Seaport Museum,
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and Sea Star Base Galveston.
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In 2020, we brought our presentations home to our offices
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at historic Fort Crockett, just before the world
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shut down for the pandemic.
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Although we have offered webinar connections
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during our live events for many years, it wasn't until 2021
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that we went completely virtual and joined forces
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with the National Marine Sanctuary webinar series.
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In all that time, our Seaside Chats only missed one year
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and that was 2019.
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So that makes this our 10th year of presentations.
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We've chosen to recognize this milestone
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with a new graphic, you see here.
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And we hope you agree with us that this comfortable chair
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by the sea at sunset captures the essence of our program.
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Hello everyone, my name is Kelly Drinnen.
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And I'm the education and outreach specialist
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for Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary.
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I'll be facilitating today's webinar from Dickinson, Texas.
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Also with me today is Leslie Whaylen Clift,
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our constituency affairs coordinator,
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and Leslie will be helping
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with the backend administration of this webinar.
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50 years ago, the United States ushered in
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a new era of ocean conservation by creating
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the National Marine Sanctuary System.
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Since then, we've grown into a nationwide network
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of 15 national marine sanctuaries and two marine
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national monuments that conserve more than
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620,000 square miles of spectacular ocean
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and Great Lakes waters.
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And that's an area nearly the size of Alaska.
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These marine protected areas are kind of like
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national parks and national forests, but underwater.
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In celebration of this 50th anniversary,
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we are running a Save Spectacular campaign
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across the entire sanctuary system.
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A way to remind everyone
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just how special these places really are.
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The National Marine Sanctuaries Act gives NOAA the authority
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to designate special areas of the marine environment
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as national marine sanctuaries.
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It also mandates that the Office of National
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Marine Sanctuaries conduct research, monitoring,
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resource protection, education, outreach and management
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of America's underwater treasures to preserve them
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for future generations.
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In addition to being places for recreation and research,
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national marine sanctuaries are also living classrooms
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where people can see, touch and learn
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about the nation's Great Lakes and ocean treasures.
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This webinar series is just one part
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of that national education and outreach effort.
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Today's Seaside Chat series is hosted
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by Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary,
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the only national marine sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico.
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This sanctuary consists of 17 banks or small
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underwater mountains that are home to some of
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the healthiest coral reefs in the world,
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amazing algal sponge communities and deep reef habitats
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featuring an abundance of black coral.
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The original sanctuary designation
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took place in January 1992.
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Meaning that we just celebrated our 30th anniversary
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a few weeks ago.
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As you can see, 2022 is turning out
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to be quite the anniversary year.
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Today's presentation focuses on the importance
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of humpback whales in the food chain around Hawaiʻi.
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You might be asking, "Why Hawaiʻi?
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I thought your focus was the Gulf of Mexico."
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But the focus is also on national marine sanctuaries.
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And this one's going to focus on our Hawaiian Island
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Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary.
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The waters around Hawaii are low
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in important nutrients for life, like iron and phosphorus.
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As a result the plankton biomass is low
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and less plankton means less food for fishes.
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Enter the humpback whales.
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Whales boost the entire food chain by shedding their skin,
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which is made up of proteins and fats.
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Perfect for zooplankton to eat.
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More zooplankton means more fishes, octopus, and coral.
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But that's not all.
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Our speaker today will tell us the rest of the story.
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Today we welcome Jeannine Rossa
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to talk about humpback whales in Hawaiʻi.
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Jeannine Rossa remembers making
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save the whales posters as a kid.
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As a college student, she earned a double degree
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in wildlife and fisheries biology
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from University of California Davis and then
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a Master's of Science in aquatic ecology
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from Utah State University.
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This led to over 35 years working
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in natural resource management, mostly in aquatic
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and threatened and endangered species issues,
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all over the Western U.S.,
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in Washington, D.C. and in Hawaiʻi.
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She also taught ecology at the University of Hawaiʻi
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Maui extension on Molokai.
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Just before the pandemic she was hired
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by the state of Hawaiʻi as the a co-manager
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of the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale
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National Marine Sanctuary.
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Bringing all her experience together in one place
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and back to whales.
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Welcome, Jeannine.
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Jeannine feel free to turn on
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your microphone and your video
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and I've just handed over the presentation control.
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There you go.
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We're not seeing your video yet.
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[Jeannine} There we go.
There we go.
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All right, take it away, Jeannine.
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Okey-doke.
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Oops.
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All right thank you everyone and aloha.
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My name is Jeannine Rossa and I am presenting
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from the island of Maui, in the archipelago of Hawaiʻi
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and in the heart of the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale
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National Marine Sanctuary.
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Where, as Kelly said, I am the state co-manager.
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And I'm here to talk about How Humpback Whales Feed Hawaiʻi.
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So you know, Kelly already mentioned a couple of things.
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For example humpback whales, the nutrients that they bring
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from Alaska you know, feed our reefs.
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They also provide important nutrients
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for our fresh water systems.
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And of course they quite literally provide food for fishes
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that in turn, feed us as humans.
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So humpback whales literally quite do feed Hawaiʻi.
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So just to go back a little bit to fourth grade biology,
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at a class, or fourth grade science class
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talking about the food chain.
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So you all remember this but I'll just go through it
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because it will make the whole talk
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make a little bit more sense.
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Gonna start out with phytoplankton,
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so the single celled or very small plants you know,
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floating around in the ocean.
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And which of course are eaten by zooplankton,
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which are the very small, teeny, tiny animals
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feeding on phytoplankton.
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Which are then fed on by larger fishes, smaller fishes,
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and then medium-sized fishes, and then bigger fishes,
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and eventually of course, top predators
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like mahi-mahi and marlin.
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So humpback whales, as many of you already know,
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are distributed all over the world.
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And they migrate from their summer feeding grounds.
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And in the case of the Hawaiian population,
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this is in Alaska.
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This is a great photo because it shows their baleen
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and humpback whales, of course, eat a lot of krill,
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so small marine shrimp.
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And then very small fishes and they can filter
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all of that through their baleen.
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And then they migrate down to Hawaiʻi where they breed
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and calf and nurse their young, and then return to Hawaiʻi.
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Or return to Alaska, sorry.
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So this is a great map of whale super highways
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that includes eight different species.
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But what I like about this one is that it really shows
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the different populations of humpback whales,
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which are in orange.
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I feel like pointing at this but that's not gonna help you.
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So for example, you can see a population down in Antarctica
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that goes to the subtropical waters off of Brazil.
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And there's another population in Antarctica
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that goes to the subtropical waters off of Australia.
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And in the case of the Hawaiʻi population,
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we can look at this one.
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They come from the Arctic waters down to Hawaiʻi.
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And they also split off and go over to Baja as well.
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And a couple of them wander over to Japan.
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You're probably gonna ask this, so I'll just tell you
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right now, that there is a little bit of evidence
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and some going back and forth between Hawaii and Mexico,
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but that's still new.
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So stay tuned for publications on that in future.
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So why do whales migrate?
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So Robert Pitman, who's from the OSU
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and Marine Mammal Institute, and some other scientists
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have been thinking that it's not actually to find
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a warm place for the calfs because the calfs actually
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do quite well in cold waters.
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And it's probably not to avoid predators,
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although killer whales are a predator.
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They actually are thinking that one of the main reasons
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that whales come down to some tropical areas
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is to shed their skin.
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And this is an example of one of the reasons,
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things that Robert Pitman and his team noticed
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is that whales in colder waters tend to build up diatoms
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all over their bodies.
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Whereas the picture below, which I took you know,
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we don't see diatoms on the whales at all around Hawaiʻi.
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Whales that stay behind, they noticed in 2016, 2017,
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when there were a lot of whales that weren't migrating
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because food stocks in the Arctic were quite low.
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They found that there were whales with strange skin lesions.
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And it's also pretty hard when you're a 40 foot you know,
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animal underwater to you know, to exfoliate.
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There are no whale spas.
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And I'm trying to remember what her name is.
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Tracy Fortune is her name.
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She's a scientist that works on bowhead whales in Canada.
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And found that there were areas where there are
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these huge underwater boulders and they got drone footage
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of the whales rubbing against the boulders.
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And this is a picture that's actually from her publication.
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And the little arrows are pointing to the scratch marks
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on the whale's skin from where they're rubbing
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against the boulders.
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So whale skin is of course made up of collagen like ours,
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but it also is very fatty.
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So, and collagen is a protein.
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So it's a high protein fat packet.
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And if you imagine all of these whales
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about eight to 12,000 whales coming down
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to Hawaiʻi this year and all of them are exfoliating.
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So not so much sheets but more like
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whale dandruff all over the place.
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But you know, those are really teeny, tiny
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and delicious for all the little zooplankton
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protein and fat packets.
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So again, looking back to our little food web diagram,
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there's the little zooplankton eating these packets.
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Which is very important in Hawaiʻi because Hawaiʻi,
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like all subtropical areas around the world
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is very low in nutrients.
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So the phytoplankton is low
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and that limits the amount of zooplankton.
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So if you get this other nutrient source from whale skin
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that means you can have a larger zooplankton population,
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which again goes up the food chain.
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Examples of zooplankton, just for fun.
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'Cause everyone likes to see this.
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There are some animals in the zooplankton community
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like copepods and ostracods that always stay zooplankton.
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But what's cool about Hawaiʻi is that 80% of our zooplankton
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is actually larva or eggs, of fishes and clams
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00:13:25.530 --> 00:13:28.040
and crabs and octopus,
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00:13:28.040 --> 00:13:33.040
as well as fresh water snails and fishes called gobies,
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that have a zooplankton stage
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in their life cycle.
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80% of our zooplankton is made up
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of those kinds of fishes and animals.
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Here's an example of close up, cool pictures of slightly
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larger than a zooplankton but still larval fishes.
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And of course our reef.
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So those zooplankton are gonna turn into these species.
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Another reason why this is just so important
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is that Hawaii is so isolated.
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I mean, we see maps all the time.
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But this is a picture from the space shuttle.
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00:14:07.130 --> 00:14:09.370
And I really love it because it really shows
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00:14:09.370 --> 00:14:12.650
like just how tiny the land masses in Hawaiʻi are
297
00:14:12.650 --> 00:14:15.490
and how enormous the ocean is around it.
298
00:14:15.490 --> 00:14:18.720
And so there's not a lot of land produced nutrients
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00:14:18.720 --> 00:14:22.060
that come into the Hawaiʻi system as well, as compared to
300
00:14:22.060 --> 00:14:24.760
for example, the Mississippi River system in the Gulf.
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00:14:28.030 --> 00:14:32.840
So another benefit of all of this whale skin is actually
302
00:14:32.840 --> 00:14:36.063
the fish is just one step above all the zooplankton.
303
00:14:38.020 --> 00:14:40.030
So this is an example.
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00:14:40.030 --> 00:14:41.950
This is Dr. Marc Lammers who works for
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00:14:41.950 --> 00:14:45.840
Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary,
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00:14:45.840 --> 00:14:48.760
and he is putting a CAT tag is what it's called,
307
00:14:48.760 --> 00:14:51.960
the abbreviation for it, on a humpback whale.
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00:14:51.960 --> 00:14:53.370
And you can see the little antenna
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00:14:53.370 --> 00:14:55.400
sticking off to the left of this.
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00:14:55.400 --> 00:14:57.900
So it has a suction cup on it and it will go
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00:14:57.900 --> 00:15:01.040
onto the whale and you know, Marc prays and hopes
312
00:15:01.040 --> 00:15:02.670
that it stays on for a long time.
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00:15:02.670 --> 00:15:05.290
Sometimes they pop off quickly but you know,
314
00:15:05.290 --> 00:15:07.340
sometimes they stay on for days.
315
00:15:07.340 --> 00:15:10.050
And it's got all kinds of sophisticated equipment on it
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00:15:10.050 --> 00:15:12.340
that can tell him how the whales are moving underwater,
317
00:15:12.340 --> 00:15:15.600
what they're doing during the night, how deep they're diving
318
00:15:15.600 --> 00:15:16.710
and that kinda thing.
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00:15:16.710 --> 00:15:21.343
And his latest CAT tags have little cameras.
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00:15:22.550 --> 00:15:25.830
So he processed one of his first films from last summer
321
00:15:25.830 --> 00:15:28.870
and lo and behold, what he found is that when the whales
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00:15:28.870 --> 00:15:32.080
would stop and rest, immediately these little fishes
323
00:15:32.080 --> 00:15:34.310
called ōpelu, would swarm the whales
324
00:15:34.310 --> 00:15:36.420
and start nibbling their skin.
325
00:15:36.420 --> 00:15:39.090
Now you might think that's a little weird
326
00:15:39.090 --> 00:15:40.630
but think about it for a second.
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00:15:40.630 --> 00:15:43.140
You possibly have seen pictures of turtles
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00:15:43.140 --> 00:15:45.880
at turtle cleaning stations, which is something
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00:15:45.880 --> 00:15:48.050
really common around Hawaiʻi and I would assume
330
00:15:48.050 --> 00:15:49.440
in other places around the world.
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00:15:49.440 --> 00:15:52.340
Where fishes known as cleaner wrasses, and there's a bunch
332
00:15:52.340 --> 00:15:54.690
of other different kinds of fishes that do this too,
333
00:15:54.690 --> 00:15:59.520
will nibble the algae off that grows on the turtles' shell.
334
00:15:59.520 --> 00:16:03.220
You know, you've often seen pictures of larger fishes
335
00:16:03.220 --> 00:16:05.090
also having little cleaning fishes around them.
336
00:16:05.090 --> 00:16:07.890
So this is not a strange thing in nature.
337
00:16:07.890 --> 00:16:10.540
What I love about this is that it got caught on film.
338
00:16:11.960 --> 00:16:16.070
So ōpelu are known as mackerel scad and they come in
339
00:16:16.070 --> 00:16:20.590
you know, vast, vast schools and are an incredibly
340
00:16:20.590 --> 00:16:25.590
important baitfish for people to catch the other fishes
341
00:16:28.110 --> 00:16:30.550
that they really like to eat, like ulua.
342
00:16:30.550 --> 00:16:32.680
This is Chinky Hubbard from Molokai.
343
00:16:32.680 --> 00:16:34.680
Taken by a friend of mine, this picture.
344
00:16:35.800 --> 00:16:38.760
And of course other top predators, like mahi-mahi,
345
00:16:38.760 --> 00:16:41.080
which is also something people really like to eat.
346
00:16:41.080 --> 00:16:42.493
And sailfish.
347
00:16:44.000 --> 00:16:46.953
And tuna also very important.
348
00:16:48.517 --> 00:16:50.130
And this is a false killer whale.
349
00:16:50.130 --> 00:16:55.130
So besides caring about the ōpelu also getting you know,
350
00:16:55.230 --> 00:16:58.580
feeding all of those top predator fishes and being
351
00:16:58.580 --> 00:17:00.810
something that we as humans care about.
352
00:17:00.810 --> 00:17:02.030
This is a false killer whale,
353
00:17:02.030 --> 00:17:04.960
which is a highly endangered whale.
354
00:17:04.960 --> 00:17:06.750
It's related to killer whales.
355
00:17:06.750 --> 00:17:09.120
It's a lot smaller, about half size,
356
00:17:09.120 --> 00:17:11.270
but it's in that same family.
357
00:17:11.270 --> 00:17:13.140
And its favorite food is mahi-mahi,
358
00:17:13.140 --> 00:17:16.230
which is what this one actually has in its mouth.
359
00:17:16.230 --> 00:17:18.790
So going back, mahi-mahi is one
360
00:17:18.790 --> 00:17:20.590
of those top predator fishes,
361
00:17:20.590 --> 00:17:22.900
which ōpelu is a big part of their diet.
362
00:17:22.900 --> 00:17:25.690
So again, whales coming down from Alaska,
363
00:17:25.690 --> 00:17:28.980
skin sloughing off, feeding ōpelu directly,
364
00:17:28.980 --> 00:17:32.030
not to mention the zooplankton, good for mahi-mahi
365
00:17:32.030 --> 00:17:34.043
and that's good for false killer whales.
366
00:17:37.940 --> 00:17:41.770
So as I mentioned of course, the humpback whales
367
00:17:41.770 --> 00:17:46.510
come to Hawaiʻi mostly to calf and breed
368
00:17:46.510 --> 00:17:47.610
and raise their young.
369
00:17:49.170 --> 00:17:51.900
I will mention one thing though before I talk about calfing,
370
00:17:51.900 --> 00:17:56.373
which is that generally whales in Hawaiʻi don't eat.
371
00:17:57.340 --> 00:18:00.040
There's some evidence of them snacking.
372
00:18:00.040 --> 00:18:02.710
For example, like off of seamounts.
373
00:18:02.710 --> 00:18:05.600
Fishermen sometimes will swear that they've seen
374
00:18:05.600 --> 00:18:07.030
whales eat fish.
375
00:18:07.030 --> 00:18:10.960
But it's not in the enormous quantities that they feed on
376
00:18:10.960 --> 00:18:15.090
in the Arctic because Hawaiʻi just doesn't produce,
377
00:18:15.090 --> 00:18:17.270
despite the ōpelu picture that you just saw,
378
00:18:17.270 --> 00:18:20.230
it really doesn't produce that quantity that have
379
00:18:20.230 --> 00:18:22.080
that same amount of food production.
380
00:18:22.080 --> 00:18:25.420
So they gorge north and then they basically fast
381
00:18:25.420 --> 00:18:27.615
most of the time that they're down in Hawaiʻi
382
00:18:27.615 --> 00:18:29.350
and then they go back up to Alaska.
383
00:18:29.350 --> 00:18:32.390
So therefore poop, whale poop is not a big part
384
00:18:32.390 --> 00:18:35.203
of the nutrients in our ecosystem here.
385
00:18:36.310 --> 00:18:37.693
But back to moms and calfs.
386
00:18:40.410 --> 00:18:42.233
This is actually very important.
387
00:18:43.960 --> 00:18:45.990
There are about eight to 12,000 whales
388
00:18:45.990 --> 00:18:47.060
coming down to Hawaiʻi.
389
00:18:47.060 --> 00:18:52.060
In a paper by Antonellis Johnson in 2007,
390
00:18:52.760 --> 00:18:54.170
there's an estimate of like maybe
391
00:18:54.170 --> 00:18:56.583
about 8% of the mothers are giving birth.
392
00:18:57.420 --> 00:19:02.420
So if we are estimating that there's about 8,000 whales
393
00:19:02.780 --> 00:19:04.250
to be on the conservative side,
394
00:19:04.250 --> 00:19:07.400
that's about 640 babies every year.
395
00:19:07.400 --> 00:19:11.010
And so with every baby of course comes the placenta.
396
00:19:11.010 --> 00:19:13.970
And whale babies are not tiny.
397
00:19:13.970 --> 00:19:15.750
They are 10 to 15 feet long,
398
00:19:15.750 --> 00:19:18.870
weigh one and a half to two tons at birth.
399
00:19:18.870 --> 00:19:20.640
So the placenta is similarly large.
400
00:19:20.640 --> 00:19:22.420
And I'm gonna show you a couple pictures
401
00:19:22.420 --> 00:19:23.920
because I know you're curious.
402
00:19:24.780 --> 00:19:28.470
Oops, oh no, this is supposed to be here.
403
00:19:28.470 --> 00:19:31.830
Tiger sharks follow the pregnant females around.
404
00:19:31.830 --> 00:19:33.570
But it's not because they wanna eat the babies
405
00:19:33.570 --> 00:19:35.940
it's because they're going after the placenta.
406
00:19:35.940 --> 00:19:39.420
And placentas of course, are these iron rich you know,
407
00:19:39.420 --> 00:19:42.710
filled with blood, you know, fat and tissue
408
00:19:42.710 --> 00:19:43.890
and it doesn't swim away.
409
00:19:43.890 --> 00:19:46.663
So it is an ideal meal for a tiger shark.
410
00:19:48.090 --> 00:19:50.190
To give you a sense of the size.
411
00:19:50.190 --> 00:19:52.460
This is that same placenta spread out on the floor
412
00:19:52.460 --> 00:19:54.590
in the lab where they're trying to, you know,
413
00:19:54.590 --> 00:19:56.740
figure out the different pieces of it.
414
00:19:56.740 --> 00:20:00.930
So if we've got 650 calfs born, and I talked to these guys
415
00:20:00.930 --> 00:20:03.240
and they've said, it weighed about 50 to 75 pounds,
416
00:20:03.240 --> 00:20:08.010
that's 16 to 24 tons of nutrients coming in every year
417
00:20:08.010 --> 00:20:09.990
from the mothers giving birth.
418
00:20:09.990 --> 00:20:11.543
So thank you, whales.
419
00:20:14.230 --> 00:20:18.110
The whales of course also give us their ultimate gift,
420
00:20:18.110 --> 00:20:21.160
which is when they die they sink to the bottom
421
00:20:21.160 --> 00:20:22.720
of the sea floor.
422
00:20:22.720 --> 00:20:24.380
And you know, their entire body
423
00:20:24.380 --> 00:20:26.550
becomes food for the whole ecosystem.
424
00:20:26.550 --> 00:20:28.850
And again, in a nutrient-poor system like Hawaiʻi,
425
00:20:28.850 --> 00:20:30.700
that's incredibly important.
426
00:20:30.700 --> 00:20:33.260
We don't have clear numbers on how many whales die
427
00:20:33.260 --> 00:20:34.840
when they're down here.
428
00:20:34.840 --> 00:20:37.733
But you know, we know that there are always a few.
429
00:20:38.800 --> 00:20:42.220
And recently...
430
00:20:42.220 --> 00:20:45.160
Oh, this is a picture of a tiger shark
431
00:20:45.160 --> 00:20:49.000
feeding on a very dead whale that was still floating
432
00:20:49.000 --> 00:20:51.433
off of Waimānalo last year.
433
00:20:53.970 --> 00:20:56.164
So anyway in Monterey Bay Aquarium
434
00:20:56.164 --> 00:20:57.550
or Monterey Aquarium, excuse me.
435
00:20:57.550 --> 00:20:59.500
Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary,
436
00:21:01.810 --> 00:21:05.220
there was a whale that died and fell to the ocean floor
437
00:21:05.220 --> 00:21:06.930
and they were able to use submersibles
438
00:21:06.930 --> 00:21:09.230
and do a full study on this whale.
439
00:21:09.230 --> 00:21:12.200
And that's what this really, very cool
440
00:21:12.200 --> 00:21:13.663
infographic comes from.
441
00:21:14.810 --> 00:21:18.520
And there's a whole suite of scavenger species
442
00:21:18.520 --> 00:21:22.720
that some of which like they bore into the bone
443
00:21:22.720 --> 00:21:26.100
or there's a specific snail that eats bone dust,
444
00:21:26.100 --> 00:21:29.210
that are incredibly you know, boosted by this.
445
00:21:29.210 --> 00:21:31.970
And it's just fascinating to see what happens.
446
00:21:31.970 --> 00:21:34.180
So it's a really important boost
447
00:21:34.180 --> 00:21:37.500
to the entire ecosystem, especially all the scavengers.
448
00:21:37.500 --> 00:21:40.100
So these particular species might not necessarily
449
00:21:40.100 --> 00:21:42.230
be in Hawaiʻi but there will be a similar suite
450
00:21:42.230 --> 00:21:45.700
of scavengers that will be able to take advantage
451
00:21:45.700 --> 00:21:48.380
of that whale's passing.
452
00:21:48.380 --> 00:21:51.890
And just recently off of Maui, there were some divers
453
00:21:51.890 --> 00:21:54.110
that found some very old whale bones.
454
00:21:54.110 --> 00:21:58.310
So this is a piece of the spine to the bottom left
455
00:21:58.310 --> 00:22:02.610
of the picture and some ribs and I think some other vertebra
456
00:22:02.610 --> 00:22:04.650
scattered about in this photo.
457
00:22:04.650 --> 00:22:07.063
So we do know it happens.
458
00:22:11.410 --> 00:22:15.780
And there's some other ideas as well.
459
00:22:15.780 --> 00:22:18.170
And one thing I'd like to point out is that you know,
460
00:22:18.170 --> 00:22:21.993
Hawaiians of course had figured all this out, you know?
461
00:22:23.400 --> 00:22:25.983
And there are some different proverbs about whales.
462
00:22:25.983 --> 00:22:29.330
This is just one of them that I decided to put in
463
00:22:29.330 --> 00:22:34.330
that a friend told me about, which is about whale mucus.
464
00:22:34.650 --> 00:22:39.230
So what that is from the whale, I'm not sure.
465
00:22:39.230 --> 00:22:41.640
But it could be just that the whales are coming
466
00:22:41.640 --> 00:22:43.470
and there's nutrients coming from the whales
467
00:22:43.470 --> 00:22:45.990
that's producing the ohua and the manini.
468
00:22:45.990 --> 00:22:48.510
The ohua being the fish on the left and the manini
469
00:22:48.510 --> 00:22:50.600
being a very delicious pan fried fish,
470
00:22:50.600 --> 00:22:52.930
that's in the nearshore area on the right.
471
00:22:52.930 --> 00:22:55.421
So hupe is your snot and then koholā
472
00:22:55.421 --> 00:22:56.971
is the Hawaiian word for whale.
473
00:23:00.630 --> 00:23:03.570
So again, that relationship between whales,
474
00:23:03.570 --> 00:23:06.330
going up to the Arctic, feeding and bringing all those
475
00:23:06.330 --> 00:23:10.010
nutrients down to the system is incredibly important.
476
00:23:10.010 --> 00:23:12.870
They feed our reefs, they feed our freshwater systems
477
00:23:12.870 --> 00:23:16.670
because our gobies and our evi have zooplankton stages.
478
00:23:16.670 --> 00:23:18.623
And they quite literally feed us.
479
00:23:21.380 --> 00:23:24.550
So mahalo to the whales and mahalo to all of you
480
00:23:24.550 --> 00:23:29.040
for listening to this you know, how it's all connected talk.
481
00:23:29.040 --> 00:23:33.070
And maybe a little piece of thinking shifting
482
00:23:33.070 --> 00:23:35.440
about whales and their contributions.
483
00:23:35.440 --> 00:23:36.440
Thank you very much.
484
00:23:39.680 --> 00:23:42.370
Wow, Jeannine that was fascinating.
485
00:23:42.370 --> 00:23:44.810
We've got a few questions on the board already.
486
00:23:44.810 --> 00:23:47.750
Folks if you do have questions right now,
487
00:23:47.750 --> 00:23:51.630
please enter them into the question box.
488
00:23:51.630 --> 00:23:55.633
We will take your questions for the remainder of this time,
489
00:23:56.780 --> 00:24:00.957
and we will feed them to Jeannine to answer them for you.
490
00:24:02.660 --> 00:24:04.300
So as you are typing in your questions,
491
00:24:04.300 --> 00:24:07.040
I'm gonna start with the ones we already have, Jeannine.
492
00:24:07.040 --> 00:24:10.950
Has anyone observed, video recorded,
493
00:24:10.950 --> 00:24:15.103
observed/video recorded a complete humpback birth yet?
494
00:24:16.023 --> 00:24:18.100
No.
495
00:24:18.100 --> 00:24:19.568
No, okay.
496
00:24:19.568 --> 00:24:21.018
That's a short answer, sorry.
497
00:24:21.860 --> 00:24:25.520
You may have seen that...
498
00:24:25.520 --> 00:24:27.331
Was it last year?
499
00:24:27.331 --> 00:24:30.110
With the pandemic, the years are blurring together.
500
00:24:30.110 --> 00:24:35.110
There was a female that was seen with the tail of the baby
501
00:24:35.650 --> 00:24:38.940
sticking out, which we were later to see her
502
00:24:38.940 --> 00:24:41.380
with her fully birthed baby so we know it was
503
00:24:41.380 --> 00:24:42.433
a successful birth.
504
00:24:43.560 --> 00:24:47.200
But nobody's caught an actual birth on video to this day.
505
00:24:47.200 --> 00:24:50.116
So we think it might happen at night. (chuckles)
506
00:24:50.116 --> 00:24:54.230
(chuckles) Okay, next question.
507
00:24:54.230 --> 00:24:57.230
Gray whales have been found to feed on soft benthic sediment
508
00:24:57.230 --> 00:24:59.570
during their migration to Mexico.
509
00:24:59.570 --> 00:25:02.593
Has there been any documented cases in humpback whales?
510
00:25:06.730 --> 00:25:09.360
Not to my knowledge, but that doesn't mean
511
00:25:09.360 --> 00:25:11.250
that it's not documented.
512
00:25:11.250 --> 00:25:14.590
And I can look into it and see.
513
00:25:14.590 --> 00:25:16.330
If I find it, then I'll let Kelly know
514
00:25:16.330 --> 00:25:18.210
so that when she sends you your certificate,
515
00:25:18.210 --> 00:25:19.260
we'll have an answer for it.
516
00:25:19.260 --> 00:25:20.870
But I don't think so.
517
00:25:20.870 --> 00:25:23.760
And I think it would be difficult for them to do it
518
00:25:23.760 --> 00:25:26.103
but I'll look into it, thanks.
519
00:25:27.670 --> 00:25:28.503
Okay.
520
00:25:29.850 --> 00:25:33.320
Are they finding skin shed in other whale species
521
00:25:33.320 --> 00:25:36.510
contributing to the food chain and such,
522
00:25:36.510 --> 00:25:39.140
just like they are with the humpbacks?
523
00:25:39.140 --> 00:25:44.140
So yes, that would be a yes.
524
00:25:44.498 --> 00:25:47.230
You know, and actually if you Google whale skin,
525
00:25:47.230 --> 00:25:49.100
you'll find pictures of people like holding up
526
00:25:49.100 --> 00:25:52.110
chunks of whale skin from different species of whales.
527
00:25:52.110 --> 00:25:57.110
So in fact, Robert Pitman, the OSU professor who was kind of
528
00:25:58.830 --> 00:26:00.730
started this idea of like you know, maybe they go
529
00:26:00.730 --> 00:26:02.780
to the subtropics to deal with their skin.
530
00:26:02.780 --> 00:26:05.470
He actually got that idea from looking at killer whales.
531
00:26:05.470 --> 00:26:10.330
And there's a photo from his paper that shows that
532
00:26:10.330 --> 00:26:12.577
with a drone picture, like a pod of killer whales.
533
00:26:12.577 --> 00:26:14.820
And some of them are like literally yellow
534
00:26:14.820 --> 00:26:17.360
because they have so many diatoms on them.
535
00:26:17.360 --> 00:26:21.100
And he also had a tagged killer whale that zipped down
536
00:26:21.100 --> 00:26:24.580
to subtropical waters, hid out for a couple days,
537
00:26:24.580 --> 00:26:26.100
turned around and zipped right back.
538
00:26:26.100 --> 00:26:27.710
So it wasn't going down to reproduce,
539
00:26:27.710 --> 00:26:30.340
it wasn't going down to feed specially.
540
00:26:30.340 --> 00:26:31.900
And we sometimes get them in Hawaiʻi.
541
00:26:31.900 --> 00:26:33.270
Sometimes we'll get a killer whale for a little while
542
00:26:33.270 --> 00:26:34.550
and then it takes off.
543
00:26:34.550 --> 00:26:39.550
So other species I would assume contribute.
544
00:26:39.610 --> 00:26:42.120
But is there data on that?
545
00:26:42.120 --> 00:26:44.033
No, but we'll get there.
546
00:26:45.510 --> 00:26:46.343
Okay.
547
00:26:48.120 --> 00:26:50.740
Do you see isotopic tracers
548
00:26:50.740 --> 00:26:52.673
in zooplankton from these whales?
549
00:26:54.280 --> 00:26:56.763
Oh gosh, that is a really good question.
550
00:26:59.150 --> 00:27:03.995
And I will ask the plankton people.
551
00:27:03.995 --> 00:27:05.162
I do not know.
552
00:27:06.557 --> 00:27:09.650
And if they haven't done it yet, I'm gonna see if
553
00:27:09.650 --> 00:27:11.080
we can get some grad students to do that.
554
00:27:11.080 --> 00:27:12.870
That's fantastic.
555
00:27:12.870 --> 00:27:16.520
So do understand that when I'm talking
556
00:27:16.520 --> 00:27:21.220
about presenting this, what I want people to understand
557
00:27:22.060 --> 00:27:26.000
is the connection between everything.
558
00:27:26.000 --> 00:27:28.700
But it doesn't necessarily mean that we have lots of hard,
559
00:27:28.700 --> 00:27:31.020
concrete data for all these different pieces.
560
00:27:31.020 --> 00:27:33.320
Obviously we have a picture of the ōpelu
561
00:27:33.320 --> 00:27:35.016
feeding on the whale.
562
00:27:35.016 --> 00:27:36.930
We have a lot of anecdotal evidence
563
00:27:36.930 --> 00:27:39.877
but that's a really good question and I'll ask, so.
564
00:27:43.320 --> 00:27:44.905
Okay, I'm writing a note down about that,
565
00:27:44.905 --> 00:27:46.209
we're gonna make sure that we follow up on that.
566
00:27:46.209 --> 00:27:47.280
I know right.
567
00:27:47.280 --> 00:27:49.840
(chuckles) All right.
568
00:27:49.840 --> 00:27:53.703
What about whale urine, does that contribute anything?
569
00:27:54.830 --> 00:27:56.090
Could that do...
570
00:27:57.200 --> 00:27:59.102
You've got me stumped, sorry.
571
00:27:59.102 --> 00:28:00.150
(Kelly chuckles)
572
00:28:00.150 --> 00:28:01.940
You know, I should point I am not actually
573
00:28:01.940 --> 00:28:06.290
a whale biologist so remember I'm actually an ecologist.
574
00:28:06.290 --> 00:28:08.670
So lots of really specific whale questions
575
00:28:08.670 --> 00:28:11.320
but I will find the answers for you and let you know.
576
00:28:11.320 --> 00:28:12.153
Okay.
577
00:28:15.610 --> 00:28:17.660
Did you actually say that whale poop
578
00:28:17.660 --> 00:28:20.053
does not contribute to the nutrient load?
579
00:28:21.710 --> 00:28:23.173
There's a little bit of it.
580
00:28:24.450 --> 00:28:26.640
But I'm talking about Hawaiʻi specifically.
581
00:28:26.640 --> 00:28:31.130
So there's a gal who has worked on blue whales in Australia,
582
00:28:31.130 --> 00:28:35.200
Dr. Trish Lavery, just write her name down.
583
00:28:35.200 --> 00:28:38.670
And there were some issues there with fishermen
584
00:28:39.621 --> 00:28:40.903
who were complaining that the blue whales
585
00:28:40.903 --> 00:28:43.620
were eating too many fish, okay?
586
00:28:43.620 --> 00:28:46.640
And you know, taking the fish away.
587
00:28:46.640 --> 00:28:50.210
So she did a study on it and she found that...
588
00:28:50.210 --> 00:28:51.690
And again remember, this is Australia
589
00:28:51.690 --> 00:28:54.940
so it's a subtropical system, nutrient deficient,
590
00:28:54.940 --> 00:28:59.210
and also iron deficient as well, similar to Hawaiʻi.
591
00:28:59.210 --> 00:29:04.110
That the poop from just juvenile male blue whales...
592
00:29:04.110 --> 00:29:06.810
So there's juvenile males, juvenile females,
593
00:29:06.810 --> 00:29:07.950
adult males, adult females.
594
00:29:07.950 --> 00:29:10.850
So just the juvenile male poop alone,
595
00:29:10.850 --> 00:29:15.650
produced enough iron in their poop or produced
596
00:29:15.650 --> 00:29:20.650
enough iron-rich poop that would boost the ecosystem
597
00:29:20.760 --> 00:29:24.730
to make up for everything all the whales ate.
598
00:29:24.730 --> 00:29:27.820
So given that that's only you know,
599
00:29:27.820 --> 00:29:30.410
a part of the whale population, it means that the whales
600
00:29:30.410 --> 00:29:33.160
are actually boosting the fish system, the fish ecosystem
601
00:29:33.160 --> 00:29:34.890
every year that they're there.
602
00:29:34.890 --> 00:29:39.070
So it is a big deal in other systems, just not in Hawaiʻi
603
00:29:39.070 --> 00:29:40.770
from humpback whales specifically.
604
00:29:42.610 --> 00:29:44.750
Okay, thanks for the clarification.
605
00:29:44.750 --> 00:29:46.310
Sure.
606
00:29:46.310 --> 00:29:48.840
Where can we learn more about the freshwater
607
00:29:48.840 --> 00:29:51.643
larval species getting nutrients from whale skin?
608
00:29:55.240 --> 00:29:59.840
Okay, so they're not that well studied.
609
00:29:59.840 --> 00:30:04.840
And what I'm theorizing in my talk here is that
610
00:30:05.150 --> 00:30:09.960
because they have a zooplankton stage and that
611
00:30:09.960 --> 00:30:14.540
are part of our zooplankton, that they would be boosted by
612
00:30:14.540 --> 00:30:16.940
you know, the nutrients coming into the system,
613
00:30:16.940 --> 00:30:20.223
just the same as a reef species would be.
614
00:30:22.070 --> 00:30:24.380
We don't have a lot of research going on with them.
615
00:30:24.380 --> 00:30:26.360
And one of the things, like we are still looking
616
00:30:26.360 --> 00:30:30.530
at the timing of you know, when we have boosts
617
00:30:30.530 --> 00:30:33.070
in the evi population or when they migrate.
618
00:30:33.070 --> 00:30:35.730
Evi are the little freshwater snails,
619
00:30:35.730 --> 00:30:37.220
I have one right here on my desk.
620
00:30:37.220 --> 00:30:38.701
See if you guys can see it.
621
00:30:38.701 --> 00:30:41.263
(vocalizes) There's a little snail, so.
622
00:30:44.560 --> 00:30:47.940
To see you know, what kind of relationships there are
623
00:30:47.940 --> 00:30:52.120
with evi populations and you know, the greater ecosystem.
624
00:30:52.120 --> 00:30:53.860
So you know, there could be other things
625
00:30:53.860 --> 00:30:55.680
affecting them as well, obviously.
626
00:30:55.680 --> 00:30:59.480
So we don't have all the money and all the time
627
00:30:59.480 --> 00:31:02.203
that we would like to have to answer all these questions.
628
00:31:03.060 --> 00:31:04.946
Definitely under consideration.
629
00:31:04.946 --> 00:31:06.627
(chuckles) Under consideration.
630
00:31:06.627 --> 00:31:08.120
Yeah, we're doing the foundation work right now.
631
00:31:08.120 --> 00:31:09.650
Hopefully we'll get there.
632
00:31:09.650 --> 00:31:11.030
All right.
633
00:31:11.030 --> 00:31:14.340
Do you know anything about the nutrient composition
634
00:31:14.340 --> 00:31:18.320
of the whale placenta, crude protein versus crude fat?
635
00:31:18.320 --> 00:31:19.340
Anything along those lines?
636
00:31:19.340 --> 00:31:22.300
And you did say it was about 75 pounds that placenta that-
637
00:31:22.300 --> 00:31:23.940
Yeah.
638
00:31:23.940 --> 00:31:25.700
Jens Currie, who's the researcher,
639
00:31:25.700 --> 00:31:28.340
that's his team that was looking at the placenta.
640
00:31:28.340 --> 00:31:31.450
He estimated that it was about 50 to 75 pounds of weight.
641
00:31:31.450 --> 00:31:33.310
It's still in their freezer.
642
00:31:33.310 --> 00:31:36.720
It's a low priority to get to because the...
643
00:31:36.720 --> 00:31:40.580
Dr. Kristi West is our local veterinarian who does
644
00:31:40.580 --> 00:31:42.620
all the necropsies on...
645
00:31:43.756 --> 00:31:44.790
This is a whole other topic.
646
00:31:44.790 --> 00:31:49.790
Stranded whales you know, that strand,
647
00:31:49.920 --> 00:31:53.180
that pass away and wash up on our beaches.
648
00:31:53.180 --> 00:31:56.980
And so she just hasn't gotten into it yet.
649
00:31:56.980 --> 00:31:58.530
So it's sitting in the freezer.
650
00:31:59.530 --> 00:32:01.710
So we don't know. (chuckles)
651
00:32:01.710 --> 00:32:03.060
As of yet.
652
00:32:03.060 --> 00:32:04.505
But we will get.
653
00:32:04.505 --> 00:32:05.930
(chuckles) Okay.
654
00:32:05.930 --> 00:32:10.270
But yeah, it's obviously not very common to get 'em.
655
00:32:10.270 --> 00:32:13.150
And then the shark researchers of course, we have folks here
656
00:32:13.150 --> 00:32:15.140
who do tiger shark research.
657
00:32:15.140 --> 00:32:17.583
But you know, they're not sampling placentas.
658
00:32:18.480 --> 00:32:19.320
Right.
659
00:32:19.320 --> 00:32:21.440
And the sharks aren't sharing.
660
00:32:21.440 --> 00:32:23.470
No, they're not.
661
00:32:23.470 --> 00:32:26.563
All right, any evidence of feeding on whale lice?
662
00:32:28.190 --> 00:32:30.073
You know, very good question.
663
00:32:31.170 --> 00:32:32.550
You know by fishes, like you were saying
664
00:32:32.550 --> 00:32:33.740
ōpelu eating the skin, like
665
00:32:33.740 --> 00:32:35.120
would something else eat the whale lice?
666
00:32:35.120 --> 00:32:37.283
My husband asked the exact same question.
667
00:32:38.970 --> 00:32:40.837
I have zero evidence of that at this point.
668
00:32:40.837 --> 00:32:42.970
But it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.
669
00:32:42.970 --> 00:32:45.930
So for those of you who don't know what whale lice are,
670
00:32:45.930 --> 00:32:48.490
they're actually amphipods, they're not really lice.
671
00:32:48.490 --> 00:32:52.593
And they're fascinating creatures, they're pretty big.
672
00:32:54.220 --> 00:32:56.400
The whale tail picture that I put on there,
673
00:32:56.400 --> 00:32:58.250
there was actually a couple of them on the ends
674
00:32:58.250 --> 00:33:01.963
of each of the flukes there.
675
00:33:04.120 --> 00:33:06.270
And they are species specific.
676
00:33:06.270 --> 00:33:09.970
So a humpback whale, I think there's two, possibly three.
677
00:33:09.970 --> 00:33:11.080
Meaning that they know there's two
678
00:33:11.080 --> 00:33:12.360
and they think there's three,
679
00:33:12.360 --> 00:33:14.343
amphipods that are specific to humpback whales.
680
00:33:14.343 --> 00:33:16.650
There's another one specific to killer whales,
681
00:33:16.650 --> 00:33:18.260
another one specific to blue whales.
682
00:33:18.260 --> 00:33:20.820
And what's very weird about them is that they don't swim.
683
00:33:20.820 --> 00:33:22.617
So you know, they're born and hatched and live
684
00:33:22.617 --> 00:33:25.370
and do their whole little thing on the whale itself.
685
00:33:25.370 --> 00:33:29.080
So they think they get passed from whale to whale
686
00:33:29.080 --> 00:33:32.310
during mating, when the mother gives birth to the calf
687
00:33:32.310 --> 00:33:35.020
and also when the males fight each other
688
00:33:35.020 --> 00:33:36.170
for the female's attention.
689
00:33:36.170 --> 00:33:38.060
'Cause they'll like literally bash into each other
690
00:33:38.060 --> 00:33:41.553
and things like that and then they could move across.
691
00:33:43.910 --> 00:33:46.010
You also caused another question earlier
692
00:33:46.010 --> 00:33:49.422
that we answered during your talk but it was
693
00:33:49.422 --> 00:33:51.650
what is a tunicate because you had brought those up too
694
00:33:51.650 --> 00:33:53.570
in the food chain.
695
00:33:53.570 --> 00:33:55.863
I mean, what is a sea squirt and we answered
696
00:33:55.863 --> 00:33:57.860
that it was a type of tunicate.
697
00:33:57.860 --> 00:33:58.960
We answered that one earlier.
698
00:33:58.960 --> 00:34:02.160
For those of you who didn't see the question and answer box
699
00:34:02.160 --> 00:34:03.860
a sea squirt that she mentioned,
700
00:34:03.860 --> 00:34:06.053
is a tunicate along those lines.
701
00:34:07.262 --> 00:34:08.095
Let's see.
702
00:34:09.680 --> 00:34:12.793
Do you think whale breaching is to slough their skin?
703
00:34:15.260 --> 00:34:17.000
There's a lot of ideas.
704
00:34:17.000 --> 00:34:19.010
Sloughing their skin is one of them
705
00:34:19.010 --> 00:34:23.163
and knocking off whale lice is another one, so.
706
00:34:26.280 --> 00:34:31.280
What I see when I'm out too, is so now that there's
707
00:34:31.640 --> 00:34:33.130
a lot of calfs around, right?
708
00:34:33.130 --> 00:34:34.203
Moms and calfs.
709
00:34:35.260 --> 00:34:37.860
So just recently, when we were out on the research boat,
710
00:34:37.860 --> 00:34:41.132
there was a mom, mom breaches, and then the baby breaches.
711
00:34:41.132 --> 00:34:43.330
(vocalizes) You know, mom puts the pectoral flipper up,
712
00:34:43.330 --> 00:34:44.910
baby puts the pectoral flipper up.
713
00:34:44.910 --> 00:34:48.203
So there's definitely, it's a taught behavior, definitely.
714
00:34:49.350 --> 00:34:52.140
So the why is just always hard to puzzle.
715
00:34:52.140 --> 00:34:55.280
But dealing with the skin is one of the ideas,
716
00:34:55.280 --> 00:34:58.023
dealing with whale lice is another idea.
717
00:34:59.120 --> 00:35:01.840
You know, making big sounds, if it's a male.
718
00:35:01.840 --> 00:35:04.130
Transmitting the fact that he's the big badass
719
00:35:04.130 --> 00:35:05.783
is maybe another idea.
720
00:35:06.810 --> 00:35:11.810
So there's a bunch of ideas but it's tough to figure it out.
721
00:35:12.820 --> 00:35:13.653
Okay.
722
00:35:15.230 --> 00:35:18.310
Are there any other organisms that migrate with humpbacks
723
00:35:18.310 --> 00:35:20.733
as hitchhikers as part of their lifecycle?
724
00:35:22.680 --> 00:35:25.220
Oh, like besides the whale lice?
725
00:35:25.220 --> 00:35:26.900
Like any other number of parasites
726
00:35:26.900 --> 00:35:29.140
that they might have on their bodies, you know?
727
00:35:29.140 --> 00:35:31.313
Barnacles as well, so.
728
00:35:33.770 --> 00:35:35.740
Oh, are you thinking that they could provide nutrients
729
00:35:35.740 --> 00:35:37.530
to the ecosystem?
730
00:35:37.530 --> 00:35:38.410
I'm sure they could.
731
00:35:38.410 --> 00:35:41.473
Oh, are you thinking about larger predators?
732
00:35:42.670 --> 00:35:44.520
Like dolphins or something like that?
733
00:35:46.225 --> 00:35:47.606
I don't know, that's a good question.
734
00:35:47.606 --> 00:35:49.930
And I don't know the answer to that.
735
00:35:49.930 --> 00:35:50.763
Okay.
736
00:35:52.670 --> 00:35:56.256
Do whales prefer one Hawaiian island over another?
737
00:35:56.256 --> 00:36:00.070
(chuckles) They are present around all
738
00:36:00.070 --> 00:36:03.143
of the Hawaiian islands but they are not distributed evenly.
739
00:36:04.080 --> 00:36:09.080
They have areas that they prefer around each island.
740
00:36:09.600 --> 00:36:13.450
And the bulk of the whales, the largest number
741
00:36:13.450 --> 00:36:18.400
of the population that's there, is actually in between Maui,
742
00:36:18.400 --> 00:36:21.370
Lana'i and Moloka'i, which makes a little triangle.
743
00:36:21.370 --> 00:36:23.107
And the water is a little bit shallower there
744
00:36:23.107 --> 00:36:24.630
and a little bit warmer.
745
00:36:24.630 --> 00:36:29.530
And because Maui, Lana'i, they all used to be one island.
746
00:36:29.530 --> 00:36:32.770
So there's like a shallower underwater
747
00:36:32.770 --> 00:36:34.893
connective area between the three.
748
00:36:37.510 --> 00:36:39.730
To remind you how Hawaiian islands got formed--
749
00:36:39.730 --> 00:36:42.030
there's like a hot spot out in the Earth's crust.
750
00:36:42.030 --> 00:36:44.790
And as the crust moved, then you know,
751
00:36:44.790 --> 00:36:46.530
there's a little volcano that blurps up
752
00:36:46.530 --> 00:36:48.060
and ends up making an island.
753
00:36:48.060 --> 00:36:50.903
I know, blurping, highly scientific term, sorry about that.
754
00:36:52.100 --> 00:36:55.307
So anyway, that's how.
755
00:36:57.160 --> 00:36:59.230
You can actually Google it, there's a map.
756
00:36:59.230 --> 00:37:00.907
So you can see it on the internet.
757
00:37:00.907 --> 00:37:02.600
That's a sanctuary map that we have
758
00:37:02.600 --> 00:37:04.807
about where the whales are concentrated.
759
00:37:06.280 --> 00:37:07.113
Okay.
760
00:37:10.370 --> 00:37:14.123
Does anybody know if mucus is throw up or snot?
761
00:37:16.130 --> 00:37:17.720
(Kelly chuckles)
762
00:37:17.720 --> 00:37:21.402
It's probably snot from the blow of the whale.
763
00:37:21.402 --> 00:37:23.247
Okay.
764
00:37:23.247 --> 00:37:26.410
The other day, we were on the research boat and Ed Lyman,
765
00:37:26.410 --> 00:37:27.860
one of our other researchers,
766
00:37:27.860 --> 00:37:30.740
has a GoPro on the end of a long pole.
767
00:37:30.740 --> 00:37:34.600
And we are in the midst of like eight whales.
768
00:37:34.600 --> 00:37:36.490
So the research boat has a special permit
769
00:37:36.490 --> 00:37:38.700
to get closer to the whales.
770
00:37:38.700 --> 00:37:42.273
And when the whales are competing for a mate,
771
00:37:43.760 --> 00:37:45.610
they just kind of ignore the boat.
772
00:37:45.610 --> 00:37:47.740
And so we're idling, we're not moving,
773
00:37:47.740 --> 00:37:50.390
we're just sitting there and the whales are swimming around.
774
00:37:50.390 --> 00:37:54.850
And one whale did notice the boat.
775
00:37:54.850 --> 00:37:56.060
Well, I'm assuming it noticed the boat
776
00:37:56.060 --> 00:37:57.760
because it was coming straight for the boat
777
00:37:57.760 --> 00:38:00.230
and then it dove down and twisted.
778
00:38:00.230 --> 00:38:03.650
And right before it dove, it blew out its blow hole.
779
00:38:03.650 --> 00:38:08.650
And it spewed snot all over Ed so I would guess snot.
780
00:38:11.260 --> 00:38:12.156
(Jeannine chuckles)
781
00:38:12.156 --> 00:38:13.810
Did you get any pictures?
782
00:38:13.810 --> 00:38:15.560
No, none of us got pictures.
783
00:38:15.560 --> 00:38:17.614
We did laugh at him though 'cause his hair was sticking up
784
00:38:17.614 --> 00:38:19.299
'cause he had all of this stuff in it, but.
785
00:38:19.299 --> 00:38:21.140
(chuckles) Wow.
786
00:38:21.140 --> 00:38:24.893
Okay, well we like hearing those real life stories
787
00:38:28.350 --> 00:38:30.680
out there. Is there a correlation of fish populations
788
00:38:30.680 --> 00:38:32.450
rising and falling with numbers of whales
789
00:38:32.450 --> 00:38:34.053
available to provide skin?
790
00:38:35.670 --> 00:38:39.163
You know, nobody's really been looking at this.
791
00:38:40.280 --> 00:38:45.183
So give me a year, (chuckles) I'll see what I can do.
792
00:38:48.580 --> 00:38:49.680
Fair enough.
793
00:38:50.910 --> 00:38:53.800
How do human actions negatively contribute to the health
794
00:38:53.800 --> 00:38:56.943
and population of whales and ecosystems involved?
795
00:38:57.780 --> 00:39:00.150
How do human populations negatively contribute
796
00:39:00.150 --> 00:39:01.593
to the whale population?
797
00:39:03.030 --> 00:39:04.603
In any number of ways.
798
00:39:05.520 --> 00:39:07.990
One that everybody I think is familiar with
799
00:39:07.990 --> 00:39:09.363
is marine debris.
800
00:39:10.330 --> 00:39:12.320
We have Ed Lyman, the researcher
801
00:39:12.320 --> 00:39:15.333
that just had whale snot all over him.
802
00:39:17.493 --> 00:39:20.700
He's actually one of the national leads
803
00:39:20.700 --> 00:39:23.490
for the Large Whale Entanglement Network,
804
00:39:23.490 --> 00:39:26.890
and trains people from all over the world
805
00:39:26.890 --> 00:39:31.890
and they've developed special tools to cut
806
00:39:32.370 --> 00:39:34.510
the marine debris away from the whales.
807
00:39:34.510 --> 00:39:39.090
Which they're dragging buoys and anchors and netting.
808
00:39:39.090 --> 00:39:40.780
And some of this is stuff that they've brought
809
00:39:40.780 --> 00:39:42.350
all the way from Alaska.
810
00:39:42.350 --> 00:39:45.010
Some of it is marine debris
811
00:39:45.010 --> 00:39:47.403
that they've ended up stuck in locally.
812
00:39:48.420 --> 00:39:52.515
I think if I recall from what Ed says, it's about 60%,
813
00:39:52.515 --> 00:39:57.515
65% from Alaska and about 33% locally, so about a third.
814
00:40:00.200 --> 00:40:01.543
So that's a huge one.
815
00:40:02.560 --> 00:40:05.993
Ship strikes of course for whales in general is a problem.
816
00:40:07.750 --> 00:40:10.550
Not in Hawai`i because we really don't
817
00:40:10.550 --> 00:40:12.073
have big tankers in Hawaii.
818
00:40:12.073 --> 00:40:15.210
I mean, we have a few that come in and out of Honolulu.
819
00:40:15.210 --> 00:40:17.980
But between all the different islands, we have a barge
820
00:40:17.980 --> 00:40:20.850
that's towed by a tugboat to move food and cars
821
00:40:20.850 --> 00:40:23.730
and refrigerators and stuff like that around.
822
00:40:23.730 --> 00:40:25.940
And there are cruise ships that come in,
823
00:40:25.940 --> 00:40:28.350
but they're going very slowly and they have
824
00:40:28.350 --> 00:40:29.430
very specific routes.
825
00:40:29.430 --> 00:40:30.867
And they're loud you know,
826
00:40:30.867 --> 00:40:33.840
the whales can hear them going slowly.
827
00:40:33.840 --> 00:40:35.850
But along shipping lanes, especially like
828
00:40:35.850 --> 00:40:38.510
the California Coast and East Coast
829
00:40:38.510 --> 00:40:40.040
whale strikes are a problem.
830
00:40:40.040 --> 00:40:42.620
Are people developing tools to avoid hitting the whales?
831
00:40:42.620 --> 00:40:43.620
Yes.
832
00:40:43.620 --> 00:40:47.780
And developing like 3D sonar, things like that you know,
833
00:40:47.780 --> 00:40:51.203
in order to help those large boats see the whales.
834
00:40:52.040 --> 00:40:53.760
What are some other things?
835
00:40:53.760 --> 00:40:54.980
Pollution is a big thing.
836
00:40:54.980 --> 00:40:57.280
Just the amount of pollution that we put in the water
837
00:40:57.280 --> 00:40:59.943
that can make any marine mammal more sick.
838
00:41:01.740 --> 00:41:05.810
Whales that are you know, eating higher on the food chain,
839
00:41:05.810 --> 00:41:09.150
like the false killer whales, they have a big problem
840
00:41:09.150 --> 00:41:14.150
with you know, concentrating mercury in their bodies
841
00:41:14.700 --> 00:41:16.410
and other pollutants because they're eating
842
00:41:16.410 --> 00:41:17.900
higher on the food chain.
843
00:41:17.900 --> 00:41:19.970
Humpback whales lucky for them, are eating krill
844
00:41:19.970 --> 00:41:24.130
and smaller fishes so they don't accumulate as much
845
00:41:24.130 --> 00:41:25.443
in my understanding.
846
00:41:27.300 --> 00:41:30.053
Anyway, those are some examples but I could go on.
847
00:41:32.260 --> 00:41:33.093
Okay.
848
00:41:34.620 --> 00:41:36.870
And also folks, there is a new article up
849
00:41:36.870 --> 00:41:38.860
in the National Marine Sanctuary Program
850
00:41:38.860 --> 00:41:40.650
about the most recent whale rescue.
851
00:41:40.650 --> 00:41:42.570
And it's up on the web and I just put the link
852
00:41:42.570 --> 00:41:44.750
in the chat box there for you.
853
00:41:44.750 --> 00:41:45.833
Thank you.
854
00:41:48.600 --> 00:41:50.050
Oh, I just wanted to say, Kelly though.
855
00:41:50.050 --> 00:41:53.270
I appreciate people's questions about data.
856
00:41:53.270 --> 00:41:55.410
I really like how you're thinking.
857
00:41:55.410 --> 00:41:58.150
And it's true, like do we have data
858
00:41:58.150 --> 00:42:01.450
for all these different things and can you say something
859
00:42:01.450 --> 00:42:04.170
you know, definitively if you don't have data?
860
00:42:04.170 --> 00:42:09.170
And I'm remiss in that I should probably have said
861
00:42:09.580 --> 00:42:12.350
before my talk that there aren't a lot of data
862
00:42:12.350 --> 00:42:13.510
for these things.
863
00:42:13.510 --> 00:42:16.400
But what we really need to do is start thinking about
864
00:42:17.530 --> 00:42:20.390
the different links between you know,
865
00:42:20.390 --> 00:42:22.430
food chains and food systems.
866
00:42:22.430 --> 00:42:24.210
And there are definitely, you know,
867
00:42:24.210 --> 00:42:26.340
facts within this that are true.
868
00:42:26.340 --> 00:42:29.780
I'm making it sound like it's a big bunch of hooey
869
00:42:29.780 --> 00:42:32.290
and that's not really what I mean.
870
00:42:32.290 --> 00:42:35.350
It's really important to shift the way that we think
871
00:42:35.350 --> 00:42:38.390
about whales and that we think about systems.
872
00:42:38.390 --> 00:42:41.510
And we think about connections between freshwater systems
873
00:42:41.510 --> 00:42:43.510
and reef systems and deep marine systems.
874
00:42:43.510 --> 00:42:45.867
Because as scientists, we tend to be siloed
875
00:42:45.867 --> 00:42:47.870
and we tend to not work together.
876
00:42:47.870 --> 00:42:49.960
And as managers, we tend to be siloed
877
00:42:49.960 --> 00:42:51.730
and we tend to not work together.
878
00:42:51.730 --> 00:42:56.690
So that is why talking about the idea of you know,
879
00:42:56.690 --> 00:42:59.380
whales bringing all these nutrients to the system
880
00:42:59.380 --> 00:43:01.650
that are getting passed around someplace.
881
00:43:01.650 --> 00:43:04.270
And here's some ideas that are very logical
882
00:43:04.270 --> 00:43:06.020
and with some data to them about
883
00:43:06.020 --> 00:43:07.870
how they move through the system.
884
00:43:07.870 --> 00:43:09.440
Could we start quantifying that?
885
00:43:09.440 --> 00:43:10.273
Yes.
886
00:43:10.273 --> 00:43:11.106
Do we need to?
887
00:43:11.106 --> 00:43:12.650
Yes, that's very important.
888
00:43:12.650 --> 00:43:15.013
So that was my focus.
889
00:43:16.850 --> 00:43:18.270
And I can take more questions, Kelly.
890
00:43:18.270 --> 00:43:19.360
That's fine.
891
00:43:19.360 --> 00:43:20.193
Okay.
892
00:43:21.050 --> 00:43:25.503
In the Spanish Sea, around Vancouver Island up there,
893
00:43:25.503 --> 00:43:28.730
the Pacific Northwest of the continental U.S.,
894
00:43:28.730 --> 00:43:31.060
humpbacks that feed there in the summer
895
00:43:31.060 --> 00:43:33.120
don't seem to have the diatoms.
896
00:43:33.120 --> 00:43:35.550
Many of these individuals do winter in Hawaii.
897
00:43:35.550 --> 00:43:38.120
Do you know why this might be?
898
00:43:38.120 --> 00:43:40.850
No I don't.
899
00:43:40.850 --> 00:43:44.120
But I think Robert Pitman from OSU is your guy,
900
00:43:44.120 --> 00:43:45.140
that's who I would ask.
901
00:43:45.140 --> 00:43:47.190
That was one of the focuses of the study.
902
00:43:48.902 --> 00:43:51.110
Okay, so is that one you're gonna look into for us
903
00:43:51.110 --> 00:43:52.200
or send us a link for or-
904
00:43:52.200 --> 00:43:53.133
I can call him and I'll look into it.
905
00:43:54.440 --> 00:43:56.760
Or even just, yeah, give us a contact.
906
00:43:56.760 --> 00:43:58.480
That'd be wonderful.
Sure, I'll call him.
907
00:43:58.480 --> 00:44:00.980
Folks, we will answer any questions
908
00:44:00.980 --> 00:44:02.870
we can't get to today or the ones that Jeannine said
909
00:44:02.870 --> 00:44:04.890
she's gonna find out more information for us
910
00:44:04.890 --> 00:44:07.950
and we will send those responses out to you later on.
911
00:44:07.950 --> 00:44:09.920
Probably a few weeks after the webinar.
912
00:44:09.920 --> 00:44:11.990
Give us time to get things collected.
913
00:44:11.990 --> 00:44:14.430
But we will send out additional information
914
00:44:14.430 --> 00:44:15.403
as we come by it.
915
00:44:17.759 --> 00:44:18.881
Next question.
So-
916
00:44:18.881 --> 00:44:19.714
Go ahead.
917
00:44:19.714 --> 00:44:21.180
I do wanna say one other thing about diatoms too,
918
00:44:21.180 --> 00:44:26.010
which is that you know, we don't know if the diatoms
919
00:44:26.010 --> 00:44:28.900
bother the whales, you know?
920
00:44:28.900 --> 00:44:33.900
That was just a very easy visual marker for Bob and his team
921
00:44:34.150 --> 00:44:36.670
to see that there was a change in the
922
00:44:36.670 --> 00:44:38.640
killer whale population that he was working on,
923
00:44:38.640 --> 00:44:40.190
between when they were in the cold waters
924
00:44:40.190 --> 00:44:42.190
and when they went to the warmer waters.
925
00:44:43.390 --> 00:44:46.660
That got him thinking about the whale's skin, so.
926
00:44:46.660 --> 00:44:47.493
Okay.
927
00:44:49.220 --> 00:44:51.270
Do you have the name of the paper that had
928
00:44:51.270 --> 00:44:53.533
the image you used of the microbial loop?
929
00:44:55.900 --> 00:44:57.073
The microbial loop?
930
00:44:58.271 --> 00:45:00.463
You mean the food chain?
931
00:45:02.450 --> 00:45:03.930
I don't know.
932
00:45:03.930 --> 00:45:05.993
Yeah, it's actually on the slide.
933
00:45:07.340 --> 00:45:09.670
Okay, we can answer that one then after the fact.
934
00:45:09.670 --> 00:45:10.539
Yeah, we can get it.
935
00:45:10.539 --> 00:45:12.747
But we'll get that one for you.
936
00:45:12.747 --> 00:45:15.090
And it's a downloadable paper on research feed.
937
00:45:15.090 --> 00:45:17.630
I think it's a free paper for everybody.
938
00:45:17.630 --> 00:45:18.463
Okay.
939
00:45:19.624 --> 00:45:21.960
Could a whale potentially poison an ecosystem
940
00:45:21.960 --> 00:45:24.180
if it had any skin diseases or defects,
941
00:45:24.180 --> 00:45:26.680
like you mentioned earlier when whales don't shed?
942
00:45:30.610 --> 00:45:32.260
You know, anything is possible.
943
00:45:33.330 --> 00:45:35.380
One of the things that Dr. Kristi West,
944
00:45:35.380 --> 00:45:39.530
the veterinarian that I mentioned earlier,
945
00:45:39.530 --> 00:45:44.280
she studies viruses and bacterial diseases
946
00:45:44.280 --> 00:45:47.350
carried by these marine mammals.
947
00:45:47.350 --> 00:45:50.270
And it's actually fairly shocking how many they have.
948
00:45:50.270 --> 00:45:53.393
And in the age of thinking about zoonotic diseases,
949
00:45:53.393 --> 00:45:54.520
it's very interesting.
950
00:45:54.520 --> 00:45:57.960
And all the people that work on those animals you know,
951
00:45:57.960 --> 00:46:00.880
are always masked and gloved, just to make sure that
952
00:46:02.760 --> 00:46:06.740
they don't get some diseases that are possibly
953
00:46:06.740 --> 00:46:10.093
from these animals and for other logical reasons.
954
00:46:12.640 --> 00:46:15.420
So that's a difficult question to ask 'cause you know,
955
00:46:15.420 --> 00:46:17.533
what kind of poisons, you know?
956
00:46:20.060 --> 00:46:22.130
You're talking about moving heavy metals around
957
00:46:22.130 --> 00:46:26.870
that does happen, you know, in marine mammals
958
00:46:26.870 --> 00:46:28.650
as they collect them and move them around.
959
00:46:28.650 --> 00:46:33.543
And there's a fairly tragic story about you know,
960
00:46:34.730 --> 00:46:38.490
peoples who have diets that are high in marine mammals
961
00:46:38.490 --> 00:46:42.740
you know, having people poisoned from eating them.
962
00:46:42.740 --> 00:46:45.620
And then that stress of trying to choose
963
00:46:45.620 --> 00:46:48.250
between your traditional diet and your culture
964
00:46:49.570 --> 00:46:52.403
versus you know, getting heavy metal poisoning.
965
00:46:55.780 --> 00:46:57.560
That was actually the next question in the list
966
00:46:57.560 --> 00:46:58.515
so you answered it.
967
00:46:58.515 --> 00:47:00.911
(Kelly and Jeannine chuckle)
968
00:47:00.911 --> 00:47:01.861
About heavy metals.
969
00:47:03.309 --> 00:47:05.410
Any ideas of what the radioactive water
970
00:47:05.410 --> 00:47:09.203
flowing into the ocean from Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant,
971
00:47:10.106 --> 00:47:12.506
if it's harming whales and other marine mammals?
972
00:47:14.490 --> 00:47:17.310
You know, I remember when we were all looking at that.
973
00:47:17.310 --> 00:47:18.470
And because we're in Hawaii,
974
00:47:18.470 --> 00:47:20.840
we were actually quite worried about it.
975
00:47:20.840 --> 00:47:25.840
But what I recall from the researchers who were studying
976
00:47:26.060 --> 00:47:30.220
that plume is that it dispersed much faster
977
00:47:30.220 --> 00:47:31.500
than they thought it would.
978
00:47:31.500 --> 00:47:34.480
It became actually difficult for them to detect.
979
00:47:34.480 --> 00:47:39.480
So I can look for that information again as well.
980
00:47:39.950 --> 00:47:41.443
So Fukushima.
981
00:47:42.950 --> 00:47:46.333
And also send the link to the NUI paper about the diet.
982
00:47:48.520 --> 00:47:49.353
Which I have.
983
00:47:50.450 --> 00:47:52.560
I used to use it in my class.
984
00:47:52.560 --> 00:47:54.080
All right.
985
00:47:54.080 --> 00:47:57.423
Why do diatoms collect on whale bodies?
986
00:48:01.430 --> 00:48:04.420
Well you know, they collect on stream rocks too, right?
987
00:48:04.420 --> 00:48:06.420
Like have you ever tried to walk on rocks in the stream
988
00:48:06.420 --> 00:48:08.210
and you realize that they're really slippery?
989
00:48:08.210 --> 00:48:09.870
Well, there's two reasons and one is, there's either
990
00:48:09.870 --> 00:48:12.200
algae on the rocks or there's diatoms on the rocks.
991
00:48:12.200 --> 00:48:14.880
So both, and because diatoms are silicate
992
00:48:14.880 --> 00:48:16.230
and they're super slippery.
993
00:48:17.240 --> 00:48:19.363
I would imagine that it's because,
994
00:48:22.138 --> 00:48:25.050
I don't know I'm gonna have to guess. (chuckles)
995
00:48:25.050 --> 00:48:26.069
Do I have a definitive answer?
996
00:48:26.069 --> 00:48:26.902
No.
997
00:48:29.460 --> 00:48:32.560
In general though, my understanding is that you know,
998
00:48:32.560 --> 00:48:35.280
pre-swimming animals or pre-swimming critters
999
00:48:36.470 --> 00:48:38.500
tend to want to...
1000
00:48:40.942 --> 00:48:42.010
Who knows?
1001
00:48:42.010 --> 00:48:43.356
I don't even wanna answer that question.
1002
00:48:43.356 --> 00:48:45.310
I would just be guessing.
1003
00:48:45.310 --> 00:48:47.360
(chuckles) Fair enough.
1004
00:48:47.360 --> 00:48:48.960
Sorry. (chuckles)
1005
00:48:48.960 --> 00:48:51.360
Do you know if any animals eat baleen?
1006
00:48:53.030 --> 00:48:54.143
I don't know that.
1007
00:48:56.680 --> 00:48:59.910
But I would assume given the information
1008
00:48:59.910 --> 00:49:02.090
that they're getting from whale falls,
1009
00:49:02.090 --> 00:49:05.540
that the different scavengers you know, once the whale
1010
00:49:05.540 --> 00:49:08.330
sinks to the bottom of the ocean you know, that it would
1011
00:49:08.330 --> 00:49:10.373
be consumed by different scavengers.
1012
00:49:12.730 --> 00:49:14.290
And what is the structure of baleen?
1013
00:49:14.290 --> 00:49:17.383
Isn't it something similar to fingernails structurally?
1014
00:49:20.980 --> 00:49:23.400
Like, is it keratinous you mean?
1015
00:49:23.400 --> 00:49:24.233
Yeah.
1016
00:49:25.597 --> 00:49:27.340
You know, I should know the answer
1017
00:49:27.340 --> 00:49:28.590
to that question and I don't.
1018
00:49:28.590 --> 00:49:31.837
I'm sorry, you guys are asking me such great questions.
1019
00:49:31.837 --> 00:49:35.880
(Kelly chuckles)
Okay, baleen structure.
1020
00:49:35.880 --> 00:49:38.260
I don't wanna say yes and then be wrong.
1021
00:49:38.260 --> 00:49:39.550
Okay.
1022
00:49:39.550 --> 00:49:41.640
I have to look that up too.
1023
00:49:41.640 --> 00:49:44.440
Can you talk about whales sequestering carbon?
1024
00:49:45.660 --> 00:49:47.370
Pardon, I missed that.
1025
00:49:47.370 --> 00:49:48.490
Can you talk about whales
1026
00:49:48.490 --> 00:49:51.290
and how they sequester carbon?
1027
00:49:51.290 --> 00:49:53.373
They sequester carbon in their bones.
1028
00:49:54.220 --> 00:49:56.230
Okay, so not in their fat
1029
00:49:56.230 --> 00:49:57.303
and their skin and things.
1030
00:49:57.303 --> 00:49:58.523
It's the bone thing.
1031
00:50:01.690 --> 00:50:03.767
Well you know, we're all gonna sequester carbon
1032
00:50:03.767 --> 00:50:04.934
in our bodies.
1033
00:50:07.100 --> 00:50:09.380
The bones last a lot longer on the sea floor,
1034
00:50:09.380 --> 00:50:12.040
as you saw in that photo, from that old, old skeleton
1035
00:50:12.040 --> 00:50:14.090
that was found off of Maui.
1036
00:50:14.090 --> 00:50:19.090
And so gosh, the International Monetary Fund
1037
00:50:20.130 --> 00:50:23.924
I think it is, you know, is like just doing
1038
00:50:23.924 --> 00:50:26.157
some financial modeling and thinking about
1039
00:50:26.157 --> 00:50:29.230
the amount of carbon sequestered in just whale bones
1040
00:50:29.230 --> 00:50:31.153
that fall to the surface of the ocean and then take
1041
00:50:31.153 --> 00:50:34.280
a really long time to degrade is you know,
1042
00:50:34.280 --> 00:50:36.640
worth trillions of dollars to the U.S.
1043
00:50:36.640 --> 00:50:38.763
Or to the U.S., excuse me, to the world.
1044
00:50:39.920 --> 00:50:43.433
Just in terms of the benefit to our planet.
1045
00:50:44.690 --> 00:50:47.570
Whereas the carbon that's in the tissues you know,
1046
00:50:47.570 --> 00:50:50.774
gets scavenged and you know, moved into other parts
1047
00:50:50.774 --> 00:50:53.774
of the ecosystem really quickly, so.
1048
00:50:55.510 --> 00:50:57.030
Okay.
1049
00:50:57.030 --> 00:50:59.260
And somebody would like to know if you could repeat again
1050
00:50:59.260 --> 00:51:01.480
where you went to school and what your educational
1051
00:51:01.480 --> 00:51:02.631
background was again.
1052
00:51:02.631 --> 00:51:05.380
(chuckles) I went to school at UC Davis
1053
00:51:05.380 --> 00:51:08.670
for a double Bachelor's in wildlife and fisheries biology.
1054
00:51:08.670 --> 00:51:10.300
And I have a Masters in aquatic ecology
1055
00:51:10.300 --> 00:51:11.683
from Utah State University.
1056
00:51:13.240 --> 00:51:17.750
So like I said, I'm actually not a marine mammal specialist.
1057
00:51:17.750 --> 00:51:22.480
I'm an ecologist so I'm interested in you know,
1058
00:51:22.480 --> 00:51:25.900
links between terrestrial and aquatic systems
1059
00:51:25.900 --> 00:51:26.733
and whether they're...
1060
00:51:26.733 --> 00:51:29.580
And then once, I've been in Hawaii about 15 years
1061
00:51:29.580 --> 00:51:33.600
so you know, I like to ask questions about well,
1062
00:51:33.600 --> 00:51:38.600
if you've got, have evi snails with the zooplankton stage,
1063
00:51:38.690 --> 00:51:41.190
how are they you know, impacted by what's going on
1064
00:51:41.190 --> 00:51:42.390
in the ocean, et cetera.
1065
00:51:43.850 --> 00:51:45.250
So.
1066
00:51:45.250 --> 00:51:46.083
Okay.
1067
00:51:46.083 --> 00:51:47.147
Hope that answers your questions.
1068
00:51:49.910 --> 00:51:50.743
Let's see.
1069
00:51:50.743 --> 00:51:53.644
You're like, "I'm never sending my kids to those schools!"
1070
00:51:53.644 --> 00:51:57.860
(chuckles) How long have humpbacks
1071
00:51:57.860 --> 00:51:59.313
been migrating to Hawai`i?
1072
00:52:00.810 --> 00:52:01.793
Do we know?
1073
00:52:02.920 --> 00:52:07.920
You know, we were just talking about wanting to do the map
1074
00:52:08.260 --> 00:52:13.260
on how old the Hawaiian islands are or are young actually.
1075
00:52:13.950 --> 00:52:16.740
They're really geologically, pretty young.
1076
00:52:16.740 --> 00:52:21.740
Versus the age of humpbacks and when they would've evolved
1077
00:52:23.370 --> 00:52:25.883
relatively close to where they are now.
1078
00:52:27.640 --> 00:52:31.327
So one thing we remember though, if this person is saying,
1079
00:52:31.327 --> 00:52:34.350
"Well you know, what's going on in Hawai`i and you know,
1080
00:52:34.350 --> 00:52:36.230
it's a relatively new system and you know,
1081
00:52:36.230 --> 00:52:37.500
why would humpbacks have gone there?"
1082
00:52:37.500 --> 00:52:39.943
Is that you know, that population splits.
1083
00:52:41.430 --> 00:52:44.870
You know, between you know, Mexico and Japan
1084
00:52:44.870 --> 00:52:45.960
and other things.
1085
00:52:45.960 --> 00:52:50.323
And that you know, with whales, animals move around.
1086
00:52:53.980 --> 00:52:56.440
We have this idea sometimes as humans,
1087
00:52:56.440 --> 00:52:58.290
that they get locked into migration roots
1088
00:52:58.290 --> 00:52:59.670
and they stay there.
1089
00:52:59.670 --> 00:53:02.310
But you know, there are always strays.
1090
00:53:02.310 --> 00:53:03.423
Like for salmon, for example.
1091
00:53:03.423 --> 00:53:05.600
It's like, yeah, there's their neat old stream
1092
00:53:05.600 --> 00:53:07.170
and they return home to their stream.
1093
00:53:07.170 --> 00:53:09.290
But there's always a percentage of that population
1094
00:53:09.290 --> 00:53:11.160
that goes to a different stream.
1095
00:53:11.160 --> 00:53:12.743
And there's always a percentage of that population
1096
00:53:12.743 --> 00:53:15.340
that stays upstream into the migration.
1097
00:53:15.340 --> 00:53:18.243
And it's you know, nature's way of ensuring that
1098
00:53:18.243 --> 00:53:21.552
that population well, it's one way of looking at it,
1099
00:53:21.552 --> 00:53:23.500
is that it's nature's way of ensuring that that population
1100
00:53:23.500 --> 00:53:25.100
doesn't go extinct, right?
1101
00:53:25.100 --> 00:53:28.310
Because there's like always a safety net out here and here.
1102
00:53:28.310 --> 00:53:33.310
So it would not surprise me that there are whales
1103
00:53:34.040 --> 00:53:37.180
that go different places than their normal migration routes,
1104
00:53:37.180 --> 00:53:38.013
et cetera.
1105
00:53:38.013 --> 00:53:40.800
And so through the eons, that's how whales have.
1106
00:53:42.640 --> 00:53:43.473
Sorry.
1107
00:53:44.330 --> 00:53:45.430
That's okay.
1108
00:53:47.560 --> 00:53:51.113
Is underwater noise a threat to whales in Hawaii?
1109
00:53:52.680 --> 00:53:55.970
So Dr. Marc Lammers, the researcher that was putting
1110
00:53:55.970 --> 00:53:59.620
the CAT tag with the camera on the whale in the photo.
1111
00:53:59.620 --> 00:54:03.180
So his specialty is actually underwater acoustics.
1112
00:54:03.180 --> 00:54:04.580
And he would be an interesting person
1113
00:54:04.580 --> 00:54:05.870
to get in on the Seaside Chat.
1114
00:54:05.870 --> 00:54:08.080
And he has been focusing on first dolphins,
1115
00:54:08.080 --> 00:54:11.470
which is what he did his PhD on, and then whales for...
1116
00:54:11.470 --> 00:54:14.530
Like, so cetaceans is his whole career, you know?
1117
00:54:14.530 --> 00:54:16.113
25 years roughly.
1118
00:54:17.500 --> 00:54:22.500
And so when he looks at acoustics, he is looking at the...
1119
00:54:24.780 --> 00:54:26.260
And he'd have to talk about this, not me.
1120
00:54:26.260 --> 00:54:28.780
But like the frequency of whale communication
1121
00:54:28.780 --> 00:54:30.900
and then the frequencies of the different you know,
1122
00:54:30.900 --> 00:54:33.300
boats and things that we have out on the waters.
1123
00:54:35.040 --> 00:54:39.790
And my impression from this is that it's not like
1124
00:54:39.790 --> 00:54:42.890
a big problem in Hawai`i.
1125
00:54:42.890 --> 00:54:44.940
Simply because we have small boats
1126
00:54:46.260 --> 00:54:48.110
relative to the number of whales.
1127
00:54:48.110 --> 00:54:49.903
It's that we don't have a lot of boats.
1128
00:54:49.903 --> 00:54:53.143
We don't have big shipping lanes, you know?
1129
00:54:55.320 --> 00:54:57.150
And it'll be interesting.
1130
00:54:57.150 --> 00:55:00.860
I know he's still processing his data from the pandemic.
1131
00:55:00.860 --> 00:55:05.860
So in March of 2020, everything shut down in Hawai`i
1132
00:55:07.180 --> 00:55:08.820
like it did all over the world.
1133
00:55:08.820 --> 00:55:10.830
And it became this fabulous experiment
1134
00:55:10.830 --> 00:55:13.110
because his acoustic recorders were still running.
1135
00:55:13.110 --> 00:55:15.616
So he went from recording what whales were doing,
1136
00:55:15.616 --> 00:55:16.570
you're in the middle of whale season.
1137
00:55:16.570 --> 00:55:18.610
What whales were doing when we have boats
1138
00:55:18.610 --> 00:55:21.240
to what whales were doing and how they were
1139
00:55:21.240 --> 00:55:23.570
vocalizing without boats.
1140
00:55:23.570 --> 00:55:27.200
So stay tuned for that paper because I'm gonna imagine
1141
00:55:27.200 --> 00:55:28.920
that he'll get it out within a year or so.
1142
00:55:28.920 --> 00:55:30.540
'Cause it's actually gonna be really interesting
1143
00:55:30.540 --> 00:55:32.550
to see if there are any shifts.
1144
00:55:32.550 --> 00:55:33.383
So.
1145
00:55:34.300 --> 00:55:35.620
Wonderful.
1146
00:55:35.620 --> 00:55:39.200
Well Jeannine, I think we have tapped you out on questions.
1147
00:55:39.200 --> 00:55:41.523
I think we've had a really good run here.
1148
00:55:42.866 --> 00:55:43.870
And thank you everyone
1149
00:55:43.870 --> 00:55:45.920
for all the questions that you've posed.
1150
00:55:45.920 --> 00:55:47.970
Jeannine has already told you, she's gonna look into answers
1151
00:55:47.970 --> 00:55:49.860
on some of the rest of these.
1152
00:55:49.860 --> 00:55:52.610
There are still more left and we will look at those
1153
00:55:52.610 --> 00:55:55.780
ourselves and answer what we can and consult with Jeannine
1154
00:55:55.780 --> 00:55:57.050
on the rest of them.
1155
00:55:57.050 --> 00:55:59.130
And we will get back to you with at least
1156
00:55:59.130 --> 00:56:01.350
some of the answers to the questions that we didn't
1157
00:56:01.350 --> 00:56:03.870
get to live during our broadcast today.
1158
00:56:03.870 --> 00:56:07.960
But at this point, it is time for us to wrap things up.
1159
00:56:07.960 --> 00:56:11.480
So thank you so much Jeannine for being here with us today.
1160
00:56:11.480 --> 00:56:13.700
We really appreciate all the time you spent
1161
00:56:13.700 --> 00:56:16.050
and the information you've shared with us.
1162
00:56:16.050 --> 00:56:21.050
And this point, I'm going to do a few wrap up slides
1163
00:56:21.950 --> 00:56:23.573
and then we'll be good to go.
1164
00:56:27.224 --> 00:56:28.140
All right.
1165
00:56:28.140 --> 00:56:30.160
So as I said, depending on the number
1166
00:56:30.160 --> 00:56:33.950
of questions remaining, we'll attempt to get those answered.
1167
00:56:33.950 --> 00:56:35.730
Especially those that Jeanine said
1168
00:56:35.730 --> 00:56:37.680
she will look into for us.
1169
00:56:37.680 --> 00:56:39.440
Please also remember to check out the links
1170
00:56:39.440 --> 00:56:41.860
we've shared with you throughout the presentation
1171
00:56:41.860 --> 00:56:42.820
in the chat box.
1172
00:56:42.820 --> 00:56:45.860
And to help you find more information on your own.
1173
00:56:45.860 --> 00:56:49.360
As a reminder, we've provided a document with these links
1174
00:56:49.360 --> 00:56:51.610
in the handouts pane of the control panel.
1175
00:56:51.610 --> 00:56:54.830
We did forget to put in the one about the whale fall.
1176
00:56:54.830 --> 00:56:56.640
So when we send out your certificates,
1177
00:56:56.640 --> 00:57:00.050
I'll try to send out an updated version of the link list
1178
00:57:00.050 --> 00:57:02.030
so you'll have a link to the information
1179
00:57:02.030 --> 00:57:03.880
on the whale fall poster.
1180
00:57:03.880 --> 00:57:07.290
And there's a short video about that too.
1181
00:57:07.290 --> 00:57:09.920
You haven't yet downloaded that handout
1182
00:57:09.920 --> 00:57:11.990
for all the other good stuff in there,
1183
00:57:11.990 --> 00:57:13.390
now would be a good time to do that.
1184
00:57:13.390 --> 00:57:14.730
Because once we close out the webinar
1185
00:57:14.730 --> 00:57:16.633
that won't be available for download.
1186
00:57:17.570 --> 00:57:20.680
Thank you for attending this Seaside Chats presentation
1187
00:57:20.680 --> 00:57:23.660
on How Humpback Whales Feed Hawai`i.
1188
00:57:23.660 --> 00:57:26.050
This is the last in a series of four presentations
1189
00:57:26.050 --> 00:57:27.640
we were offering this month.
1190
00:57:27.640 --> 00:57:30.030
But we may have a few more presentations
1191
00:57:30.030 --> 00:57:32.770
as part of our 30th anniversary activities.
1192
00:57:32.770 --> 00:57:34.720
They will come up later this year.
1193
00:57:34.720 --> 00:57:36.830
We will email information about these programs
1194
00:57:36.830 --> 00:57:38.150
as they are scheduled.
1195
00:57:38.150 --> 00:57:40.740
We will also invite you to visit us on the web
1196
00:57:40.740 --> 00:57:45.380
at flowergarden.noaa.gov next January to see
1197
00:57:45.380 --> 00:57:49.330
what we have planned for Seaside Chats in 2023.
1198
00:57:49.330 --> 00:57:50.590
Our Seaside Chats program
1199
00:57:50.590 --> 00:57:52.900
is traditionally a February program.
1200
00:57:52.900 --> 00:57:55.600
We try to run every week in the month of February,
1201
00:57:55.600 --> 00:57:57.900
occasionally drifting into March.
1202
00:57:57.900 --> 00:57:59.530
But this year we may actually add
1203
00:57:59.530 --> 00:58:02.210
a few more presentations to the lineup.
1204
00:58:02.210 --> 00:58:04.650
So stay tuned for more information.
1205
00:58:04.650 --> 00:58:07.400
As always, we welcome your feedback and questions.
1206
00:58:07.400 --> 00:58:09.450
You can submit input to us by replying
1207
00:58:09.450 --> 00:58:12.570
to the follow-up email you'll receive after the webinar
1208
00:58:12.570 --> 00:58:16.593
or by emailing us at flowergarden@noaa.gov.
1209
00:58:18.290 --> 00:58:20.330
Today's presentation has also been part of the
1210
00:58:20.330 --> 00:58:22.720
National Marine Sanctuaries webinar series.
1211
00:58:22.720 --> 00:58:25.940
And while Seaside Chats generally lasts just one month,
1212
00:58:25.940 --> 00:58:29.270
our national webinar series continues throughout the year
1213
00:58:29.270 --> 00:58:31.200
to provide educators with educational
1214
00:58:31.200 --> 00:58:34.490
and scientific expertise, resources, and training
1215
00:58:34.490 --> 00:58:37.820
to support ocean and climate literacy in the classroom.
1216
00:58:37.820 --> 00:58:40.910
And anyone is welcome to listen in on any of these.
1217
00:58:40.910 --> 00:58:43.180
They're not geared just for educators.
1218
00:58:43.180 --> 00:58:45.200
We welcome all audiences.
1219
00:58:45.200 --> 00:58:48.380
Be sure to check the website for recordings of past webinars
1220
00:58:48.380 --> 00:58:51.000
and a schedule of what's to come.
1221
00:58:51.000 --> 00:58:54.240
As a reminder, we will share the recording of this webinar
1222
00:58:54.240 --> 00:58:57.370
via the National Marine Sanctuaries and Flower Garden Banks
1223
00:58:57.370 --> 00:58:59.523
National Marine Sanctuary websites.
1224
00:59:00.780 --> 00:59:04.430
Following this webinar, attendees will receive a PDF copy
1225
00:59:04.430 --> 00:59:07.810
of a certificate of attendance that provides documentation
1226
00:59:07.810 --> 00:59:09.860
for one hour of professional development
1227
00:59:09.860 --> 00:59:11.760
for today's presentation.
1228
00:59:11.760 --> 00:59:15.870
This includes our Texas CPE provider number for those of you
1229
00:59:15.870 --> 00:59:17.640
who are Texas educators.
1230
00:59:17.640 --> 00:59:19.910
If you are an educator outside of Texas,
1231
00:59:19.910 --> 00:59:22.080
please use this certificate to help get your hours
1232
00:59:22.080 --> 00:59:23.880
approved in your district.
1233
00:59:23.880 --> 00:59:26.210
And if you require any additional information
1234
00:59:26.210 --> 00:59:28.520
to get that accomplished, please contact me
1235
00:59:28.520 --> 00:59:30.993
at flowergarden@noaa.gov.
1236
00:59:31.920 --> 00:59:33.650
There will also be a short evaluation
1237
00:59:33.650 --> 00:59:35.580
following today's presentation.
1238
00:59:35.580 --> 00:59:37.730
We ask that you complete this survey immediately
1239
00:59:37.730 --> 00:59:39.280
after signing off the webinar.
1240
00:59:39.280 --> 00:59:42.240
It should only take about three minutes to complete.
1241
00:59:42.240 --> 00:59:44.550
We greatly appreciate any feedback
1242
00:59:44.550 --> 00:59:46.800
you are willing to share through that survey.
1243
00:59:48.070 --> 00:59:50.980
And last but not least, thanks again
1244
00:59:50.980 --> 00:59:53.420
to Jeannine Rossa for a great presentation
1245
00:59:53.420 --> 00:59:56.220
about How Humpback Whales Feed Hawai`i.
1246
00:59:56.220 --> 00:59:59.580
And thanks to all of you for taking time to join us.
1247
00:59:59.580 --> 01:00:00.753
This concludes our webinar.