WEBVTT

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<v ->Well, thank you and thank you, everyone, for being here</v>

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and giving me the opportunity to speak about my work.

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My name's Chris Biggs.

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I'm a research scientist at the Washington Department

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of Fish &amp; Wildlife, and I've been in this role,

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I guess, about a year and a half now.

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And so, I sit within the intergovernmental

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ocean policy group, which is actually the group

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in our department that deals with the management

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of most of the coastal fisheries,

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and so this is most species

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along the coast, excluding salmon.

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And a large part of this and large focus of my work,

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as you'll see, is on Dungeness crab.

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My official title is

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Climate and Ecosystem Fisheries Scientist,

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which I'm sure is very intuitive for everybody.

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But right now, the focus of my work

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is on the Dungeness crab fishery,

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looking at incorporating climate and environmental science

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into understanding the population and its fluctuations

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and distribution for management of the fishery.

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And then the other side of the work I work on

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is also with the problem of whale entanglements,

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which is a very large issue for the Dungeness crab fishery

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as well as we'll see.

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And right now, we're in the process of working

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on a conservation plan and developing some monitoring

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and adaptive management approach to minimize

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and mitigate and avoid entangling whales.

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And so, for this talk,

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I'll start off talking a little bit about the management

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of the fishery and describe how that works,

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and it's actually a little bit unique

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compared to other fisheries in the region

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and really across the United States.

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And then I'll get into the biology of crab a little bit,

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and that will lead into more of the research I'm heading up

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and we're working on to try to understand crab populations.

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And then I'll finally wrap up

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with the tying it all back into whale entanglements

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and what we're doing there to reduce risk for whales.

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Okay.

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Here we go.

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You should see my screen now, yeah?

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<v ->Yes.</v>

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<v ->Perfect.</v>

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Okay.

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There's some of the nice pictures I was talking about

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and describing my role.

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Okay.

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So, when talking about the management

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of the Dungeness crab fishery,

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the first distinction I wanna make is that in Washington,

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we manage fisheries in Puget Sound

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and the Salish Sea separately

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from fisheries along the coast,

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so I'll just be talking about the coastal commercial

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Dungeness crab fishery today.

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And this management of this coastal fishery

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is really a collaboration with multiple groups,

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so we have a tri-state group that we work with,

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so it's Washington, Oregon, and California.

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And we go through the tri-state Dungeness crab process,

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which is facilitated

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by the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission,

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and so we all can talk and approach

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how we manage the fishery together.

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We also work with our stakeholders

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through a crab advisory board.

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And then we also co-manage

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with treaty tribes along the coast,

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and so there are four treaty tribes

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along coastal Washington,

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so we have the Hoh, the Makah, the Quileute,

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and the Quinault Indian Nation

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to co-manage our crab fishery with the resource-sharing goal

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of 50-50 sharing in their usual and custom fishing areas,

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which I'll show you a map of in a little bit.

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And so, as you can imagine with all these parties

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and these entities involved, it's really no small task,

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and especially because the Dungeness crab fishery

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is one of the number one fishery

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in terms of revenue in the state.

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And so, the graph here is showing landings revenue

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in thousands of dollars from 2012 to 2021.

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And of course, the light green bar is Dungeness crab,

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which you can see swamps

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just about every other species in the state.

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And then if we look at in terms of biomass as well,

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it's also equally as important.

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It comes in usually one or two depending on the year.

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And so, Dungeness crab is obviously a huge part

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of the economy in Washington and fishing,

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but it's also a very important part of the ecology

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of the ecosystem along the coast, too.

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And so, if we look at the spatial extent of the fishery,

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it really spans the entire coastline,

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and it even operates into Oregon,

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so we have some fishers that are dual-permitted,

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and they will fish in both Washington and Oregon,

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so they may fish in Washington,

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but deliver crab into Oregon, or vice versa.

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And this map here is showing the density of fishing efforts,

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so like the intensity of fishing effort

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measured as the number of strings of crab pots

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within a five-square-kilometer grid.

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Okay.

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And this is multiple years combined from 2010 to 2023,

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but you get the idea that we do cover the entire coastline

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with the fishery.

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And then from Point Chehalis or Grays Harbor north

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is where we see the usual and the custom fishing areas

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for our treaty tribes,

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and you can see the areas here of what those cover.

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And then we also have the extent of the marine sanctuary,

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which obviously a lot of the fishery operates

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within that territory as well.

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But essentially, fishing happens from the coastline

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out to about 270 meters water depths, or 900 feet,

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or 150 fathoms, whatever you prefer.

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And so, it is the top fishery in the state,

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but with that has come this really large swings

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in annual catch,

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and so there's a lot of variation year to year

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in the landings and what we think is the actual abundance

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of crab in the population as well.

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And we've seen this variation maintained through the fishery

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as it's grown and changed through

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what we've started referring to

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as these different eras of the fishery.

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So, we have this foundational era,

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and next coming a time of fleet standardization

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and the beginning of our co-management agreements.

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And then through to our current era, which we're in now.

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And you could call this fairly stable right now,

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although with high variations,

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so we have a pretty consistent capacity

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in our state fishing fleet,

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but we still see that large variation,

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which, of course, was noted by the 2023 season

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when it was the highest catch ever

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at 28.7 million pounds statewide,

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and that includes state and tribal catch.

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So, how do they catch all that crab, right?

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In case you're not familiar with how crab are fished,

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I have a short video showing one of our fleet pulling up one

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of the crab pots, but essentially, they fish individual pots

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with a single line attached to a buoy to the surface,

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but they align these pots in strings,

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and that's why we're showing the strings

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in the previous graph.

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All right, we'll take a look at this.

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So, you may or may not hear some noise.

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There's nothing.

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No audio that's essential for this video,

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so if you're not hearing anything, it's okay.

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But do notice exactly how much line

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is involved in this fishery.

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So, this site here is probably about 45 fathoms,

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or 270 feet, and so they have that much line

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coming up as they pull up this trap.

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(audio scratching)

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And so there you have it.

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And I think that's a pretty typical day on the water.

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Not really.

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So, most of our crab fishing season

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operates in the wintertime,

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so they're usually out there in very rough conditions

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and challenging weather.

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I've gotten lucky the few times I've been out.

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I've actually had pretty good weather, so.

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So, when we start thinking about the management

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of this fishery, like I said, it is unique.

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Many fisheries are managed by conducting stock assessments

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or monitoring the population

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with fisheries-independent surveys.

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And then they might set catch limits

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or have harvest control rules to manage the catch,

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not with crab.

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So, instead, we use this 3-S approach,

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which includes size, sex, and season,

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and that's how we manage the crab,

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and it's really part of the biology of the crab

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that allows us to take this approach,

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which in a lot of ways, is simplified,

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but has been working over the years.

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But just so we're clear, there's no quota

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and there's no total allowable catch

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for the coastal fishery anyway.

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And so, in terms of size,

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the first criteria we have

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is the minimum size for legal crab,

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which is six and a quarter inches, or 159 millimeters,

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and so this measurement is made across the widest part

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of the carapace and excluding the lateral spines

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that you'll see in the picture here.

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That size can vary in different areas

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or different management units, but for our coastal fishery,

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that's what the size limit is.

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And the point of this is to let the crab grow long enough

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that hopefully it can reproduce a couple times

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before it enters the fishery.

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The next criteria is sex,

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so we only catch and retain male crabs.

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So, if you haven't sexed a crab before,

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it's actually pretty easy.

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And you can see from these pictures,

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if you flip it on the underside, the ventral side,

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the abdominal flap looks very different

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between males and females.

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So, the males have more

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of a White House-looking abdominal flap

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and the females is a little bit more broad and triangular.

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And as you might suspect, that flap is there to help carry

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and protect the eggs when the female has eggs with her.

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And so, as crab are coming on board,

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the crew is processing 'em,

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they can very quickly identify the sex.

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If it's female, they return it to the water.

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If it's a male that's large enough, it goes on the hold.

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The final criteria is seasonal,

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so we have seasonal regulations in the fishery,

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and the primary goal of this is to avoid fishing

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when crab are molting and have soft shells.

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So, again, just to be clear, molting in crustaceans

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is when they must periodically shed their exoskeleton

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and then they re-harden to grow at a larger size.

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And so we have regulations about keeping soft crab,

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but we also wanna reduce handling

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that tends to increase mortality with soft crab.

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So, when we think that most crab are molting,

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and traditionally when they have been

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is when we close the season to avoid this.

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So, this also seems like a good time to go over some

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of the basic lifestyle or lifecycle aspects of crab.

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So, a female crab will extract their eggs

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and hold them for three to five months,

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usually starting in October through December.

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And then after that, those eggs will hatch as zoea,

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and then they'll travel out into the water column,

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so they'll be in the pelagic zone out at sea,

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developing through multiple stages

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for another about three to four months

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until they hit this final stage of the megalopa.

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And at this point, they start traveling back in near shore

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and looking to settle in the bottom or benthic habitat.

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And at that point, they'll grow

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for three or four more years later,

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becoming adults, until they are able

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to enter the fishery and be caught.

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So, the crabbing season, like I said,

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is set to avoid that time that most crab are soft,

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but we also want plenty of meat in the crab

255
00:12:31.470 --> 00:12:33.660
when people are trying to catch 'em and sell them,

256
00:12:33.660 --> 00:12:36.810
so the actual criteria that we use for opening the fishery

257
00:12:36.810 --> 00:12:39.690
is this idea of meat pick-out.

258
00:12:39.690 --> 00:12:43.260
And so what we do as WDFW

259
00:12:43.260 --> 00:12:45.450
is conduct a test fishery starting in October,

260
00:12:45.450 --> 00:12:47.880
and we go out and sample the population,

261
00:12:47.880 --> 00:12:50.040
catch crab, have them processed,

262
00:12:50.040 --> 00:12:51.590
and then we compare the amount,

263
00:12:52.440 --> 00:12:54.510
the weight of the meat that is processed

264
00:12:54.510 --> 00:12:57.540
to the total body weight when we catch them.

265
00:12:57.540 --> 00:12:59.520
And when that reaches a certain threshold,

266
00:12:59.520 --> 00:13:01.949
then we're able to open the fishery.

267
00:13:01.949 --> 00:13:04.410
And so, the fishery is potentially open

268
00:13:04.410 --> 00:13:08.163
from December through September, September 15th.

269
00:13:09.960 --> 00:13:13.380
And here is a graph of the average catch

270
00:13:13.380 --> 00:13:16.173
per month over several years.

271
00:13:17.248 --> 00:13:19.890
And so, these are box plots, so how to read these are,

272
00:13:19.890 --> 00:13:21.930
the horizontal line within the box

273
00:13:21.930 --> 00:13:24.420
is the mean value over the years.

274
00:13:24.420 --> 00:13:25.890
And the box gives you an indication

275
00:13:25.890 --> 00:13:29.400
of how much variation there is around that mean.

276
00:13:29.400 --> 00:13:33.060
So, in other words, if we look at May through September,

277
00:13:33.060 --> 00:13:35.490
we see that these are very small boxes,

278
00:13:35.490 --> 00:13:37.890
so meaning catch does not vary much

279
00:13:37.890 --> 00:13:41.010
in that time of year in the summer.

280
00:13:41.010 --> 00:13:44.370
And it's also a relatively less contribution

281
00:13:44.370 --> 00:13:46.140
to the total annual catch.

282
00:13:46.140 --> 00:13:48.270
Most of the catch happens at the very beginning

283
00:13:48.270 --> 00:13:50.580
of the fishery in the first couple months.

284
00:13:50.580 --> 00:13:53.040
And so, when we look at those boxes from December

285
00:13:53.040 --> 00:13:55.110
through March, you see a lot more variation,

286
00:13:55.110 --> 00:13:57.240
and that's for a couple reasons.

287
00:13:57.240 --> 00:14:00.120
One is that crab populations vary quite a bit

288
00:14:00.120 --> 00:14:02.790
as we've seen year to year, so catch can vary.

289
00:14:02.790 --> 00:14:06.240
But a larger part of it is that the start of the season

290
00:14:06.240 --> 00:14:08.520
varies based on these criteria,

291
00:14:08.520 --> 00:14:09.690
and so there's been some years

292
00:14:09.690 --> 00:14:11.640
where we start the fishery in December,

293
00:14:11.640 --> 00:14:13.530
and there's some years that it gets delayed

294
00:14:13.530 --> 00:14:16.530
and we're not able to open it until February,

295
00:14:16.530 --> 00:14:18.750
and so that also causes some of this variation

296
00:14:18.750 --> 00:14:20.520
that we see in this data.

297
00:14:20.520 --> 00:14:23.610
There's also one other criteria I'll mention here,

298
00:14:23.610 --> 00:14:25.380
which is domoic acid.

299
00:14:25.380 --> 00:14:27.660
And so, domoic acid is a toxin

300
00:14:27.660 --> 00:14:30.420
that comes from harmful algal blooms,

301
00:14:30.420 --> 00:14:32.340
and we do monitor that in crab

302
00:14:32.340 --> 00:14:34.470
and the Department of Health monitors it,

303
00:14:34.470 --> 00:14:37.770
and so if it gets to a certain level that's dangerous,

304
00:14:37.770 --> 00:14:39.720
it can affect the opening of the crab season

305
00:14:39.720 --> 00:14:41.250
or it can interrupt harvest.

306
00:14:41.250 --> 00:14:44.790
And so, for example, in 2015, we had an episode

307
00:14:44.790 --> 00:14:47.370
where the fishery was actually interrupted on,

308
00:14:47.370 --> 00:14:49.950
delayed due to domoic acid.

309
00:14:49.950 --> 00:14:54.030
It hasn't been as much of a problem since then,

310
00:14:54.030 --> 00:14:55.590
but elsewhere along the coast,

311
00:14:55.590 --> 00:14:57.420
it continues to be problematic.

312
00:14:57.420 --> 00:14:58.920
And there were some high levels

313
00:14:58.920 --> 00:15:01.170
of domoic acid in California this year,

314
00:15:01.170 --> 00:15:03.420
for instance, at the beginning of the season.

315
00:15:06.150 --> 00:15:09.480
So, again, we have this large variation

316
00:15:09.480 --> 00:15:11.070
in landings year to year,

317
00:15:11.070 --> 00:15:13.320
and it's also presumably reflecting

318
00:15:13.320 --> 00:15:15.180
what the population is doing.

319
00:15:15.180 --> 00:15:17.520
There's been some really great research out there

320
00:15:17.520 --> 00:15:20.190
showing that we can catch up to 90%

321
00:15:20.190 --> 00:15:22.500
of the legal-sized crab in a given year,

322
00:15:22.500 --> 00:15:25.980
so we really are catching most of that cohort,

323
00:15:25.980 --> 00:15:30.363
and we think the population reflects itself in the landings.

324
00:15:31.590 --> 00:15:33.510
So, again, though, we have no actual

325
00:15:33.510 --> 00:15:36.690
stock assessment or monitoring, so how do we understand

326
00:15:36.690 --> 00:15:38.040
what's happening with the population?

327
00:15:38.040 --> 00:15:39.840
And that's the work that I've been trying

328
00:15:39.840 --> 00:15:42.210
to do over the last year and a half or so,

329
00:15:42.210 --> 00:15:44.493
is how to predict some of this variation.

330
00:15:45.990 --> 00:15:49.140
And so, one of the most promising indicators

331
00:15:49.140 --> 00:15:51.330
that we have comes from this connection

332
00:15:51.330 --> 00:15:54.240
between the number of megalopa, so that's the larval crab

333
00:15:54.240 --> 00:15:57.150
that are coming in shore to settle,

334
00:15:57.150 --> 00:16:00.180
and fisheries catch four years later.

335
00:16:00.180 --> 00:16:03.630
So, really, we think that survival at that megalopa stage

336
00:16:03.630 --> 00:16:05.700
and through the settlement process

337
00:16:05.700 --> 00:16:08.970
seems to be the bottleneck for crab abundance.

338
00:16:08.970 --> 00:16:12.210
So, it's a sample crab, the megalopa anyways.

339
00:16:12.210 --> 00:16:14.340
We use these fairly simple light traps,

340
00:16:14.340 --> 00:16:16.080
which are cool contraptions.

341
00:16:16.080 --> 00:16:18.360
It's just a five-gallon water bucket

342
00:16:18.360 --> 00:16:21.030
with a light stuck in the middle

343
00:16:21.030 --> 00:16:24.420
and some ports cut in on the side with funnels.

344
00:16:24.420 --> 00:16:26.910
And so, these are placed in the water overnight

345
00:16:26.910 --> 00:16:28.500
and the light attracts the megalopae

346
00:16:28.500 --> 00:16:30.210
as they're coming in to settle.

347
00:16:30.210 --> 00:16:31.530
And then they enter through the funnel,

348
00:16:31.530 --> 00:16:34.890
which acts as a one-way door and keeps them in there

349
00:16:34.890 --> 00:16:37.500
and collect them in the cod end.

350
00:16:37.500 --> 00:16:39.450
So, then you can do this daily

351
00:16:39.450 --> 00:16:41.823
and monitor these waves of settlement.

352
00:16:42.690 --> 00:16:46.020
And what we've seen is that that tends to correlate

353
00:16:46.020 --> 00:16:48.869
with catch four years later.

354
00:16:48.869 --> 00:16:52.290
And so, the person that first developed this relationship

355
00:16:52.290 --> 00:16:55.140
was a researcher in Oregon, Alan Shanks.

356
00:16:55.140 --> 00:16:57.150
And all the way, like, 23 years ago,

357
00:16:57.150 --> 00:16:58.440
started collecting megalopa

358
00:16:58.440 --> 00:17:01.170
with these light traps in Coos Bay,

359
00:17:01.170 --> 00:17:03.870
and eventually found this relationship between

360
00:17:03.870 --> 00:17:06.300
what he was seeing in these waves of settlement

361
00:17:06.300 --> 00:17:08.487
and the commercial fisheries catch four years later,

362
00:17:08.487 --> 00:17:11.340
and so that's the graph we're looking at on the right here

363
00:17:11.340 --> 00:17:13.500
with a measure of the megalopae

364
00:17:13.500 --> 00:17:16.470
being caught for each season.

365
00:17:16.470 --> 00:17:20.100
And then on the y-axis is the fisheries catch.

366
00:17:20.100 --> 00:17:21.600
And you see, there are a couple different

367
00:17:21.600 --> 00:17:24.420
linear-ish relationships here,

368
00:17:24.420 --> 00:17:25.680
and there were some dynamics

369
00:17:25.680 --> 00:17:28.440
with different climate variables

370
00:17:28.440 --> 00:17:30.690
or the status of the PDO, for example,

371
00:17:30.690 --> 00:17:33.120
that kind of altered some of these relationships,

372
00:17:33.120 --> 00:17:35.211
but it was a pretty strong relationship

373
00:17:35.211 --> 00:17:38.100
for Oregon for a number of years.

374
00:17:38.100 --> 00:17:40.050
The problem for us was,

375
00:17:40.050 --> 00:17:42.870
those weren't really translating to Washington waters,

376
00:17:42.870 --> 00:17:44.910
and the data from Coos Bay didn't relate

377
00:17:44.910 --> 00:17:47.070
to our fisheries landings.

378
00:17:47.070 --> 00:17:49.320
And then also, some of these relationships have started

379
00:17:49.320 --> 00:17:51.090
to become a little bit more complex as some

380
00:17:51.090 --> 00:17:54.150
of the different environmental variables have changed

381
00:17:54.150 --> 00:17:56.100
and some of those climate indices,

382
00:17:56.100 --> 00:17:58.383
the impact of them has been changing.

383
00:18:00.750 --> 00:18:03.540
And so, in 2023, we started our own sampling,

384
00:18:03.540 --> 00:18:04.500
which makes sense, right?

385
00:18:04.500 --> 00:18:06.720
And started collecting our own megalopae.

386
00:18:06.720 --> 00:18:08.962
And so now, we have two sites along the coast,

387
00:18:08.962 --> 00:18:12.060
one in Westport and one in Tokeland and Willapa Bay,

388
00:18:12.060 --> 00:18:15.663
but we're also part of this larger light trap network,

389
00:18:16.800 --> 00:18:19.470
and we have sites throughout the Salish Sea

390
00:18:19.470 --> 00:18:20.940
and into the British Columbia.

391
00:18:20.940 --> 00:18:23.160
And this is all coordinated and organized

392
00:18:23.160 --> 00:18:26.703
by the Pacific Northwest Crab Research Group, or PCRG,

393
00:18:27.840 --> 00:18:32.430
and them in partnership with their Canadian counterparts,

394
00:18:32.430 --> 00:18:36.210
the Hakai Institute, managed this entire light trap network,

395
00:18:36.210 --> 00:18:40.113
which is this really impressive collaboration between,

396
00:18:41.190 --> 00:18:46.190
you know, state agencies, tribes, fishermen, volunteers.

397
00:18:46.950 --> 00:18:50.100
A lot of people are involved in this project, which is neat.

398
00:18:50.100 --> 00:18:53.100
But if we look at our data on the coast anyways,

399
00:18:53.100 --> 00:18:54.990
on the top here, we have our Westport station,

400
00:18:54.990 --> 00:18:57.330
which I said it started in 2023,

401
00:18:57.330 --> 00:18:59.730
and we got a nice signal that first year.

402
00:18:59.730 --> 00:19:02.490
And then these last two years, it's dwindled quite a bit,

403
00:19:02.490 --> 00:19:04.830
so we've had some issues,

404
00:19:04.830 --> 00:19:06.720
and we actually do think that it has to do

405
00:19:06.720 --> 00:19:09.000
with the location and the marina that we're sampling

406
00:19:09.000 --> 00:19:12.090
and not that it's really a signal of what's happening

407
00:19:12.090 --> 00:19:13.350
with the crab population there,

408
00:19:13.350 --> 00:19:15.330
so we're still working on that.

409
00:19:15.330 --> 00:19:18.117
And then our Tokeland site, we started in 2024,

410
00:19:18.117 --> 00:19:20.070
and that's been working pretty well

411
00:19:20.070 --> 00:19:21.150
and producing pretty well,

412
00:19:21.150 --> 00:19:24.690
so we're hopeful that's gonna continue to work.

413
00:19:24.690 --> 00:19:28.860
But again, we need four years of megalopae data

414
00:19:28.860 --> 00:19:31.830
to get one-year estimate of the adult population,

415
00:19:31.830 --> 00:19:33.270
so we're not quite there yet,

416
00:19:33.270 --> 00:19:36.060
but we are gonna keep working on this project.

417
00:19:36.060 --> 00:19:37.020
But in light of that,

418
00:19:37.020 --> 00:19:38.640
that we're not quite there with this data,

419
00:19:38.640 --> 00:19:40.590
I started to wonder if we could just look

420
00:19:40.590 --> 00:19:43.710
at environmental conditions that affect megalopae

421
00:19:43.710 --> 00:19:44.790
four years prior,

422
00:19:44.790 --> 00:19:46.770
and if those would indicate what's happening

423
00:19:46.770 --> 00:19:48.630
with the adult population.

424
00:19:48.630 --> 00:19:51.843
And I thought that's a pretty inspired idea.

425
00:19:53.160 --> 00:19:55.410
Turns out several other people have this idea

426
00:19:55.410 --> 00:19:58.800
before me as well, so I wasn't the first.

427
00:19:58.800 --> 00:20:01.770
And so, several people have worked on developing models

428
00:20:01.770 --> 00:20:06.030
of explaining catch or explaining crab abundance

429
00:20:06.030 --> 00:20:08.340
with that megalopae relationship.

430
00:20:08.340 --> 00:20:10.350
And a really great example is this work here

431
00:20:10.350 --> 00:20:12.390
by Emily Norton.

432
00:20:12.390 --> 00:20:15.540
So, in 2023, she was looking at predicting the occurrence

433
00:20:15.540 --> 00:20:19.410
of megalopae along the whole Washington coast.

434
00:20:19.410 --> 00:20:22.440
And then a follow-up paper actually looked at predicting

435
00:20:22.440 --> 00:20:24.810
and explaining the catch per unit effort

436
00:20:24.810 --> 00:20:26.970
or the number of crab per pot

437
00:20:26.970 --> 00:20:29.547
in the fishery along the coast as well.

438
00:20:29.547 --> 00:20:33.090
And so, she used a range of indicators

439
00:20:33.090 --> 00:20:34.290
or predictor variables,

440
00:20:34.290 --> 00:20:35.850
so she included things that had to do

441
00:20:35.850 --> 00:20:37.200
with the seasonal fishing efforts,

442
00:20:37.200 --> 00:20:40.230
so for instance, like soak time

443
00:20:40.230 --> 00:20:42.780
is how long the pot is in the water

444
00:20:42.780 --> 00:20:44.220
and left there to collect crab,

445
00:20:44.220 --> 00:20:45.270
and that has a big influence

446
00:20:45.270 --> 00:20:47.520
on how much you catch, obviously.

447
00:20:47.520 --> 00:20:48.900
The day in season, as we saw,

448
00:20:48.900 --> 00:20:51.240
has an influence on what you catch.

449
00:20:51.240 --> 00:20:55.770
She also considered some of the current conditions

450
00:20:55.770 --> 00:20:58.110
that were out there while the fishing was happening

451
00:20:58.110 --> 00:21:00.630
and kind of normal things that you would expect,

452
00:21:00.630 --> 00:21:04.020
temperatures, salinity, bottom oxygen, things like that.

453
00:21:04.020 --> 00:21:06.780
But then she also included these lagged variables,

454
00:21:06.780 --> 00:21:09.360
and now this is where you start getting at that relationship

455
00:21:09.360 --> 00:21:13.080
between the megalopae larva coming in and their survival

456
00:21:13.080 --> 00:21:14.850
and catch for it four years later,

457
00:21:14.850 --> 00:21:17.583
is with that lagged conditions.

458
00:21:18.691 --> 00:21:21.120
And so, really, this model worked really well,

459
00:21:21.120 --> 00:21:24.840
and she was able to predict catch pretty accurately.

460
00:21:24.840 --> 00:21:27.480
So, this graph here is showing the difference

461
00:21:27.480 --> 00:21:30.000
between her forecast and the observed

462
00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:32.790
along all the grid cells of the coast here.

463
00:21:32.790 --> 00:21:36.840
So, lighter, more colors closer to white

464
00:21:36.840 --> 00:21:39.360
are closer to the actual observed values

465
00:21:39.360 --> 00:21:42.153
and the darker colors are further away.

466
00:21:43.050 --> 00:21:46.290
Less accurate estimates or bias, as she says here.

467
00:21:46.290 --> 00:21:48.210
But overall, it worked pretty well,

468
00:21:48.210 --> 00:21:51.960
and it worked well, really, explaining catch

469
00:21:51.960 --> 00:21:53.160
that we'd seen in the past.

470
00:21:53.160 --> 00:21:56.460
This model wasn't really designed to predict in the future

471
00:21:56.460 --> 00:21:58.590
because it's using those current conditions

472
00:21:58.590 --> 00:22:00.600
of the seasonal fishing effort

473
00:22:00.600 --> 00:22:02.040
and the environmental conditions.

474
00:22:02.040 --> 00:22:05.430
So, from my perspective, I was still interested in seeing

475
00:22:05.430 --> 00:22:08.700
if we could come up with a true preseason prediction

476
00:22:08.700 --> 00:22:11.850
of what was happening with the crab population,

477
00:22:11.850 --> 00:22:13.830
and so what I wanted to do was just focus

478
00:22:13.830 --> 00:22:16.110
on those lagged conditions

479
00:22:16.110 --> 00:22:18.570
and see if those alone could get me to a model

480
00:22:18.570 --> 00:22:22.563
that would do similarly well as the Norton model.

481
00:22:23.460 --> 00:22:26.190
And so, considered environmental variables,

482
00:22:26.190 --> 00:22:28.830
but I also focus these in a little bit,

483
00:22:28.830 --> 00:22:30.360
and I only looked at conditions

484
00:22:30.360 --> 00:22:33.510
through March and through July,

485
00:22:33.510 --> 00:22:35.610
and this is because this is when we see megalopae

486
00:22:35.610 --> 00:22:37.980
coming in on the coast.

487
00:22:37.980 --> 00:22:42.390
So, this figure here is showing the average catch per month

488
00:22:42.390 --> 00:22:45.090
of those light traps throughout the entire network.

489
00:22:45.090 --> 00:22:47.337
And our coastal sites are right down here,

490
00:22:47.337 --> 00:22:48.810
and so we can see.

491
00:22:48.810 --> 00:22:50.820
We start seeing megalopae in March,

492
00:22:50.820 --> 00:22:52.440
and they go through July

493
00:22:52.440 --> 00:22:54.450
and maybe spill into August a little bit,

494
00:22:54.450 --> 00:22:56.790
and so I focused the environmental conditions

495
00:22:56.790 --> 00:22:59.640
I was gonna look at just between that time.

496
00:22:59.640 --> 00:23:02.700
And again, these are all lagged by four years.

497
00:23:02.700 --> 00:23:03.993
So, I had my approach.

498
00:23:05.010 --> 00:23:07.050
Next, I needed to decide which indicators

499
00:23:07.050 --> 00:23:10.080
were actually gonna tell us the most about megalopae.

500
00:23:10.080 --> 00:23:12.900
And again, we had an idea of what this would be

501
00:23:12.900 --> 00:23:14.400
based on the previous research

502
00:23:14.400 --> 00:23:17.010
and correlations that were made.

503
00:23:17.010 --> 00:23:19.320
And there's also some really great resources

504
00:23:19.320 --> 00:23:22.530
like the Integrated Ecosystem Assessment from NOAA

505
00:23:22.530 --> 00:23:24.810
that has identified a lot of the main drivers

506
00:23:24.810 --> 00:23:28.890
of this California current system that runs our coast.

507
00:23:28.890 --> 00:23:33.153
And they maintain a lot of databases on these factors.

508
00:23:34.170 --> 00:23:36.170
And so, looking at these, again, you see a lot

509
00:23:36.170 --> 00:23:39.180
of the same typical indicators you would think of

510
00:23:39.180 --> 00:23:43.320
of like sea surface temperature and dissolved oxygen

511
00:23:43.320 --> 00:23:45.750
and salinity and things like that.

512
00:23:45.750 --> 00:23:47.933
But this California current system, of course,

513
00:23:47.933 --> 00:23:50.700
is really marked by the seasonal upwelling,

514
00:23:50.700 --> 00:23:53.160
especially for our Washington coast.

515
00:23:53.160 --> 00:23:56.820
This is a major factor in the productivity of our system

516
00:23:56.820 --> 00:23:58.980
and what's going on out there.

517
00:23:58.980 --> 00:24:02.700
And as such, there's a handful of different indices

518
00:24:02.700 --> 00:24:05.670
that have been developed to capture, really, the timing

519
00:24:05.670 --> 00:24:08.790
of seasonal upwelling, the duration of it,

520
00:24:08.790 --> 00:24:10.407
and the intensity of it,

521
00:24:10.407 --> 00:24:11.790
and so we looked at a lot

522
00:24:11.790 --> 00:24:15.960
of those different upwelling indices in our model as well.

523
00:24:15.960 --> 00:24:18.975
And so, went through a typical sort

524
00:24:18.975 --> 00:24:22.650
of model selection process of using,

525
00:24:22.650 --> 00:24:25.523
you know, part of the data to test the model

526
00:24:25.523 --> 00:24:29.430
or training the model and then testing it on left-out data

527
00:24:29.430 --> 00:24:31.920
to see which one performed the best.

528
00:24:31.920 --> 00:24:34.260
And ultimately, what we ended up including

529
00:24:34.260 --> 00:24:37.230
was a measure of sea surface temperature,

530
00:24:37.230 --> 00:24:39.150
the length of the upwelling season,

531
00:24:39.150 --> 00:24:42.390
or LUSI, as it's affectionately called,

532
00:24:42.390 --> 00:24:45.780
and a measure of the upwelling intensity

533
00:24:45.780 --> 00:24:48.090
in the biologically effective upwelling

534
00:24:48.090 --> 00:24:50.843
transport index, or the BEUTI.

535
00:24:52.305 --> 00:24:55.560
And so, that was the model we ended up settling on.

536
00:24:55.560 --> 00:24:58.770
And this is a spatially explicit model,

537
00:24:58.770 --> 00:25:00.990
so we added depth as well 'cause we had depth

538
00:25:00.990 --> 00:25:03.660
of the water at each location.

539
00:25:03.660 --> 00:25:06.240
And so, the metric we're trying to model here

540
00:25:06.240 --> 00:25:08.370
is actually crab per pot,

541
00:25:08.370 --> 00:25:10.800
and so this is a catch per unit effort,

542
00:25:10.800 --> 00:25:12.810
and we get this from the logbook data.

543
00:25:12.810 --> 00:25:14.850
So, fishers maintain logbooks,

544
00:25:14.850 --> 00:25:17.400
and they record the location they're fishing in,

545
00:25:17.400 --> 00:25:18.960
the number of pots being fished,

546
00:25:18.960 --> 00:25:20.730
and the number of crab retained,

547
00:25:20.730 --> 00:25:23.817
and so then we're able to get that metric from that.

548
00:25:23.817 --> 00:25:26.820
And so, this model is predicting crab per pot

549
00:25:26.820 --> 00:25:28.740
in each grid cell along the coast,

550
00:25:28.740 --> 00:25:31.500
and that's what the graph is you're looking at here.

551
00:25:31.500 --> 00:25:32.700
But then that also allows us

552
00:25:32.700 --> 00:25:36.150
to add up all those different catches in each grid,

553
00:25:36.150 --> 00:25:39.330
and then give us a index of relative abundance,

554
00:25:39.330 --> 00:25:41.033
and that's really the main goal here

555
00:25:41.033 --> 00:25:42.480
of what I was trying to do,

556
00:25:42.480 --> 00:25:44.640
was to see if I could come up with this index

557
00:25:44.640 --> 00:25:47.703
of relative abundance that would predict what was happening.

558
00:25:48.900 --> 00:25:50.850
And so, if it performs well,

559
00:25:50.850 --> 00:25:53.910
it should mimic what we see in the landings data.

560
00:25:53.910 --> 00:25:55.377
That's the idea anyways.

561
00:25:55.377 --> 00:25:56.659
And so, as a reminder,

562
00:25:56.659 --> 00:26:01.320
here's our landings data from 2010 to 2025,

563
00:26:01.320 --> 00:26:03.970
and then we'll take a look and see how the model did.

564
00:26:04.993 --> 00:26:07.871
And it did quite well, amazingly well.

565
00:26:07.871 --> 00:26:10.020
(laughs) I was definitely excited

566
00:26:10.020 --> 00:26:11.880
when it got this good of a result,

567
00:26:11.880 --> 00:26:14.583
so give myself a little pat on the back.

568
00:26:16.170 --> 00:26:18.420
And especially does well in the hindcast,

569
00:26:18.420 --> 00:26:21.060
so looking at the data that was trained on,

570
00:26:21.060 --> 00:26:24.093
looking back in time, it follows landings extremely well.

571
00:26:25.528 --> 00:26:29.970
And then again, so this model was trained on data

572
00:26:29.970 --> 00:26:34.590
from 2010 to 2023 'cause that's when we have logbook data.

573
00:26:34.590 --> 00:26:38.940
And so, 2024 and 2025 are actually true predictions

574
00:26:38.940 --> 00:26:43.440
from the model, and you do see they deviate

575
00:26:43.440 --> 00:26:45.780
from the actual landings a little bit more.

576
00:26:45.780 --> 00:26:49.950
In 2024, I think the difference was 1.8 million kilograms.

577
00:26:49.950 --> 00:26:53.760
And in 2025, it was 1.4 million kilograms.

578
00:26:53.760 --> 00:26:55.350
But we're still in the ballpark

579
00:26:55.350 --> 00:26:58.020
and we're still within those confidence intervals.

580
00:26:58.020 --> 00:27:01.320
And that information alone can do a lot for us, I think,

581
00:27:01.320 --> 00:27:04.530
and inform how we approach the management of this.

582
00:27:04.530 --> 00:27:06.600
And then, of course, in 2026, we'll see

583
00:27:06.600 --> 00:27:09.090
what happens and how close we are.

584
00:27:09.090 --> 00:27:14.090
But the idea here is that it'll help us inform stakeholders

585
00:27:14.160 --> 00:27:16.590
of our expectations and what we think is gonna happen

586
00:27:16.590 --> 00:27:19.800
so they can make more informed decisions on how they enter

587
00:27:19.800 --> 00:27:22.500
or exit the fishery and what's coming down.

588
00:27:22.500 --> 00:27:26.040
And then especially in regards to our co-management

589
00:27:26.040 --> 00:27:27.540
and resource-sharing goals,

590
00:27:27.540 --> 00:27:29.853
I think this information can do a lot to help.

591
00:27:31.050 --> 00:27:34.590
What we've seen in the past is in high abundance years,

592
00:27:34.590 --> 00:27:37.500
the state tends to catch more than its fair share

593
00:27:37.500 --> 00:27:39.150
of crab in those areas.

594
00:27:39.150 --> 00:27:42.210
And then just the opposite happens in low abundance years.

595
00:27:42.210 --> 00:27:43.500
So, kinda knowing where we are

596
00:27:43.500 --> 00:27:47.790
on the relative abundance scale can help those efforts

597
00:27:47.790 --> 00:27:50.940
to manage and achieve our goals that way as well,

598
00:27:50.940 --> 00:27:52.770
so I think that will be really helpful.

599
00:27:52.770 --> 00:27:54.720
And then we'll see in the next coming years

600
00:27:54.720 --> 00:27:56.850
if we catch these changes in abundance

601
00:27:56.850 --> 00:27:58.413
accurately with this model.

602
00:28:01.022 --> 00:28:05.040
And so, again, this is a spatiotemporal model,

603
00:28:05.040 --> 00:28:10.040
so we can see the variation in catch in space

604
00:28:10.440 --> 00:28:12.690
over all the different years,

605
00:28:12.690 --> 00:28:14.190
and this can be really helpful

606
00:28:14.190 --> 00:28:18.340
in looking at where we see changes and what's going on

607
00:28:19.260 --> 00:28:20.427
that might be different year to year,

608
00:28:20.427 --> 00:28:24.300
and so this can help identify more localized variation

609
00:28:24.300 --> 00:28:25.950
that's causing these changes

610
00:28:25.950 --> 00:28:28.830
and identifying things that aren't captured in our model

611
00:28:28.830 --> 00:28:30.720
that we might need to look further into.

612
00:28:30.720 --> 00:28:34.320
So, for example, if we look at 2017,

613
00:28:34.320 --> 00:28:37.230
we see there's higher catch in the northern areas

614
00:28:37.230 --> 00:28:40.380
of the state all the way up in Neah Bay,

615
00:28:40.380 --> 00:28:42.060
and so those are the lighter green areas,

616
00:28:42.060 --> 00:28:44.820
so there's more catch in those areas.

617
00:28:44.820 --> 00:28:47.400
Or in 2019, we see just the opposite,

618
00:28:47.400 --> 00:28:50.010
where there's more catch shifting south

619
00:28:50.010 --> 00:28:52.410
towards the Columbia River and even into Oregon.

620
00:28:53.760 --> 00:28:56.400
Or in 2023, when we saw elevated catch

621
00:28:56.400 --> 00:28:57.837
along the entire shelf, really.

622
00:28:57.837 --> 00:29:00.270
And again, that was our highest abundance,

623
00:29:00.270 --> 00:29:01.563
highest catch year.

624
00:29:05.160 --> 00:29:07.980
And so, we can actually test some of these shifts

625
00:29:07.980 --> 00:29:11.040
in distribution by looking at the center of gravity.

626
00:29:11.040 --> 00:29:15.300
So, this is a measure of the weighted average

627
00:29:15.300 --> 00:29:16.980
of the spatial coordinates

628
00:29:16.980 --> 00:29:21.120
of each of those estimates over each year, right?

629
00:29:21.120 --> 00:29:24.240
And so, what we see is exactly what we thought.

630
00:29:24.240 --> 00:29:28.620
2011, 2017, and 2023 were the highest abundance,

631
00:29:28.620 --> 00:29:31.650
highest catch years in this record,

632
00:29:31.650 --> 00:29:32.850
and those are the years

633
00:29:32.850 --> 00:29:36.660
with the furthest north centers of gravity.

634
00:29:36.660 --> 00:29:40.320
So, indeed, that was a shift that's happening.

635
00:29:40.320 --> 00:29:42.839
I will say, if we look at this in context

636
00:29:42.839 --> 00:29:46.182
of the whole coast, it's not a huge shift.

637
00:29:46.182 --> 00:29:50.580
The north-to-south range is about 20 kilometers is all,

638
00:29:50.580 --> 00:29:52.380
but it does give us a very nice indication

639
00:29:52.380 --> 00:29:55.170
of how things are moving within that area

640
00:29:55.170 --> 00:29:56.520
and what's going on.

641
00:29:56.520 --> 00:29:59.370
And then it also, I think, provides a really nice baseline

642
00:29:59.370 --> 00:30:02.100
for moving forward in the future as we see

643
00:30:02.100 --> 00:30:06.540
of changing conditions or changing status of the population,

644
00:30:06.540 --> 00:30:09.783
were to shift, we would be able to detect it with this data.

645
00:30:12.390 --> 00:30:16.110
Okay, so we have a model that's performing pretty well,

646
00:30:16.110 --> 00:30:17.880
and so, of course, the next question is,

647
00:30:17.880 --> 00:30:21.357
is what is temperature and upwelling have to do with crab?

648
00:30:21.357 --> 00:30:23.220
And so, to start diving into that,

649
00:30:23.220 --> 00:30:26.220
we can look at what's called the conditional effects plots,

650
00:30:26.220 --> 00:30:28.830
and it's essentially looking at how our metric,

651
00:30:28.830 --> 00:30:31.200
our crab per pot, varies

652
00:30:31.200 --> 00:30:33.810
with each predictor when you hold all else equal,

653
00:30:33.810 --> 00:30:36.720
so we hold all the other predictors to the mean value

654
00:30:36.720 --> 00:30:38.820
and look what happens when you change one.

655
00:30:40.110 --> 00:30:41.250
And so, for temperature,

656
00:30:41.250 --> 00:30:43.800
we see that lower sea surface temperatures

657
00:30:43.800 --> 00:30:46.470
tend to correspond with higher catch,

658
00:30:46.470 --> 00:30:48.360
and this is pretty much what we expected

659
00:30:48.360 --> 00:30:51.480
based on previous research of looking at this correlation

660
00:30:51.480 --> 00:30:54.090
between megalopae and environmental variables,

661
00:30:54.090 --> 00:30:57.540
or PDO, and things like that, so that makes sense.

662
00:30:57.540 --> 00:31:00.420
And then following up on that,

663
00:31:00.420 --> 00:31:03.450
Leif Rasmussen in Oregon did some interesting work

664
00:31:03.450 --> 00:31:06.600
and looking at higher temperatures

665
00:31:06.600 --> 00:31:08.190
cause larva to grow faster,

666
00:31:08.190 --> 00:31:10.920
which generally we would think is a good thing,

667
00:31:10.920 --> 00:31:14.760
and generally getting bigger is better to evade predation.

668
00:31:14.760 --> 00:31:16.920
But in this situation, it was a little interesting

669
00:31:16.920 --> 00:31:19.710
because what also happened was,

670
00:31:19.710 --> 00:31:23.160
larva tended to have the same pelagic larva duration,

671
00:31:23.160 --> 00:31:25.770
so they're spending the same amount of time at sea,

672
00:31:25.770 --> 00:31:28.230
even though they're getting bigger, faster,

673
00:31:28.230 --> 00:31:32.920
which we think is exposing them to more predation

674
00:31:33.810 --> 00:31:35.640
'cause lots of salmon like to eat nice,

675
00:31:35.640 --> 00:31:37.713
nutritious megalopae out there.

676
00:31:40.350 --> 00:31:42.150
In terms of upwelling intensity,

677
00:31:42.150 --> 00:31:46.290
so this BEUTI index was our measure,

678
00:31:46.290 --> 00:31:47.940
and this accounts for the nitrate

679
00:31:47.940 --> 00:31:49.770
being upwell in the system.

680
00:31:49.770 --> 00:31:52.710
And so, what we see here is that medium-high values

681
00:31:52.710 --> 00:31:54.510
of the BEUTI index were associated

682
00:31:54.510 --> 00:31:56.490
with the highest crab per pot,

683
00:31:56.490 --> 00:31:58.627
and so this tends to make sense on the low end.

684
00:31:58.627 --> 00:32:01.740
You know, you need upwelling and you need these nutrients

685
00:32:01.740 --> 00:32:05.130
coming up to get the system going

686
00:32:05.130 --> 00:32:07.680
and feed that production that happens

687
00:32:07.680 --> 00:32:10.020
to have these nice, stable food webs.

688
00:32:10.020 --> 00:32:13.890
But then on the high end why it might start going down is,

689
00:32:13.890 --> 00:32:15.630
intensely, upwelled water is also

690
00:32:15.630 --> 00:32:17.550
bringing up other conditions with it

691
00:32:17.550 --> 00:32:20.463
that may not be so helpful for crab.

692
00:32:22.230 --> 00:32:25.380
And so, for instance, upwelled water is low in oxygen,

693
00:32:25.380 --> 00:32:27.720
so if upwelling is intense enough,

694
00:32:27.720 --> 00:32:29.970
hypoxic conditions can develop.

695
00:32:29.970 --> 00:32:31.770
And in fact, we are seeing an increase

696
00:32:31.770 --> 00:32:34.110
in hypoxia along the shelf,

697
00:32:34.110 --> 00:32:36.390
and so for example, this work by Jack Barth

698
00:32:36.390 --> 00:32:41.390
found that 56% of the shelf water at 200 meters

699
00:32:42.870 --> 00:32:45.960
can be hypoxic in the summer if the upwelling is strong,

700
00:32:45.960 --> 00:32:48.690
and that was the case in 2021,

701
00:32:48.690 --> 00:32:50.940
was we had especially strong upwelling,

702
00:32:50.940 --> 00:32:54.240
and that elevated level of hypoxia.

703
00:32:54.240 --> 00:32:57.750
And so, this is obviously a problem for crab,

704
00:32:57.750 --> 00:32:59.670
both adult and larval crab,

705
00:32:59.670 --> 00:33:01.830
but it's also a problem for the fishery.

706
00:33:01.830 --> 00:33:03.810
So, if you go fishing

707
00:33:03.810 --> 00:33:06.600
and try to catch crab in hypoxic conditions,

708
00:33:06.600 --> 00:33:08.400
you're very likely to do this.

709
00:33:08.400 --> 00:33:12.420
Pull up no crab and maybe get a bunch of sand dollars,

710
00:33:12.420 --> 00:33:17.220
so it's definitely a problem and an increasing problem.

711
00:33:17.220 --> 00:33:19.320
And then similar to the situation with oxygen,

712
00:33:19.320 --> 00:33:23.610
the volume of acidic water being up welled on the shelf

713
00:33:23.610 --> 00:33:25.410
is tending to increase,

714
00:33:25.410 --> 00:33:28.740
which is a threat to all calcifying organisms.

715
00:33:28.740 --> 00:33:30.780
So, this is some work by Sam Siedlecki.

716
00:33:30.780 --> 00:33:31.710
Did a lot of the modeling

717
00:33:31.710 --> 00:33:34.560
of these environmental variables along the shelf,

718
00:33:34.560 --> 00:33:37.470
and it's showing that both the volume

719
00:33:37.470 --> 00:33:40.620
of corrosive water is increasing over time,

720
00:33:40.620 --> 00:33:41.940
but it's also staying there,

721
00:33:41.940 --> 00:33:43.470
so the duration that it's there

722
00:33:43.470 --> 00:33:46.050
in present is also increasing.

723
00:33:46.050 --> 00:33:50.310
And so, for crab, this acidic water has been shown

724
00:33:50.310 --> 00:33:53.400
to delay hatching and development of larva

725
00:33:53.400 --> 00:33:55.350
and lead to higher mortality.

726
00:33:55.350 --> 00:33:57.570
And then for megalopae specifically,

727
00:33:57.570 --> 00:34:00.960
we've seen some dissolution of the exoskeleton

728
00:34:00.960 --> 00:34:04.980
and also disruption of some of its sensory abilities.

729
00:34:04.980 --> 00:34:08.400
So, right now, the work that's being done

730
00:34:08.400 --> 00:34:11.820
has shown that adult crabs seem to be a little bit more able

731
00:34:11.820 --> 00:34:16.820
to tolerate these different ranges of pH, for now anyways,

732
00:34:16.830 --> 00:34:20.703
so it is mostly affecting the earlier life stages.

733
00:34:22.560 --> 00:34:24.660
In terms of the length of the upwelling season

734
00:34:24.660 --> 00:34:26.760
was the other factor we had.

735
00:34:26.760 --> 00:34:29.043
We saw this kind of Goldilocks zone where a season

736
00:34:29.043 --> 00:34:31.410
that was not too short and not too long

737
00:34:31.410 --> 00:34:34.200
was the most ideal in terms of crab.

738
00:34:34.200 --> 00:34:37.800
And again, this tends to make sense, we need some upwelling.

739
00:34:37.800 --> 00:34:40.587
But on the higher end, if you get too much upwelling

740
00:34:40.587 --> 00:34:42.573
and the winds are too consistent,

741
00:34:43.920 --> 00:34:45.930
you can actually get advection off shore,

742
00:34:45.930 --> 00:34:48.900
which will push those megalopae and those larva off,

743
00:34:48.900 --> 00:34:51.600
and will make it harder for them to come in

744
00:34:51.600 --> 00:34:53.340
to the near-shore environment and settle

745
00:34:53.340 --> 00:34:54.603
and survive that way.

746
00:34:56.550 --> 00:34:59.790
All right, so that gives us the synopsis

747
00:34:59.790 --> 00:35:02.398
of what we're looking at with environmental variables

748
00:35:02.398 --> 00:35:05.163
and threats, really, to the crab,

749
00:35:06.120 --> 00:35:07.500
but in terms of the fishery,

750
00:35:07.500 --> 00:35:10.440
we also have another major threat which I mentioned,

751
00:35:10.440 --> 00:35:15.180
and as you might suspect, is the whale entanglement problem.

752
00:35:15.180 --> 00:35:17.910
And so, whales do get entangled to fishing gear,

753
00:35:17.910 --> 00:35:20.250
and it's really a global problem,

754
00:35:20.250 --> 00:35:22.140
but as we'll see it's been increasing

755
00:35:22.140 --> 00:35:24.840
for Dungeness crab along the entire West Coast.

756
00:35:24.840 --> 00:35:27.900
And so, as I mentioned before,

757
00:35:27.900 --> 00:35:30.000
crab pots are fished with one buoy line

758
00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:31.800
on every pot it goes up to the surface,

759
00:35:31.800 --> 00:35:33.226
and it's those buoy lines,

760
00:35:33.226 --> 00:35:36.600
or whales tend to get entangled in.

761
00:35:36.600 --> 00:35:37.800
And so, sometimes, they are able

762
00:35:37.800 --> 00:35:39.310
to shed the gear on their own

763
00:35:40.260 --> 00:35:43.050
or they may drag it around for days, months,

764
00:35:43.050 --> 00:35:45.990
or even years in some cases they can drag this gear around.

765
00:35:45.990 --> 00:35:49.110
And as you would guess, has a serious impact

766
00:35:49.110 --> 00:35:52.203
on their health and their ability to survive.

767
00:35:54.600 --> 00:35:56.820
So, along the West Coast,

768
00:35:56.820 --> 00:36:00.270
entanglement spiked in 2015 and 2016,

769
00:36:00.270 --> 00:36:03.330
and that was tied to the marine heat wave we had,

770
00:36:03.330 --> 00:36:05.000
and I'll talk a little bit more about that

771
00:36:05.000 --> 00:36:06.063
in the next slide.

772
00:36:07.260 --> 00:36:08.100
And since that time,

773
00:36:08.100 --> 00:36:11.130
we've still seen elevated numbers of entanglements,

774
00:36:11.130 --> 00:36:13.470
even though they haven't reached that same level.

775
00:36:13.470 --> 00:36:16.470
And so, you know, the 2015-2016 event

776
00:36:16.470 --> 00:36:17.910
really got everyone's attention

777
00:36:17.910 --> 00:36:20.370
and got us really thinking and working on this issue,

778
00:36:20.370 --> 00:36:21.840
but it hasn't gone away,

779
00:36:21.840 --> 00:36:24.417
and so we're really still quite concerned with it

780
00:36:24.417 --> 00:36:25.953
and trying to do what we can.

781
00:36:29.130 --> 00:36:32.520
So, we did have this marine heat wave in 2015 to 2016.

782
00:36:32.520 --> 00:36:35.160
This paper by Santora et al. described several

783
00:36:35.160 --> 00:36:37.200
of the factors that kind of combined

784
00:36:37.200 --> 00:36:39.330
leading to this elevated entanglement.

785
00:36:39.330 --> 00:36:41.670
So, the heat wave, it was a combination

786
00:36:41.670 --> 00:36:44.010
of warm water coming down from the Gulf of Alaska

787
00:36:44.010 --> 00:36:46.680
and generally warm water in the Pacific

788
00:36:46.680 --> 00:36:48.120
moving in close to shore.

789
00:36:48.120 --> 00:36:50.400
And so, what you can see here in this figure

790
00:36:50.400 --> 00:36:53.640
is the area of that cool upwelled water I was talking about

791
00:36:53.640 --> 00:36:56.610
is actually getting compressed over this time

792
00:36:56.610 --> 00:37:00.630
down to 2016 where it's much less airy area

793
00:37:00.630 --> 00:37:03.063
than it was previously in 2013.

794
00:37:04.260 --> 00:37:07.260
And so, this phenomenon is actually now characterized

795
00:37:07.260 --> 00:37:10.020
with the habitat compression index that's calculated

796
00:37:10.020 --> 00:37:12.573
throughout the coast at different latitudes.

797
00:37:13.950 --> 00:37:17.400
But also happening with this habitat compression is,

798
00:37:17.400 --> 00:37:20.250
it was a year that there was fewer krill,

799
00:37:20.250 --> 00:37:21.720
and so what the whales did,

800
00:37:21.720 --> 00:37:24.810
instead of targeting krill that were fewer in abundance,

801
00:37:24.810 --> 00:37:27.060
they switched to targeting fish,

802
00:37:27.060 --> 00:37:28.380
and they were following these fish

803
00:37:28.380 --> 00:37:30.930
into these cool areas that were compressed,

804
00:37:30.930 --> 00:37:33.480
and just so happened to overlap to a greater degree

805
00:37:33.480 --> 00:37:35.700
with the Dungeness crab fishery.

806
00:37:35.700 --> 00:37:39.540
And so, there was a higher overlap of those two components,

807
00:37:39.540 --> 00:37:41.880
and we think that was leading to a large part

808
00:37:41.880 --> 00:37:44.913
of these elevated entanglements.

809
00:37:47.520 --> 00:37:51.243
Several species over time we do see entangled.

810
00:37:52.350 --> 00:37:54.060
The large majority, though, are humpbacks,

811
00:37:54.060 --> 00:37:57.180
and that's the main one we're concerned with right now.

812
00:37:57.180 --> 00:37:58.740
Second to that is gray whales,

813
00:37:58.740 --> 00:38:01.830
which we are also quite becoming very concerned with

814
00:38:01.830 --> 00:38:05.250
as their numbers aren't doing as well either.

815
00:38:05.250 --> 00:38:08.220
All the whales here and mammals in general

816
00:38:08.220 --> 00:38:10.710
are protected through the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

817
00:38:10.710 --> 00:38:13.080
And then if they're listed as endangered or threatened,

818
00:38:13.080 --> 00:38:15.300
they get additional protection

819
00:38:15.300 --> 00:38:17.853
from the Endangered Species Act as well.

820
00:38:19.920 --> 00:38:23.730
And even though whales get entangled in all kinds of gear

821
00:38:23.730 --> 00:38:27.120
and across all the fisheries that we see,

822
00:38:27.120 --> 00:38:28.920
Dungeness crab gear does tend

823
00:38:28.920 --> 00:38:31.860
to be the most often identified gear type

824
00:38:31.860 --> 00:38:32.987
when we can identify the gear,

825
00:38:32.987 --> 00:38:36.180
and so that is in the context that half the time,

826
00:38:36.180 --> 00:38:37.590
we can't identify the gear

827
00:38:37.590 --> 00:38:40.290
or it's unknown what caused the entanglement,

828
00:38:40.290 --> 00:38:43.683
but Dungeness crab is a major concern here.

829
00:38:47.130 --> 00:38:49.470
One thing we're doing to address that specific need

830
00:38:49.470 --> 00:38:51.750
of not being able to identify the gear

831
00:38:51.750 --> 00:38:54.480
is by using state-specific line,

832
00:38:54.480 --> 00:38:56.580
and so that way, when we see an entanglement,

833
00:38:56.580 --> 00:39:00.000
there is a higher chance that the gear can be identified

834
00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:02.850
during the disentanglement process

835
00:39:02.850 --> 00:39:04.980
or any other observer that sees it.

836
00:39:04.980 --> 00:39:07.080
And right now, each state has their own color,

837
00:39:07.080 --> 00:39:10.410
so Washington is red and black, Oregon's yellow and black,

838
00:39:10.410 --> 00:39:12.300
and California is purple and black.

839
00:39:12.300 --> 00:39:13.560
So, if you see that,

840
00:39:13.560 --> 00:39:17.730
we can identify it to a state and get some of the location

841
00:39:17.730 --> 00:39:20.730
of where the entanglement happened nailed down a little bit.

842
00:39:21.810 --> 00:39:23.940
We've adopted these rulemaking.

843
00:39:23.940 --> 00:39:26.580
We're in the process of working towards full compliance

844
00:39:26.580 --> 00:39:29.190
as the fleet and everyone's changing out their line

845
00:39:29.190 --> 00:39:32.340
and painting what they have to make these regulations.

846
00:39:32.340 --> 00:39:36.450
So, the vertical line will be state-specific and help.

847
00:39:36.450 --> 00:39:39.510
We also have buoy tags that are specific to each state

848
00:39:39.510 --> 00:39:43.020
and sometimes different times of year within a season,

849
00:39:43.020 --> 00:39:45.180
so we can also get more information from that

850
00:39:45.180 --> 00:39:47.403
if those are present on an entanglement.

851
00:39:48.360 --> 00:39:49.440
But of course, this is just helping

852
00:39:49.440 --> 00:39:50.820
that identification problem.

853
00:39:50.820 --> 00:39:53.397
We also wanna try to reduce risk,

854
00:39:53.397 --> 00:39:56.310
and so one way we're doing that is limiting the amount

855
00:39:56.310 --> 00:39:59.310
of surface line that can be on a buoy

856
00:39:59.310 --> 00:40:00.390
and on one of these traps.

857
00:40:00.390 --> 00:40:04.536
So, oftentimes, fishers will wanna be putting multiple buoys

858
00:40:04.536 --> 00:40:08.310
on their line to keep it up in case of strong currents

859
00:40:08.310 --> 00:40:10.290
or fouling or other things,

860
00:40:10.290 --> 00:40:12.540
but now we've restricted that to 36 feet,

861
00:40:12.540 --> 00:40:14.430
and so by reducing how much line

862
00:40:14.430 --> 00:40:15.600
is out there on the surface,

863
00:40:15.600 --> 00:40:18.693
we're trying to reduce risk to whales.

864
00:40:21.000 --> 00:40:24.840
Other efforts that we have implemented are pot reductions,

865
00:40:24.840 --> 00:40:27.840
so we reduced the number of pots that can be fished

866
00:40:27.840 --> 00:40:30.420
between May and September as this is the time

867
00:40:30.420 --> 00:40:33.360
where we see the highest density of whales in our area,

868
00:40:33.360 --> 00:40:35.790
so fishers lose a third of their pots.

869
00:40:35.790 --> 00:40:38.133
Less pots in the water, less risk.

870
00:40:39.420 --> 00:40:44.420
We also have been working with this gear recovery program.

871
00:40:44.520 --> 00:40:48.180
So, gear gets lost, there's derelict gear out there,

872
00:40:48.180 --> 00:40:49.710
and now we have a process

873
00:40:49.710 --> 00:40:53.730
where we license commercial fishers to identify that and go,

874
00:40:53.730 --> 00:40:56.310
and they're able to remove the gear,

875
00:40:56.310 --> 00:40:58.980
and there's a part of it in season.

876
00:40:58.980 --> 00:41:00.420
And then also at the end of the season,

877
00:41:00.420 --> 00:41:01.977
we remove gear as well.

878
00:41:01.977 --> 00:41:04.230
And so, that's what you can see in this graph here,

879
00:41:04.230 --> 00:41:06.990
is the blue and orange bars indicate

880
00:41:06.990 --> 00:41:08.880
how many pots have been removed,

881
00:41:08.880 --> 00:41:10.530
either in season or out of season.

882
00:41:10.530 --> 00:41:14.100
And the black line is how many licenses we've issued,

883
00:41:14.100 --> 00:41:17.040
so how much participation there is in the project.

884
00:41:17.040 --> 00:41:19.290
And you can see both have increased over time,

885
00:41:19.290 --> 00:41:23.670
so this is going a long ways to reduce risk out there

886
00:41:23.670 --> 00:41:25.260
by getting those pots out of the water

887
00:41:25.260 --> 00:41:27.010
that would otherwise be left there.

888
00:41:29.850 --> 00:41:32.640
There's several other options that we're considering

889
00:41:32.640 --> 00:41:35.790
and are being researched now to further reduce risk.

890
00:41:35.790 --> 00:41:37.560
So, first one is, you know,

891
00:41:37.560 --> 00:41:39.720
we can reduce the number of licenses available

892
00:41:39.720 --> 00:41:40.860
or the number of pots fish.

893
00:41:40.860 --> 00:41:44.910
That's a direct reduction of risk.

894
00:41:44.910 --> 00:41:48.510
Another way is to switch from these single-pots fish

895
00:41:48.510 --> 00:41:51.690
to long-lining them so they're connected with ground line

896
00:41:51.690 --> 00:41:54.240
instead of having all these vertical lines.

897
00:41:54.240 --> 00:41:57.480
And this is a little bit of a shift of risks,

898
00:41:57.480 --> 00:41:58.830
so instead of vertical lines,

899
00:41:58.830 --> 00:42:01.650
those lines just go underwater and now they're ground lines.

900
00:42:01.650 --> 00:42:04.800
But in some situations, this could significantly

901
00:42:04.800 --> 00:42:06.780
help the entanglement problem

902
00:42:06.780 --> 00:42:09.210
by reducing those vertical lines in the water

903
00:42:09.210 --> 00:42:10.800
if you're long-lining 'em.

904
00:42:10.800 --> 00:42:15.300
Another thing that's been developed a lot recently

905
00:42:15.300 --> 00:42:18.450
is the on-demand or pop-up fishing gear,

906
00:42:18.450 --> 00:42:21.450
and so these are pots that keep the buoy line coiled

907
00:42:21.450 --> 00:42:24.120
into the pot until the fisher's ready to retrieve it,

908
00:42:24.120 --> 00:42:26.280
at which point they send down a signal,

909
00:42:26.280 --> 00:42:27.840
the buoy line comes to the surface,

910
00:42:27.840 --> 00:42:29.290
and then they can pull it up.

911
00:42:30.240 --> 00:42:34.020
And so, with both of these things, there's work being done.

912
00:42:34.020 --> 00:42:38.310
We're working with the Pacific states

913
00:42:38.310 --> 00:42:40.860
to understand some of the long-lining implications

914
00:42:40.860 --> 00:42:42.120
and how that could work,

915
00:42:42.120 --> 00:42:44.400
and we're also pursuing funding to test some

916
00:42:44.400 --> 00:42:47.370
of this pop-up gear in Washington as well.

917
00:42:47.370 --> 00:42:49.200
And so, I will say, I know it seems

918
00:42:49.200 --> 00:42:51.000
like these are very straightforward,

919
00:42:51.000 --> 00:42:53.490
like logical solutions to the problem,

920
00:42:53.490 --> 00:42:57.197
but there actually is quite a bit of nuance in using these,

921
00:42:57.197 --> 00:42:59.910
and we are trying to check all our boxes

922
00:42:59.910 --> 00:43:02.370
and make sure we understand all the caveats

923
00:43:02.370 --> 00:43:04.230
and all the implications

924
00:43:04.230 --> 00:43:07.170
and make sure there's no unintended consequences

925
00:43:07.170 --> 00:43:08.940
with implementing any of these

926
00:43:08.940 --> 00:43:10.830
and that they're actually reducing risk

927
00:43:10.830 --> 00:43:12.810
the way we hope they could.

928
00:43:12.810 --> 00:43:16.023
So, this is still ongoing work for us.

929
00:43:17.880 --> 00:43:19.470
You can do things, too, to help.

930
00:43:19.470 --> 00:43:22.200
If you're on the water and you see an entangled whale,

931
00:43:22.200 --> 00:43:24.390
the best thing to do is just report it immediately,

932
00:43:24.390 --> 00:43:28.500
so you can call this number, 877-SOS-WHALE,

933
00:43:28.500 --> 00:43:30.240
or you can also call the Coast Guard,

934
00:43:30.240 --> 00:43:32.400
or hail the Coast Guard if you're on a radio,

935
00:43:32.400 --> 00:43:33.900
and let them know.

936
00:43:33.900 --> 00:43:36.000
If you're able to get pictures, that helps,

937
00:43:36.000 --> 00:43:38.740
both of the whale and of the entangling gear

938
00:43:39.600 --> 00:43:41.310
are very helpful.

939
00:43:41.310 --> 00:43:42.510
Keeping eyes on the whale

940
00:43:42.510 --> 00:43:44.970
until, you know, other people can get there

941
00:43:44.970 --> 00:43:48.570
or we can get a clear indication of the location

942
00:43:48.570 --> 00:43:50.370
'cause it can be very difficult

943
00:43:50.370 --> 00:43:53.343
to re-site these whales once they are reported once.

944
00:43:54.540 --> 00:43:55.470
But that should be said,

945
00:43:55.470 --> 00:43:58.020
all that should be done at a very, very safe distance,

946
00:43:58.020 --> 00:44:00.780
and nobody should try to disentangle a whale. (chuckles)

947
00:44:00.780 --> 00:44:03.270
It's extremely dangerous for yourself,

948
00:44:03.270 --> 00:44:05.100
but it's also dangerous for the whale,

949
00:44:05.100 --> 00:44:07.170
and you can cause the entanglement to get worse

950
00:44:07.170 --> 00:44:09.633
and be more harmful to the whale as well.

951
00:44:10.890 --> 00:44:12.720
So, when whales are reported, though,

952
00:44:12.720 --> 00:44:14.550
we do have a response team,

953
00:44:14.550 --> 00:44:17.970
and there's several along the coast and some federal ones,

954
00:44:17.970 --> 00:44:20.130
but in Washington,

955
00:44:20.130 --> 00:44:22.530
it's primarily Cascadia Research Collective

956
00:44:22.530 --> 00:44:24.090
that responds to this,

957
00:44:24.090 --> 00:44:27.210
and they're also the ones that do a lot of the surveys

958
00:44:27.210 --> 00:44:29.160
and research on whale populations

959
00:44:29.160 --> 00:44:30.715
and understanding where they are

960
00:44:30.715 --> 00:44:34.737
and the genetics and all of that work as well.

961
00:44:34.737 --> 00:44:37.860
And so, here's an example of a whale that was spotted

962
00:44:37.860 --> 00:44:41.670
in the Strait of Juan de Fuca this last year,

963
00:44:41.670 --> 00:44:44.010
and Cascadia was able to get out

964
00:44:44.010 --> 00:44:46.937
and conduct this disentanglement.

965
00:44:50.320 --> 00:44:52.440
And so, as I said, you know, these whales,

966
00:44:52.440 --> 00:44:54.990
they can be hard to re-site them,

967
00:44:54.990 --> 00:44:57.060
and so in this case, what actually happened was,

968
00:44:57.060 --> 00:44:59.430
The Whale Museum were the first ones

969
00:44:59.430 --> 00:45:00.840
to spot it in the strait,

970
00:45:00.840 --> 00:45:01.677
and they were able to go out

971
00:45:01.677 --> 00:45:04.860
and attach a telemetry buoy.

972
00:45:04.860 --> 00:45:06.180
And I know you might be thinking like,

973
00:45:06.180 --> 00:45:08.880
why would you attach more stuff to an entangled whale?

974
00:45:08.880 --> 00:45:10.560
But that buoy sends out a signal

975
00:45:10.560 --> 00:45:13.740
so Cascadia could come and find that whale again

976
00:45:13.740 --> 00:45:17.523
and actually make this disentanglement, so that was helpful.

977
00:45:19.290 --> 00:45:23.430
Another key point here is that to Cascadia,

978
00:45:23.430 --> 00:45:25.410
and to us in general,

979
00:45:25.410 --> 00:45:27.150
the information they're able to gain

980
00:45:27.150 --> 00:45:29.010
from these entanglement responses

981
00:45:29.010 --> 00:45:32.280
are equally important to saving the whale,

982
00:45:32.280 --> 00:45:33.870
and so learning about the gear

983
00:45:33.870 --> 00:45:35.520
and how the whale was entangled

984
00:45:35.520 --> 00:45:38.320
and the damage and injuries it's causing

985
00:45:39.270 --> 00:45:41.910
tells us a lot of very useful information

986
00:45:41.910 --> 00:45:44.220
that we can use in helping understanding these

987
00:45:44.220 --> 00:45:46.110
and trying to reduce risk in the future,

988
00:45:46.110 --> 00:45:48.273
so that's an equally important part.

989
00:45:49.920 --> 00:45:51.930
And then you'll see there, they are able to get up there

990
00:45:51.930 --> 00:45:54.660
and figure out where to cut the lines

991
00:45:54.660 --> 00:45:57.543
and safely cut the lines without harming the whale.

992
00:46:02.100 --> 00:46:04.020
And again, these people have undergone hours

993
00:46:04.020 --> 00:46:05.640
and hours of training,

994
00:46:05.640 --> 00:46:08.370
and it's still exceedingly difficult to do this,

995
00:46:08.370 --> 00:46:11.207
but that is a successful disentanglement.

996
00:46:12.720 --> 00:46:14.100
All right, so just before I finish,

997
00:46:14.100 --> 00:46:16.560
I do wanna thank Megan Hintz.

998
00:46:16.560 --> 00:46:19.230
She's our whale entanglement coordinator,

999
00:46:19.230 --> 00:46:21.180
and she's working on a lot of these issues

1000
00:46:21.180 --> 00:46:23.130
and working on developing conservation plan

1001
00:46:23.130 --> 00:46:25.320
for the fisheries and the whales.

1002
00:46:25.320 --> 00:46:28.200
And then I also wanna thank the coastal shellfish team.

1003
00:46:28.200 --> 00:46:31.410
They administer our fishery and they, you know, collect

1004
00:46:31.410 --> 00:46:33.390
and curate a lot of this data I was able to use,

1005
00:46:33.390 --> 00:46:35.580
and they really do an excellent job.

1006
00:46:35.580 --> 00:46:37.533
So, thank you all for listening.

1007
00:46:39.120 --> 00:46:40.800
<v ->That was really interesting.</v>

1008
00:46:40.800 --> 00:46:41.850
I learned a bunch of stuff.

1009
00:46:41.850 --> 00:46:43.020
Thank you, Chris.

1010
00:46:43.020 --> 00:46:43.853
<v ->Thank you.</v>

1011
00:46:44.730 --> 00:46:48.390
<v ->So, now, we're gonna go have our AmeriCorps</v>

1012
00:46:48.390 --> 00:46:53.070
help us out on facilitating some of the questions

1013
00:46:53.070 --> 00:46:55.260
that you all have put into the question box,

1014
00:46:55.260 --> 00:46:59.460
and so, as long as the questions are coming in,

1015
00:46:59.460 --> 00:47:03.720
we'll keep reading 'em off and get your responses.

1016
00:47:03.720 --> 00:47:04.553
Chris?

1017
00:47:05.610 --> 00:47:06.443
<v ->Sounds good.</v>

1018
00:47:09.480 --> 00:47:10.313
<v ->Amazing.</v>

1019
00:47:10.313 --> 00:47:11.146
Again, thank you.

1020
00:47:11.146 --> 00:47:13.227
That was an incredible presentation.

1021
00:47:13.227 --> 00:47:15.240
So, so insightful.

1022
00:47:15.240 --> 00:47:17.760
The first question that we received was pretty early on

1023
00:47:17.760 --> 00:47:20.160
in the presentation, but it was that first graph

1024
00:47:20.160 --> 00:47:24.300
that you showed in terms of catch of different species,

1025
00:47:24.300 --> 00:47:27.300
and one of our attendees noticed that there's a steep

1026
00:47:27.300 --> 00:47:30.660
decline in the salmon landings in the graph,

1027
00:47:30.660 --> 00:47:34.113
and they were curious if that was correct slash accurate.

1028
00:47:35.632 --> 00:47:36.900
<v ->I know you're a crab guy, so.</v>

1029
00:47:36.900 --> 00:47:38.610
<v ->I don't know first-hand.</v>

1030
00:47:38.610 --> 00:47:42.510
That data comes from NOAA,

1031
00:47:42.510 --> 00:47:46.413
as they collect all that landings data and curate it online,

1032
00:47:47.580 --> 00:47:49.440
so I would have to go back and look at that.

1033
00:47:49.440 --> 00:47:51.330
I unfortunately don't know off the top of my head.

1034
00:47:51.330 --> 00:47:53.403
I don't deal with salmon that much.

1035
00:47:54.870 --> 00:47:57.220
<v ->Totally understandable, (chuckles) thank you.</v>

1036
00:47:59.670 --> 00:48:03.870
<v ->Our second question is a clarifying question.</v>

1037
00:48:03.870 --> 00:48:06.900
Have you found high levels of domoic acid in the crabs

1038
00:48:06.900 --> 00:48:08.073
or just in the water?

1039
00:48:09.300 --> 00:48:13.080
<v ->No, it occasionally does accumulate in crabs,</v>

1040
00:48:13.080 --> 00:48:14.460
and so that's where we monitor.

1041
00:48:14.460 --> 00:48:17.550
So, for instance, when we go out for our test fishery,

1042
00:48:17.550 --> 00:48:20.310
we collect a couple crabs at each location

1043
00:48:20.310 --> 00:48:22.110
that we deliver to the Department of Health,

1044
00:48:22.110 --> 00:48:26.190
and they test the meat as well.

1045
00:48:26.190 --> 00:48:27.570
What tends to happen, too though,

1046
00:48:27.570 --> 00:48:30.990
it concentrates more in the viscera, in the body meat,

1047
00:48:30.990 --> 00:48:34.290
so sometimes the legs and the leg meat's okay to eat,

1048
00:48:34.290 --> 00:48:36.867
and then the body isn't, but we monitor all that,

1049
00:48:36.867 --> 00:48:40.373
and there's different ways to deal with that.

1050
00:48:40.373 --> 00:48:42.510
<v ->Another question that we received was,</v>

1051
00:48:42.510 --> 00:48:44.520
is there any consequences

1052
00:48:44.520 --> 00:48:48.690
for bringing a crab 270 feet back up to the surface?

1053
00:48:48.690 --> 00:48:51.540
Do they experience, like, higher mortality rates?

1054
00:48:51.540 --> 00:48:54.570
Is the meat quality declining?

1055
00:48:54.570 --> 00:48:57.900
How do you counteract any impacts that this may have?

1056
00:48:57.900 --> 00:48:58.797
<v ->Yeah, that's a good question,</v>

1057
00:48:58.797 --> 00:49:01.230
and it probably comes from the experience of

1058
00:49:01.230 --> 00:49:03.990
if you bring up a fish from depth, a lot of times,

1059
00:49:03.990 --> 00:49:05.730
their stomach will be popping out of their mouth

1060
00:49:05.730 --> 00:49:07.530
and their eyes will be bulging out

1061
00:49:07.530 --> 00:49:10.440
because they have these air spaces within them.

1062
00:49:10.440 --> 00:49:14.220
Well, crab, being shellfish and having that exoskeleton,

1063
00:49:14.220 --> 00:49:16.200
they don't have, you know, an air bladder.

1064
00:49:16.200 --> 00:49:17.970
They don't have a lot of those air spaces

1065
00:49:17.970 --> 00:49:22.020
that can't get out any other way, so they really do okay.

1066
00:49:22.020 --> 00:49:23.253
<v ->That is good to know.</v>

1067
00:49:24.570 --> 00:49:28.440
Our next question is, are crabs not territorial?

1068
00:49:28.440 --> 00:49:32.109
Like, how do they have so many crabs in one pot?

1069
00:49:32.109 --> 00:49:33.450
(Christopher laughs)

1070
00:49:33.450 --> 00:49:37.263
<v ->Well, you do tend to see, you know,</v>

1071
00:49:38.130 --> 00:49:41.520
the larger crabs dominate,

1072
00:49:41.520 --> 00:49:45.840
and that is another part of crab ecology that's interesting,

1073
00:49:45.840 --> 00:49:47.400
is they are cannibals.

1074
00:49:47.400 --> 00:49:50.760
So, they will eat the smaller crab.

1075
00:49:50.760 --> 00:49:52.590
And if you leave them in there long enough,

1076
00:49:52.590 --> 00:49:57.590
that becomes a problem, and so they are, yes.

1077
00:49:58.020 --> 00:49:59.779
But you know, at the same time,

1078
00:49:59.779 --> 00:50:03.390
you don't get a lot of the undersized crab in there

1079
00:50:03.390 --> 00:50:06.930
and you don't get as many females coming in the pots,

1080
00:50:06.930 --> 00:50:08.763
so it kinda helps that way.

1081
00:50:10.020 --> 00:50:12.900
<v ->Next question is, has the availability of data</v>

1082
00:50:12.900 --> 00:50:15.723
been affected by federal budget cuts or loss of staff?

1083
00:50:17.460 --> 00:50:21.360
<v ->Yes, in fact, I was gonna mention and I kinda forgot.</v>

1084
00:50:21.360 --> 00:50:23.660
When we were watching that entanglement video,

1085
00:50:24.930 --> 00:50:29.880
work like that, so both work to whale surveys for our group

1086
00:50:29.880 --> 00:50:33.660
and other groups in the states and respond to entanglements

1087
00:50:33.660 --> 00:50:38.640
and tests alternative gears has been paused

1088
00:50:38.640 --> 00:50:40.950
or discontinued recently,

1089
00:50:40.950 --> 00:50:43.200
and so that severely impacted our ability

1090
00:50:43.200 --> 00:50:44.910
to do a lot of this work.

1091
00:50:44.910 --> 00:50:48.630
So, if you get the chance to share how important it is,

1092
00:50:48.630 --> 00:50:52.830
it's always appreciated to support this.

1093
00:50:52.830 --> 00:50:54.270
<v ->Awesome.</v>

1094
00:50:54.270 --> 00:50:56.880
Our next question, it's kind of a multi-parter,

1095
00:50:56.880 --> 00:50:58.200
so I can go part by part if we want,

1096
00:50:58.200 --> 00:51:01.560
but the first part is, how do you track upwelling?

1097
00:51:01.560 --> 00:51:03.630
Are you using the wind conditions?

1098
00:51:03.630 --> 00:51:06.543
What is your process to tracking upwelling?

1099
00:51:07.830 --> 00:51:08.670
<v ->Good question.</v>

1100
00:51:08.670 --> 00:51:13.230
So, there's many different ways we do it, right?

1101
00:51:13.230 --> 00:51:16.590
So, yeah, there's measures that we look at the wind,

1102
00:51:16.590 --> 00:51:18.630
the direction, and the intensity of the wind,

1103
00:51:18.630 --> 00:51:22.650
and that can give us a correlate of upwelling.

1104
00:51:22.650 --> 00:51:24.900
And then there's different points along the coast

1105
00:51:24.900 --> 00:51:26.980
where it's physically measured

1106
00:51:27.990 --> 00:51:31.530
of how much upwelling there is both in the water.

1107
00:51:31.530 --> 00:51:34.620
And then like I said, I was using that BEUTI index,

1108
00:51:34.620 --> 00:51:38.220
which is biologically effective upwelling transport,

1109
00:51:38.220 --> 00:51:40.560
so that's measuring how much nitrate is coming up.

1110
00:51:40.560 --> 00:51:42.300
And so, again, there's different stations

1111
00:51:42.300 --> 00:51:45.360
along the coast, but that's measured.

1112
00:51:45.360 --> 00:51:47.230
And then you know, you can go to that

1113
00:51:48.270 --> 00:51:51.660
integrated ecosystem assessment website for NOAA,

1114
00:51:51.660 --> 00:51:53.340
and they'll have lists of all these,

1115
00:51:53.340 --> 00:51:56.820
and they're calculated at different latitudes as well.

1116
00:51:56.820 --> 00:52:00.090
So, there's lots of good information about there,

1117
00:52:00.090 --> 00:52:01.503
about details of upwelling.

1118
00:52:02.820 --> 00:52:04.530
<v ->That's amazing, awesome.</v>

1119
00:52:04.530 --> 00:52:06.960
And then the second part to that question is,

1120
00:52:06.960 --> 00:52:09.330
are there any correlations between upwelling,

1121
00:52:09.330 --> 00:52:10.470
sea surface temperatures,

1122
00:52:10.470 --> 00:52:13.080
and the catch that are published anywhere?

1123
00:52:13.080 --> 00:52:15.180
Is there a published research article

1124
00:52:15.180 --> 00:52:16.863
finding those correlations?

1125
00:52:18.210 --> 00:52:20.910
<v ->Not yet, I'm working on it. (chuckles)</v>

1126
00:52:20.910 --> 00:52:25.890
So, this work I presented today is going into a manuscript

1127
00:52:25.890 --> 00:52:27.543
that will hopefully be published.

1128
00:52:29.070 --> 00:52:30.630
But yeah, for different things,

1129
00:52:30.630 --> 00:52:33.153
we have seen similar relationships.

1130
00:52:34.512 --> 00:52:36.570
One of the star qualities of this

1131
00:52:36.570 --> 00:52:40.440
was it was just so accurate and so tight to actual landings.

1132
00:52:40.440 --> 00:52:43.020
That part was fairly unusual

1133
00:52:43.020 --> 00:52:45.693
and maybe more specific to this situation, but.

1134
00:52:47.850 --> 00:52:49.380
<v ->That's awesome, very good to know.</v>

1135
00:52:49.380 --> 00:52:51.823
We'll keep an eye out for that when it comes out.

1136
00:52:51.823 --> 00:52:53.670
<v ->Yeah.</v>
<v ->Question is, is there</v>

1137
00:52:53.670 --> 00:52:55.590
a deterrent we can attach to lands

1138
00:52:55.590 --> 00:52:58.770
or some sort of signaling for marine life?

1139
00:52:58.770 --> 00:53:00.510
For example, an acoustic signal

1140
00:53:00.510 --> 00:53:03.360
to make more marine life aware of these lines?

1141
00:53:03.360 --> 00:53:07.170
<v ->Yeah, yeah, so there is some work that's been done</v>

1142
00:53:07.170 --> 00:53:09.000
with acoustic signals they've attached

1143
00:53:09.000 --> 00:53:12.813
to mostly net fishing, I believe.

1144
00:53:14.760 --> 00:53:19.530
And in that situation, it works somewhat.

1145
00:53:19.530 --> 00:53:20.883
They've had some success.

1146
00:53:22.140 --> 00:53:24.690
The main problem with trying to do something

1147
00:53:24.690 --> 00:53:27.150
like that with the crab fishery is,

1148
00:53:27.150 --> 00:53:30.150
we have way more pots out there. (chuckles)

1149
00:53:30.150 --> 00:53:32.700
There's thousands and thousands of pots in the water,

1150
00:53:32.700 --> 00:53:36.450
so all of a sudden, if you attach acoustic devices now,

1151
00:53:36.450 --> 00:53:40.050
you're creating a bunch of noise in the environment

1152
00:53:40.050 --> 00:53:42.000
to try to solve another problem,

1153
00:53:42.000 --> 00:53:46.530
so that isn't a very viable solution for crab,

1154
00:53:46.530 --> 00:53:48.993
but they have used it with net fishing.

1155
00:53:50.430 --> 00:53:51.423
<v ->Very interesting.</v>

1156
00:53:52.740 --> 00:53:54.300
The next question we had is,

1157
00:53:54.300 --> 00:53:57.900
presumably if a whale did get entangled on a long line,

1158
00:53:57.900 --> 00:53:59.190
it would be even worse

1159
00:53:59.190 --> 00:54:01.720
unless there was some kind of release mechanism

1160
00:54:02.670 --> 00:54:05.913
in terms of dragging multiple pots and lines around,

1161
00:54:07.530 --> 00:54:09.750
if that makes sense.
<v ->Yeah.</v>

1162
00:54:09.750 --> 00:54:10.650
Yeah, exactly.

1163
00:54:10.650 --> 00:54:12.960
So, what happens with the crab pots right now

1164
00:54:12.960 --> 00:54:16.740
is they are able to drag one pot around.

1165
00:54:16.740 --> 00:54:20.460
We do see some tendency that they are likely

1166
00:54:20.460 --> 00:54:22.680
to get multiple entanglements once they have one,

1167
00:54:22.680 --> 00:54:24.570
but they're still swimming,

1168
00:54:24.570 --> 00:54:25.770
where yeah, it's just the opposite.

1169
00:54:25.770 --> 00:54:27.690
If you have a long line and you have a bunch of pots,

1170
00:54:27.690 --> 00:54:29.730
now they're way too heavy to drag around,

1171
00:54:29.730 --> 00:54:31.980
and it actually anchors the whale,

1172
00:54:31.980 --> 00:54:34.563
and in some cases, can drown the whale.

1173
00:54:35.760 --> 00:54:39.300
But we're still trying to understand more

1174
00:54:39.300 --> 00:54:41.280
of how that entanglement process happens.

1175
00:54:41.280 --> 00:54:43.770
We don't know exactly what they're doing

1176
00:54:43.770 --> 00:54:45.540
or what the line is doing, you know.

1177
00:54:45.540 --> 00:54:47.640
We do think that slack lines

1178
00:54:47.640 --> 00:54:49.290
tend to cause more entanglements,

1179
00:54:49.290 --> 00:54:51.360
so there's measures that we have

1180
00:54:51.360 --> 00:54:54.330
that try to keep those lines taut in the water.

1181
00:54:54.330 --> 00:54:57.570
But all of a sudden, if you have ground line, too,

1182
00:54:57.570 --> 00:54:59.850
gray whales are foraging on the bottom,

1183
00:54:59.850 --> 00:55:01.890
and so then they're more likely to get caught

1184
00:55:01.890 --> 00:55:04.860
in that ground line between traps as well.

1185
00:55:04.860 --> 00:55:08.760
So, those are the little nuances I was speaking of

1186
00:55:08.760 --> 00:55:11.370
that all the little things we have to think about

1187
00:55:11.370 --> 00:55:14.973
and try to figure out what the best solution's gonna be.

1188
00:55:19.410 --> 00:55:21.120
<v ->Very interesting.</v>

1189
00:55:21.120 --> 00:55:22.740
Awesome.

1190
00:55:22.740 --> 00:55:24.150
Thank you.

1191
00:55:24.150 --> 00:55:26.310
The next question that we have is,

1192
00:55:26.310 --> 00:55:29.400
how well does the annual variation of crabs

1193
00:55:29.400 --> 00:55:31.620
in the Strait of Juan de Fuca

1194
00:55:31.620 --> 00:55:33.780
correlate with the annual variation

1195
00:55:33.780 --> 00:55:36.540
of the West Coast crab megalopa

1196
00:55:36.540 --> 00:55:38.433
or just crab harvest in general?

1197
00:55:39.840 --> 00:55:43.713
<v ->You know, I haven't directly looked at that yet,</v>

1198
00:55:45.180 --> 00:55:47.550
but that's a really good question.

1199
00:55:47.550 --> 00:55:50.610
In general, the work that's been done,

1200
00:55:50.610 --> 00:55:54.270
so there's some folks that are Western Washington

1201
00:55:54.270 --> 00:55:57.000
that have looked at the genetics of the population a lot,

1202
00:55:57.000 --> 00:55:59.523
and it's a very mixed population.

1203
00:56:00.870 --> 00:56:03.510
Within Puget Sound and the Salish Sea and the strait,

1204
00:56:03.510 --> 00:56:06.423
we do see different waves of settlements.

1205
00:56:07.770 --> 00:56:09.423
Indicate some difference there.

1206
00:56:10.980 --> 00:56:13.020
I don't know how catch lines up.

1207
00:56:13.020 --> 00:56:16.530
They have a lot more regulations in the sound,

1208
00:56:16.530 --> 00:56:19.200
and they actually have a quota to help them achieve

1209
00:56:19.200 --> 00:56:22.440
their sharing goals with their co-managers,

1210
00:56:22.440 --> 00:56:25.650
and so that affects catch a lot where ours doesn't,

1211
00:56:25.650 --> 00:56:28.500
so it's really hard to compare those directly

1212
00:56:28.500 --> 00:56:30.570
is what the problem is.

1213
00:56:30.570 --> 00:56:34.950
But we are working with the light trap network, PCRG,

1214
00:56:34.950 --> 00:56:38.160
and we're trying to combine all that megalopae data

1215
00:56:38.160 --> 00:56:41.400
from all those different sites, including our coastal sites,

1216
00:56:41.400 --> 00:56:45.030
and look at how environment affects all those differently

1217
00:56:45.030 --> 00:56:46.440
in the different areas as well,

1218
00:56:46.440 --> 00:56:50.253
so that's where we're currently trying to get going.

1219
00:56:51.990 --> 00:56:54.150
<v ->Our next question is, what is known about the movement</v>

1220
00:56:54.150 --> 00:56:57.183
of adult crabs, and how far do they move as adults?

1221
00:56:58.290 --> 00:57:00.480
<v ->Yeah, that's a good question.</v>

1222
00:57:00.480 --> 00:57:04.203
As adults, there are a few movement studies out there.

1223
00:57:05.730 --> 00:57:07.320
One I just saw referenced,

1224
00:57:07.320 --> 00:57:11.040
they were guessing about seven kilometers in a day

1225
00:57:11.040 --> 00:57:14.103
was the maximum movement of a crab.

1226
00:57:16.680 --> 00:57:19.410
But they are able to move over, you know,

1227
00:57:19.410 --> 00:57:21.450
several days in a row, quite long distances,

1228
00:57:21.450 --> 00:57:23.970
so there is quite a bit of movement as well.

1229
00:57:23.970 --> 00:57:27.720
And, you know, that picture I showed with the sand dollars,

1230
00:57:27.720 --> 00:57:30.450
so you know, that's a prime fishing spot.

1231
00:57:30.450 --> 00:57:31.710
They didn't put that pot down there

1232
00:57:31.710 --> 00:57:33.840
'cause they thought there was crab there,

1233
00:57:33.840 --> 00:57:34.980
and there usually is crab there,

1234
00:57:34.980 --> 00:57:36.627
so when those hypoxic conditions come in,

1235
00:57:36.627 --> 00:57:39.333
the crab are moving out of the area as well.

1236
00:57:40.230 --> 00:57:43.360
They're not just all dying, so they can move quite a bit.

1237
00:57:43.360 --> 00:57:44.613
<v ->Quite interesting.</v>

1238
00:57:45.570 --> 00:57:46.403
Awesome.

1239
00:57:46.403 --> 00:57:48.993
The next question that we have is,

1240
00:57:50.437 --> 00:57:52.950
have you received positive feedback

1241
00:57:52.950 --> 00:57:54.690
in collaboration with fleets

1242
00:57:54.690 --> 00:57:57.570
or are you frequently seeing pushback?

1243
00:57:57.570 --> 00:57:59.760
Are there any consequences for fishermen

1244
00:57:59.760 --> 00:58:01.650
who do not retrieve their crab gear

1245
00:58:01.650 --> 00:58:02.900
at the end of the season?

1246
00:58:04.980 --> 00:58:09.840
<v ->Yes, there are consequences for not pulling your gear</v>

1247
00:58:09.840 --> 00:58:12.690
or storing it illegally in water and things like that,

1248
00:58:12.690 --> 00:58:14.640
and we have enforcement units.

1249
00:58:14.640 --> 00:58:18.270
And our crab management team is constantly in contact

1250
00:58:18.270 --> 00:58:20.673
with enforcement and the crab fleet, too,

1251
00:58:22.260 --> 00:58:24.120
and so we're always trying to work on that

1252
00:58:24.120 --> 00:58:27.153
and make it a better situation.

1253
00:58:28.170 --> 00:58:31.050
And overall, we we have a good fleet that's,

1254
00:58:31.050 --> 00:58:32.910
you know, working on these,

1255
00:58:32.910 --> 00:58:35.310
and they don't wanna entangle whales

1256
00:58:35.310 --> 00:58:37.863
any more than anybody else does, right?

1257
00:58:39.690 --> 00:58:42.570
And in the same regard, they're quite interested

1258
00:58:42.570 --> 00:58:45.000
in all this kind of research

1259
00:58:45.000 --> 00:58:46.290
and understanding what's going on

1260
00:58:46.290 --> 00:58:48.027
with the population as well.

1261
00:58:48.027 --> 00:58:50.250
You know, they would love to know

1262
00:58:50.250 --> 00:58:52.080
what's likely to change in the future

1263
00:58:52.080 --> 00:58:54.840
and how that population might be moving around,

1264
00:58:54.840 --> 00:58:57.383
so they're very interested in this as well.

1265
00:58:57.383 --> 00:58:58.577
<v ->(laughs) That was great.</v>

1266
00:58:58.577 --> 00:58:59.907
That's very good to know.

1267
00:58:59.907 --> 00:59:01.860
And this one kind of does feed along that

1268
00:59:01.860 --> 00:59:02.880
with you saying that, you know,

1269
00:59:02.880 --> 00:59:05.251
they also wanna know this information, which is,

1270
00:59:05.251 --> 00:59:09.480
is there strategy to the way that fishermen

1271
00:59:09.480 --> 00:59:13.200
place their crab traps?

1272
00:59:13.200 --> 00:59:15.840
Are they looking for specific types of bathymetry,

1273
00:59:15.840 --> 00:59:17.340
types of bottom?

1274
00:59:17.340 --> 00:59:20.220
How are they doing that in terms of trying

1275
00:59:20.220 --> 00:59:21.930
to get the highest rate of catch

1276
00:59:21.930 --> 00:59:24.090
versus avoiding (indistinct)?

1277
00:59:24.090 --> 00:59:26.880
<v ->Yeah, well, you know, generally what we see</v>

1278
00:59:26.880 --> 00:59:29.130
is there's more fishing on the outer shelf

1279
00:59:29.130 --> 00:59:31.200
at the beginning of the season.

1280
00:59:31.200 --> 00:59:33.326
And then as we move into more of the summer months,

1281
00:59:33.326 --> 00:59:37.713
the fleet tends to move a little bit more near shore.

1282
00:59:39.300 --> 00:59:40.710
If you look at where crab pots are set,

1283
00:59:40.710 --> 00:59:44.260
they're usually set, like, parallel to the shore

1284
00:59:45.180 --> 00:59:49.050
more often than not, along one depth is probably why.

1285
00:59:49.050 --> 00:59:51.210
You don't want pots going down,

1286
00:59:51.210 --> 00:59:52.380
you know, changing a bunch of depth,

1287
00:59:52.380 --> 00:59:55.470
so they're fishing one depth in different areas.

1288
00:59:55.470 --> 00:59:58.500
And you know, fishers, they've been doing this a long time,

1289
00:59:58.500 --> 01:00:01.680
so they have their spots, they know where to go,

1290
01:00:01.680 --> 01:00:03.256
and they figure it out,

1291
01:00:03.256 --> 01:00:06.303
and they're obviously following the crab, yeah.

1292
01:00:07.830 --> 01:00:08.933
And I think that's why we see, you know,

1293
01:00:08.933 --> 01:00:11.220
like in those high abundancy areas,

1294
01:00:11.220 --> 01:00:13.020
there's a little bit more happening up north,

1295
01:00:13.020 --> 01:00:14.790
like they find them up there.

1296
01:00:14.790 --> 01:00:16.590
There's some people fishing up there all the time

1297
01:00:16.590 --> 01:00:19.983
and kind of testing, but the abundance isn't always there,

1298
01:00:21.405 --> 01:00:23.790
and so yeah.

1299
01:00:23.790 --> 01:00:25.800
<v ->Next question is, do you see otters interfere</v>

1300
01:00:25.800 --> 01:00:28.263
with the Dungeness crab fishery off Washington?

1301
01:00:29.430 --> 01:00:30.390
<v ->I have not.</v>

1302
01:00:30.390 --> 01:00:31.980
I've heard stories

1303
01:00:31.980 --> 01:00:35.130
that some people claim otters are eating a lot of crab,

1304
01:00:35.130 --> 01:00:37.650
and I'm sure they eat their fair share,

1305
01:00:37.650 --> 01:00:40.470
but it hasn't really been a problem

1306
01:00:40.470 --> 01:00:42.513
that I'm aware of in our fleet.

1307
01:00:43.380 --> 01:00:45.540
I did see an otter once when I was out on crab boat,

1308
01:00:45.540 --> 01:00:47.823
but it was just one.

1309
01:00:48.810 --> 01:00:50.640
But yeah, there are some stories of that

1310
01:00:50.640 --> 01:00:53.670
being an issue as the otters have returned,

1311
01:00:53.670 --> 01:00:56.280
that it's caused some of the decline in crab,

1312
01:00:56.280 --> 01:00:58.530
and that's thought maybe to be some of the reason

1313
01:00:58.530 --> 01:01:01.950
that the crab has declined in the northern areas,

1314
01:01:01.950 --> 01:01:05.043
but we don't really have any evidence of that yet.

1315
01:01:06.210 --> 01:01:07.350
<v ->Awesome.</v>

1316
01:01:07.350 --> 01:01:09.540
One of our attendees was concerned

1317
01:01:09.540 --> 01:01:11.190
that they may have missed this in the presentation

1318
01:01:11.190 --> 01:01:13.620
if you mentioned it, they wanted to clarify,

1319
01:01:13.620 --> 01:01:17.730
are you working closely with the fishermen and other parties

1320
01:01:17.730 --> 01:01:21.270
and organizations in terms of gathering data

1321
01:01:21.270 --> 01:01:22.870
and observations from the field?

1322
01:01:23.730 --> 01:01:24.690
<v ->Yeah, for sure.</v>

1323
01:01:24.690 --> 01:01:27.270
So, we have a crab advisory board

1324
01:01:27.270 --> 01:01:28.890
that we meet with regularly

1325
01:01:28.890 --> 01:01:31.590
that's representatives of the fishing fleet,

1326
01:01:31.590 --> 01:01:34.350
and we talk about them all kinds of things.

1327
01:01:34.350 --> 01:01:36.270
But then when we do our test fishery,

1328
01:01:36.270 --> 01:01:39.420
we actually contract commercial fishers

1329
01:01:39.420 --> 01:01:41.460
to go out and conduct that test fishery.

1330
01:01:41.460 --> 01:01:44.430
We go out on the boat with them and help collect that data

1331
01:01:44.430 --> 01:01:46.230
and talk with them about what's going on.

1332
01:01:46.230 --> 01:01:50.640
And then we also have ride-alongs throughout the season

1333
01:01:50.640 --> 01:01:53.560
where we have staff on boats with the commercial fishers

1334
01:01:54.570 --> 01:01:57.510
figuring out what's going on and monitoring the population

1335
01:01:57.510 --> 01:01:58.860
for, like, soft-shell condition

1336
01:01:58.860 --> 01:02:01.140
and things like that as well, so.

1337
01:02:01.140 --> 01:02:02.730
<v ->Awesome, that's amazing.</v>

1338
01:02:02.730 --> 01:02:05.070
And then our next question was,

1339
01:02:05.070 --> 01:02:07.200
if the total landing data that you showed

1340
01:02:07.200 --> 01:02:09.930
included both the strait and the Puget Sound

1341
01:02:09.930 --> 01:02:12.720
or if it was just looking at the coast

1342
01:02:12.720 --> 01:02:14.730
versus one or the other?

1343
01:02:14.730 --> 01:02:16.290
<v ->Yeah, no, it's just the coast,</v>

1344
01:02:16.290 --> 01:02:19.323
so right at the top of Neah Bay there, it's cut off,

1345
01:02:20.520 --> 01:02:23.190
and that's the end of our area

1346
01:02:23.190 --> 01:02:25.740
for the coastal fishery right there.

1347
01:02:25.740 --> 01:02:28.230
<v ->Awesome. And then how far down does it go?</v>

1348
01:02:28.230 --> 01:02:30.690
<v ->It goes down into Oregon, like I showed,</v>

1349
01:02:30.690 --> 01:02:32.370
because we do have fishers-
<v ->Oh, okay.</v>

1350
01:02:32.370 --> 01:02:34.860
<v ->That are licensed in Washington,</v>

1351
01:02:34.860 --> 01:02:36.600
but they might catch crab

1352
01:02:36.600 --> 01:02:38.670
south of the Columbia River into Oregon,

1353
01:02:38.670 --> 01:02:42.240
and then deliver 'em back up into Washington processors

1354
01:02:42.240 --> 01:02:43.727
and sell the crab there, so.

1355
01:02:43.727 --> 01:02:45.960
<v ->One of our audience members was wondering,</v>

1356
01:02:45.960 --> 01:02:48.633
what is the downside of using ground lines?

1357
01:02:50.549 --> 01:02:52.349
<v ->So, I just mentioned a minute ago,</v>

1358
01:02:53.250 --> 01:02:57.210
especially for gray whales, they feed on the bottom.

1359
01:02:57.210 --> 01:02:59.400
And so now, if you have a bunch of ground line,

1360
01:02:59.400 --> 01:03:01.380
and whether you can either use sinking line

1361
01:03:01.380 --> 01:03:03.450
that will go to the bottom or you can have floating line

1362
01:03:03.450 --> 01:03:05.133
that creates these little arcs,

1363
01:03:06.090 --> 01:03:07.470
and obviously, the floating line would probably

1364
01:03:07.470 --> 01:03:09.390
be a bigger problem for these whales,

1365
01:03:09.390 --> 01:03:10.890
but if they're feeding along the bottom

1366
01:03:10.890 --> 01:03:14.340
and run into one of those long lines on the ground line,

1367
01:03:14.340 --> 01:03:16.540
then that could cause them to get entangled.

1368
01:03:18.810 --> 01:03:21.780
And that's our primary concern right now.

1369
01:03:21.780 --> 01:03:23.430
But you might come across a situation, too,

1370
01:03:23.430 --> 01:03:26.690
where long line with ground line pots might work better

1371
01:03:26.690 --> 01:03:29.490
in some locations may be further offshore

1372
01:03:29.490 --> 01:03:31.980
and not so well in shore,

1373
01:03:31.980 --> 01:03:34.500
where you might get more gray whales feeding, you know.

1374
01:03:34.500 --> 01:03:36.120
Those are the kinds of things we have to consider

1375
01:03:36.120 --> 01:03:38.280
and think about and try to figure out.

1376
01:03:38.280 --> 01:03:42.240
<v ->Our next question is, with whale populations increasing,</v>

1377
01:03:42.240 --> 01:03:44.730
do you think there will be an allowable amount

1378
01:03:44.730 --> 01:03:46.443
of entanglements by NOAA?

1379
01:03:47.831 --> 01:03:49.620
Which is interesting.
<v ->That's a very good question.</v>

1380
01:03:49.620 --> 01:03:51.630
So, yeah, I mean, in general,

1381
01:03:51.630 --> 01:03:54.993
whale populations are doing better and coming back.

1382
01:03:56.220 --> 01:03:57.810
One of the main issues is,

1383
01:03:57.810 --> 01:04:00.060
we have different stocks of humpbacks,

1384
01:04:00.060 --> 01:04:03.390
so there's a Central American stock, a Mexican stock,

1385
01:04:03.390 --> 01:04:04.920
and then the Hawaiian.

1386
01:04:04.920 --> 01:04:07.380
And the Hawaiian, they're doing really well,

1387
01:04:07.380 --> 01:04:09.330
the Mexican stock is doing pretty good,

1388
01:04:09.330 --> 01:04:12.210
and the Central American stock, we're most uncertain about,

1389
01:04:12.210 --> 01:04:14.637
but it looks like they're not doing as well.

1390
01:04:14.637 --> 01:04:16.680
And so, you have those things to consider,

1391
01:04:16.680 --> 01:04:21.680
but we are trying to reduce entanglements across the board

1392
01:04:21.750 --> 01:04:23.130
and doing what we can.

1393
01:04:23.130 --> 01:04:28.130
How it's measured is with the potential biological removal,

1394
01:04:28.740 --> 01:04:32.550
PBR, which is a calculated amount of how many whales

1395
01:04:32.550 --> 01:04:34.570
you could essentially take

1396
01:04:35.430 --> 01:04:39.570
without harming the sustainability of the population,

1397
01:04:39.570 --> 01:04:43.230
and so there is that figure that gets calculated,

1398
01:04:43.230 --> 01:04:44.490
and this is through stock assessment

1399
01:04:44.490 --> 01:04:46.260
and understanding those populations,

1400
01:04:46.260 --> 01:04:51.260
but there is a value that's acceptable essentially.

1401
01:04:51.930 --> 01:04:55.170
But the goal is always bringing the risk of entanglement

1402
01:04:55.170 --> 01:04:59.010
down to zero and not harming the population, so.

1403
01:04:59.010 --> 01:05:00.750
<v ->With that, someone was wanting to know,</v>

1404
01:05:00.750 --> 01:05:03.873
what does the training for disentanglement look like?

1405
01:05:05.487 --> 01:05:07.350
<v ->I'm not an expert on that.</v>

1406
01:05:07.350 --> 01:05:08.973
So, there's different levels.

1407
01:05:09.930 --> 01:05:14.670
If you look it up, level one is achievable by anybody.

1408
01:05:14.670 --> 01:05:16.410
It's just some information

1409
01:05:16.410 --> 01:05:19.080
and, like, I think an hour or so of training.

1410
01:05:19.080 --> 01:05:22.230
And at that point, you're really just qualified to, like,

1411
01:05:22.230 --> 01:05:25.380
identify and report and call it in

1412
01:05:25.380 --> 01:05:27.600
and not actually do anything.

1413
01:05:27.600 --> 01:05:29.730
And then as levels go up,

1414
01:05:29.730 --> 01:05:32.370
there's much more training involved

1415
01:05:32.370 --> 01:05:35.160
for the different stages, so another level might be,

1416
01:05:35.160 --> 01:05:38.940
you can offer some sort of support to a entanglement group.

1417
01:05:38.940 --> 01:05:41.280
And then the final is, like, level four,

1418
01:05:41.280 --> 01:05:43.740
and that's when you're actually doing the disentanglement.

1419
01:05:43.740 --> 01:05:47.340
And like I said, it takes many hours of training

1420
01:05:47.340 --> 01:05:49.080
and working with experienced teams

1421
01:05:49.080 --> 01:05:52.440
to learn how to do it safely, so.

1422
01:05:52.440 --> 01:05:54.270
But you can look it up.

1423
01:05:54.270 --> 01:05:59.270
Whale entanglement responder training, I think.

1424
01:05:59.340 --> 01:06:00.930
And NOAA has a really nice website

1425
01:06:00.930 --> 01:06:02.460
on their whale entanglements

1426
01:06:02.460 --> 01:06:03.993
and whale entanglement responses,

1427
01:06:03.993 --> 01:06:08.940
as does WDFW as well.

1428
01:06:08.940 --> 01:06:09.773
<v ->Very interesting.</v>

1429
01:06:09.773 --> 01:06:11.400
I'm gonna have to go read a little bit deeper into that.

1430
01:06:11.400 --> 01:06:13.230
That'd be very interesting.

1431
01:06:13.230 --> 01:06:15.930
Our next question that we received,

1432
01:06:15.930 --> 01:06:18.090
they made a comment that on the East Coast,

1433
01:06:18.090 --> 01:06:21.690
on-demand gear can be a point of contention

1434
01:06:21.690 --> 01:06:23.370
for fishing communities,

1435
01:06:23.370 --> 01:06:25.750
and she was curious if it is similar

1436
01:06:26.820 --> 01:06:29.160
here in the Pacific Northwest

1437
01:06:29.160 --> 01:06:32.463
and if fisheries have an interest for on-demand gear.

1438
01:06:33.780 --> 01:06:34.830
<v ->Yeah, yeah.</v>

1439
01:06:34.830 --> 01:06:38.613
So, we aren't currently using it in Washington.

1440
01:06:39.630 --> 01:06:42.630
They've done some work in California,

1441
01:06:42.630 --> 01:06:44.670
and have been able to implement it

1442
01:06:44.670 --> 01:06:46.290
in a very limited capacity.

1443
01:06:46.290 --> 01:06:49.680
So, California's had areas that they've had to close

1444
01:06:49.680 --> 01:06:51.930
to reduce whale entanglement,

1445
01:06:51.930 --> 01:06:54.000
so the entire fishery gets shut down.

1446
01:06:54.000 --> 01:06:56.790
And the way they've allowed to fish in those areas

1447
01:06:56.790 --> 01:07:00.690
was by offering the use of this on-demand gear.

1448
01:07:00.690 --> 01:07:04.710
And they've limited it just a few people

1449
01:07:04.710 --> 01:07:06.450
that have applied for these licenses,

1450
01:07:06.450 --> 01:07:08.070
and it's been very controlled.

1451
01:07:08.070 --> 01:07:09.750
And that's kind of in the works,

1452
01:07:09.750 --> 01:07:12.480
but it's only in that special application

1453
01:07:12.480 --> 01:07:16.110
that it's actually happening on the West Coast right now.

1454
01:07:16.110 --> 01:07:17.407
Like I said, we're talking with Oregon

1455
01:07:17.407 --> 01:07:19.980
and we're all trying to work together

1456
01:07:19.980 --> 01:07:22.860
to figure out if it'll work here

1457
01:07:22.860 --> 01:07:24.750
and where it will work here

1458
01:07:24.750 --> 01:07:27.090
and what that means and what makes sense,

1459
01:07:27.090 --> 01:07:29.970
but you know, we have pretty strong currents

1460
01:07:29.970 --> 01:07:31.149
under the water.

1461
01:07:31.149 --> 01:07:33.930
There's considerations about how do you mark that gear

1462
01:07:33.930 --> 01:07:35.760
to let everyone else that's out on the water

1463
01:07:35.760 --> 01:07:38.223
and using the ocean know that it's in the water.

1464
01:07:39.360 --> 01:07:42.390
There's a lot of different things that go into it,

1465
01:07:42.390 --> 01:07:44.910
and we are trying to figure that out,

1466
01:07:44.910 --> 01:07:46.800
but it's not currently being used.

1467
01:07:46.800 --> 01:07:48.393
And I would say in general,

1468
01:07:49.530 --> 01:07:54.030
fishers like the way they fish now 'cause it works for them,

1469
01:07:54.030 --> 01:07:57.330
so changing that, (chuckles) in any way, shape,

1470
01:07:57.330 --> 01:08:00.270
or form is usually not too welcome because,

1471
01:08:00.270 --> 01:08:03.150
you know, they have to change what they know works.

1472
01:08:03.150 --> 01:08:07.290
<v ->Okay, someone was wondering if around May and June,</v>

1473
01:08:07.290 --> 01:08:08.940
it's important for crab reproduction,

1474
01:08:08.940 --> 01:08:11.700
and whales are especially common then

1475
01:08:11.700 --> 01:08:13.170
and the catch is small anyway,

1476
01:08:13.170 --> 01:08:15.663
why not close the fishery over this period?

1477
01:08:17.400 --> 01:08:20.130
<v ->Right, so I didn't get way into it,</v>

1478
01:08:20.130 --> 01:08:24.510
but yeah, crab reproduction is interesting.

1479
01:08:24.510 --> 01:08:29.370
And so, crabs reproduce when the female molts,

1480
01:08:29.370 --> 01:08:31.023
which is in the spring.

1481
01:08:32.070 --> 01:08:37.070
The males molt in the fall and going into the winter,

1482
01:08:37.230 --> 01:08:39.330
where the fishery's actually closed

1483
01:08:39.330 --> 01:08:40.740
'cause we're mostly concerned

1484
01:08:40.740 --> 01:08:42.753
with the male crab at that point.

1485
01:08:44.520 --> 01:08:46.780
So we're still able to actually catch

1486
01:08:47.670 --> 01:08:50.730
male crab in the springtime,

1487
01:08:50.730 --> 01:08:52.440
so it doesn't affect their reproduction

1488
01:08:52.440 --> 01:08:55.860
as much is probably the answer.

1489
01:08:55.860 --> 01:08:58.050
But I also wasn't around when we designed

1490
01:08:58.050 --> 01:09:01.263
seasonal fishing regulations for the fishery.

1491
01:09:02.430 --> 01:09:03.900
But there's other considerations too, right?

1492
01:09:03.900 --> 01:09:06.840
So, we catch the majority of our crab

1493
01:09:06.840 --> 01:09:09.810
in the beginning of the season, so into in the winter.

1494
01:09:09.810 --> 01:09:11.670
As we move into the spring and summer,

1495
01:09:11.670 --> 01:09:15.600
yes, we catch less crab and there's less boats

1496
01:09:15.600 --> 01:09:18.840
involved in the fishery, but those are also,

1497
01:09:18.840 --> 01:09:20.220
you know, smaller boats

1498
01:09:20.220 --> 01:09:23.010
and very important for their livelihoods

1499
01:09:23.010 --> 01:09:27.120
that they have that ongoing stream of income as well,

1500
01:09:27.120 --> 01:09:29.823
so you have to take that into consideration as well.

1501
01:09:31.280 --> 01:09:33.037
You know, you might say,

1502
01:09:33.037 --> 01:09:34.380
"Just close down the fishery

1503
01:09:34.380 --> 01:09:36.330
in, yeah, May through September,

1504
01:09:36.330 --> 01:09:38.700
and there's not that much crab being caught anyways."

1505
01:09:38.700 --> 01:09:41.823
But it has a pretty big effect as well.

1506
01:09:43.590 --> 01:09:46.320
And so, there's always a lot to think about

1507
01:09:46.320 --> 01:09:49.470
when you're managing fisheries in that regard.

1508
01:09:49.470 --> 01:09:50.913
<v ->Awesome.</v>

1509
01:09:50.913 --> 01:09:52.650
The next question that we received is,

1510
01:09:52.650 --> 01:09:55.290
have you seen or noticed any particular trends

1511
01:09:55.290 --> 01:09:58.980
involving entanglements that are unique for each species?

1512
01:09:58.980 --> 01:10:00.930
So, an example that they gave was,

1513
01:10:00.930 --> 01:10:04.110
do majority of humpbacks get their pectoral fin

1514
01:10:04.110 --> 01:10:06.423
entangled because of the size of it?

1515
01:10:07.317 --> 01:10:08.610
<v ->Yeah.</v>
<v ->Any correlations or trends</v>

1516
01:10:08.610 --> 01:10:09.610
that you've noticed?

1517
01:10:11.130 --> 01:10:14.970
<v ->No, not me personally and really not in general.</v>

1518
01:10:14.970 --> 01:10:17.613
The problem we have is,

1519
01:10:18.510 --> 01:10:22.290
actual observations of entanglements are so few

1520
01:10:22.290 --> 01:10:24.590
that we just don't have that many data points.

1521
01:10:25.890 --> 01:10:29.280
You know, they really are still pretty rare to happen,

1522
01:10:29.280 --> 01:10:31.950
even, you know, we have these spikes and elevated levels.

1523
01:10:31.950 --> 01:10:35.310
But frankly, we just don't have enough information

1524
01:10:35.310 --> 01:10:38.280
about how whales get entangled and what happens,

1525
01:10:38.280 --> 01:10:40.620
and you know, what's the initial entanglement

1526
01:10:40.620 --> 01:10:42.360
versus what happens as the whale's trying

1527
01:10:42.360 --> 01:10:46.770
to disentangle itself and learning some of that.

1528
01:10:46.770 --> 01:10:49.950
But we do see scars on the fins

1529
01:10:49.950 --> 01:10:54.950
and the caudal peduncle a lot as well, so it happens both.

1530
01:10:54.990 --> 01:10:57.903
They get rope in their mouths frequently.

1531
01:10:59.514 --> 01:11:02.550
But no direct trend, really.

1532
01:11:02.550 --> 01:11:05.580
Other than, we do think, like I said, slack line

1533
01:11:05.580 --> 01:11:09.570
is something that's always referred to as a cause.

1534
01:11:09.570 --> 01:11:10.800
<v ->Next question is,</v>

1535
01:11:10.800 --> 01:11:13.470
how extensive is the use of pop-up traps far,

1536
01:11:13.470 --> 01:11:15.000
and do they have release mechanisms

1537
01:11:15.000 --> 01:11:16.323
if a whale gets entangled?

1538
01:11:17.550 --> 01:11:19.830
<v ->Yeah, so as I mentioned, right now,</v>

1539
01:11:19.830 --> 01:11:24.480
they're using some popup gear limitedly in California,

1540
01:11:24.480 --> 01:11:27.630
but that's it on the West Coast.

1541
01:11:27.630 --> 01:11:30.270
There is some more being used on the East Coast,

1542
01:11:30.270 --> 01:11:33.753
and then lobster pots and other applications.

1543
01:11:36.330 --> 01:11:38.910
And as far as I know,

1544
01:11:38.910 --> 01:11:40.710
they don't have any release mechanisms

1545
01:11:40.710 --> 01:11:42.420
if they get entangled 'cause the idea

1546
01:11:42.420 --> 01:11:46.620
is that all the rope's underwater

1547
01:11:46.620 --> 01:11:48.516
until the fishers that are triggering it,

1548
01:11:48.516 --> 01:11:51.300
and then it comes up to the surface,

1549
01:11:51.300 --> 01:11:53.103
so they're there to pull it up.

1550
01:11:54.931 --> 01:11:56.790
In the cases where it doesn't deploy,

1551
01:11:56.790 --> 01:11:59.580
then the fisher takes a grapple and drags along the bottom

1552
01:11:59.580 --> 01:12:01.890
and pulls up the pot that way.

1553
01:12:01.890 --> 01:12:02.727
<v ->Awesome.</v>

1554
01:12:02.727 --> 01:12:05.100
And I believe this is gonna be

1555
01:12:05.100 --> 01:12:07.200
our last question of the evening.

1556
01:12:07.200 --> 01:12:09.600
Thank you for everybody who wrote in questions.

1557
01:12:09.600 --> 01:12:13.020
If we didn't get to yours, we do apologize,

1558
01:12:13.020 --> 01:12:15.960
but the last one of the night is gonna be,

1559
01:12:15.960 --> 01:12:20.960
does DFW, or WDFW pay fishers to recover derelict gear,

1560
01:12:22.140 --> 01:12:23.883
fishing gear from the waters?

1561
01:12:25.620 --> 01:12:28.500
<v ->No, they don't pay.</v>

1562
01:12:28.500 --> 01:12:31.953
But it's a program that we all understand the benefits of.

1563
01:12:32.815 --> 01:12:34.770
And the reason there's a licensing and a program

1564
01:12:34.770 --> 01:12:35.603
is because it's illegal to take gear

1565
01:12:35.603 --> 01:12:38.130
out of the water that's not your own,

1566
01:12:38.130 --> 01:12:41.760
and so this is a mechanism to make it legal

1567
01:12:41.760 --> 01:12:44.913
for you to take somebody else's gear out of the water.

1568
01:12:46.620 --> 01:12:48.690
And we document it, and they keep logbooks

1569
01:12:48.690 --> 01:12:51.753
and records of all of this, so it's very regulated that way.

1570
01:12:53.940 --> 01:12:56.100
But I mean, I like the idea,

1571
01:12:56.100 --> 01:12:59.013
incentivizing derelict gear recovery.

1572
01:13:00.750 --> 01:13:02.910
But one of the reasons it works for us right now

1573
01:13:02.910 --> 01:13:05.370
is because it's commercial fishers doing it,

1574
01:13:05.370 --> 01:13:06.900
so they're out on the water all the time,

1575
01:13:06.900 --> 01:13:10.500
they pretty much know whose gear's whose

1576
01:13:10.500 --> 01:13:11.970
'cause they're out there almost every day,

1577
01:13:11.970 --> 01:13:13.167
and so they can help spot it,

1578
01:13:13.167 --> 01:13:16.410
and they can tell if somebody's, you know,

1579
01:13:16.410 --> 01:13:19.140
lost a pot or it's drifted in from somewhere else,

1580
01:13:19.140 --> 01:13:21.900
and so they are the best ones to be doing it.

1581
01:13:21.900 --> 01:13:22.860
<v ->That is really good to know.</v>

1582
01:13:22.860 --> 01:13:24.270
I was unaware that it's really cool

1583
01:13:24.270 --> 01:13:26.647
to bring in fishing gear that wasn't yours otherwise,

1584
01:13:26.647 --> 01:13:28.487
so you learn something new.

1585
01:13:28.487 --> 01:13:32.040
I learned a lot new, but I think we're gonna pass it back

1586
01:13:32.040 --> 01:13:34.870
over to Chris Butler-Minor

1587
01:13:35.880 --> 01:13:38.790
for some closing remarks, but thank you again, Chris.

1588
01:13:38.790 --> 01:13:40.173
That was great.

1589
01:13:41.400 --> 01:13:42.600
<v ->Thank you.</v>

1590
01:13:42.600 --> 01:13:44.880
<v ->Agree with everything that they've said so far</v>

1591
01:13:44.880 --> 01:13:47.280
because I really, again,

1592
01:13:47.280 --> 01:13:49.530
have enjoyed learning a lot more about this,

1593
01:13:49.530 --> 01:13:51.930
and I learned some things about pop-up gear

1594
01:13:51.930 --> 01:13:54.660
that I didn't know before, so thank you.

1595
01:13:54.660 --> 01:13:55.620
<v ->Nice.</v>
<v ->Well, first of all,</v>

1596
01:13:55.620 --> 01:14:00.140
a big thank you from me and my whale friends

1597
01:14:00.140 --> 01:14:02.890
(Chris laughing)

1598
01:14:04.656 --> 01:14:07.590
and for sharing this important information.

1599
01:14:07.590 --> 01:14:11.580
And then thank you all who joined us for the webinar.

1600
01:14:11.580 --> 01:14:13.173
Really appreciate that as well.

1601
01:14:14.640 --> 01:14:19.020
I wanted to let you all know, just a quick wrap-up,

1602
01:14:19.020 --> 01:14:21.720
the National Marine Sanctuaries Webinar Series

1603
01:14:21.720 --> 01:14:25.350
provides educators, students, and the interested public

1604
01:14:25.350 --> 01:14:28.800
with educational and scientific expertise, resources,

1605
01:14:28.800 --> 01:14:32.940
and training to support ocean and climate literacy,

1606
01:14:32.940 --> 01:14:34.320
and so all attendees

1607
01:14:34.320 --> 01:14:36.480
will receive a Certificate of Attendance,

1608
01:14:36.480 --> 01:14:38.610
which represents one contact hour

1609
01:14:38.610 --> 01:14:41.970
of professional development after this session.

1610
01:14:41.970 --> 01:14:44.190
And any questions that we weren't able to get to

1611
01:14:44.190 --> 01:14:48.000
during the webinar will be sent to Chris

1612
01:14:48.000 --> 01:14:50.640
so that he can give us responses to them,

1613
01:14:50.640 --> 01:14:53.483
and then we'll send them back out to you at a future date.

1614
01:14:55.170 --> 01:14:59.580
And also, somewhat shameless plug

1615
01:14:59.580 --> 01:15:02.700
for upcoming remaining series,

1616
01:15:02.700 --> 01:15:07.700
and so we have Dr. Drew Harvell on sea stars

1617
01:15:08.910 --> 01:15:13.200
and how they're faring on March 24th.

1618
01:15:13.200 --> 01:15:17.700
And then the final episode for this year will be in April

1619
01:15:17.700 --> 01:15:20.430
with Luan Roberts on nudibranchs,

1620
01:15:20.430 --> 01:15:21.600
so we hope you can join those.

1621
01:15:21.600 --> 01:15:24.603
Watch for those upcoming advertisements.

1622
01:15:26.040 --> 01:15:27.570
If you have time to scan this,

1623
01:15:27.570 --> 01:15:30.360
or if you just wanna look up Office

1624
01:15:30.360 --> 01:15:32.460
of National Marine Sanctuary Webinar Series,

1625
01:15:32.460 --> 01:15:35.340
you can check out upcoming webinars,

1626
01:15:35.340 --> 01:15:38.733
but also go and see webinars that you may have missed.

1627
01:15:41.520 --> 01:15:44.820
And then last, but not least,

1628
01:15:44.820 --> 01:15:47.220
there will be a survey automatically

1629
01:15:47.220 --> 01:15:49.230
presented to you as you leave,

1630
01:15:49.230 --> 01:15:52.050
and we'd ask that you take a couple minutes to complete it,

1631
01:15:52.050 --> 01:15:55.110
to provide information about what you liked,

1632
01:15:55.110 --> 01:15:56.940
what you think could be improved,

1633
01:15:56.940 --> 01:15:59.760
and what you would like to see in the future.

1634
01:15:59.760 --> 01:16:03.000
And with that, I will say thank you,

1635
01:16:03.000 --> 01:16:06.393
and hope to see you next time.

1636
01:16:07.680 --> 01:16:09.060
Thanks again, Chris.

1637
01:16:09.060 --> 01:16:09.893
<v ->Thank you.</v>