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 care of
in Northeast Florida they feed up here
and Cape Cod Bay great South channel Bay
of Fundy gulfs and Lawrence they used to
be all over the North Atlantic but we
killed most of them off for 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 catalog them so as
those photographs are taken through the
years of these 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 39 11
she was observed entangled Christmas Day
2010 off of the coast of Georgia
colleagues of mine took photographs from
the plane which is one of them she was
disentangled two or three times the
folks here in Provincetown really
promulgated the whole disentanglement
processed 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 Baelor
and the distant tank the entanglement
that it had and you can see that both
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 and 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 baler 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 approached very
easy to approach now where 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 is intact there are
entangled so that leads to you know it’s
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 and I’ll
tell you that but I just want to give
you a little bit more of an idea of the
impact and then recently the increasing
impact of the entanglement problem so
red here is the entanglements that have
been recorded since 2002 and gray of 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
really since 2011 the ship strikes in
2017 were primarily up in the Gulf’s and
Lawrence but we also had one in the 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 carving season ended
in same a not a one calf this year so
along with the mortalities that we saw
in canada the 17 animals that died in
2017 the canada and in and new england
waters with this carving rate going down
to zero at the moment there’s been more
press about North Atlantic right whales
in their plight in the last six months
that have it in the last
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 but 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 its 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
salmon right whale it’s really really
encouraging because whalers knocked them
down heavily in the 17 and 1800’s 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 pretty good
growth of 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 percent 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
that 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 39 11 and Baelor this is the last
photograph
I’ll show you of Baelor it’s a
photograph that I took of a section that
I cut in the lip of Baelor after she
died she came on to the beach we wanted
to figure out you know all we could
about the animal and inside that red
yellow circle is the cut end of the
piece of the rope that was she
entangled in it ran through her lip for
about four or five 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
and 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 I
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 other shellfish is laid on the
bottom either single traps and pots or
in a chain and if they are strung out
together the the line between 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 a 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 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 ping er on the trap and a
receiver a 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 sets or other
other vessel users at the bottom uses
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 out 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
or eating think about gala and these
image
the next time you eat travel 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 neighbour whether
they are they are they not because
there’s somebody’s neighbor it’s this
isn’t like ocean trash 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 said 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 endline so thank you [Applause]
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 care of
in Northeast Florida they feed up here
and Cape Cod Bay great South channel Bay
of Fundy gulfs and Lawrence they used to
be all over the North Atlantic but we
killed most of them off for 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 catalog them so as
those photographs are taken through the
years of these 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 39 11
she was observed entangled Christmas Day
2010 off of the coast of Georgia
colleagues of mine took photographs from
the plane which is one of them she was
disentangled two or three times the
folks here in Provincetown really
promulgated the whole disentanglement
processed 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 Baelor
and the distant tank the entanglement
that it had and you can see that both
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 and 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 baler 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 approached very
easy to approach now where 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 is intact there are
entangled so that leads to you know it’s
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 and I’ll
tell you that but I just want to give
you a little bit more of an idea of the
impact and then recently the increasing
impact of the entanglement problem so
red here is the entanglements that have
been recorded since 2002 and gray of 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
really since 2011 the ship strikes in
2017 were primarily up in the Gulf’s and
Lawrence but we also had one in the 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 carving season ended
in same a not a one calf this year so
along with the mortalities that we saw
in canada the 17 animals that died in
2017 the canada and in and new england
waters with this carving rate going down
to zero at the moment there’s been more
press about North Atlantic right whales
in their plight in the last six months
that have it in the last
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 but 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 its 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
salmon right whale it’s really really
encouraging because whalers knocked them
down heavily in the 17 and 1800’s 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 pretty good
growth of 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 percent 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
that 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 39 11 and Baelor this is the last
photograph
I’ll show you of Baelor it’s a
photograph that I took of a section that
I cut in the lip of Baelor after she
died she came on to the beach we wanted
to figure out you know all we could
about the animal and inside that red
yellow circle is the cut end of the
piece of the rope that was she
entangled in it ran through her lip for
about four or five 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
and 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 I
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 other shellfish is laid on the
bottom either single traps and pots or
in a chain and if they are strung out
together the the line between 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 a 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 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 ping er on the trap and a
receiver a 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 sets or other
other vessel users at the bottom uses
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 out 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
or eating think about gala and these
image
the next time you eat travel 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 neighbour whether
they are they are they not because
there’s somebody’s neighbor it’s this
isn’t like ocean trash 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 said 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 endline so thank you [Applause]
Please follow and like us: