How To Protect The Ocean
SUFB 126: Online Maps of Marine Mammals Distribution Available for Better Management
As someone who works in producing important maps of fish habitat to inform manager, I am geeking out at this article I cover in today's episode. The Duke Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab produced online maps for 35 Whale and Dolphin Species for managers to see them. I explain why these maps are important and how they will be used in Ocean Conservation during this episode.
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Show Notes:
http://www.speakupforblue.com/session126
welcome to the speaker for blue podcast session 126 I am back and my voice is back to normal thank you for your patience sorry about last week my voice being all jumbled because of my cold slash cough slash flu it looks like I'm mostly done with everything and today I'm glad because today I'm going to be talking about maps online maps of species distributions and how important they are to the way we manage our oceans it's something that I love to talk about because it's a bit of my specialty and I'll talk about that on today's episode of the speaker for blue podcast so stay tuned welcome to the speak up for blue podcast helping you get involved in ocean conservation and now here's your host he still puts his hands in the air because he doesn't care Andrew Lewin Hey everybody welcome back to another exciting episode of the speak up for blue podcast your voice for the ocean I am your host Andrew Lewin founder speak up for blue.com marine ecologist and self-proclaimed ocean perner and happy Monday I hope you guys had a wonderful weekend I know I did because I got to recover from this cold cough flu thing that I had last week probably a little bit due to lack of sleep from the weekend before and I caught a virus which was a bit of a knowing usually I don't mind these kind of things but when you're trying to do a podcast five days a week and you're tired and you don't have a voice and you're stopping every five minutes because you need a drink it gets a little bit annoying so I appreciate your patience for that I still think we had some pretty good quality episodes last week I missed an episode last week so I apologize for that but we were able to make it up with a really good Ocean Talk Friday which we hosted on Blab Nathan and I hosted on Blab which I think I'm going to host more of my my podcast shows on Blab so it'll be live if you don't know what Blab is the Blab is a live streaming site that you can allow interaction from people whether it be through audio video or even just text it's really kind of cool so I'm going to start hosting that I'm going to try a few this week I'm going to try actually one tomorrow night at 9 30 p.m. I'm going to schedule it so look out it's going to be under speak up for blue look for that you can go to Blab dot I am all you to do just sign up with your Twitter and I'm going to have just a bit of a special show I'm going to talk about a couple of of articles and maybe if we get some people who kind of come on as well then that would be great so I'm also going to be on it seems like this while you're listening to it but I was on Sunday I'm recording this right before I go on Blab on the blue streak science show the podcast so they record or they don't record but they host a Blab live show on Sunday nights and I'm going to be partaking and that I don't know to what extent but I'm gonna be I'm gonna be there so looking forward or for those of you who are watching this or listening to this because of that welcome to the speak up for blue podcast and I had a great time last night kind of predicting that I'm going to have a good time anyway before we get into this week's episode of online maps which I love to talk about and I'll tell you why in a sec I just wanted to thank our supporters on on patreon as you know as you may or may not know we have a crowd source a crowd source funding site the crowd source crowd funding source site crowd funding site that's right a crowdfunding campaign going on to help fund the spreading of our ocean conservation message our ocean science message that we need to conserve the oceans and we want to provide you with not only the issues that are going on information on the issues that are going on but also with the solutions that will help reduce and or eliminate some of these issues so we do this through podcasting right now we want to get to other platforms such as a digital magazine platform as well as YouTube eventually with some cool little documentaries and so forth tackling those tough issues that people love to hate to talk about but that's what we like to talk about because we have to face those issues so we're trying to hit different platforms and our crowd funding campaign page on patreon if you go speak up for blue dot com forward slash patreon P A T R E O N you can put in a monthly support financial support and there is of course different incentives to get people and give them donating at different levels or supporting at different levels but we'd appreciate any support you can provide us because we're just trying to you know get there and spend as much time as we can to get the message out to people that's what we're trying to do so for those of you who already done so thank you very much that is dr. Judith Weiss Ron and Judy as well as Chris and Clark Jeffert thank you very much we appreciate your support every week in in every month in every month and out so we appreciate that so anyway let's get on with this episode all right so online maps this article that I found on three tags dot org I've never been to this this site before but it looks pretty cool anyway we're gonna post this on the show notes which will be speak up for blue dot com forward slash episode 126 but essentially what happens is is the the I believe the government have posted this is the government site have posted sizes have made these maps and they've posted them online and essentially it's an integration of 1.1 million linear kilometers of surveys and more than 26,000 sightings collected by researchers at five institutes over 23 years of whales and dolphins along the east coast and the Gulf of Mexico the US east coast and the Gulf of Mexico now the reason why this is so important we've had you know scientists have had this data for a long long time they just haven't displayed it to the public and for for a while but this data always goes into making sort of management decisions of what's happening of what you know based on what's happening and where these animals are really going on the east coast and in the Gulf of Mexico and the reason why these are important is because lately it seems like the east coast and the Gulf of Mexico have been opened up to a lot more oil and gas exploration a lot more transportation routes which that's which would which would provide more transportation routes via vessels there's going to be more implementation of renewable energy such as wind farms tidal energy you know a lot you know obviously fishing is always an important aspect on the US east coast and Gulf of Mexico and of course US Navy have begun working on environmental impact statements to assess the impacts of future trainings in hopes to conduct in the western North Atlantic so that the there's a lot of things there are a lot of things that want to happen that want to go on in these on the east coast now with all these things happening some bad things can happen to marine mammals such as whales and dolphins we need to look at what those threats are and where those threats are going to be and without the data of where these organisms or these species actually go it's very difficult to say okay well we can you know we can do oil and gas exploration in this quadrant but not here you know because you want to know where these animals go and of course it's difficult you know you think oh well yeah online maps make sense and you're saying yeah it does make sense it makes a lot of sense however it's not easy to get all that information of different species into one map or one source or series of maps online maps and it's really only become popular in the last ten years or so where these online platforms that that host maps for decision-makers and public to see where these whales are are really have really been available that technology has really only come online no pun intended in the last ten years or so but before we get into that I want to talk just about some of the things that I mentioned earlier oil and gas fishing tidal energy and renewable energy such as tidal and wind those things can really affect and of course ship traffic those things affect a navy of course sorry that's a lot of things of course those things can affect whales those things affect dolphins in and and how they're how they move across the Atlantic and how they move within the Gulf of Mexico just how they move in general so what we need to do is we need to look at how these are facts so we got transportation that's gonna affect whales in terms of accidental ship ship strikes is what we call it or you know so what happens is a whale will cross the ship's path a path will the ship will actually hit the whale and we get a boat strike right and that can damage the whale in a big way depending on the size of the ship you know smaller vessel above 40 to 100 feet not so much but you get a big oil tanker and hitting a big whale and you're getting you're getting some serious damage not only can injure the whale maiment but it could actually kill it and the right whales which are endangered are known to being hit by this so much so that the government have actually created specific transportation routes knowing where these these animals go and this is I'm assuming the right whales are part of the sightings and the tracks of the right whales where they normally go are part of this map series it doesn't mention if they were or not but I'm sure they are so then you got oil and gas so you're looking at digging for oil and gas you're looking at or drilling for oil and gas you're looking at potential spills which could be disastrous so the not only the physical aspect of actually displacing whales because of drilling or a platform being in a specific area the noise of the drilling can affect you know whale migration or whale occurrences and then of course if a spill happens just the damage it can do to whales passing by whales and dolphins passing by those you know three aspects can really affect the way a whale can be so you don't want to put an oil and gas platform in while in my opinion period but you don't want to put it in in an area where you're gonna get a lot of occurrence of whales and dolphins so that's a big that could be a big problem now with this new push for U.S. oil and gas and exploration especially on the East Coast you're looking at a big problem right so you got to be careful of that in the Gulf of Mexico might be a little too late it might be a little bit more awkward because there are so many oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico on the East Coast not so much what else do we have here we have Navy Navy exercises they're doing impact assessments right now of course it's always difficult to say the Navy stop doing these exercises because they feel it's important especially with security being such an issue these days however the sonar can provide noises that can drive whales and dolphins crazy to the point where they actually beats themselves is what the theory current theory is or it can actually alter their migration routes alter their occurrences because of the noise you got to remember that whales and dolphins are very social species that speak to each other through clicks and sounds and noises they do this through the water column if the sonar gets in the way not only can it just drive them insane it could also it could also get in the way of their communication so they may not know where they're danger they may not know where there's food they may not know where they're going navigation it can really disorient where they are provide real problems so there's that aspect right so we got over fishing getting caught in nets getting caught on fish hooks that are not easy to get off of I remember doing an interview with somebody from bycatch.org forget there I think McClellan I think McClellan I think is her last name I forget her name I apologize anyone McClellan McClellan I think I believe anyway she was very helpful in saying that now they're using circle hooks on long lines to ensure that whales sharks and whatnot that are non-targeted species usually that are endangered species can actually get off those hooks easier than it is to than it is either J hooks or things like that so new hooks are being implemented however there's still people there's still animals who get caught in these nets gill nets, trawls and if they come up from the ocean from with the in those nets there's not a good chance that they can survive or there's a less of a chance they can survive so overfishing is also bad so we've covered a lot of things negative things that can happen with increased pressure on the east coast and the Gulf of Mexico so there's a reason to manage these these these uses what we like to call right ocean uses or ocean users you need to manage these users so that not only can the environment flourish but these users can flourish as well they want to you know fishermen need to fish it's a huge part of the economy especially on the Atlantic East coast in the Gulf of Mexico you know oil and gas although we want to go more towards renewable energies we've got problems with you know we still need to depend on oil and gas and of course with everything going on in the world people holding off you know reserves are opening them especially in the Middle East the US and the western countries feel that it's more important to get their own gas so they're not at the whim of another country that may not have the same sort of outlook that they do and of course this all this political thing is just me paraphrasing and putting injecting a little bit of my opinion in there and what I know from what's going on around the world but this is a reality oil and gas may come to the east coast hopefully it doesn't but it may come they've been doing a lot of seismic surveys so far on these areas so it's important to know where this information where the where the whales go and these online maps provide that so what you do with these online maps is you you put them on a GIS you see you tell them you basically open it up to everybody which is what they're doing now this is the maps are coming out of the Duke Marine Geo geospatial ecology lab okay this is a the the person involved in this is Jason Roberts a research associate at at Amgal which is which is the geospatial lab actually I believe it's somebody else who's in is a yeah so Laura Minich Minochi a postdoctoral research associate at Duke's universities Marine geospatial ecology lab so essentially she's saying that putting these maps together right online so that everybody can see makes it easier to manage and reduce the risk of any kind of harmful interaction and it makes sense if you think about it if you go on that it will post this we'll post a picture of this map on the on the show notes which is speak up from blue dot com for slash session 126 but you'll see the map and it shows you densities or animals per hundred kilometers squared so you'll see you know on the map that we're looking at it's like an Atlantic spotted dolphin mean you're around density you'll see where they occur normally and you'll see how many individuals occur in those areas and where they don't occur so it's easier to manage that because you know where and where they don't occur so you know where to put specific things if they occur in a specific area where there's a high where they they're highly dense a specific area you don't put anything else in there you leave them alone there's a reason why they're there could be a feeding area could be a nursing area could be something important that habitat is something important to them now where there's areas that they don't show up is probably the ultimate the the optimal habitat to put something else in there you know whether it be a fishing area or a gas area maybe a you know wind or a generation station in there something like that you can put in there and make sure that it's it's safe now of course that's only one species you've got to look at eleven other species that they've posted online to see where these animals occur and and I bet you more than not there's gonna be a lot of overlap on these areas these highly dense areas of marine mammals because usually along East Coast and and speak and and Gulf of Mexico you're gonna see areas where more than one marine mammal is in that area and that's for usually for a reason you know this the a lot of the maps they say they follow the continental shelf where there's a lot of upwelling of of nutrient cold nutrient-rich waters where there's a lot of food for marine mammals special baleen mammals it also attracts smaller fish and then larger fish and of course it'll attack it'll attract tooth whales dolphins orcas and so forth and then those those will feed on the fish that show up into these upwelling areas so there will be areas that are going to be more popular than others and and it'll it'll make it easier to pick out areas that you want to protect for the environment and the marine mammals and there's gonna be areas where you want to put in marine uses or you there's an optimal area where they put in marine use and uses so this is the importance of maps now of course maps really will function better if it's in the right hand so if it's in the right hands of decision-makers and that's what these online platforms do now what's been really great about the US is the US is very good at sharing ecological information they've been doing it for years not only do they share base layers like boundaries and bathymetry and substrate type which I'll tell you about habitats and stuff but they'll provide you with ecological data where fish occur distribution of like say tuna or distribution of specific commercial fisheries or other fish and you can actually download those and for guys like me and girls like me girls like me but girls and guys who do things like I do for a work you know we take that information we put it into a model and then we we output we use the outputs to make better management decisions for species so whether you're working in the Great Lakes or you're working along this the one of the coasts in the states or Canada or anywhere in the world these maps really make sense and it really is helpful to the coastal practitioner or conservation practitioner or decision-makers really is what it really comes down to so the more online maps that we can get the better now these online maps are not easy to put together you want to make sure that they are represented these are the stuff that that I put that I put together not these ones particular but things like this is what I put together and it takes a lot of of digging up to try and get information the right information that will provide a true representation because when you provide these data you want to make sure that it's right you don't want to just put up data willy nilly and if you're estimate especially if you're estimating you want to make sure the model that you use to estimate where these species will occur it's got to be it's got to be bang on right it's got to be as accurate as possible so knowing that they're not always going to be perfectly accurate but you want to be as accurate as possible so it takes a lot of it takes a lot of time it takes a team of people to put this stuff together and I know the marine geospatially ecology lab at Duke are fantastic people and I know they put in their work to put this together not only that but they work with a lot of other organizations to put this these maps together and I hope it gets some good use from government and stakeholders alike that are trying to manage these areas luckily an executive order came down a while ago I believe it was in President Obama's first term where he made an executive order that marine spatial planning in each in at the state level or at the federal level will be very important and because of that they've made the government has made these regions where a number of states are grouped together based so that they can manage these areas very well or a lot a lot more efficiently and they can work together to manage these areas from an ocean perspective and a spatial planning perspective so very important that that that law went in to place and it's allowed the things like these maps to actually come together so that's always nice to see but anyway I just want to kind of give you a bit of an insight of how important these maps are I don't know if there's a website that you can go to but you we can look up in the show notes if we find it we'll look it up and we'll see where you can actually look at these maps it's kind of nice you can zoom in and out sometimes they allow you to look at download reports and things like that it's been it's a pretty cool thing so anyway so you know this is important for the way we manage oceans it's important that we make sure these things are funded properly and because we only have there's only a what's according to this article there's only 35 species that are there there are probably more species and not only marine mammals but other species fish species and macro invertebrates like and invertebrates and plankton and all the animals that need to be protected on the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico and the West Coast and the Arctic and everywhere else in the world need maps made and it's very difficult to get these kind of studies funded because it's difficult to samples difficult to find boat time and stuff it takes a lot of time so finding areas finding groups of funders that will fund this type of information of information collection and data analysis and then synthesis is very important so it's I would look out for those kind of funding agencies and help them you know provide even if it's a micro fund or a micro donation provide that kind of information because that's where we really need the money is just you know the powers in the information and we don't have a lot of it in the ocean so these kind of things really make a difference anyway that is the show for today I really appreciate you listening thank you for listening and thank you for continuing listening as I mentioned last week we surpassed a hundred thousand downloads we want to get to a hundred thousand more and we want to get there faster so let's see if we can get there let's say by June you know I think that would be I think that's a pretty realistic timeline so let's get let's try and get to another let's try to get to 200,000 by June and I think that will be fantastic and and it's with the help of you guys sharing this and this this podcast telling your friends about telling your family telling people that are in and out of the ocean conservation industry just tell people about what you learned on this podcast and hopefully you're entertained enough and you find this interesting information so please share it please rate and review it on iTunes or on Stitcher the links are always in the on the website that's speakerforblue.com and we really appreciate you listening so thank you very much for listening to speak up for Blue Podcast I'm your host Andrew Lewin happy Monday and happy conservation [Music]