Oh, yeah!
Whales are so majestic and just so massive.
But as big as her size is the role they play in maintaining ocean health
and cooling the planet.
That's right.
Whales are capable of capturing and sequestering large amounts of CO2
throughout their lifetime.
And even after they're dead, a single whale can capture
as much carbon as 1,375 trees.
But sadly, whale populations are at risk of growing threats imposed by us humans.
So I want to know,
can we help whale populations get back to where they should be?
Is there enough support from governments to protect whales from extinction?
And can ecotourism help spread whale awareness?
Let's find out.
On today's episode of Save the Planet, I'm tagging along with ecologists
in Antarctica to learn more about whales, their impact on the ocean,
the threats they're facing...
There's no way you don't leave here wanting to see it protected.
...and ultimately find out if whales can save the planet.
Presented by Astral Tequila.
There are 13 great whale species on this planet.
Each of them help with the transportation of important nutrients,
such as phosphorus and iron throughout the marine ecosystem.
And also help stimulate
the all important base of the ocean food web, phytoplankton.
Phytoplankton are organisms that feed off nutrient rich where food to flourish.
And together with other marine plants
like seaweed, they generate more than half of the world's atmospheric oxygen.
But they also help capture about 37 billion metric tons of CO2,
which is estimated to be 40% of all CO2 produced globally.
That's as much CO2 1.7 trillion trees would capture on land,
and that's approximately half the trees we have in the world.
Whales themselves also help
captured carbon throughout their lifetime by accumulating it in their bodies.
But unlike most terrestrial organisms, which release carbon into the atmosphere
after death, whales sink to the bottom of the ocean
and sequester their body weight and carbon for centuries to come.
In fact, estimates suggest whales can sequester an average of 33 tons of CO2.
So if we have more whales, we have more phytoplankton,
which means more carbon capture and less climate change.
But like I said, whales are at risk.
Six of the 13 great whale species are now classified as endangered or vulnerable.
And biologists estimate there are roughly 1.3 million whales left globally.
For context, it's believed
there were about 4 to 5 million whales prior to industrialized whaling.
We're tagging
along with marine scientists and ecologists in the Antarctic Peninsula
to learn more about how we can better
protect whales through the conservation of what's known as blue corridors.
These can be thought of as superhighways that facilitate the movement of whales
and other large marine animals between critical ocean habitats
that are used for feeding, mating and giving birth.
Our expedition began with Ari Friedlander, an ecologist and professor
who was the first to deploy motion sensing and video recording tags that help
track whale behaviors in Antarctica.
And I see the tag right here, which looks pretty cool.
Can you walk me through the process and what we're looking at?
This tag attaches with suction cups.
It's noninvasive.
This sits at the end of about a 'bout a 15 foot carbon fiber pole
that I'm holding on to. And we cruise up to a whale.
We ask it nicely if it wants to volunteer to be part of our project,
slap it on its back.
These suction cups typically
will hold for about 24 hours and measure everything continuously.
Then when it falls off, it floats at the surface.
And then we have a little hand-held little rangefinder or antenna
that helps us pick up the tag with this RV says
attacks are basically little computers with an array of sensors
that effectively allows his team to measure the animal's behavior.
The tag also comes with a GPS,
microphone, and video camera which capture where the whale is located.
And everything it's seen from the animal's perspective.
Learning how their feeding behavior correlates with how much sea ice there is
or how much prey there is compared with what we learned from our biopsy sampling
and our other techniques,
gives us information on how healthy these animals are, where they go,
what the potential impacts are of changing climates or interaction
with human activity. Now, tell me more about the biopsies.
So this is just a regular hunting dart.
We shoot it at the whale.
It penetrates in up to the stopper and it collects a little piece
of skin and blubber.
Keeps it inside there.
That sample is worth its weight in gold.
We can tell
if the animal has an elevated stress level because it's nutritionally stressed
or something else.
The more information we have for any species,
the better we can be at saying these are the critical areas
that we need to block off and protect from any type of human activity.
If you're thinking doesn't that hurt the whales?
Well, Ari reassured me that it doesn't cause them any elevated stress.
It's basically just like a mosquito bite to them.
Do you have enough support from governments
to help protect these whales from going extinct?
Short answer's no.
I mean, if you look at the budgets that go into,
you know, the different programs for outer space versus
what we find for our oceans, orders of magnitude different.
Clearly, we're on a tourist ship right now.
How does that help your research or does it ever become an obstacle?
It's something I weigh a lot.
Should we leave someplace like the Antarctic completely alone?
Or should we bring people down there to it?
I'd say leave it alone.
But working with tour companies and partnering with NGOs
that have similar conservation interests to us is absolutely ideal,
because not only does it allow us to do the science,
but from the tour ships, we have a built in audience.
So our messaging and our science turning into policy has a much shorter
and more direct route than if I'm trying to do it as a scientist alone.
And that to me is the most important thing, is the outreach and taking it
beyond science to policy, to management, to public empathy.
And if we can harness that energy that people have and bring them to this
place, there's no way you don't leave here wanting to see it protected.
Well, that was very inspiring.
Let's catch up with the rest of the team in the field
and see what they've collected.
One of the other researchers on the team is Chris Johnson.
A marine scientist and conservation strategist with WWF Australia
who has studied whales, their habitats and human impacts.
So we're out here with humpback whales.
We were taking some tissue biopsies and we were able to fly
the drone, get up about 20 meters high and get some great photos of their bodies.
This research will contribute to our knowledge here on the Antarctic Peninsula.
It's helping us show where whales feed, the most important habitats
we need to set aside to protect not only the Antarctic Peninsula
but on the entire migratory superhighway of humpback whales.
The Antarctic Peninsula is actually under negotiations to become
a major marine protected area, which would ban krill fisheries
from operating in major foraging habitats where whales feed on Antarctic krill.
There's increasing pressure to raise the total allowable catch
of krill on the Antarctic Peninsula And this is something at WWF we're working
hard to fight because right now wildlife needs Antarctic krill.
It drives the entire marine ecosystem here.
And we have to be highly precautionary with this.
According to Chris.
There seems to be some geopolitics getting in the way of implementing
marine protected areas in Antarctica.
But once in place, could whale populations bounce back to where they should be?
Humpback whales,
it's one of the biggest conservation success stories of the 20th century.
But there's trouble ahead.
We're seeing these cumulative impacts from fisheries, bycatch, ghost nets,
plastic pollution, increased ship traffic and underwater noise,
all working together to impact populations worldwide.
And that's why
we need to protect blue corridors for whales and their critical habitats.
All right.
Seems like there's hope, but more work needs to be done.
One thing is for sure, we need whales.
Here's what we learned so far.
Number one, whales are resilient.
However, many species are still endangered or vulnerable.
Number two, more funding is needed to better protect whales.
But organizations are coming together to set up marine protected areas
in which species can thrive.
And number three, ecotourism comes with its own impacts, but
it's a great way to amplify the research and value it whales have in the world.
So can we all save the planet?
Yes, they are vital to our ocean ecosystems.
They're basically the textbook definition of a public good.
But there's an asterisk.
Like many other public goods.
There are always issues around funding, infrastructure and regulation
when it comes to protecting whales and their migration patterns, one
option could be creating a program that compensates shipping companies
for altering their shipping routes to reduce the risk of collisions.
It's a good solution in theory, especially when you could put
a dollar value on whales in order for politicians to, well, understand it.
But the implementation can get a bit murky.
So many questions arise like who is responsible for drafting this regulation?
Who will disburse compensation?
More importantly,
who will actually monitor compliance in international waters?
Other than cost, whale protection and ocean protection efforts
aren't receiving sufficient attention.
In fact, the ocean has never been a key theme in the climate change COP agenda
over its 27 year history.
Ocean solutions receive less than 1% from philanthropic climate funding
and only 33 out of 193 countries that signed the Paris
Agreement have strategies
focused on protecting and restoring coastal and marine landscapes.
So governments need to step it up if we want
whale protection to rise to the top of the global climate agenda.
That includes joining the 30 by 30 Pledge, which calls for the protection
of at least 30% of the ocean. By 2030.
There are also organizations like the Antarctic Southern Ocean Coalition
and WWF that are helping implement and push for marine protected areas.
These designated areas provide long term conservation protections
for their marine life.
Within these beautiful creatures must be protected
one way or another because they keep our planet, well, blue.
And to paraphrase the amazing Sylvia Earle, without the blue, there's no green.
And without green there's no us.
Caused by
vessel strikes and—I can't, I'm sorry, this is just so damn adorable.
Out of all the shoots, this is definitely the most distracting in the best way.