Translator: Elena Montrasio Reviewer: John Ockey
So, I'm going to tell you a sad story,
and show you some horrible images,
but it's up to you whether it has a happy ending,
and you'll figure that out by the time we get through this.
So, North Atlantic right whales,
45 feet long, 60 tons.
When they can, they calve in Northeast Florida.
They feed up here, in Cape Cod Bay, Great South Channel,
Bay of Fundy, Gulf of St. Lawrence.
They used to be all over the North Atlantic,
but we killed most of them off, years and years ago.
This whale, on its tail, on the left, there, you can see those white marks.
Those are rub marks, scars, from entanglement in fishing gear.
We can identify the individuals by the patterns on their heads,
and catalogue them.
So, as those photographs are taken, through the years,
of all these different individuals,
we get a very good idea about the whole species,
in terms of what's going on.
Because there are so few of them, we have a better record of this species
than any other wild animal in the world, really.
I'm going to tell you a story about Bayla, catalog number 3911.
She was observed, entangled, Christmas Day, 2010,
off of the coast of Georgia.
Colleagues of mine took photographs from the plane, this is one of them.
She was disentangled two or three times.
The folks here in Provincetown really promulgated
the whole disentanglement process for aiding entangled whales.
This is ground zero, right here in Provincetown,
for large-whale disentanglement
and training globally as to how people do that.
In spite of the disentanglement for this animal,
it died two weeks after the last disentanglement event.
So, this sketch here is of Bayla,
and the entanglement that it had.
And you can see both the flippers, around the head, and the trailing gear.
So, entanglement causes constriction, and partial amputation,
and loss of body weight.
And the drag, these ropes here, they can make a huge difference
to the ability and the cost of the animal to move through the water.
All of that adds up, for the females,
as a loss of the ability to get pregnant, and nurse and suckle calves.
And we talked about the disentanglement for Bayla.
This is another photograph of it,
and it was really exciting to be involved in this.
We gave the animals a sedative, in this case,
to make it more approachable.
And as you can see here, it's very easy to approach now with that boat.
But, ultimately,
the disentanglement didn't help it.
And the disentanglement of large numbers of animals is simply not possible
because we don't encounter the majority of the animals that are entangled.
So, that leads to -- you know, it's a palliative thing,
and the folks doing that will be the first to tell you that that's the case.
So, how do we deal with this entanglement problem?
I'll tell you that,
but I just want to give you a little bit more of an idea of the impact,
and, recently, the increasing impact of the entanglement problem.
So, red, here, is the entanglements that have been recorded since 2002,
and gray are the vessel strikes, the ship strikes.
Both are problems, both remain problems
but as you can see,
the entanglement problem has been progressively getting worse
in the last -- well, really since 2011.
The ship strikes in 2017 were primarily up in the Gulf of St. Lawrence,
but we also had one in Cape Cod Bay at the beginning of the year.
Along with that increased entanglement -
and it may just be a correlation,
but I think there's some causation involved, as well -
the calving rate, the annual calf count, through the years since 2002, again,
has been shrinking over the last 8-10 years,
and indeed, in 2018, the calving season ended in, say, May,
not one calf this year.
So, along with the mortalities that we saw in Canada,
the 17 animals that died in 2017,
in Canada and in New England waters,
with this calving rate going down to zero, at the moment,
there's been more press
about North Atlantic right whales and their plight in the last 6 months
than happened in the last 10 years.
It's been extraordinary,
we've all been very busy communicating about this,
but ultimately what I'm saying tonight
is what's going to change the whole situation.
So, you're on the side of your seats, you're ready for this.
So, am I just whistling Dixie where there's no way we can do this,
or is there a real chance that we can turn this really dire situation around?
So, the yellow up there
is the North Atlantic right whales' traditional habitat,
but most of it is on the eastern seaboard now.
The brown is the Southern right whale, a sister species,
and then, up in the Pacific, you've got the North Pacific right whale,
which is another story unto itself.
But if we look at the trajectory of the Southern right whale,
it's really, really encouraging,
because whalers knocked them down heavily in the 1700s and 1800s,
and then they started to come back in the 1950s,
and then the Russians went after them again, 1960 to 1970,
but after that, you can see that trend going up,
and it's around 7% a year.
That's a pretty good growth for stock.
So, we'll stick with that.
And I seriously believe that if we leave right whales alone in this habitat,
the North Atlantic right whale,
they will do so much better than they are right now.
So, this is about a 1 to 2% growth rate since 1990,
which then, again, fell off in 2010, and continues to fall now.
And it's the reflection of food moving climate change,
but also the impact of entanglement, and also the vessel strikes we've seen.
So, if this line doesn't change,
we're not going to have any reproductively active female right whales
in, say, 20-25 years.
Now is the time.
We don't have time to fix climate change,
but we do have time to fix the entanglement problem.
What is the entanglement problem?
Well, I told you about 3911, Bayla.
This is the last photograph I'll show you of Bayla.
It's a photograph that I took of a section that I cut
in the lip of Bayla, after she died.
She came on to the beach
and we wanted to figure out all we could about the animal.
And inside that yellow circle is the cut end of the piece of the rope
that she was entangled in.
It ran through her lip for about 4 or 5 feet, and it cut through the skin.
You can see the furrow, where it moved down through there.
The white is the scar in the skin of the lip.
When I saw that,
I knew I had something of great importance,
in terms of understanding and communicating what this problem is.
And I told that animal that I was going to tell its story.
And my prayer today is that that story is not being told in vain.
So, how do we turn this around?
Trap gear - lobster, snow crab, other shellfish - is laid on the bottom;
either single traps and pots, or in a chain.
And if they are strung out together -
the line along the bottom today is sinking line,
so it doesn't get up in the water column.
But what remains is what we call the end line.
The end line runs from the trap up to the surface buoy.
There's numbers on the buoy to identify it,
but also they use the line to hold the trap,
to service it, to take off the harvest,
and to put in new bait.
So, that's where we know that whales are getting most entangled today.
And how do we change that? On the right is the solution.
We get away from end line, and we create a virtual end line
in the form of an acoustic pinger on the trap,
and a receiver transducer on the vessel, which goes up to the cloud,
so you can see on the plotter, in the wheelhouse,
where the traps have been set,
so other vessel users at the bottom, using draggers, can see where not to go.
And we also have to have a remote retrieval,
either an acoustically triggered buoyancy device
to come back up to the surface,
or a traditional grapple,
you throw it over the side, you know where it is,
you tow it along the bottom and you pull it up.
None of these are going to be as simple as the end line of today,
but it may be that it's a compromise that can work and be economically viable.
So, in thinking about all of that,
put this in the context of the next lobster dinner
that I hope you're going to eat,
because I'm not saying don't eat lobster.
What I am saying is, we can change things around,
so that we can feel good about the lobster we're eating.
Think about Bayla and these images the next time you eat crab, or lobster.
But none of this is going to happen, unless we can do this
in a collaborative and a supportive and an economically viable way
for the industry and industries involved.
So, I like to think of lobstermen as my neighbor,
whether they are or are they not, because they're somebody's neighbor.
This isn't like ocean trash.
And in fact, for large whales, ocean trash is a relatively minor problem,
unless you're a suction feeding whale,
which these are not.
To the actively fish gear that we have here,
that's being set on a daily basis, and being run into on a daily basis.
So, we've got to figure it out, working with these guys,
working with the managers,
working with the -
various regional lobster and crab associations,
as to how we can do this all together.
And you, as consumers, are driving this, will drive this,
as ethical consumers, demanding that we have
lobsters and crabs that are caught without using an end line.
So, thank you.
(Applause)