SIO375: Why Are Whales Attacking Rich People Boats?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:16 Thomas: And welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 375. What a number. I'm Thomas Smith, and today's episode is a delight. Be speaking with Dr. Heidi Pearson, a marine biologist whose paper, Whales in the Carbon Cycle, caught our eye here. In addition to that, this conversation covers so much more. For one, I asked her about the whale attacks you might have heard about. I had only seen peripherally that whales were attacking perhaps some rich people's yachts or something, so I asked her about that.

Then we got to talking about animal intelligence and evolution and brain size of different animals. Really fascinating stuff. Before getting to the paper itself, talking about the carbon cycle and some really interesting things about the life of a whale that you might not have thought about. That have implications going forward for global warming. More than anything, Pearson was incredibly kind and just nice to listen to. Someone who sounds like she just loves what she does.

And I it really infectious and just incredibly so joyful to listen to. So with that said, let's get over to the interview. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did. And coincidentally, actually, are just now, this episode's a little late because we're heading to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

I actually mentioned it in the end of the interview that only was it coincidence because we had just planned it when this episode happened, but also now on release, it was the next one up in the queue as I'm trying to get prepped to leave for a birthday trip for little Phoebster. Her. Turning six in a few days. You believe it? Well, anyway, I thought that was just a sweet little coincidence. Now for reals, let's get over to the interview. Joined by Dr. Heidi Pearson. How you doing today?

0:01:56 Heidi: I'm doing well, thank you. Thanks for having me on the show.

0:01:59 Thomas: Oh, thanks for coming on. I'm excited to talk about whales. First and foremost, I hear they're attacking rich people. I don't know. Have you heard about that? Do they talk to you about that.

0:02:09 Heidi: I assume you're referring to the orcas that have been attacking sailboats in the Mediterranean.

0:02:16 Thomas: I'm sure people have asked you about it.

0:02:19 Heidi: It is a hot topic, but I will say that that is a very rare and isolated behavior, and it's not typical behavior of orcas worldwide. For example, our orcas here in Alaska, they don't bother boats at all.

0:02:35 Thomas: Sure. You're just saying that to get us to come to Alaska. I are that's what an orc would say, we're totally safe, we don't have to often attack people. No, I'm just teasing. It struck me as the kind of thing where like it happened like, like, you know, more than one time. So the internet was like, "Well, this is now common. This is regular, right? This is, this isn't, we, we tend to do that." Was it just a couple little incidents that blew up?

0:02:38 Heidi: I Well, it's been a behavior that one specific pod in the Mediterranean has been displaying for about three years or so. And it is, it is an issue in that part of the world. And there's no easy answer to it. But it is, as I said, an isolated, insulated behavior in one part of the world. And it's something that scientists in that region of the world are really looking into to figure out why these orca are doing it and some preventive measures to protect the boats that are being damaged and also the orca themselves.

0:03:07 Thomas: Oh, we think I speak for the show and we tend be pretty like not super on the side of the rich people's yachts on this show, just politically, but it's cool, you don't have to weigh in either way, but, but but yeah, I'm, I'm more interested in like, are the whales going to be okay? Cause I feel like we're on on their territory. Like, I feel like that's, you know, if they want to attack the boats, like that, to me, that strikes me as like, yeah, okay. That's, they live there, right? I mean, come on.

0:04:01 Heidi: And that is true of all vessels on the ocean. We are, so to speak, in the territory of of all the marine life that lives there from the anemones on up to the whales?

0:04:08 Thomas: Yeah. I did not know that it's like a one pod thing. Like how, so maybe that's a cool way to kind of enter into some of the, some knowledge here. So you can identify or scientists identify like, Yeah, it's this one pod. Do they all have the same tattoo or something? And they're going in with baseball bats to these boats, or I didn't know it was that isolated to the point where they know for sure it's like this one pod. Could you tell me a little bit about how that works?

0:04:42 Heidi: Well, first of all, killer whales mostly live in tight family units, and they are a matriarchal society. I mean, they are typically led by an older female. And in a pod, you will have the matriarchy, the older female and her descendants. And killer whales are fairly easily easily recognizable by distinctive markings they have on their dorsal fins. They get natural nicks and notches through time on their fin. And they also have these saddle patches. So these kind of light gray colors at the base of their dursal fin, which are also distinctive. And so we can recognize individuals and track them through time by obtaining photographs of these distinctive markings.

Andso with all of the video and imagery that's come out of this part of the world with the orca attacking mostly the sailboats in this case, it's been documented that it is really a handful of killer whales in this one pod. And the other thing about killer whales or orca that's so cool is they are, they're so intelligent. You know, we know a lot about their complex cognitive abilities. They're smart. They figure things out and they learn from each other. That's called social learning. And so what we think what's happening here with these orca is that one of these orcas, for whatever reason, we'll probably never know why, started attacking boats, interacting with these boats. And then her other pod members, we think it was a female that started this behavior. Her other pod numbers learned from her and then the behavior just spreads.

And that's what we call a cultural tradition. And we have seen this before with other cultural behaviors in killer whales, and they can be quick to catch on, and then sometimes they can be quick -to -die -out. And so what I'm hoping in this case is that this behavior will die out sooner rather than later. But we'll have to wait and see.

0:05:17 Thomas: Hmm.

0:05:42 Thomas: Troublemakers.

0:05:51 Thomas: Yeah. Wow.

0:06:46 Thomas: That is so fascinating. It's just so funny to to think about, you could imagine like Reagan Republicans going really nuts about the activity in Orca Wales. You know, like we better fight. Are they doing drugs too? You know those whales? I don't know. There's one bad one of them and it does sound like they're markings. It is tattoos. It's gang tattoos. That's it. I'm blowing the lid on this whole thing. This is a gang of orcas. We learning thing, how distinct is that among the animal kingdom? I mean, obviously there's always going to be some combination of learned behavior and just evolved, whatever instinctual behavior, but it feels like with most animals, usually we put it in the terms of like, oh yeah, see, they have an instinct to do this because of such and such, you Know, adaptation, but that must be really fascinating to study something where it's like, no, this is a fad. So this orca did did it on TikTok and then all the other orcas saw it. And so they're doing it too. That must be really interesting to study that.

0:06:55 Heidi: Oh, gosh.

0:07:37 Heidi: Yes. And it tends to be the more intelligent animals, larger -brained animals that show this social learning. So many cetaceans, so cetacens being whales and dolphins, learn from each other. Primates also learn from Each other. Some birds, hyenas, elephants, for example, learn from Each other. And that that's a fast way for them to figure out how to solve problems in their natural world. You know, they learn from someone else in their group instead of having to figure it out on their own?

0:07:55 Thomas: Yeah.

0:08:11 Thomas: I remember there was a short story. Oh, I think it's a Ted Chiang short story where it was just written from the perspective of, I don't know, some animal, it might've been a bird or something. And the whole, it was anyway, the only reason I bring it up is it was a, a short little little interesting tale that was like contrasting how we look for intelligent life on other planets. And essentially the point of it was they haven't even, these humans haven't even seen this intelligent life. On earth, they haven'T even discovered us. You know, that was kind of the point -of -view it was written from. And I found it really fascinating. And do you think maybe most people don't really recognize how intelligent a lot of animals on this planet are already? You know? Do you think that's kind of something that goes under the radar for most people?

0:08:51 Heidi: Do. I do, and that's one area of study that I've been long interested in is the intelligence of non -human animals, and I've done quite a bit of work with great apes, so chimpanzees, for example, and cetaceans, who are two of the largest brained creatures on earth other than humans, and I think animals are probably a lot more intelligent than we even know or give them credit for because we're, we're totally different species trying to assess intelligence of totally different animal. It's, you know, it's hard enough to assess intelligence in our own species amongst humans, let alone trying to understand it in non -humans. So I think we have a lot to learn from animals.

0:09:02 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah.

0:09:36 Thomas: Yeah, for sure. Well, on I know this is a totally, totally out and backwards how I'm doing this, but now I am curious, you mentioned some of the work you did. Do you want to give people maybe more of a sense of your background and kind of your areas of study over the years?

0:09:49 Heidi: So, I started with marine mammal work when I was an undergrad at Duke University. I did some work at the Duke Marine Lab looking at dolphin associations. So this was back in, I'm going to date myself here, but this was back in 1996 when we were still collecting dolphin photo identification images with slide and film. And so I spent a lot of time looking at slides with a magnifying glass over a light board to try to match up individuals and figure out who was associating with who, basically looking at friendships amongst bottlenose dolphins. And then from there, I went on to Texas A&M for my graduate work. And I first looked at sea otter behavioral ecology in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Our team developed a way to identify sea otters based on distinctive nose scars, which was pretty exciting. And then I did some work studying the territorial behavior of male sea otter. And sea oters are really great species to study for behavior of marine mammals because they spend a lot of time at the surface.

So you can actually see them more than you can other animals such as dolphins and whales, which I went to study next. So I studied dusky dolphins in New Zealand as the PhD part of my graduate studies at Texas A&M. And there I really dug into their societies and their friendships, how they interact with one another. I also looked at human impacts on dusky dolphins to see if the mussel farming industry and their habitat was having an effect on the the dolphins.

And then fast forward to my first job after I earned my PhD, I started working with humpback whales off of New England. I was the assistant director of a small nonprofit, the Whale Center of New Zealand. And looking back, it wasn't by plan, but I kind of went from small to large with marine mammals. I started with sea otters, which are the smallest marine mammal. And now I'm working with humpback whales, which are one of the largest marine mammals.

And then I took this position at University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau 12 years ago now. It was just an incredible opportunity to come to Southeast Alaska to teach in marine biology at the university and also to continue my work with humpbacks whales and other marine mammals, and so here we are.

0:10:26 Thomas: Yeah.

0:12:28 Thomas: And speaking of the size, one thing I was curious about after the last question was, you talked about big brain animals. How much does the literal size correlate with intelligence? Because, you know, you mentioned birds were one of the examples and they're pretty smart and they have usually pretty small brains, I would think. Is that like a term that doesn't literally mean, you or what can you tell me about that?

0:12:54 Heidi: And And so bird brains is a total misnomer because some birds, especially parrots, the corvids, which are jays and crows and ravens and their relatives, they actually are very smart. And they have relatively large brains for their body size. And so that's what we need to do. When we look at brain size, you have to scale it to the body. But then once an animal gets so big, like a whale, their brain stops scaling with their their body size, because they've evolved to be large for other reasons. And their head, their skull can only get so big. So relative brain size is one measure of intelligence, but it's not the only measure. And again, it doesn't work when you get to very large animals like whales.

0:13:42 Thomas: Interesting. Yeah. One hand relative to body size, okay, that kind of makes sense. On the other hand, does it make sense? Because it's like, if I, you know, and I know it's not a perfect analogy, but if I'm trying to think about computers or something, I think like, like, okay, there's, uh, if we, if we have the capability of making a chip that is, you, unit of measurement of, uh, effective of powerful, um, it matter so much the relative size of that to the computer it's in.

Is it the kind of thing where it's like the brain needs so much power taken up with manipulating and and, using that giant body and so therefore the scaling kind of matters, or because going on there with the ratio of brain size to body size, that would effectively mean something with a tiny, tiny brain could be perhaps just as intelligent as something with the gigantic brain, in a way that, you know, we don't see with like our technology, with like our computer technology, that would never really make sense, right?

I mean, if we had a whole room full of a computer, it would be much more powerful than a tiny, tiny computer in a calculator or something, whatever. Does that make sense?

0:14:45 Heidi: Does, but we can't really compare something like a computer to a living animal. So takes a lot of energy to power the brain. And so that's the thinking here is that if an animal is going to invest energy in having an extra large brain, bigger than it really needs to power its body, that extra mass of the brain is used for complex processing because the brain mass, that extra mass is going to contain more neurons, which can aid in more complex processing. And And so if an animal has invested in this very energetically expensive organ to have it extra large, it must have some function.

And there's some other nuances in terms of the fine scale anatomy that you can look at of brains of different species, which are considered more or less intelligent, which bear that out. But again, we don't just want to think of animals in terms OF their intelligence, because because of course, each animal has evolved to be as intelligent as it needs to be to live in its ecosystem and to exist. And so there's kind of a fine line there when you think about intelligence, because I don't want to just say only intelligent species matter. All species matter. It's just some have invested more in that expensive brain organ. In.

0:14:49 Thomas: Mm-hmm. -mm. Mm. Sure, sure. Right, right.

0:16:13 Thomas: Sure. I mean there's a broad philosophical topic there, absolutely. It reminds me of a lot of the skeptics in the audience that remember the myth that, you know, oh, you know humans only use 10 % of their brain, and how silly that is, because like, well, of course, we wouldn't, that wouldn't possibly be true, because as you say, it's so expensive to power this damn thing. I gotta eat so much food to keep this brain even working at any sort of level. It's not very good, and so the idea that we just carry around this massive, expensive thing that takes all this power just, you know, and use 10 % of it is very silly. Yeah. Okay. That's really interesting. Is there any more there that might, audience might find fascinating in terms of your when you studied these different intelligent animals? Are there any examples or things that stick out to you from your experience that be interesting to

0:16:38 Heidi: Right, right, One thing that I've looked at with the dusky dolphins and I'm continuing to look at here with the humpback whales, again, is their social relationships or their friendships. And one thing we do find in these animals that are more cognitively complex is that they know individuals and they remember them and they can form these Long-term bonds. And that's all within the society, which is called a fission fusion society. And that is what humans have. So if you think about how you go about your daily life, you are in different groups with different people. You associate with certain people for certain things. Some people you are friends with, but you might not see for a long time. You might have a best friend, et cetera. And we are seeing the same types of things in dolphins and whales.

And so that's one of the things I'm looking at is through photo identification, just identifying an individual through distinctive markings like those saddle patches and nicks and notches I talked about with the orca. Well, we have other reliable identification markers for other cetaceans. And so by going out and doing these photo ID surveys and determining who is here, when, and who are they with, we can uncover all of these details about their societies.

And that's something really exciting to me because when I look at an individual humpback whale, for example. I know not only who she is, but I know who some of her best friends are. And I think that's really exciting to think about these animals in a very social context that their societies are probably not too unlike our own human societies.

0:17:20 Thomas: Yeah.

0:18:42 Thomas: That is interesting to think about. What do do you think you think the nature of some of those relationships are? It's I hard as a human, you Know, obviously, when you asked me to think about our examples, it'S like, okay, yeah, I got different people I talked to or work with for different things. What what kinds of activities are they doing? You know, I mean that they're not literally talking to each other? I don't think are they? Are they kind of talking? Are they having a conversation? What does it mean to be friends? I guess in that sense? I'm curious.

0:19:06 Heidi: One thing that we have found with our dusky dolphin work in New Zealand, and this was the work of myself and then some of of my other colleagues from Texas A &M, is that they between a year -round habitat off Kaikoura, and then some of them move about 300 kilometers to the north during the winter where they forage. And when they are in this winter habitat, they are not mating. It's more Foraging. And then when when they're off that Kaikoura habitat, they're foraging, but they're also mating and socializing, et cetera. But what we found is that some individuals that are foraging partners in this wintertime habitat have also been found to be working together in these mating groups off Kaikoura. So I think one of the functions of these friendships or long-term bonds is to be more more efficient hunters to, you know, work together so that they can get their food more easily.

So think of it like a team. You know, you have a basketball team. They're really effective at working together and hopefully winning. Well, it's the same thing with what we're seeing in dolphins and I think humpback whales too. If they spend more time with each other, they get to know each other better and they can work together more efficiently to cooperatively forage.

0:19:32 Thomas: Is. Hmm.

0:20:26 Thomas: A sense of these populations. Know some of these animals, some of them are, I imagine, endangered, right? I mean, I see from the study we're going to talk about, it seems as though, you lot of the whale population was taken out in the 18th, 19th centuries. Give me a sense of these populations that you're talking about. Is it the kind of thing where you're able to focus in on one small community or is it such that there's just there's not even that many in the in the whole ocean? So it's the kind of thing where you can track them easily.

0:20:53 Heidi: You're correct that the so -called great whales, which are sperm whales, and then all of the baleen whales, so whales that have baleene plates instead of teeth, they were severely decimated during industrial whaling, as you said, from the 18th on up to the 20th century. And some whale populations like the blue whales, for example, in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, their populations were decimated by 99%. I mean, that's just incredible, a number of individual blue whales that were killed. Other populations were also severely hit, many of them are now starting to recover. So I'm studying humpback whales in the North Pacific. We have this broad North Pacific humpback whale population.

And the animals I see up here in Juneau, Alaska during the summer are here on their feeding grounds. They are here during the summer months to feed primarily on herring. They also eat krill. And then during the winter months, they are migrating down to their breeding grounds, either Hawaii or Mexico, and they're fasting when they're on their breeding grounds. So when they're up here in Southeast Alaska, their main job is to eat because they have a few months to put on all of the energy stores, which they store in blubber or fat, that they need to sustain them while they are fasting down on the breeding grounds. And so as far as their population, the overall North Pacific population of humpback whales is roughly 25 ,000 or so.

And the portion that comes to Southeast Alaska is probably 3 ,000 more or less. We're actually working up the data now to get more of a handle on those population numbers. But then narrowing in further to my study site here in Juneau, Alaska, I have over 200 hundred individual whales in my long-term photo ID catalog that I have identified over my 12 years of study. On any given day, we probably have anywhere from 12 to 30 humpback whales in my study site.

And my study side is actually fairly small. The bounds are dictated by an area that I can reliably cover in a day -long survey. And so if you think about it, in this relatively small area, so my surveys maybe will travel 50 to 75 miles. We kind of do this circular route around So in those 50 to 70 miles, we're seeing anywhere from maybe 12 to 30 humpback whales each time. So it's actually quite a bit

0:21:23 Thomas: Wow. Oh, wow. Yeah.

0:23:43 Heidi: Of a pumpback whales in this small area.

0:23:46 Thomas: That's really I mean, people people go on touristy things and hope to catch a glimpse of maybe one, you one whale. I mean, so are you just all the time you're just seeing whales, you're waving to them, you're getting to see these really massive, majestic creatures?

0:24:00 Heidi: Job. It's definitely one of the perks of my position. And we know these whales because they have high site fidelity. So many of these whales come back to Juneau year after year. And amazingly, some of them are feeding in the same spot year after years. But we have others that move in and out as well. So we have a core group, I would say of about maybe 30 that are here reliably during the summer. And then we have other whales that move In -N -Out as well, which makes it really exciting in terms of looking at these association patterns.

0:24:01 Thomas: Yeah.

0:24:36 Thomas: I imagine there's a lot of excitement among the whale community. Oh, did you see the new kid in school? They're moved in. What are the lifespans we're talking about here? I mean you've talked about 12 years identifying, you know, different whales. How long do they live?

0:24:40 Heidi: Yeah.

0:24:49 Heidi: They live, I mean, definitely more than 50 years and up to 80. I believe 80 something is about the record we have so far for humpback whales, you know, so it's a human, it's like a human lifespan.

0:24:52 Thomas: Wow. That's crazy. Yeah, yeah, it is. That's as old as our president. We could have a President Whale Biden in there. That's crazy. Yeah. Well, maybe now's a good time just to actually transition into the study that we want to talk about. I was going to make a joke earlier that must it be really cold in Alaska, but global warming has taken care of that for you. So that's probably a lot better. And then I realized, oh, yeah, that's a little bit related to the topic here. Can you tell us about the, introduce us to the study about whales and the carbon cycle?

0:25:32 Heidi: And so you mentioned warming of Alaska, which we do take very seriously. We are, you know, we're seeing it before our eyes with the glaciers receding. And so one of the the personal experiences I had, which got me interested in whales and climate change and whales' rule in the carbon cycle, was watching a in Juneau called Mendenhall Glacier shrink. I mean, before my very eyes. I drive by it almost every day. You can see it right from our main road in Juneaux. And year after year, it's receding, it's shrinking. And when you live in Alaska, I think you're closer to climate change maybe than in some other places. And so that got me thinking about the connection between whales and climate change? Because of course, whales are being affected by changing seas. But also, what is the role of whales in maintaining healthy oceans and potentially playing a big role in the carbon cycle? And so that's how this line of research got started, just because I feel closer to climate change after living here in Alaska.

0:25:37 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, it's it's honestly, I find it really sad to see those massive glaciers, you know, breaking away and all that. And I don't know. I, you know, I'm not a scientist. I don'T know how much of that is like, some, some of it's somewhat of a normal annual cycle. But I get the sense that, you know, obviously, we're dealing with way more than that currently, right?

0:27:00 Heidi: There, of course there's going going to be natural glacier recession because we're still coming out of the effects from the last little ice age. But the rate at which the glaciers are receding is more than would be expected under natural conditions.

0:27:19 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. So was this? Something largely driven by you, like this, study this effort or, the wanting to look into this, you know, was that largely kind your idea to focus on this, or was that just a me misunderstanding?

0:27:30 Heidi: A great question. So let me clarify. So that's what got me personally interested in the question. And then I started reading about the work of others that had already started to look at this question. So one of my good colleagues, Joe Roman, for example, he developed the whale pump hypothesis. He put out a paper in 2010, which briefly states that whales have an important role in ecosystem functioning because they produce a large amount of waste, which is whale poop. And this whale poop has a lot of nutrients in it that fertilizes the ocean and causes phytoplankton to grow, helps to maintain healthy food webs. And then others following off of Joe's work have then taken it a step further, talking about the potential carbon benefits of the whales stimulating the food web and causing more phytoplancton to grow. So there's suite of papers that came out around the year 2010 or so. So interestingly, I moved to Alaska in 2011. So kind of the timing of all of this was coming together to get me interested. And then I started reaching out to other folks working in the area and it's evolved from there.

0:27:40 Thomas: Hmm.

0:28:49 Thomas: Yeah, one sense, it seems like, okay, how much impact could like an individual organism have on something as large as the climate, as large at the ocean? On the other hand, these are some gigantic freaking creatures, so, so, um, is that kind of counterintuitive, or would, was that something that was kind of obvious to you, like, no, have a big impact, they're, they're massive, you creatures, know, talk about the kind of, just the, I don't know, the biomass, the actual size we're talking about here.

0:29:15 Heidi: Yes. Well, whales are the largest animals to have ever existed on the planet, including the dinosaurs. So blue whales arethe largest animal ever. And I think, you know, what a privilege for us as humans to share the earth with blue whales, the largest animal ever in existence.

0:29:21 Thomas: Yeah okay here's here's I'm sorry to interrupt, but I was just telling my kids that the other day, and because my uh my my my four-year-old got it in his mind that, um, he told me that giants don't exist because they were too big, so they're extinct. And I said, what, what are you talking about? He said, yeah, they, they're distinct because any, any reasoned that, you know, dinosaurs, they're instinct, they were really big, they must have gone extinct because they were real big. Never told, told him why they've gone extinct, but you know, kids, they don't, they're four, he's four, he doesn't remember.

And so he had reasoned like, yeah, no, really, really big things go extinct. And then I said, oh yeah, well, I think I saw that actually blue whales are the biggest creature to ever exist, the biggest animal to ever exist. And then, I was going to ask you about that, but I was so embarrassed that, oh great, did I see a meme that's totally wrong or something? I didn't want to like ask you something and you'd be like, no that's stupid actually. Actually. So that's actually true. I'm so glad that a fascinating internet thing I saw was actually true, that they are the biggest organism ever to live on the earth so far as we know.

0:29:56 Heidi: Yeah.

0:30:31 Heidi: They And then at the same time, I think we have a deep responsibility to keep this giant, beautiful creature from going extinct. You know, because they, they still are, their numbers are very low compared to what they were pre whaling. And so to kind of answer your question further, whales are big, but what we're looking at in the paper, you mentioned looking at the potential carbon effects of whales is that their potential, we believe on ecosystems and generally is, is quite large if we allow them to recover.

0:30:41 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:31:09 Heidi: Because as I mentioned with the blue whales in Antarctica, they currently number about 1 % of what they were previously. Other populations are not as dire, but collectively we have way fewer whales on the earth now than we did 100 or 200 years ago. So if we allow them to recover, their ecosystem benefits are going to be much larger. And then one of the things we're looking at is what are these carbon benefits? Could they actually play a role in capturing and sequestering carbon?

0:31:44 Thomas: And that topic, what are, I mean, are there good efforts that are effective efforts that ARE being made to restore these populations? What's the kind of the state of that.

0:31:54 Heidi: Are. So in the U.S., we have the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which has been in existence since 1972, I believe. And it gives protections to all marine mammals, including including whales. And there's a suite of other regulations that protect whales. Of course, most countries are no longer whaling. So that's the removal of a direct effect as well. But even with global efforts for whale conservation, we still see whale populations declining or not not increasing due to climate change, of course, and then also noise pollution, vessel strikes, fisheries entanglement, microplastics, and other pollution, and list goes on. And so as we have more humans on the earth using the oceans more, it's having an effect on whales.

0:32:36 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, right.

0:32:54 Thomas: Were some of the things that came to mind as well. I mean, massive, you seems than ever. I guess, you Know, COVID interrupted that a little bit, but it's got to be not an easy world out there, not an Easy Ocean out there for a lot of these animals. I, you about a lot of these things and not knowing the details, it's like, like, shoot, I, how are they living anywhere? I, you know, there's so much, it feels like there's so much going on that we've, we've really just messed up the ocean in so many different ways. Are are there areas, territories that we have been able to protect or, a you danger everywhere kind of thing for some of these species?

0:33:12 Heidi: Whales?

0:33:26 Heidi: There's definitely, you pockets where whales are doing better and where whales are not so great. But I will say, overall, the population that I study in the North Pacific has recovered from so I think that population is doing pretty well. But get entangled and get hit by ships. And so I think that there is always more that we can do. I think That technology with making ships quieter, you know, helping to reduce noise pollution could help making vessels more efficient to help reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they're emitting, marine protected areas where there isn't other use of areas where whales are. All that can help.

0:33:50 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. About some of the noise stuff, because that's so fascinating. Does that affect whales? Why do whales, you need a nice quiet environment? All

0:34:27 Heidi: So whales, their dominant sense is their hearing. So you and I, our dominant sense, is probably our sight. But whales, our dominant senses are hearing because they live in a world that's often dark. Because when they dive down below what we call the sunlit zone or the photic zone, it gets dark. And that's where they're finding their food. And so they use their ears as their dominant sense.

And they use that to sense prey and also to communicate with one another, for example, mothers and their calves or males and females, if they're trying to find each other for breeding. And if you overlay that with noise, whether it's from ocean exploration or vessels, then that masks or dampens their ability to communicate. And and the oceans are much noisier than they were when whales evolved to rely on this dominant sense. And you mentioned the COVID time with vessel traffic.

So interestingly, I do have a study right now that I'm working on with some colleagues from UA Fairbanks and NOAA where we went out and we studied the whales during 2020 when it was pretty quiet around Juneau because we didn't have any cruise ships. And we didn't have a lot of whale watching vessels. So the water was quieter and

0:35:47 Thomas: Yeah.

0:35:47 Heidi: We collected biopsy samples from the whales to measure their stress hormones, to see if they had a change in stress level. And then we continued that study in 2021 when tourism was a little bit more, but still nothing like pre -COVID. And dann 2022, when it was pretty much full swing again with tourists and boats around Juneau. And so now we're, we're analyzing the data to see if that change in vessel traffic, which is a proxy for noise, if that had an effect on their stress levels.

0:36:04 Thomas: Yeah.

0:36:23 Thomas: Yeah. Fascinating. Um, so that's still ongoing.

0:36:26 Heidi: Is, it is. We're working up the data now, and then we're continuing the study this year as well, and continuing to collect the biopsy samples for stress hormones. Sounds.

0:36:36 Thomas: You know, uh, I have given the recent, uh news event that the whole world cared about for, I don't know, a week or whatever, too. I feel like people are weirdly more familiar with ocean depth than they would be normally. How deep do these whales go down?

0:36:49 Heidi: Yes. The humpback whales that I study here in Southeast Alaska, they don't dive that deep. They dive to where their prey are. So 100, 200 meters, maybe. But let's talk about something like a beaked whale, which is a toothed whale. They are, they're smaller than a humpback whale and they can dive down to, let me just think about my measurement here. They can dive down to over a thousand meters, which is over 3000 feet. And I believe the record is even deeper than that. Mean, they're not diving down to the Titanic, not, not those depths, but very, very, you they're the extreme divers and they are, they are mammals. So it's amazing to think about how they are able to dive underwater for that long, more than an hour at a time at that extreme depth. And they do that time after time again.

0:36:57 Thomas: Sure, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, shoot, how the heck do they do that? How do they maintain, you guess the oxygen and also the pressure? How does that, are they really squishy? Do they just squish down into, you now? How do the do that, mm

0:37:58 Heidi: They do, they do, they do squish down. And so there's this thing called the dive response that marine mammals undergo. And that triggers some physiological processes. One of them being that they divert all of their blood to just their vital organs, their brain and their heart. They also slow down their heart rate, so they're not needing as much oxygen. And then they carry oxygen not in their lungs, but they carry it in their blood and their muscle. Special proteins in their their blood and their muscle to which oxygen binds. And so that enables them to basically dive down with very little air in their lungs, because that of course is going to cause the bends or decompression sickness in humans. Well, they are avoiding that by carrying oxygen in their muscle and their blood. And then their bodies also collapse. Their rib cage will collapse.

0:38:41 Thomas: -hmm?

0:38:51 Thomas: I just imagine they become like the size of a goldfish, you kno? They're just, they just go from this massive whale to this tiny, tiny thing.

0:38:53 Heidi: Yeah. You know, gosh, I would love to see that though. But to get that, that imagery would have to put a video camera tag on a whale that has infrared light or something so that we'd be able to see them. But yeah, I'm sure they look very, very different than they do at the surface.

0:39:05 Thomas: Yeah.

0:39:15 Thomas: Well, I saw that one time that people said like, hey, the reason that blobfish, you know, that blob fish gets bad press because yeah, they look like a weird blob, but that's because they're at the surface and they're designed to be way, way deeper. You know, is that, is that another internet bullshit thing or is that real?

0:39:28 Heidi: Yeah. To say that's out of my realm of expertise with blobfish. So

0:39:32 Thomas: Okay. Okay. But same Same idea, you know, where it's going to look likely, I guess, in general, the question would be, yeah, can things look massively different in those depths where the pressure is just, you almost inconceivable, they would physically, visibly look different if we were able to see them there versus on the surface, right?

0:39:52 Heidi: At those extreme depths. Yes, for sure.

0:39:54 Thomas: Yeah. Cool. All right. Well, I know I, we keep referencing it, but there's so many fascinating topics around this. Let's get back into that study. So, what were, you know, some of the findings? Take us through some of the science about, you whales and the carbon cycle. Some of the stuff you, discovered. You What did we learn?

0:40:09 Heidi: So I first want to acknowledge that I I worked with nine other co -authors from economics to biogeochemistry to whale ecology. So it was definitely a team effort. And we, in this paper, we assimilated the current state of knowledge of what is known about the role of whales in the carbon cycle. And so we identified two main pathways through which whales might have the potential to capture, store, and sequester CO2. So the first pathway are these direct pathways, which refers to the ways in which whales store carbon in their bodies. So as we've discussed, whales are very large. And just like you and me, they're made up of carbon, roughly 20 to 25 % or so. And they also live for a long time. As I mentioned, humpback whales likely live to be 80, maybe longer. Whales, for example, bull can live to be over 200 years. And so you have these large, yeah, yeah.

0:41:09 Thomas: Wow, really? What are those ones? I don't remember that. Bowhead whale.

0:41:12 Heidi: The bowheads, they live up here in Alaska. They live in the Arctic, uh, off of Alaska and Greenland, the whole Arctic region. And they have been aged at over 200.

0:41:26 Thomas: Wow. What do they look like? What's their distinctive, what I know if I saw a picture of one? Bowhead. I can't think.

0:41:31 Heidi: Are, they are, they have a very stocky body. Their head is black and white. Do not have a dorsal fin and they're, they're very tubby because they live in the Arctic. They have very, very thick blubber layers. You'll have to look them up. They're a really beautiful whale.

0:41:42 Thomas: Huh. Hmm. Yeah, I will. I will, that's fascinating. I remember seeing an article about, do you know, offhand, happen to know, what's the longest lived lived thingy animal in the ocean. I remember seeing a headline about this shark. It was like super ancient shark that had lived. I don't know. I can't remember now, but it was an absurd number of years. Do you know offhand what the longest lived thing is? Species maybe?

0:42:06 Heidi: Yes. I believe you're talking about the Greenland shark, which I, from what I've read again, and I'm not a shark expert, but from what I've read, they can live to be 400 years or so.

0:42:15 Thomas: Yeah, sure. Crazy. Absolutely crazy. That's so cool.

0:42:25 Heidi: Is. Yeah. Whales, so they are very large. Some of them can live for a very long time, and they just inherently can store, trap a lot of carbon in their bodies just throughout their lifetime, and then when they die, most whales will sink to the seafloor. These carcasses are big and heavy and they sink. And when they sink to the seafloor, that lifetime of stored carbon then becomes what we call sequestered. So it's going to be removed from the atmosphere for over 100 years, sometimes thousands of years.

0:43:01 Thomas: Wow.

0:43:01 Heidi: These whales are called these whale falls. So these whales sink to the ocean, sometimes the very deep ocean, and they start to decompose. And at at the same time, they are providing nourishment for this thriving deep sea community. Some of the organisms that have been found on these whale falls have evolved solely to live on whale carcasses. They're special worms and bacteria and so forth. And so it not only helps to remove that carbon from the atmosphere for a long period of time, it also provides a food source for the deep sea, which is traditionally pretty food poor. So those are the direct pathways that whales can help to trap carbon. And then we have these indirect pathways. And this is what I referred to previously with the whale poop.

0:43:02 Thomas: Wow, Okay.

0:43:55 Heidi: It's this nutrient fertilization of the ocean. So again, the whale pump is where whales will dive under the water to depth to get fished, other prey. And then when they're at the surface, they are pooping. And that's part of that dive response I talked about. So when they are diving, they're not worried about digesting or doing anything else other than trying to stay alive, really, while they're diving. And they come to the surface. They are relaxing. And more of their other bodily processes are occurring. And they're pooping at the surface. And whales are big, so they're pooping a lot. And their poop is buoyant. For the most part, it floats. And so that's important because we have this whale poop that's floating, and there's nutrients in this whale poo that are slowly leaching out into the seawater. And these nutrients are important for the tiny marine plants, the phytoplankton, to pick up. And phytoplankton forms the base of the food web because then zooplanktons, such as krill, eat the phytoplankton. Fish eat the krill.

Bigger fish eat the fish. Humpback whales, for example, eat the bigger fish and so on. So not only are these nutrients from the whales helping to rev up the food Web, we also believe they can help to cause more phytoplankton to grow than would otherwise. And phytoplankton are taking up CO2. And then some of those phytoplankton can get exported to depth and bring that trapped CO2 with them. And so that's this indirect pathway. There's all of these links in this chain.

And this indirect pathway is fairly, it's not very well understood. We have a lot of work to do to better understand each of those linkages. But we think there is greater potential in whales' carbon benefits through this indirect pathway than through that direct pathway I described before. And so that's what the paper describes, is it walks us through the current state of knowledge of all these pathways.

0:44:30 Thomas: Oh, Okay. I'm a little confused on is why the conversation about the lifespan actually, now that I think about it. I mean, hypothetically, if these animals had a short lifespan, wouldn't that almost be better? Like if they're, assume everything else were the same, they're able to get as big, although maybe that's the problem. They were, you know, living and dying faster, wouldn't that sequester even more carbon at the bottom of the ocean?

0:46:33 Heidi: An interesting question. I mean, I guess, in theory, if you could get big really fast, and then sink and die. And the population was still growing fast enough to offset all of that sinking and dying in theory. But you know, as you, as he said there, it's, that's just really not how biology works though. Cause it takes a long time to get big.

0:46:40 Thomas: Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. Right, right, you need the time. Yeah, sure. Yeah, but I mean, it does seem like the lifespan then is sort of not, not really as, I don't know, directly relevant or is that unfair to say? It's it's more more, the size. Cause like you say, if we could replace all the other factors, sounds like it would be better if that could physically happen. Is there something I'm missing about the lifespan there.

0:47:18 Heidi: Lifespan is important because for one, that carbon that's taken in by that animal is going to be stored for the duration of their lifespan, but also as they are living, remember, they're having all of these other benefits for the ecosystem. So they're eating and they're pooping and they're feeding the food web. And so the longer they live, the longer THEY can continue those positive effects. Hmm.

0:47:34 Thomas: Sure. Right. But I guess maybe, you know, I'm kind of a math person. I guess I think of like, well, what we need is we need the population of these organisms, these life forms that are doing this at any given time to be higher. Right? I mean, it feels like that could happen one of two ways. Like if it was longer lifespan or if there are just more of them, then that would, but isn't that right? I mean, it kind of matters if you had one whale that lived to 80 years, or you happen to have two that both lived to 40 years, like, you know, stacked up, you know, one after the other, wouldn't that, is there a difference there when that essentially accomplished the same thing? Or would it be even better? Cause now you got two whale carcasses down at the bottom of the ocean instead of one.

0:48:02 Heidi: Hmm.

0:48:23 Heidi: Some tricky accounting there.

0:48:25 Thomas: I did actually work as an accountant for a while. I'm not going to lie. I didn't do whale accounting though. That wasn't one one of my areas. Yeah.

0:48:26 Heidi: And I think that it's OK. OK. Yeah. Yeah, well, I see your point. Right. And I that could be an interesting exercise. But what we don't want to do with this paper is to diminish whales just for their their carbon values and, you know, what they can do for us to to save the planet, because they're much more than that. And so I think that, you know, if we just do that basic accounting you were doing there, we're diminishing all the other things about their lives, like those social benefits I mentioned, those friendships, which help them to get food and then, you know, are going to release more nutrients and rev up the food chain. And so, I think, that it's not really the best way to look at them.

0:48:46 Thomas: Sure. Oh, Okay. Don't misunderstand me. I think we both want the same thing. I want more whales. That's all I'm saying. I just was curious about that kind of the logical point there about the lifespan. But that aside, yeah. Talked about, I think, most of these mechanisms. Anything that was surprising when you're coalescing these findings? Is there something that surprised you, you know, when going into this, that have stuck might out?

0:49:22 Heidi: Yes. Sure.

0:49:39 Heidi: I can think of a couple things. So one is that when we did tally the total carbon value of whales based on these pathways I described, it's pretty small. It's pretty small in the grand scheme of things. But at the same time, we are looking at populations, modern day populations that are greatly diminished from what they once were. And also, we were careful to only present values that were quantified. And there are a lot of gaps in knowledge. Many whales have not even been assessed for their ecosystem services and carbon benefits. And so I think that was one that the number currently is relatively small. And the second thing is there are so many unknowns, which I think is really exciting in this field of study, especially in that indirect pathway, like the whale pump, which I was describing. There's so many linkages and a lot of things we should do for future study. And that was was one of the exciting things about the paper is that we mapped out what needs to be done to better fully understand all of these carbon processes of whales.

0:49:53 Thomas: Okay. Okay, do you want to give us any of that info, or is that more like scientist to scientist, here's what we need to do?

0:51:03 Heidi: Well, we laid it out in the paper. So one of them is looking at the carbon that's exhaled by whales, because like you and me, they're exhaling CO2. And so what is that effect? You know, how much CO2 are they actually exhaling, is that going to still be a net gain of carbon capture or carbon removal? I think it is, but we have to quantify that. So that's one of the things. Thing is, what is the actual nutrient concentration that a whale will excrete in these fecal plumes? And then how readily is that taken up by phytoplankton? That's a big question that we need to get at.

0:51:25 Thomas: Yeah.

0:51:48 Thomas: Okay. Interesting. Interesting. Hope to happen? You've kind of answered that, but what did you hope to have and accomplish? What kind of effects are you hoping for?

0:51:57 Heidi: One is that we were aiming to compile all of the scientific information in one place and use it as a resource because this idea of whales and carbon has gotten a lot of attention over the past few years. And there's been some misleading information out there. And so we wanted to just try to pull everything together scientifically and put it in one place as a resource to use.

A second thing is we wanted to uncover the unknowns and provide kind of a roadmap for what else needs to be done to fully understand these carbon values of whales. And then thirdly, we wanted to bring attention to the ecosystem benefits overall that whales provide. So they help to maintain biodiversity, which is important in this time of extinction crisis. We think they have a carbon removal value as well, though we don't know the full extent.

And then of course, we know that there's also some intrinsic and moral reasons for protecting whales. So just shedding light on the importance of whale conservation overall, and then looking at these potential carbon values, which could in the end have a climate benefit as well. So I guess take home message,

0:53:24 Heidi: Looking at whales in a different light and really understanding their ecosystem benefits and just another reason to protect them.

0:53:23 Thomas: Yeah, Absolutely. Have, once again, could be a bullshit thing, but have somebody who was very interested in this kind of thing, but, uh, but different on land, restoring the woolly mammoth, because of Some of the, like, carbon You know, benefits of that, have you heard of that? Is there any similarities there to project? Okay.

0:53:42 Heidi: Oh, I just heard about that peripherally. And mean, I guess in theory, woolly mammoths being very large could also have a nutrient fertilization effect like we know elephants do. But in my opinion, restoring an extinct animal like that, especially such a massive animal, there's going to be some risks in that.

0:53:51 Thomas: That's Fine. Yeah.

0:54:16 Thomas: Are there any whale species that, uh, extinct, that if they were around, it would be nice, they would be adding to these great benefits? Did the whaling kill any entire species? Well, That's Good.

0:54:24 Heidi: Yet. We do have the Pacific right whale and the North Atlantic right whale, which are critically endangered. And right whales were the first whales to be whaled even before large-scale industrial whaling, you going out in like wooden sailboats along the shore, right whales were easy to kill because they're coastal, they're slow moving, or excuse me, slow moving, and then they have a lot of blubber, so they float when they die.

0:54:26 Thomas: Hmm.

0:54:55 Heidi: And so right whales have, you know, for hundreds of years, and unfortunately, two of those species have not recovered and sadly may go extinct sometime in relatively near future. But to answer your question, I don't believe any whales were hunted to extinction as a result of whaling. Yes.

0:54:54 Thomas: But Near, sounds like. Well, I remembered. There's one more question about the whale carcass thing. I imagine, you know, when whales were hunted, that's got to be disrupting that natural process that was taking place of the whale carcass sinking to the bottom of the ocean, right? I mean, so is it possible that since you talked about how long that effect is, you know, maybe a century or more, I think you said, is it possible we have yet to even see the full kind of cost of interrupting that process?

0:55:31 Heidi: Yes, I think so. Because these whale carcasses can sit at the bottom of the ocean for, we don't even know how long, decades, probably centuries, and provide some, you know, positive ecosystem benefits. So certainly, the large scale industrial whaling interrupted that cycle.

0:56:10 Thomas: It really feels like humans did so much damage in such a short time. I was also telling my kids about a lot of the giant trees. You know, I'm from an area, there's a park called Big Trees State Park, somewhat near where I'm From. And it's, it's so sad, because a lot of it is like, yeah, this is where, you know, this massive tree used to be. And then, you know, some people just cut it down in like 18-whatever. And, uh, it really feels like so much damage was done in, you know, that, I don't know, 100 or 200 years or whatever. Is that a sense you get looking at this stuff, like just, we just did so much catastrophic damage in such a short time for whatever reason in that time period.

0:56:35 Heidi: Yes.

0:56:48 Heidi: Certainly was, as you say, catastrophic damage, with some populations hunted almost to extinction, again, that Southern Ocean blue whale, the Antarctic blue whale, but at the same time, you know, commercial whaling is largely stopped now, we had the IWC moratorium on commercial whaling as of the mid-1980s. And some whale populations have recovered or are starting to recover. And so it's important to recognize what the human impacts have been, but also to think about what we can do now to aid in their conservation. And that's something that I always try to put forth in my classes because I don't want to leave my students feeling hopeless or frustrated. There's always something we can do.

And, you know, so something that everyone can do is to help, to whales and just the planet is to minimize your carbon footprint because we know whales are being readily affected by climate change. So anything we can doing in our daily lives to minimize our carbon footprint is going to help it help whales and other species on this planet as well.

And there's other actions we can take as well, but I think that's kind of an easy one to say generally is reducing the carbon footprint as a way we can help to try to reverse some of this decimation we've seen of whales.

0:57:06 Thomas: Hmm.

0:58:13 Thomas: Yeah. I always look at it as, like, shouldn't we not put too much responsibility on the individual. Cause it feels like a lot of it is the result of, you know, a few corporations or whatever. Um, but what are, are there any like tangible steps? Maybe that's a good note to go out on. Do you have any like actual kind of practical tips for that? Uh, is it just the kind of thing where it's like, do, do our best, to, to reduce where we can.

0:58:34 Heidi: In terms of the footprints, you know, eating less meat is a big thing, driving less or having a hybrid or electric vehicle is good. Buying locally sourced food as much as you can, reducing purchase of plastics and adjusting your thermostat and everything in your house. I mean, all of these, buying recycled products, recycling, all these are things we hear about time and time again.

0:58:58 Heidi: But also a big thing with whales and other marine mammals is eating sustainable seafood. So making sure that if you do eat seafood, it is sustainably sourced. There's a great program out of Monterey Bay, California called Seafood Watch, and you can go there and twice a year, I believe, they provide a list of all the best most sustainable seafoods to eat and the least sustainable, sustainable, and then, um, you like to donate to non-profits, donate to those that help in whale conservation, like Whale and Dolphin Conservation, for example, is a non-profit I work with closely, they're great for getting boots on the ground for whale conservation.

0:58:57 Thomas: Yeah, excellent.

0:59:40 Thomas: Get dorsal fins on the ground. Yeah, no. Uh, yeah, uh that's interesting. My, uh my daughter wanted to go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium for her birthday in August, so that's cool. I'm gonna have to, I'm going to have to see if I can check that out. You said it's twice a year though? Is it something I can check out anytime or no?

0:59:43 Heidi: Okay. Oh. So Seafood Watch, it's a program, you can google it, they have a website.

1:00:00 Thomas: I will.

1:00:00 Heidi: They even have, I think, an app on your your phone and they update it twice a year, but it's a resource where you can, let's say you're out to eat and you want to order, I don't know, um, and can put halibit into this app and it'll tell you if it's sustainable choice or not.

1:00:06 Thomas: Okay, that's Right, Seafood Watch. Thanks for the practical tips and thank you so much for your time. This was really fascinating, and say, you know, say hi to the whales for us, and let's let's all do these things and literally save the whales. Awesome.

1:00:33 Heidi: I think we can, working together. Thanks so much for having me on the show. I really appreciate it.

1:00:38 Thomas: Oh, is there anything you want to point people to personally, any plugs or any anywhere to follow you or anything, or is that that good? Awesome.

1:00:44 Heidi: Can follow me on Twitter, Heidi Pearson UAS. I'm also on LinkedIn and you can also find me on the University of Alaska Southeast website.

1:00:54 Thomas: Thanks again so much and take care all.

1:00:57 Heidi: Thanks so much. Take care.