WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.320 --> 00:00:07.200 Hi everyone welcome to tonight's webinar my name  is Lisa Uttal and I work for Monterey Bay National   00:00:07.200 --> 00:00:15.440 Marine Sanctuary. Just a few logistics before we  get started, during the presentation all attendees   00:00:15.440 --> 00:00:21.120 will be in listen only mode. You're encouraged to  type your questions for the presenters into the   00:00:21.120 --> 00:00:25.200 question box in the bottom of the control  panel on the right side of your screen.   00:00:26.080 --> 00:00:30.800 This is the same area you can let us know  about any technical problems that you may be   00:00:30.800 --> 00:00:37.200 experiencing. My colleague Chelsea Prindle will  be monitoring incoming questions and technical   00:00:37.200 --> 00:00:45.520 issues and will respond to them as soon as she  can just so you know we are recording this session   00:00:45.520 --> 00:00:52.160 and we'll share this recording with all registered  participants via email after this webinar.   00:00:53.920 --> 00:00:59.040 Tonight I'm going to start out with a short  introduction to our sanctuaries and then our   00:00:59.040 --> 00:01:05.200 program will go for approximately 35 minutes and  then we will wrap up with my favorite part of   00:01:05.200 --> 00:01:11.840 the webinar, where you get to ask questions  of us and we can have a great discussion. 00:01:20.560 --> 00:01:29.040 It's my pleasure to introduce Scott Benson and  the company Tanzle who I've had the opportunity to   00:01:29.040 --> 00:01:37.040 work with over the last several months, even years  to bring you this incredible immersive experience.   00:01:38.560 --> 00:01:42.960 Scott Benson is stationed at Moss  Landing Marine Labs in Moss Landing,   00:01:42.960 --> 00:01:48.080 California. He is the lead investigator of  the leatherback turtle ecology program at   00:01:48.080 --> 00:01:54.400 NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center and he  coordinates studies of the distribution abundance   00:01:55.120 --> 00:02:01.520 and movement patterns and foraging ecology  and health of endangered western Pacific   00:02:01.520 --> 00:02:08.000 leatherback turtles along the U.S. west coast  and throughout the Pacific. His research   00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:14.480 integrates biotelemetry, aerial surveys,  vessel-based sampling, and satellite remote   00:02:14.480 --> 00:02:21.200 sensing to enhance our understanding of how  oceanographic processes influence the occurrence   00:02:21.200 --> 00:02:27.920 and behavior of this species and to aid U.S. and  international conservation and recovery efforts   00:02:28.800 --> 00:02:35.840 since 1986. Scott has been involved in ecological  research and conservation of marine vertebrates   00:02:36.800 --> 00:02:42.800 in the Pacific ocean, including integrated studies  of marine mammals and seabirds along the U.S. west   00:02:42.800 --> 00:02:49.520 coast. His education includes a B.A from San  Diego State University and an M.S. in marine   00:02:49.520 --> 00:02:55.280 science from San Jose State University.  Scott thank you for joining us tonight. 00:02:57.680 --> 00:03:04.400 Pleasure to be with you. I'm coming to you from  Half Moon Bay with and am joined by my colleagues   00:03:04.400 --> 00:03:12.080 from Upwell, a non-profit in Monterey and my  friends at Moss Landing Marine Labs. We are up   00:03:12.080 --> 00:03:18.240 here to begin sampling leatherbacks this year,  the first time we've tried to do so since that   00:03:18.240 --> 00:03:26.000 pandemic started, so we're very excited to be up.  Excellent, so right from the field that's great.   00:03:28.000 --> 00:03:33.360 Our aerial team managed to find two turtles today  so we're we're pretty excited about tomorrow.   00:03:34.640 --> 00:03:42.560 Great this is real time excellent. I'd like to  introduce Ed Gregor and Stacy Martin who are   00:03:42.560 --> 00:03:48.880 the geniuses behind this immersive experience  that you're going to see today and the company   00:03:48.880 --> 00:03:54.720 Tanzle. There's a whole suite of amazing  people who have helped us put together this   00:03:55.760 --> 00:04:01.280 experience. Tanzle's mission is to solve  issues around the human challenges of   00:04:01.280 --> 00:04:07.600 understanding and sharing insights with big  data. They are developing an innovative data   00:04:07.600 --> 00:04:14.480 management and visualization system that enables  collaborative analysis research and presentation,   00:04:15.120 --> 00:04:22.240 bringing a whole new level of intuition to data  analysis. Founded by entrepreneurs Nancy Clemens   00:04:22.240 --> 00:04:29.360 and Mike Vesely, they have more than 30 years of  developing 3d hardware and software in Silicon   00:04:29.360 --> 00:04:36.960 Valley. So Ed and Stacy will be on hand tonight  to answer any questions. Thank you Tanzle for   00:04:36.960 --> 00:04:41.840 being here and thank you for this wonderful  experience that we're going to show everyone. 00:04:45.360 --> 00:04:52.240 All right, I'd like to introduce the national  marine sanctuary system briefly. Our system   00:04:52.240 --> 00:04:58.400 serves as the trustee of a network of underwater  parks encompassing more than six hundred thousand   00:04:58.400 --> 00:05:04.800 square miles of marine and Great Lakes waters.  We span from Washington State to the Florida   00:05:04.800 --> 00:05:13.200 Keys and from Lake Huron to American Samoa. The  network includes 15 national marine sanctuaries   00:05:13.840 --> 00:05:22.000 and Papahānaumokuākea and Rose Atoll Marine  National Monuments. There are five sanctuaries   00:05:22.000 --> 00:05:27.920 here on our west coast. You can see in the north  here, the Olympic Coast moving down south to the   00:05:27.920 --> 00:05:35.120 Greater Farallones, Cordell Bank, Monterey Bay  and Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary.   00:05:36.000 --> 00:05:42.560 We have here on the west coast some of the most  biodiverse areas in the world. These sanctuaries   00:05:42.560 --> 00:05:47.520 are connected by....Something in common that  they have is the California current. This   00:05:47.520 --> 00:05:53.840 long meandering current that moves along the coast  at different levels during different times a year.   00:05:55.040 --> 00:06:01.120 Because of this cold California current and  because of upwelling regions on our coast,   00:06:01.840 --> 00:06:06.400 this brings rich nutrient waters to our  coast and therefore productive waters,   00:06:06.960 --> 00:06:13.280 which attracts so many of the charismatic  megafauna, one of which we're going to spend   00:06:13.280 --> 00:06:20.400 our time today talking about and focusing on the  leatherback sea turtle. Zooming in closer to home   00:06:21.040 --> 00:06:28.400 a lot of you may be familiar with Monterey Bay  National Marine Sanctuary. It is one of the most   00:06:28.400 --> 00:06:34.240 biodiverse ecosystems in the world and I  feel fortunate to say that I get to be here.   00:06:35.200 --> 00:06:42.560 We, our sanctuary team does research, we  do education and we do resource protection,   00:06:43.360 --> 00:06:51.360 which really all results in ecosystem protection  and I get the opportunity to share these science   00:06:51.360 --> 00:06:58.560 stories with you and the public and it's  what I call science-based stewardship 00:07:01.360 --> 00:07:09.120 I don't know if everyone knows but tomorrow  October 15th is California Leatherback   00:07:09.120 --> 00:07:19.200 Day, so the leatherback turtle is actually  California's state marine reptile, so it's very   00:07:19.200 --> 00:07:25.760 fitting that tonight that we are taking this time  to really jump in, learn about this leatherback,   00:07:26.320 --> 00:07:31.360 Scott's up on the coast, they've already seen  two leatherbacks today and he's just starting   00:07:31.360 --> 00:07:40.080 out his research time on the water, that we  honor and celebrate the leatherback turtle.   00:07:41.120 --> 00:07:47.920 So let's get started, we're going to go ahead and  take a little journey with the leatherback turtle 00:07:54.720 --> 00:07:59.360 Hi my name is Andrew and I'm on the edge of  the spectacular Monterey Bay. We're asking   00:07:59.360 --> 00:08:03.840 people that visit this area from around the  world what they know about sea turtles. Sea   00:08:03.840 --> 00:08:07.920 turtles, sea turtles, leatherback turtles?  00:08:07.920 --> 00:08:14.800 Get a load of some of these answers.  I would think Australia and Hawaii   00:08:15.680 --> 00:08:19.920 more like tropical places. I've never seen  turtles around here It doesn't like the cold   00:08:19.920 --> 00:08:27.200 water. I don't think very much about the  sea turtles, south of Mexico, San Diego,   00:08:27.200 --> 00:08:31.120 warmer waters they're different animals  they can survive in different temperatures.   00:08:32.400 --> 00:08:37.840 I think I believe they swim in the ocean maybe  in ocean currents and they come up to spawn on   00:08:37.840 --> 00:08:43.920 the beach. I believe they nest on beaches. They  just crack and hatch and then the little turtles   00:08:43.920 --> 00:08:48.080 just say hey head to the ocean, head to the  ocean because that's where we need to be next.   00:08:48.080 --> 00:08:52.560 A lot of them are kind of scared and don't  know what to do. Also the baby turtles they   00:08:52.560 --> 00:08:58.560 also get caught by the birds. And then they swim  with their parents right if I'm not mistaken.   00:09:01.760 --> 00:09:05.280 They eat vegetables, eat  plankton, they eat seaweed   00:09:05.280 --> 00:09:11.200 they eat shrimp too. If they're feeding on  jellyfish there's lots out there for plenty.  00:09:13.920 --> 00:09:18.960 Other turtles probably eat other baby turtles  just because they're a food source. I think the   00:09:18.960 --> 00:09:25.360 french eat lots of turtles. Humans eat them in  different cultures. Who would eat turtle soup,   00:09:25.360 --> 00:09:29.280 I don't know that'd be horrible think anyone  would really. I think they're protected so we   00:09:29.280 --> 00:09:33.520 can't technically can't eat them or capture them  you know the United States technically can't do   00:09:33.520 --> 00:09:39.440 it, I know other countries probably do they they  take the eggs do they i don't know i don't know. 00:09:41.920 --> 00:09:49.600 Is it the big big one, the huge one some of them  must be what a meter across that big uh-huh.   00:09:49.600 --> 00:09:53.760 What I know from finding Nemo,  they get to be good size. 00:09:58.080 --> 00:10:03.840 Oh my god really that's a leather back! 00:10:05.200 --> 00:10:07.920 Wow whoa big! 00:10:11.120 --> 00:10:15.600 See it looks like a dinosaur. Where  was that? I think it was caught here,   00:10:15.600 --> 00:10:20.000 but it's more southern hemisphere, warmer  waters it doesn't like the cold water.   00:10:20.640 --> 00:10:27.680 Really 800 kilograms yes very big. It's large it's  probably quite old I would guess. That's amazing   00:10:28.560 --> 00:10:45.840 and that's out there there yeah  that's fantastic. Gigantic too! 00:10:49.200 --> 00:10:59.840 I picture them kicking with both legs coordinated. 00:11:08.000 --> 00:11:13.840 It's almost like a breaststroke. 00:11:44.880 --> 00:11:48.640 Just protect them as best we  can. And I would definitely do   00:11:48.640 --> 00:11:55.840 anything in the future to  make them less endangered 00:12:06.560 --> 00:12:13.440 Hi I'm here with Scott Benson, a leatherback  turtle scientist. He works for NOAA Fisheries and   00:12:13.440 --> 00:12:20.400 he's been studying these turtles for over 20 years  here in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary,   00:12:20.400 --> 00:12:25.520 but also throughout the Pacific ocean--  oh look, here's this leatherback.   00:12:27.200 --> 00:12:32.560 The star of the show right. You can see  this how this animal is just perfectly   00:12:33.280 --> 00:12:41.120 designed for a life in the marine environment. So  this is it, the magnificent leatherback turtle,   00:12:41.120 --> 00:12:48.240 a swimming and diving machine. You can see  that it's perfectly suited for aquatic life.   00:12:49.280 --> 00:12:55.280 That carapace, the shell is not hard, it's  actually soft, so if I scratch it with my   00:12:55.280 --> 00:12:59.760 fingertip it would bleed a little bit. But  look at that shape this is Mercury's turtle   00:13:00.320 --> 00:13:06.480 you know Mercury carried a loot and you can  see this carapace, this shell looks like a loot   00:13:07.200 --> 00:13:14.480 it's teardrop shaped. It's got those longitudinal  ridges that enhance the hydrodynamic aspects of   00:13:14.480 --> 00:13:21.760 this animal so they can move effortlessly through  the water. Those huge flippers in the front,   00:13:21.760 --> 00:13:28.960 that's what propels this animal all the way across  the Pacific ocean. It's a very strong animal.   00:13:28.960 --> 00:13:34.640 I've actually had I've actually been lifted off  the deck of the boat by one of these flippers.   00:13:34.640 --> 00:13:41.840 Unfortunately it's a gentle giant it doesn't bite  but it can-- heck of a wrestler that's for sure   00:13:42.480 --> 00:13:47.520 when it's on a boat. Now it doesn't doesn't  move very well on land, it's very heavy   00:13:47.520 --> 00:13:55.200 these animals as adults about five to six feet  long can weigh over a thousand pounds. So on land,   00:13:55.200 --> 00:14:02.000 they look pretty clumsy and they labor  immensely the females labor immensely when   00:14:02.000 --> 00:14:07.520 they're crawling up on the beach to lay eggs,  but put them in the water and they're really   00:14:08.480 --> 00:14:15.840 few animals that can match the abilities  of the leatherback turtle in the water.   00:14:16.960 --> 00:14:21.920 This migration that it does from nesting  beaches over in the western Pacific   00:14:22.560 --> 00:14:28.720 to these distant foraging grounds here on the west  coast of the United States, five to six thousand   00:14:28.720 --> 00:14:36.400 miles, it's one of the longest greatest migrations  of any aquatic air breathing vertebrate. There are   00:14:36.400 --> 00:14:42.880 some birds that will go further, there are some  fishes that will go might go a little further but   00:14:43.600 --> 00:14:48.000 bird gets to fly and the fish doesn't have to  come up for air. This animal is essentially   00:14:48.000 --> 00:14:54.880 pushing water across the Pacific ocean. You see  these giant flippers that's the motor this is a   00:14:54.880 --> 00:15:01.440 swimming and diving machine. It's those flippers  and this design that let this animal essentially   00:15:01.440 --> 00:15:07.520 move effortlessly through the water even though  it might be migrating five six thousand miles to   00:15:07.520 --> 00:15:14.800 get her. It can do so effortlessly. How fast can  a turtle like this move? Well they can they could   00:15:14.800 --> 00:15:21.040 do some short bursts of speed, you know maybe 20  miles an hour or something for trying to catch   00:15:21.040 --> 00:15:27.360 them sometimes, but in general they're usually  moving slower maybe do like 50 miles in a day,   00:15:28.320 --> 00:15:33.840 That's pretty good, it's fast for a turtle.  We always think about turtles being really   00:15:33.840 --> 00:15:39.200 slow on land. Well on land and this one  too this animal when it gets out on land   00:15:39.760 --> 00:15:48.480 it's like a turtle out of water excuse me. The  females have to come up on the beaches to lay eggs   00:15:49.040 --> 00:15:58.000 and boy they really have to work hard for that  and they, they're just not very suited for moving   00:15:58.000 --> 00:16:03.760 around on land. Because they weigh a lot? They  weigh a lot exactly. What's the largest turtle   00:16:03.760 --> 00:16:10.320 you know of? Well I know that there's been some  seen over in the Atlantic ocean that may be way up   00:16:10.320 --> 00:16:16.640 as much as 2 000 pounds, but here in Monterey Bay  National Marine Sanctuary, we've actually caught   00:16:16.640 --> 00:16:26.320 live animals that weigh up to 1300 pounds, so very  large, so but again in the water it's doing very.   00:16:26.320 --> 00:16:34.320 They're buoyant. They're just tremendous swimmers.  They must have use a lot of energy to stay in the   00:16:34.320 --> 00:16:39.840 water. They don't have to use as much energy  when they're in the water. Again this design   00:16:39.840 --> 00:16:47.120 is such that it is perfectly suited for life in  the marine world. I'm noticing here if you look   00:16:47.120 --> 00:16:55.200 at the head of the turtle, what is that pink  spot. That's what it's called, the pink spot   00:16:57.040 --> 00:17:04.160 and that is the part of the skull that is actually  the thinnest and beneath that pink spot is the   00:17:04.160 --> 00:17:09.760 pineal gland and the pineal gland is sensitive  to light so this pink spot is essentially the   00:17:09.760 --> 00:17:16.560 turtle's window on the world. Pineal gland is  able to provide information about day length,   00:17:17.280 --> 00:17:23.200 for example, we've got leatherbacks showing  up here in on the west coast of United States   00:17:24.160 --> 00:17:31.120 from about 4th of July or so and they stay into  the late fall and as those days get shorter   00:17:31.120 --> 00:17:36.880 in October and November, that pineal gland is  sending a signal for the animal it's time to leave   00:17:37.520 --> 00:17:44.320 and they don't stay here in on our coast  the entire year they are here seasonally. So   00:17:44.960 --> 00:17:51.120 by late November they're usually moving away,  they'll spend their winter maybe in the tropics   00:17:51.120 --> 00:17:56.400 if they don't go all the way back to the beach and  then they'll come back again following something.   00:17:56.400 --> 00:18:02.320 Can we take a closer look at that pineal gland? I  think with the some of the magic we've got here.   00:18:04.800 --> 00:18:09.600 Leatherback turtles like most reptiles have a  pretty small brain maybe about the size of a   00:18:09.600 --> 00:18:18.480 grape, however this pineal gland is significantly  larger. As I mentioned before it is a means for   00:18:18.480 --> 00:18:25.440 which the animal can keep track of day length.  It's also probably helps as a navigational aid   00:18:25.440 --> 00:18:32.080 during migration as well and you can see that  right there that that brown that piece of brown   00:18:32.080 --> 00:18:40.720 on the skull there, that's the pineal gland.  You said their brain is the size of grape,   00:18:42.000 --> 00:18:50.080 are they smart? Do they have personalities? I  can't say anything about smart although actually   00:18:50.080 --> 00:18:56.480 I've seen a few things that makes me think that  they're not stupid. For example, sometimes when   00:18:56.480 --> 00:19:02.720 we try to capture them, they'll just stay abreast  of us the entire time and not let us approach   00:19:02.720 --> 00:19:10.160 from the back and so it knows where we are and  we catch these animals and put transmitters on   00:19:10.160 --> 00:19:18.080 some of them. We do health assessments. Some of  the creatures are very difficult to to work with,   00:19:18.960 --> 00:19:25.280 put up a tremendous resistance and others are very  easy. So, I would say there are personalities,   00:19:26.000 --> 00:19:31.840 despite the fact they have a small brain. they're  they are different each one is an individual.   00:19:33.280 --> 00:19:40.800 Scott I'm looking at this skeleton and you know  these guys are vertebrates they have a backbone   00:19:41.920 --> 00:19:48.160 they're some of the oldest vertebrates that have  been on earth. How long have they been around?   00:19:49.760 --> 00:19:55.760 In this form here, they've been around for  nearly 80 million years. They go back to time of   00:19:55.760 --> 00:20:02.320 the dinosaurs, essentially so this is an ancient  mariner. So it's kind of like a living dinosaur.   00:20:02.320 --> 00:20:07.280 It is, it's like a living dinosaur, correct.  Scott, you mentioned that they eat jellyfish. 00:20:10.400 --> 00:20:15.520 Yes, they eat jellyfish. They eat all kinds of  gelatinous zooplankton , so jellyfish and salps,   00:20:17.040 --> 00:20:23.200 again poor calorie items and  you we can tell that this is a   00:20:23.760 --> 00:20:27.840 jellyfish or gelatinous zooplankton  specialist when we look inside that mouth.   00:20:28.480 --> 00:20:33.840 Now it looks pretty scary in  there. You'll see just a moment. 00:20:35.760 --> 00:20:41.760 There we go. Those are papillae, they're actually  soft they're not, if i put my hand in there,   00:20:41.760 --> 00:20:47.040 it won't get shredded like in a garbage disposal  or something like that. But what those papillae do   00:20:47.760 --> 00:20:53.920 are help that slippery slimy jellyfish  move down the esophagus to the stomach.   00:20:54.720 --> 00:21:02.800 As I mentioned, jellyfish are very poor calorie,  oh look at that, that's incredible. Jellyfish   00:21:02.800 --> 00:21:10.000 are poor calorie items to be consuming and this  animal's doing this incredible migration. If you   00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:17.280 eat enough jellyfish, it works and so leatherback  turtles eat a tremendous amount of jellyfish every   00:21:17.280 --> 00:21:23.680 day. Fortunately we have lots of jellyfish here  in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary,   00:21:23.680 --> 00:21:30.160 particularly the brown sea nettles and that's  why this animal is coming here. The Monterey Bay   00:21:30.160 --> 00:21:35.840 National Marine Sanctuary is highly productive.  We get a lot of migration of organisms coming   00:21:36.400 --> 00:21:42.720 year round at different times of the year. We  have whales. We have turtles. We have all kinds   00:21:42.720 --> 00:21:49.200 of things so these guys are just part of a larger  migration because of that productivity that brings   00:21:49.200 --> 00:21:57.760 jellies. That's correct, absolutely right and  it's predictable. We have a seasonal aspect to   00:21:57.760 --> 00:22:04.160 things over here and so the turtles, they show  up in about early July, just about the time you   00:22:04.160 --> 00:22:09.760 start seeing some of these jellies becoming  more abundant, the jellies get larger as the   00:22:09.760 --> 00:22:19.520 summer gets goes on, and so we end up peaking our  leatherback abundance in late August or so. Scott   00:22:19.520 --> 00:22:24.960 you said these guys travel a long long distance.  Where are they coming from in the Pacific ocean?   00:22:26.240 --> 00:22:31.440 The leatherbacks that come to the Monterey Bay  National Sanctuary are part of the western pacific   00:22:31.440 --> 00:22:37.600 meta population and this population nests in  this area here. This is the island of New Guinea.   00:22:38.800 --> 00:22:45.280 The western part of it is Indonesia, also known as  West Papua, the eastern part is Papua New Guinea   00:22:45.280 --> 00:22:50.320 and then over here under this cloud here are the  islands of the Solomon Islands and so these are   00:22:50.320 --> 00:22:56.880 the areas where the nesting beaches are located.  So they're going all the way from there to?   00:22:59.040 --> 00:23:05.840 They are going from here all  the way across the Pacific   00:23:07.280 --> 00:23:13.840 and eventually.... That's the west coast  of California. As I mentioned, it's a meta   00:23:13.840 --> 00:23:20.640 population so other members of this population are  using forging grounds that are a little closer for   00:23:20.640 --> 00:23:27.760 instance, over here in the south china sea in the  Sulawesi sea and yet others are using just areas   00:23:27.760 --> 00:23:34.160 out here in the middle of the north Pacific.  The north Pacific transition zone, it's that   00:23:34.160 --> 00:23:40.880 extension of the Kuroshio current. So you could  find leatherbacks in a lot of different spots?   00:23:41.600 --> 00:23:48.320 The nesting beaches are isolated in that area? The  nesting beaches are what unify this population so   00:23:48.320 --> 00:23:54.800 all this all this stuff here. I'll use a slightly  different color. All this is the whole area for   00:23:54.800 --> 00:24:02.960 the nesting beach right there so these areas and  I will also mention that it's a meta population   00:24:03.760 --> 00:24:10.960 unique to any of the leatherback populations in  the world, this population nests twice in a year.   00:24:10.960 --> 00:24:16.240 There is a summer nesting group and a winter  nesting group. Now these are the areas that   00:24:16.240 --> 00:24:23.440 are used by the summer nesting group, but the  winter animals they leave these beaches and   00:24:23.440 --> 00:24:29.200 they use regions down here in the south  Pacific off New Zealand and Australia,   00:24:30.400 --> 00:24:35.600 so you can see that this population is using  lots of different parts of the Pacific ocean.   00:24:37.360 --> 00:24:44.480 That's an incredibly long journey and as they're  migrating, are they just swimming the whole time,   00:24:44.480 --> 00:24:49.200 what do they do? Mostly they're just swimming  the whole time. There is not a lot of   00:24:49.920 --> 00:24:54.720 forging behavior that's going on. Now there  may be some opportunistic bites along the way,   00:24:55.360 --> 00:25:01.440 but pretty much they are moving all the way  across the ocean or to one of these other place   00:25:01.440 --> 00:25:10.480 to get their meal. Now how do you know this  about these turtles? Are you are out there in a   00:25:10.480 --> 00:25:17.520 boat chasing them? No I'm not in a boat chasing  them, so we know this because, many years ago   00:25:18.160 --> 00:25:24.160 I've traveled to these places looking for the  origin of leatherbacks in California. We had some   00:25:24.960 --> 00:25:32.480 evidence from molecular biology in this case  mitochondrial DNA that animals that were found   00:25:32.480 --> 00:25:39.360 stranded in California are likely linked to the  western Pacific. We didn't know where exactly and   00:25:39.360 --> 00:25:46.640 so I put transmitters on these animals at these  different nesting beaches for nearly 10 years.   00:25:46.640 --> 00:25:51.600 So these are satellite transmitters? Correct,  these are satellite link transmitters right and   00:25:51.600 --> 00:25:57.520 they provide essentially a position every day  about where the animals located and that's how   00:25:57.520 --> 00:26:05.520 we're able to figure out where all these different  foraging grounds are. Many people often ask   00:26:05.520 --> 00:26:16.960 well you know if you've got some animal that's  all the way coming all the way over to California,   00:26:16.960 --> 00:26:24.560 why do that there are other places to eat that  are much closer and the reason is because these   00:26:24.560 --> 00:26:29.120 nesting beaches do unify this population. This  is the place they all have to go to at some point   00:26:29.760 --> 00:26:36.000 and when the small turtles leave the beach,  they're only about the size of a silver dollar.   00:26:37.520 --> 00:26:42.880 They get moved by ocean currents primarily  because they're not strong swimmers at that point   00:26:42.880 --> 00:26:48.560 and they can be moved to any of these locations.  And it turns out that there's a longshore current   00:26:48.560 --> 00:26:53.280 along the coast the New Guinea, the New Guinea  coastal current and it switches directions   00:26:54.400 --> 00:27:02.640 with the monsoon. So part of the year that current  moves westward part of the other part of the year   00:27:02.640 --> 00:27:09.680 it moves eastward.These animals don't necessarily  know about these other foraging grounds.   00:27:10.320 --> 00:27:15.200 Once an animal identifies the west coast  the United States as its foraging ground   00:27:15.200 --> 00:27:20.160 that's the place it's going to return to it  shows fidelity to that foraging room just like   00:27:20.160 --> 00:27:31.200 they show fidelity to these nesting beaches So  that is a journey across the whole pacific ocean.   00:27:31.200 --> 00:27:37.120 How many miles will a turtle swim, do your  satellite tags tell you that they swim   00:27:37.680 --> 00:27:46.160 on this journey just to eat jellyfish? That that's  about five to six thousand miles is the trip.   00:27:46.160 --> 00:27:52.640 So the animals that actually do this trip from  the nesting beach to the west coast United States   00:27:54.293 --> 00:27:58.000 is going to take them about 11 to  12 months to make that journey.   00:28:00.080 --> 00:28:08.800 I would assume along the way it's not just an easy  trip? Now the dangers that do occur along the way   00:28:10.480 --> 00:28:17.040 are primarily anthropogenic. So the chief  danger to these animals during this trip   00:28:17.040 --> 00:28:23.280 is being caught in fishing gear. Now most folks  aren't trying to catch leatherback turtles.   00:28:24.400 --> 00:28:30.320 They're not that good to eat? Well some people  eat them, but there's a few people. There's   00:28:30.320 --> 00:28:38.720 some islands off Indonesia that where people have  been hunting leatherbacks for some time. Generally   00:28:39.280 --> 00:28:45.840 the problem is that they get caught in fishing  gear that's intended for other items. For example   00:28:47.280 --> 00:28:54.720 swordfish, long lines that are used to catch  swordfish often snag leatherback turtles and   00:28:54.720 --> 00:29:02.480 if you look at this space right this incredible  distance. All people don't have the same kind of   00:29:04.320 --> 00:29:11.760 mindset with regards to how to use marine  resources or how to protect them. We have the   00:29:11.760 --> 00:29:19.360 Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary which is a  place. It has 6 000 square miles of protected area   00:29:19.360 --> 00:29:26.240 that have different regulations. I can imagine  that a turtle traveling across the ocean   00:29:27.040 --> 00:29:33.760 doesn't know those boundaries? Yes you're right so  the turtle doesn't know any of these boundaries.   00:29:33.760 --> 00:29:40.160 If we were to look at this and from an aspect of  the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) of the various   00:29:40.160 --> 00:29:48.480 nations across the Pacific, you'd see all these  little jigsaw puzzle looking pieces, bits and   00:29:48.480 --> 00:29:56.720 pieces here and there. The leatherback isn't aware  of those kind of political boundaries whatsoever.   00:29:57.680 --> 00:30:02.080 It turns out that the west coast of the united  states is probably the safest place in this entire   00:30:02.080 --> 00:30:09.040 ocean for this animal to occur, because we do  have these kinds of laws and regulations to help   00:30:09.760 --> 00:30:15.280 conserve or protect these animals. For instance  like the Endangered Species Act or the Marine   00:30:15.280 --> 00:30:22.720 Mammal Protection act. Those instruments  are not common currency across the ocean,   00:30:23.360 --> 00:30:28.000 so if we're going conserve leatherback  turtles, we all have to be in this together.   00:30:28.720 --> 00:30:33.280 We can't just have the west coast United  States be a safe place and nothing else because   00:30:33.920 --> 00:30:37.760 the animal's not going to stay there. It's only  going to be here for part of the year and then   00:30:37.760 --> 00:30:45.440 it's going to be out here in this great expanse  here whether it's in waters of other nations or   00:30:45.440 --> 00:30:51.680 it's in what we call the international high  seas which doesn't really belong to anybody. Wow   00:30:51.680 --> 00:30:58.160 so you as you know Scott, the pacific ocean is  huge. In fact if you were to take away the bottom   00:30:58.960 --> 00:31:05.600 and the top and look at that three-dimensional  space, this is the largest habitat on earth,   00:31:05.600 --> 00:31:12.720 the pelagic environment. So many marine mammals  come to Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary   00:31:12.720 --> 00:31:18.560 and they come at different times a year and  travel through. Do these turtles on their   00:31:18.560 --> 00:31:26.160 trans-pacific migration taking advantage  of this huge habitat that has lots of   00:31:26.160 --> 00:31:33.440 animals? Yes absolutely, the leatherback is one  of the greatest divers out there, bar anything.   00:31:36.240 --> 00:31:41.040 They can get down they can dive down to  incredible depths of a thousand meters.   00:31:43.200 --> 00:31:50.160 What you see right here is what we call a v-shaped  dive. This is the kind of dive that occurs quite   00:31:50.160 --> 00:31:57.440 a bit as it moves across the pacific as it is  going down and back up. I mentioned before that   00:31:57.440 --> 00:32:03.040 the leatherback is what we call a mesotherm,  so it's not endothermic, it's not ectothermic   00:32:03.040 --> 00:32:09.760 but it is actually able to adjust its temperature  and it does this with by diving. So this v-shaped   00:32:09.760 --> 00:32:14.800 dive here that you see that goes down to about 200  meters here. The function of this kind of a dive   00:32:14.800 --> 00:32:22.480 is for this animal to get down in some cold water  to cool itself off. Remarkably the leatherback is   00:32:22.480 --> 00:32:29.840 most at risk of overheating so this this dive  right here, this v-shaped dive allows this animal   00:32:29.840 --> 00:32:36.560 to cool off. Leatherback has the greatest range  of any of the sea turtles and part of that is   00:32:36.560 --> 00:32:42.640 attributable to this fact that it can change its  dive shapes as you see here this v dive. How deep   00:32:42.640 --> 00:32:47.680 is it going here at the bottom of its dive? In  this case here, this one's going down to about   00:32:47.680 --> 00:32:54.000 200 meters. So 200 meters is its steepest depth  that you've recorded? No, the deepest depth we've   00:32:54.000 --> 00:33:00.160 ever recorded is over a thousand meters. Wow,  These dives that go down to a thousand meters,   00:33:00.160 --> 00:33:05.360 I can't really tell you what the purpose of those  dives are they don't occur very often, they're   00:33:05.360 --> 00:33:13.280 fairly rare but maybe it's predator avoidance. I  don't know. But this kind of a dive here down to   00:33:13.280 --> 00:33:20.960 200 meters is more common and it occurs often  in the deeper waters off the shelf obviously   00:33:21.680 --> 00:33:28.080 from where we are right now and its function is to  again have this animal get to some cool water. For   00:33:28.080 --> 00:33:32.960 example, I mentioned that one of the foraging  areas that they use is in the south China Sea.   00:33:33.760 --> 00:33:38.720 Well that's very tropical it's very warm there  and so you have to get down to some depth in   00:33:38.720 --> 00:33:47.600 order to find some cool water. That shell is  soft, so there is huge pressure as you move down   00:33:48.160 --> 00:33:54.160 into the ocean, there is just a huge amount of  pressure weighing down on these organisms, so   00:33:54.160 --> 00:34:01.280 having a soft shell is also adaptive to being able  to dive deep correct? Yes, that shell can compress   00:34:01.280 --> 00:34:08.080 and we don't know if they're feeding at those  deep depths. We don't think that they're feeding,   00:34:08.080 --> 00:34:12.960 it doesn't look like it now. There's another  type of dive that is associated with foraging   00:34:12.960 --> 00:34:20.960 it's called the the wiggle or the W dive-- we can  see a image of what that looks like. There you go,   00:34:20.960 --> 00:34:25.680 now this is the kind of stuff that we often  see in the Monterey Bay National Sanctuary,   00:34:25.680 --> 00:34:30.000 where essentially the animal dives down  into about the top of the thermocline   00:34:30.960 --> 00:34:37.520 and then as it moves back out again it's grabbing  jellies on the way back up often on the way back   00:34:37.520 --> 00:34:47.360 up. And is that at a particular time of day.  Yes, there's not a lot of that behavior that   00:34:47.360 --> 00:34:53.280 forging behavior that goes on at night, a  lot of it happens during the early morning   00:34:53.280 --> 00:34:59.520 late afternoon hours, even during the middle  of the day. You would think so again with this   00:34:59.520 --> 00:35:06.880 big three-dimensional environment the largest  habitat on earth, there is a mass migration,   00:35:06.880 --> 00:35:12.560 something we call the deep scattering layer.  Correct. Where layers of organisms dense   00:35:13.440 --> 00:35:20.000 at night will do a diurnal or daily  migration all the way up. This is happening   00:35:20.960 --> 00:35:30.480 worldwide, ocean wide, there is a mass migration  of organisms migrating up. If you were to see them   00:35:30.480 --> 00:35:34.880 diving down at night it makes sense  because they might be feeding on these   00:35:34.880 --> 00:35:41.840 you know nutrient-rich layers. The jellyfish are  going to change their position in the water too   00:35:43.200 --> 00:35:48.160 and part of that is just a matter of for  instance jellies won't be near the surface   00:35:48.160 --> 00:35:53.680 when it's windy because they're getting beat  up by the waves, so they go down and stay   00:35:55.280 --> 00:36:02.400 beneath the waves. After we have a couple really  calm days, then you'll see the jellies at the top,   00:36:02.400 --> 00:36:10.640 you know at the surface. The leatherbacks don't  care, they're eating these jellies typically in   00:36:10.640 --> 00:36:18.080 the upper 20 meters of the water column. Although  this is an animal is well known for, world   00:36:18.080 --> 00:36:23.520 renowned really for its diving abilities when  it's in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary,   00:36:23.520 --> 00:36:29.680 it's just lurking beneath the surface, usually in  the upper five meters of the water column. Here   00:36:29.680 --> 00:36:36.160 we've got some footage of leatherback foraging  just off the coast here of central California.   00:36:37.280 --> 00:36:44.800 You can see that obviously there's quite a few  jellies to choose from here. How it determines   00:36:44.800 --> 00:36:51.200 which one it's going to take, I don't know. But  in this case here, these are large jellyfish,   00:36:52.400 --> 00:36:58.960 large sea nettles to be specific and because  they're so large, this animal's actually got   00:36:58.960 --> 00:37:04.960 to handle them and so in this case here you can  see this animal is scouring out the area beneath   00:37:04.960 --> 00:37:10.800 the belt. This is where the highest calorie  content of the jellyfish is located, is in the   00:37:12.240 --> 00:37:18.000 arms the oral arms, the manubrium, the  gonads. How come they don't get stung?   00:37:18.960 --> 00:37:24.160 Well, I don't know, maybe they do get stuck. Is  there something protecting them in those papillae?   00:37:25.280 --> 00:37:30.000 No I'm not aware about that, but there could  be, I'm just not familiar with. Or maybe it's   00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:33.600 thick enough of the surface  of those papillae that the   00:37:34.160 --> 00:37:41.040 stinging cells and the nematocysts can't make it  through. People often ask me about the stinging   00:37:41.040 --> 00:37:46.880 aspect and I really can't say that I know  how that works with leatherbacks at least.   00:37:48.000 --> 00:37:52.240 So there you go see this in this case this  animal's approaching from the beneath the jelly   00:37:53.280 --> 00:37:58.480 to get that high calorie content  that's located underneath the bell.   00:37:59.920 --> 00:38:05.520 Well this is making me really hungry. Yea, I don't  know, I don't have an appetite for jellies myself. 00:38:07.920 --> 00:38:14.720 Thank you, Scott, as you know Monterey Bay  National Marine Sanctuary is one of the most   00:38:14.720 --> 00:38:21.680 biodiverse places in the world. You can see in  the upper corner here, there's plankton. Plankton   00:38:21.680 --> 00:38:27.840 is the base to all this biodiversity. Plankton  produces one of every breath that we breathe.   00:38:29.680 --> 00:38:37.120 The ocean is so pivotal and so important just like  trees on land, the phytoplankton photosynthesizes   00:38:37.120 --> 00:38:44.720 and creates so much oxygen almost fifty percent.  This is important because the zooplankton come and   00:38:44.720 --> 00:38:52.800 eat those phytoplankton and then it brings marine  mammals and reptiles like your leatherback turtles   00:38:52.800 --> 00:38:57.920 to Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.  Some people would say that the sanctuary   00:38:57.920 --> 00:39:05.280 is the Serengeti of the Sea because it has such  diversity and the jellies are all part of that.   00:39:06.160 --> 00:39:16.240 So can you tell us when those jellies come to  our coast? The jellyfish and other gelatinous   00:39:16.240 --> 00:39:22.480 zooplankton are part of the zooplankton community  obviously and they're here all year round,   00:39:22.480 --> 00:39:29.920 however blooms like this these occur  during the summer months so particularly   00:39:29.920 --> 00:39:36.640 you know by late August and early September, the  biomass of jellies is at its peak at that point   00:39:36.640 --> 00:39:42.400 and that's of course why when leatherbacks  are here to consume these. In this case here,   00:39:42.400 --> 00:39:48.880 these are brown sea nettles. This is the favorite  food of the leatherback turtle and by late summer,   00:39:48.880 --> 00:39:54.880 early fall the biomass is its greatest. The  jellies themselves are their largest. The bell   00:39:54.880 --> 00:40:02.560 diameter maxes out by that time to be about nearly  40 centimeters diameter so it's a very large   00:40:02.560 --> 00:40:09.280 scyphomedusa, you know the classic shape with  the bell and the arms and so forth, hanging below   00:40:09.280 --> 00:40:16.960 the animal. Now they're not a very high calorie  item so you have to eat a lot of them. Fortunately   00:40:17.760 --> 00:40:23.760 the Monterey Bay National Sanctuary has just  incredible amount of brown sea nettles occurring   00:40:23.760 --> 00:40:30.240 here during the summer and fall months. This is  why the leatherbacks are here is to eat those. The   00:40:31.120 --> 00:40:39.440 brown sea nettle is like the favorite food  to this turtle, like dark chocolate is to us.   00:40:40.400 --> 00:40:45.440 It's the favorite food here in the along the west  coast of the United States or the west coast of   00:40:45.440 --> 00:40:52.320 North America. Now other places as I mentioned  this population being somewhat diverse with   00:40:52.320 --> 00:40:57.280 some of them actually using other areas of the  oceans like the south China sea for instance,   00:40:57.280 --> 00:41:01.680 they're not going to find sea nettles there,  they'll find another jellyfish species like   00:41:01.680 --> 00:41:06.880 probably a Rhizostome that in those areas  there's so many jellyfish that they actually   00:41:06.880 --> 00:41:12.160 have fisheries for jellyfish, commercial  fisheries, so people can eat jellyfish as well.   00:41:14.640 --> 00:41:22.400 I don't really find it very appetizing myself  but nevertheless yes, they're eating sea nettles   00:41:22.400 --> 00:41:28.000 here on the west coast. So people when they're  walking the beach I know you can find in the late   00:41:28.000 --> 00:41:34.400 summer and early fall you can see purple striped  jellies you can see the moon jelly Aurelia and   00:41:34.400 --> 00:41:39.680 also these sea nettles washing up. So if you're  ever out walking on the beach make sure you look   00:41:40.400 --> 00:41:46.800 for what's on the beach, That's really tells  you a lot and it would remind you maybe that   00:41:46.800 --> 00:41:50.800 possibly leatherbacks are here off of  Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. 00:42:53.840 --> 00:43:00.240 All right, well that was wonderful  thank you Scott. Thank you Tanzle for   00:43:00.240 --> 00:43:06.160 sharing so much with us about the leatherback  and giving us such an immersive experience.   00:43:08.080 --> 00:43:15.120 I just want to open up for questions, We have a  few questions that have come in and so Scott if   00:43:15.120 --> 00:43:22.160 I could get everyone to get their cameras on.  Looks like we're all here and unmute yourselves 00:43:25.360 --> 00:43:27.760 I'm going to just kick it off with a question   00:43:29.440 --> 00:43:37.840 Scott. This would be for you just about the kind  of populations that are happening with the Pacific   00:43:37.840 --> 00:43:43.760 populations of leatherbacks versus the Atlantic.  Can you tell us a little bit about the status? 00:43:45.840 --> 00:43:52.720 Sure the status in the Pacific is not very good.  There are two populations, an eastern Pacific   00:43:52.720 --> 00:43:59.120 population that's primarily in Costa Rica,  Mexico and then what we saw here the western   00:43:59.120 --> 00:44:04.320 Pacific population and that's the tropical island  states for instance in the western Pacific.The   00:44:05.040 --> 00:44:13.280 eastern Pacific population's thought to have  just maybe about 750 females adult reproductive   00:44:13.280 --> 00:44:21.440 females at the present time and the western  Pacific population is about 1300. In contrast,   00:44:21.440 --> 00:44:28.400 in the northwest Atlantic population, there's  over 20 000. Now quite a bit more in the in the   00:44:28.400 --> 00:44:34.880 Atlantic ocean, but I would just mention that more  most recently in the last five to seven years that   00:44:37.520 --> 00:44:42.480 people have noticed some kind of decline beginning  at some of those beaches in the Atlantic as well   00:44:42.480 --> 00:44:48.640 but clearly the Atlantic population is far more  robust at this time than what's happening in the   00:44:48.640 --> 00:44:56.640 Pacific where both the eastern and western Pacific  populations are an immediate threat of extinction. 00:45:00.080 --> 00:45:06.240 Okay well the the numbers aren't doing so  well here in the Pacific population and and   00:45:06.240 --> 00:45:11.920 are there any additional protections that are  coming on board. We know that these guys are   00:45:11.920 --> 00:45:18.160 federally protected, they're an endangered species  and for NOAA fisheries, they are a Species in the   00:45:18.160 --> 00:45:27.440 Spotlight. Is there anything we're doing off the  west coast here in California? Well yes, the state   00:45:27.440 --> 00:45:33.360 of California has actually taken some steps for  the species to become a candidate for threatened   00:45:33.360 --> 00:45:41.120 or endangered status under California's Endangered  Species Act. So he yet another protection here   00:45:41.120 --> 00:45:49.040 locally for the leatherback and as i mentioned  in the interview with Tanzle, that makes the west   00:45:49.040 --> 00:45:53.760 coast of the united states probably the safest  place in the whole Pacific for a leatherback 00:45:57.040 --> 00:46:05.920 Excellent. I think I was reading that they're  going to be making some kind of in the next year   00:46:05.920 --> 00:46:14.800 or so we should see something look for it in the  news. Terrific, all right well I'm going to go   00:46:14.800 --> 00:46:21.040 ahead and kick it off to Chelsea who's going to  be asking some questions that are coming in from   00:46:21.040 --> 00:46:26.720 the audience. I've been monitoring the chat box or  the question box all evening and you guys have had   00:46:26.720 --> 00:46:32.160 a ton of great questions. I'm sorry in advance  if we're probably not gonna be able to get to   00:46:32.160 --> 00:46:36.960 all of them but hopefully we get a few. So I'm  gonna dive right in. The first one's for Scott.   00:46:38.320 --> 00:46:44.080 I'm gonna combine them a little bit Scott. Why  are turtles so long-lived? Do you know of the   00:46:44.080 --> 00:46:51.120 oldest documented turtle and similarly  maybe why do they travel so far to nest.   00:46:53.360 --> 00:46:59.520 Okay I'll go with the the first one there about  the long lived. I think maybe what some people   00:46:59.520 --> 00:47:05.760 are thinking about are tortoises in that case  like land tortoises which are known to live very   00:47:05.760 --> 00:47:11.920 long lives. In the case of the leatherback turtle,  we really don't know exactly how long they live.   00:47:12.960 --> 00:47:18.800 People have trapped animals for upwards of 30  to 40 years that maybe when they first saw them   00:47:18.800 --> 00:47:25.040 the animal might have been about 20 years old,  so that would mean that maybe a leatherback can   00:47:25.040 --> 00:47:32.000 survive for you know 50 to 60 years. Of course  it's a dangerous world out there in the ocean   00:47:32.000 --> 00:47:37.040 in addition to some of the anthropogenic threats.  There are natural predators as well like sharks   00:47:37.040 --> 00:47:48.400 and orcas and crocodiles. Your last question  about why do they have such a long migration and   00:47:50.480 --> 00:47:53.040 travel so long from Monterey  bay to their nesting beaches.   00:47:53.760 --> 00:47:58.880 Because in this case, the turtles that use  Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary have   00:47:58.880 --> 00:48:05.680 essentially identified that as their foraging  ground. They show fidelity to that and come back   00:48:05.680 --> 00:48:10.800 to this place throughout their lifetime,  even though there are other places closer   00:48:11.520 --> 00:48:18.080 to get a bite, to forage, the animals don't  know about those places and so they come here   00:48:18.080 --> 00:48:23.280 and you see the same thing with fidelity  being displayed to the nesting beach itself.   00:48:25.200 --> 00:48:28.480 The way I've explained it in the past and let  me know if I'm wrong is that it's sort of like   00:48:28.480 --> 00:48:32.400 when the babies are leaving the nesting  beach they go in whatever direction sort   00:48:32.400 --> 00:48:37.520 of makes sense to them at the time and maybe  they end up for a longer journey than others.   00:48:39.600 --> 00:48:44.800 Well actually when they leave the nesting  beaches, there's little hatchlings that they   00:48:44.800 --> 00:48:49.600 get moved around a bunch by ocean currents  and so most of the time they're going to   00:48:49.600 --> 00:48:57.440 get moved into an area where they will starve  frankly. We figure that maybe out of a 1000 eggs   00:48:58.800 --> 00:49:03.920 that maybe one out of those thousand will  actually survive to become an adult animal.   00:49:04.480 --> 00:49:10.560 This is partly why the leatherbacks lay so many  eggs. An individual female will be responsible   00:49:10.560 --> 00:49:18.240 for multiple clutches anywhere from 2 to 3  clutches, up to 10 clutches and each clutch   00:49:18.240 --> 00:49:25.440 has about 70 to 80 eggs in it. So they lay a  lot of eggs because of the very low probability   00:49:25.440 --> 00:49:30.640 of survivorship to adulthood. That's the way  the selection process works for leatherbacks.   00:49:32.080 --> 00:49:38.880 Excellent, thanks for that clarification. Thinking  along the nesting lines, do males ever come ashore   00:49:38.880 --> 00:49:47.760 and similarly, would we ever see females here in  Monterey Bay? Females or males? Sorry, those were   00:49:47.760 --> 00:49:53.440 two questions. First of all, do males ever go  ashore like at the nesting beaches? No, a male   00:49:53.440 --> 00:49:58.400 and the only time a male is down on shore is when  it was that big and it never comes to shore again. 00:50:00.960 --> 00:50:05.120 And then do both males and females  come to Monterey Bay to feed?   00:50:05.840 --> 00:50:12.880 Yes males and females come to Monterey Bay  to forage here. We have sampled males as well   00:50:12.880 --> 00:50:19.680 as females here. They also engaged in that  migration. Again those animals have probably   00:50:19.680 --> 00:50:23.760 likely identified this as their foraging  ground, so this is where they come to be.   00:50:25.760 --> 00:50:31.600 All of the reproductive activity, the mating and  things like that happens over on the other side.   00:50:32.480 --> 00:50:36.560 We've never on all the years we've done  aerial surveys and sampled leatherbacks,   00:50:36.560 --> 00:50:42.800 we've never seen any mating activity on  the foraging ground. They're pretty clean.   00:50:44.320 --> 00:50:49.200 They're just here to eat. Great so I'm gonna  switch it up and pass it over to Tanzle. We   00:50:49.200 --> 00:50:54.000 had a lot of comments and praise for the  animations this evening. Lots of people   00:50:54.000 --> 00:50:58.080 had questions about how that was done. So  specifically, I think this would go to Ed.   00:50:58.720 --> 00:51:03.520 How long does it take to make and  animate that 3d model of the sea turtle?   00:51:05.680 --> 00:51:11.120 Well, for this one specifically there was a lot  of iteration going on with it. First it was nice   00:51:11.680 --> 00:51:22.320 first of all great having Stacy champion  this relationship with NOAA and Lisa.   00:51:22.320 --> 00:51:26.800 We've been working for a while together on  all different kinds of things and this is   00:51:26.800 --> 00:51:30.000 just some of the things that we've  worked on together and so there's   00:51:30.640 --> 00:51:37.520 there's a lot of other things that we've been  researching and experimenting with, as far as   00:51:38.880 --> 00:51:48.240 how can we especially with something like like the  leatherback turtle, which is this elusive creature   00:51:48.880 --> 00:51:55.680 that you really you'd never stand next to it in  real life, unless it was a very rare occasion,   00:51:55.680 --> 00:52:00.880 maybe on a beach somewhere where there you  know was very protected so to be able to just   00:52:00.880 --> 00:52:07.040 have the experience of standing there around  it for a while. There was a lot of conversation   00:52:07.040 --> 00:52:11.600 that happened with Scott when he came and saw  the first iterations of it where it was like   00:52:12.720 --> 00:52:20.240 I haven't been able to look at this long sort of  in the swimming state. There's some interesting   00:52:22.240 --> 00:52:29.680 concepts that we're going over especially ---- how  does it move in the water really?What's going on   00:52:29.680 --> 00:52:35.120 with the back flippers? Are they steering? Are  they propelling it? Scott was like yeah you know   00:52:36.160 --> 00:52:39.520 there's some question about exactly  how it does all of that stuff because   00:52:40.160 --> 00:52:44.480 a lot of the camera work is really sort of focused  on where it's going and this sort of idea of   00:52:44.480 --> 00:52:51.680 capturing it from every angle and how it moves  through the water. It took us looking at at what   00:52:51.680 --> 00:52:56.960 other turtles do, but but it's so unique. It's  not like most other turtles that you think of. 00:53:03.440 --> 00:53:10.080 As far as animating it, the actual animation of it  there's there's a lot of techniques that go into   00:53:10.720 --> 00:53:15.680 building sort of the internal rig for it and  what that should look like and what we need   00:53:15.680 --> 00:53:20.800 to articulate as well as when you saw sort of the  see-through version of it, we wanted to make sure   00:53:20.800 --> 00:53:26.720 that we could have sort of a transparent version  that had all of these elements to it. The swimming   00:53:26.720 --> 00:53:33.760 is kind of animation part of it that probably took  the least amount of time than sort of building   00:53:33.760 --> 00:53:38.720 the model, making sure that the skin looked  correct. We also built a skeleton inside of it   00:53:38.720 --> 00:53:44.720 and maybe Stacy could speak real quick because it  might come up and other things is how we managed   00:53:44.720 --> 00:53:49.360 to do the skull which you saw a little bit of we  saw the brain but the actual skull that was in it,   00:53:50.800 --> 00:53:55.840 how we came up with that you might  want to speak to that real quick. 00:53:58.960 --> 00:54:06.480 We were fortunate enough to get access to Moss  Landing Marine Labs Jim Harvey through Scott,   00:54:06.480 --> 00:54:15.600 and he lent us several of his skulls. We spent an  afternoon photographing the skulls in a process   00:54:15.600 --> 00:54:22.800 called photogrammetry. So Ed's got a printout  right there that we made from that process so when   00:54:23.520 --> 00:54:29.440 you see the skull in there, we have versions of it  that are actually composites of real photographs.   00:54:30.640 --> 00:54:36.560 The process of photogrammetry is like stitching  together hundreds of photographs to make an actual   00:54:36.560 --> 00:54:43.440 3d object. When you ask how long it took, this  was as Ed said, it was an iterative process of   00:54:43.440 --> 00:54:49.200 going back and forth with the marine biologists  and having them look at what we made and and   00:54:49.200 --> 00:54:55.040 having them say well maybe or you know maybe a  little bigger this way a little smaller that way.   00:54:58.240 --> 00:55:03.360 I can't speak to the technical building of it but  this this is a relationship that's been going on,   00:55:03.920 --> 00:55:13.440 these conversations have been going on for a  couple years. I'm gonna hit it back to Scott   00:55:13.440 --> 00:55:20.640 and I'm gonna try for the sake of time to combine  many people's questions into one or two. So people   00:55:20.640 --> 00:55:26.720 are very concerned about all the different threats  to leatherbacks and we now know that they are   00:55:27.360 --> 00:55:34.000 a declining species and that our current pacific  population is declining and so people want to know   00:55:34.000 --> 00:55:40.000 what the what the greatest impacts or the greatest  threats are to them. So for instance people have   00:55:40.000 --> 00:55:45.520 mentioned things such as sea level rise on  their nesting beaches oil spills of course,   00:55:46.080 --> 00:55:51.680 warming waters in the pacific potentially  affecting their migration, ingesting plastic   00:55:51.680 --> 00:56:01.840 and vessel strikes. Can you kind of sum up what  the greatest threats would be to leatherbacks? 00:56:04.820 --> 00:56:08.960 At this point a lot of them are  really anthropogenic threats. Now   00:56:09.520 --> 00:56:16.160 you think about it, if the leatherback has been  on the planet for about 70 to 80 million years,   00:56:16.160 --> 00:56:20.880 it's seen climate change before, it's seen  meteor you know meteor striking the planet,   00:56:21.920 --> 00:56:28.720 it's seen lots of natural calamities. Like i  mentioned, it has some natural predators. But the   00:56:28.720 --> 00:56:34.800 decline that we're seeing now is is recent  and it's really an anthropogenic cause.   00:56:36.640 --> 00:56:44.160 We mentioned fishery bycatch that happens. This  is a trans boundary species and the fact that   00:56:44.160 --> 00:56:49.200 it doesn't have the same kind of protections  across the Pacific as it does here off the west   00:56:49.200 --> 00:56:57.520 coast the United States is a big problem.  Ingestion of plastic likely plays a role,   00:56:57.520 --> 00:57:04.560 to what extent it actually affects this animal  at a population level, I don't know. Some of   00:57:04.560 --> 00:57:11.040 the nesting beaches are not really considered  safe, so we've got colleagues for instance in   00:57:12.480 --> 00:57:17.360 Papua Barat Indonesia and in Solomon  Islands and Papua New Guinea where some   00:57:17.360 --> 00:57:24.240 of the beaches are protected and monitored,  but that's not the case throughout the whole   00:57:24.240 --> 00:57:30.800 nation or throughout all the beaches that the  animal might visit. There's people poaching eggs.   00:57:31.440 --> 00:57:36.320 Some cases people actually kill adult animals  that come up on the beach for the meat itself   00:57:36.880 --> 00:57:44.480 so that's another that's another reason. Things  like climate change is and potential sea level   00:57:44.480 --> 00:57:52.000 rise is a threat in that the population is so  much lower than it used to be. If it was a robust   00:57:52.000 --> 00:57:58.480 population, you know leatherbacks are got a bunch  of tricks you know. They for instance they don't   00:57:58.480 --> 00:58:04.320 do like put all their eggs in one basket if  you will. They will occasionally put some   00:58:04.320 --> 00:58:12.400 nests in some other places, with the idea being  with the primary beach becomes unfavorable for   00:58:12.400 --> 00:58:16.240 reproduction that maybe some of these other  places where they've got a few other nests,   00:58:16.240 --> 00:58:23.200 those will work. That did work for them over time  when the population was much larger but now we've   00:58:23.200 --> 00:58:29.200 got a smaller population, not as many, there's  not many as many cards in the deck if you will   00:58:29.200 --> 00:58:34.160 as there was in the past. I know that  was kind of a long-winded answer but   00:58:34.880 --> 00:58:39.840 most of the threats these days that are  really putting the population at risk   00:58:39.840 --> 00:58:46.160 are anthropogenic threats. On that note, I  think this has to be our last question for time,   00:58:47.040 --> 00:58:51.120 similarly a lot of people want to know what  they can do to help protect leatherbacks?   00:58:53.280 --> 00:58:58.880 Yes there's a few things you can do to protect  leatherbacks for certain. I think for first   00:58:58.880 --> 00:59:05.440 and foremost is become an educated consumer of  seafood. Try to learn where your seafood comes   00:59:05.440 --> 00:59:12.080 from how it's caught. You know if it becomes a  little bit too difficult, I think you could always   00:59:13.520 --> 00:59:18.800 you know just rely on consuming U.S.  caught seafood that comes with a side   00:59:18.800 --> 00:59:22.800 dish of the Endangered Species Act and the  Marine Mammal Protection Act, rather than   00:59:22.800 --> 00:59:31.840 a side dish of dead turtle or dead  dolphin and support groups and nonprofits. 00:59:36.480 --> 00:59:43.120 Did we lose Scott? It looks like it, but an  opportune time because I think we were just   00:59:43.120 --> 00:59:47.840 wrapping up. I'm going to assume he was saying  support groups like nonprofit organizations   00:59:47.840 --> 00:59:53.680 like maybe the Monterey Bay Aquarium and others  that get information about seafood sustainability.   00:59:54.400 --> 01:00:01.200 I'd like to give a shout out to Upwell.org who's  been a partner in promoting this webinar with us   01:00:01.920 --> 01:00:08.000 and Upwell and NOAA fisheries. Upwell  is a great organization that works on   01:00:08.000 --> 01:00:16.400 behalf of turtles and specifically leatherback  turtles as well. Everyone thank you so much,   01:00:17.600 --> 01:00:23.680 I realized when we were getting on this  webinar that tonight is the Dodgers and the   01:00:24.480 --> 01:00:31.600 Giants game, it's the 5th game and so I think it  is so wonderful that all of you came out tonight   01:00:31.600 --> 01:00:37.840 to learn about leatherback turtles and to be  with us, we really really appreciate it. So,   01:00:39.520 --> 01:00:46.240 go Giants. Go giants and I think that the other  few hundred people are probably watching it.   01:00:46.240 --> 01:00:55.840 You as registrants will receive the recording at  a later date, so you can pass it on to friends.   01:00:56.720 --> 01:01:09.760 All right thanks everyone. Have a good night  bye bye. Leatherback turtle day is tomorrow.