How To Protect The Ocean
SUFB 066: Over 300 Cetaceans Found Dead in Chile
Researchers found over 300 Cetaceans dead in a remote area of Chile. National Geographic and researchers conducted a study to find out why the animals died. No markings were found on sei whales indicating the animals could have died from a virus or "red tide." Listen to the episode to find out more.
Shop for the Ocean:
http://www.speakupforblue.com/shop
10 Ocean Tips to Conserve the Ocean:
http://www.speakupforblue.com/wordpress/sufb_optinpdf
Show Notes:
http://www.speakupforblue.com/session66
Welcome to the Speak Up For Blue podcast, session 66. Troubling news coming out of Chile, over 300 whales found dead up in Patagonian remote islands. We're gonna talk all about that on today's Speak Up For Blue podcast. (upbeat music) - 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. (upbeat music) - 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 of SpeakUpForBlue.com. Marine ecologist and self-proclaimed ocean printer. And today we have some bad news to start the week off. I hope every, before we get into that, I hope everybody's week, everybody's weekend. It was great. It was fantastic. This podcast is getting out late because I'll be honest, I had a really busy weekend. It's the holidays or coming into the holiday season. And we've got a lot of Christmas parties and get togethers and stuff like that. So sometimes it's hard for me to get, to get these things recorded and out on time. So I apologize for that. Hopefully that won't be happening again anytime soon anyway. But while I speak of that, before we get into the episode, I am about to launch next Monday. I am about to launch a SpeakUpForBlue podcast crowdfunding campaign. And really what this crowdfunding campaign will hopefully allow me to do is spend full time on this podcast. I wanna spend as much time as possible on this podcast because I'll tell you what, it's been working. A lot of people have been emailing me saying, "Hey, Andrew, this is a great podcast "you've been doing really well. "I've been learning a lot "through all these news things that I've been coming out "and the interviews that you've been doing. "And it's just been a wonderful time "and I hope we can continue this." So what I wanna do with this podcast is just go more in depth into these stories. Right now I read the story and I just essentially tell you about it and it's a quick hit kind of story just so that you guys are aware of what's happening in the ocean. However, I'd like to get into deeper detail, do more research, spend the time to really get down to the nitty gritty of these stories and maybe expand on them as well with some of the research that's going on, but that takes time. So what I've decided to do is start a crowdfunding campaign for those of the people who really want to hear more and get more out of the podcast and you can donate on a monthly basis to support the podcast and support this information that's coming out. And the reason I'm doing this is just because there's no real traditional way of making money through podcasts to support my time to do this. You can use advertisements or advertisers, but then they're putting out a product that may not be suitable for this audience. So I don't really want to go through all that. I'd rather, you know, the people who really want to watch it if they want to support it. That's great. There's different incentive levels that you can do with this crowdfunding campaign and I'll tell you more about that in the email. So if you want to sign up for that email list, you can just go to the show notes and there'll be a place to sign up for that email list. The show notes today will be www.speakupforblue.com. slash session 66. So speakupforblue.com/session66 and you can get access to that PDF. Or you'll get access to a PDF that tells you how to, you know, the 10 tips that I have on how to conserve the ocean. If you're just starting out, plus you'll get access to the email newsletter, which gives you more information on the Patreon page that comes out. So that's going to come out next Monday, which is, let me look it up. Do do do do do. December 14th. Next Monday, December 14th. I am going to release that Patreon page. It'd be really great if you guys want to support this podcast. If you can go and write away on Monday, put in your support amount. There's different levels of support. I think there's going to be $1, $5, $10 and so forth. And there's different incentives for each one. So it'd be great. It'd be a great way to build a community so that I can interact with you guys more and find out what you guys really want. So I think it'd be a lot of fun. So anyway, that's it for now. Let's talk about what's happening around the ocean today. And this actually, this story actually happened back in April. In Chile, in the Patagonia region, a very remote set of islands, there were over 300 whales found dead. And a lot of them, I believe, according to the story, most of them were Sei whales. S-E-I, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that properly, but Sei whales, they're a baleen type cetacean. A baleen has the baleen mouths. They basically feed off of krill and tiny animals. And they are, they were dying. Over 300, I believe the amount number were 337 whales found dead. 32 of them were skeletons. The other amount were fresh bodies. Now, the problem with this, I mean, this is the largest, this region is seen, largest stranding and death that this region is seen for whales. And it's really devastating to see this. When they did the initial, this story, the more details are gonna come out. National Geographic has flown an expedition there and they've done some tests. So we're gonna find out more about that. And once a paper is released soon, I hope that we're gonna get seen. And once we see that paper, I'm gonna keep a look out for it. We're gonna see what is going on. Hopefully National Geographic will be able to tell us more. But when National Geographic went in and the researchers went in, they didn't see any outer markings or any wounds on the whales. So they're thinking it's either a red tide, which I'll go into that in a minute, or they died of some type of virus, which of course they won't know until they run tests, which I think they have. And now they're just waiting to get the results published. Now a red tide bloom is essentially a poisonous or a toxic bloom. So it's a dinoflagellate bloom. So it's like a plankton bloom, which it turns the water red because the animals are red. And it can be very toxic for animals that are swimming across, swimming through it. It can either really hurt them or eventually kill them. And it's something that usually comes off of climate change. I know I keep mentioning climate change, but it is a big thing that's happening. And especially now with all the Paris talks, this story is definitely gonna be talked about. Usually when we talk about climate change and these issues, we don't really think of whales being affected, but they do get affected in two ways. One, their food source goes away. There's less food for them to eat in climate change. Either because of changing tides that are changing ocean currents and wind patterns that actually move the animals, their prey away from them, and away from their normal migratory route that they've been doing for years and years and years, maybe even centuries or decades anyway. And then also their migratory patterns change not only because of food, but because of the circulation processes change. So when you think about a whale migrating, take a humpback whale, for instance, it'll migrate from the Caribbean all the way up to the Arctic on the Atlantic side and from Hawaii all the way up to the Arctic on the Pacific side with the different populations. And that's a long, thousands of kilometer migration. On the way over those, during those migration routes, they have to eat. So there's specific spots along that migration route that they know, that they follow and that they get food. Usually areas of what my biology professor and advisor for my masters used to call a distinctive area. These areas tended to be upwelling areas. So when ocean processes bring water, nutrient-rich water up from the bottom and it just kind of comes up to the top. So it's cold nutrient-rich water. Animals tend to feed in those aggregated areas and it attracts a lot of fish. The fish will check bigger fish, their predators. The small plankton will attract whales, cetaceans and you know, and other cetaceans. And so there's this huge sea turtles will come. This is just a huge amount of seabirds. You got a huge amount of diversity of animals that have large migratory patterns. And these areas are very critical for these animals to feed along their migratory route. 'Cause if you think about it, animals expend a lot of energy when they go along these migratory routes. And if that food is not there for them, then they can get very, very tired, very malnutritioned and then just that whole body process. Let me think about if you went for days and days without food, what would you do? What would your body do? It wouldn't be pleasant, and especially when you're swimming the entire time. And you have such a large body to create energy for, right? So it's a big process. So these critical areas are very important. These distinctive areas, these upwellings are very important. Now, if these upwellings are not there because the climate change, because circulation patterns are changing and those upwellings might still be there but they're in a different spot, away from their migratory route. Now these animals have to find their migratory routes. So what will happen is you'll see some animals adapt, some not, some won't adapt to these migratory routes and then they'll end up dying. We talk about this survival of the fittest natural selection when the ocean changes and there's large changes, you'll see animals start to die off. Now, this could be one of the reasons why these animals are dying off. I'm not saying it is because I don't know the evidence. I don't have the evidence in front of me. I don't have the paper in front of me. It could be a toxic bloom, which is also caused a lot by climate change and we're seeing more and more and more of them just because of massive like warm waters. And so we have to be careful. We have to watch out for these things and we might see more of these but we have to monitor them and where they are and find out what this red tide, where these red tides are coming up and find out if there's a human influence on there 'cause a lot of times it's nutrients coming from land-based sources and some sort of influence from humans, either toxic water coming in, bad water quality, high nutrients can cause these red tide blooms. So we have to be careful and make sure that we control our substances that are going into the water. So that really brings it back to us. How do we control those substances? We'll be careful of what you pour down. The toilet, be careful what you pour down the sink. You have to be careful with these toxic materials that can really add nutrients, that can really add pharmaceuticals to the water, that can really add just some nasty stuff that will affect animals, ocean animals, aquatic animals, so freshwater animals, coastal animals, all these things affect them. So you have to really be careful of what you put down your drains. And if some of those items may not get filtered out through these big sewer treatment plants that we have here in Canada and the US and develop a lot of developed countries. And then you gotta think on the other side, developing countries may not be up to par with sewer treatment plants or they may not have sewer treatment plants or even the ones that do have sewer treatment plants. You know, the water just gets emptied into the ocean if they're over capacity or they can't handle all that sewage. So it just goes right into the ocean, right? And it wasn't long ago that these things were happening. So there's a lot of nutrients that are already in the ocean, a lot of bad water quality that's in the ocean and it came from us. So we have to control that stuff to reduce or hopefully eliminate these red tides and these harmful algae blooms. So, you know, there's a lot of work to do. You know, we have climate change on one hand that's sort of, you know, exaggerating everything. It's bringing everything to that next level. Whereas, you know, we're causing a lot of things that allows climate change to just kick that up one notch. So we have to really control what we're doing, you know? And I hope that this also, these types of topics get discussed at the climate change talks where, you know, taking out the human influence, not only through reduction of emissions, but also taking out the human influence of what we put in the water, you know, as waste and how it gets filtered out and making sure that we're all up to par, that will help make a difference as well and will reduce the effects of climate change, right? So, getting back to these whales, I mean, this is very, very tragic. I mean, it just breaks the heart to see these whales. There's some pictures that are on this site. I got this from Yahoo News and there's a bunch of other places that are reprinting this story. And, I mean, it's just tragic. These beautiful animals, they're large, they're wonderful coloring, and they're all just dead, right? And lying in these one beautifully remote islands, like wonderful settings, and you see these dead animals. And hopefully, if they died, well, I mean, if they died of toxicity as these animals break down, that's gonna go back into the system. So, we have to really watch out for these things and we have to monitor them and hopefully we can prevent them from happening. I don't know how. I mean, you can't track every whale pod or cetacean pod around the world, but we can do our best to do so. And there's some great organizations that they're all over the world that are helping animals that are strand themselves, cetaceans that strand themselves. One person, one organization is the British Marine Divers Life Rescue, British Marine Life Rescue, British Marine Divers Life Rescue. I will link to that in the blog post, but they're a great organization because it's a volunteer organization, sort of like a citizen science organization that trains and maintains volunteers all around the UK to look out and help in stranding situations. So, they're fully trained for stranding, making sure everything's safe for the animal and themselves and then they go out and they help these animals. If they weren't there, these animals would probably die, right? So, it's good to have these networks and maybe we'll have Stephen who's in charge of this back on the show to talk more about it and see what he's been up to lately. Or I'll post the interview on the blog post 'cause I think it's great. Organizations like these are wonderful to have because they can look out for these things, especially in the remote areas. Satellite imagery can really help, real-time satellite imagery can really help detect these animals and where they're going and where they've been. It's kind of a nice aerial monitoring through planes, helicopters as well. At a certain distance and height, you can actually see these wonderful animals swimming and you can watch them and find out where they're going, where they like to sit and feed and so forth. So, it's actually, there's a lot of monitoring going on, but of course, not enough to handle all these cetacean pods. So, unfortunately, we have this massive stranding and massive death. Hopefully, we can prevent it by organizing more citizen science projects like the British Marine Life Divers Club or Divers Rescue because these guys really know what they're doing and they've been doing it for years. Maybe we can learn from them and how to create more citizen science projects like that. So, anyway, that's it for today's episode. I know it's a little bit of bad news, but I think what we can do is learn from this bad news and try not to have it happen again by one, reducing your impact, your footprint on climate change. Also, maybe get a join or look into joining a similar citizen science project like the British Marine Divers Life Rescue because these guys know what they're doing. Or maybe organizing one yourself. Maybe we can get him on Steven Murphy and see if he can help us figure out how to organize something like that. But anyway, that's all for me today. Remember, December 14th, I'm gonna be releasing my crowdfunding campaign to support this podcast and allow me to spend more time on it so that we can really get things going and really get down to the nitty gritty of these types of stories. So, it allows me, it gives me time to really focus on this. So, thank you very much, guys, for listening. I really appreciate it. And of course, if you can wait 'til December 14th to support us on our Patreon page, patreon.com, and I'll give you the links when we're all set and done. And I look forward to talking to you tomorrow. You've been listening to Andrew Lewin. You've been listening to Speaker for Blue's podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Happy conservation. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)