Our 12 wishes for the ocean on 12.12.12

by oceansadminHuman ImpactsPosted on No Comments


I woke up this morning and decided that everyone gets twelve wishes today! Ta-da! Here are ours.

1.  Quiet oceans for whales, dolphins and all marine life.  You can help make this a reality.  Please vote here to support our Quiet Oceans Campaign.  It’s easy to vote and you’re welcome to vote once per day!

 

2. A plastic-free ocean.  Help make this one come true by bringing your own bag to the grocery store.  As the City of Vancouver says, “Create Memories, Not Garbage” by buying experiences, not gifts, this holiday season.  The best way to reduce plastic waste in the ocean is to stop buying things we don’t need.

 

3. Be an effective voice for ocean conservation in 2013.  You can help us achieve our goal by spreading the word about the work we do.  We’d like to get to 1000 likes on Facebook in the next 3 months.

 

4.  Reduce bycatch in fishing gear and marine plastics.  Here are our priority regions in BC to reduce marine plastics and their impacts on marine mammals.

 

5.  Subscribe to our newsletter Scroll up near the top of our page to “Get the Ocean in your Inbox”.  You’ll be glad you did!

 

6.  Reduce the risk of oil spill.  The Deepwater Horizon incident was a huge wake-up call to everyone in the ocean conservation community.  Our work showed that every dead dolphin recovered on the beach probably translated to 50-250 deaths that went undetected at sea.  In 2013, we’re keen to draw attention to “silent spills” – we’re trying to understand what happens when marine life comes into contact with small oil spills that happen everyday during routine operations when transporting oil by sea.  Keep in touch for our new findings.

 

7.  Sign up to become a monthly donor to Oceans Initiative.  We hate to ask.  We know that everyone is asking you to fund a lot of great causes.  But the reality is that our charitable organization can’t function without your financial support.  Please consider making a one-time or monthly donation.

 

8.  A new ocean etiquette.  This isn’t rocket science.  Being a good ocean neighbour is no different than being a good neighbour on land.  Don’t litter.  Recycle.  Keep the noise down when you’re having a party.  Pick up your dog poop. Cover your mouth when you cough (i.e., don’t transmit diseases into the ocean through unsafe aquaculture practices).

 

9.  More support for research and conservation for animals like Pacific white-sided dolphins that are currently under the conservation radar, but may need our help.  This is a pet peeve of ours.  The ocean is facing multiple threats, and we need to set priorities when spending scarce conservation funding.  But the current model isn’t working.  Too often, we wait for a conservation problem to become a crisis, with funding thrown at the problem in hopes of reversing declines.  Instead, we’d like to see a calmer approach, where species are monitored routinely, and potential problems are identified before they become catastrophic.

 

10. Keep it cool and save the polar ice caps.  Everyone loves polar bears and penguins, especially at this time of year.  Reduce your dependence on fossil fuels.  It feels like a tall order, but we each can make progress in even small ways.  We travel a lot to do science (including in the Antarctic), but also to see our science used in making smart decisions to protect the ocean.  In fact, we rely on our charitable pooling account with Aeroplan to keep our field costs low.  But we’ve recently discovered Aeroplan’s partner programs to offset carbon.  We’ve switched to video conference whenever we can, but when we have to travel, we try to offset the carbon costs.

 

11. For you to become our next Twitter follower.  It’s a fantastic spot to engage in conversation.  Hope to see you there.

 

12. Our final wish is for you to connect and engage in ocean conservation in a way that speaks to you.  For us, it’s sitting on our deck at our field site, listening to the sounds of whales and dolphins breathing as they swim by.  For our land-locked friends, it’s listening to the songs of whales online.  What works for you?  How do you connect to the ocean?  What is your wish for the ocean?

Wishing you all the best for 2013!

-Erin & Rob

PUTTING OCEAN NOISE ON THE MAP

by oceansadminAcoustics, Habitat, Human Impacts, Ocean NoisePosted on No Comments
This map from Dr Erbe’s paper shows the cumulative noise energy we predict across one year from shipping traffic in BC waters.

We recently partnered with two acousticians, Christine Erbe of Curtin University and Alex MacGillivray of JASCO, to predict how BC’s waters sound to a whale.  Using shipping traffic data compiled by Patrick O’Hara (which we used previously in a ship strike analysis for fin, humpback and killer whales), and making some assumptions about how noisy ships are at different speeds, Christine and Alex were able to predict how much noise different parts of BC experience throughout the year.

What we found is that while ship noise comes and goes, human activities are carving persistent acoustic features into the ocean soundscape, because shipping lanes are entrenched.

The good news is that some areas, particularly some of the mainland inlets on BC’s north central coast, are still comparatively quiet.  It may be that the tangle of islands, fjords and narrow passageways, buffer the ability of anthropogenic ocean noise to propagate up into those inlets, some of which remain in a bit of an acoustic shadow.  Armed with this new information, perhaps Canadians would like to manage human activities in such a way as to maintain these sites as acoustic sanctuaries — marine wilderness areas that remind us what the ocean used to sound like decades ago, when whales were the loudest features of the soundscape.

We enjoyed working on this project, which was supported by WWF-Canada.  Please see what WWF had to say about our study, and check out the original article, which is published in the open-access {FREE!} journal, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America Express Letters.

WHERE THE WHALES (AND WHALE RESEARCHERS) ARE

by oceansadminHabitat, Human Impacts, Populations, WhalesPosted on No Comments

 

A global summary of where researchers have published density estimates for whales, dolphins and porpoises (from Kaschner et al. 2012)

Rob and his colleagues published a neat new paper today in the open access journal, PLOS ONE.  The paper, led by Dr Kristin Kaschner at the University of Freiburg, examined >1100 estimates of the abundance of whales, dolphins and porpoises reported in more than 400 surveys conducted worldwide between 1975 and 2005.

It is hard to convey how boring science can be sometimes.  

During the research, the team digitized thousands of maps, so you don’t have to.  Seriously.  Kristin made the data for the map (above) available for download, in case you ever want to do a global analysis of where people have and haven’t surveyed for whales.  Here’s what was learned about the global patchiness of whale and dolphin research.  Overall, only 25% of the world’s ocean surface has been surveyed at all, while only 6% has been covered well enough to offer any hope of detecting trends in population size.  Other findings included:

  • The vast majority of surveying effort has taken place in waters under the jurisdiction of wealthy, northern hemisphere countries like the US, Canada and Europe.
  • Southern hemisphere regions are underrepresented, except the Antarctic, where the International Whaling Commission leads surveys to estimate abundance of the Antarctic minke whale, which is subject to scientific whaling by Japan.
  • Few surveys have taken place in high-seas waters beyond national jurisdiction.  This hinders global initiatives to implement high-seas marine protected areas that reflect the habitat needs of whales and dolphins.
  • The level of survey effort conducted in the eastern tropical Pacific may look excessive but is actually at the low end of what is needed to detect population trends.
  • The main focus for surveying populations was in tuna fishing regions due to the market for “dolphin-friendly” tuna, with more surveys in the eastern tropic Pacific Ocean than in the rest of world combined.

Our ability to protect cetaceans from threats such as military sonar, seismic surveys (for offshore oil exploration), oil spills or bycatch in fisheries hinges on good information, and this latest research indicates a lack of baseline information to evaluate threats across the vast majority of the world’s oceans.  As international efforts are underway to protect global biodiversity, the researchers conclude there is an urgent need to develop new methods to fill in data gaps which can in turn improve marine conservation efforts.

 

Here are some quotes from the authors:

Dr Nicola Quick, co-author and honorary research fellow from the University of St Andrews, commented: “One of the primary motivations for our research was to know where whales might be most vulnerable to the use of military sonar or seismic surveys to find oil under the seabed. The enormous data gaps we found in our study remind us that we still have a lot of work to do to predict whether vulnerable species might be using the waters that have never been surveyed.  We recommend international coordination of surveys to share resources to fill in these gaps.”

When looking at the coverage in the eastern tropical Pacific, Kristin noted that “the rest of the world has a lot of catching up to do if we want to know if whale populations are recovering from historic whaling or bycatch in fisheries. The issue of data gaps pervades every issue in marine planning, from fisheries management to marine protected areas.  Because of the strict science needs of whaling, the information available on whales and dolphins may paint an optimistic picture of marine science.  Knowledge gaps are almost certainly worse for deep-sea invertebrates, sharks or marine viruses.”

Oceans Initiative co-founder, Dr Rob Williams (who is also a Researcher in the Sea Mammal Research Unit at the University of St Andrews) added: “One of the most important management and conservation decisions we make is how to allocate scarce funding for research.  As we aim to protect marine biodiversity on a global scale, we need to ensure that our scientific advice reflects the fact that the vast majority of the world ocean has never been surveyed in a comprehensive way. If we ignore that, our advice is biased toward coastal waters of wealthy countries, and that is unjust.”

 

Whale stranding in Scotland

by oceansadminHuman ImpactsPosted on One Comment

Recently (2 September 2012), 26 pilot whales stranded on the beach about a mile from the place where we’re staying in Anstruther, Scotland.  The whales came ashore just a few feet from the coastal path where we run with our dog, Wishart.  Pilot whales are normally found in deeper water, so this was highly unusual and highly distressing.  Many capable people from our research group at the University of St Andrews, Sea Mammal Research Unit, were at the ready to assist.  In the United Kingdom, the British Divers Marine Life Rescue take the lead (with the help of veterinarians) on refloating the whales that are still alive.  Later, postmortems, or necropsies, are performed on the whales that do not survive.

 

 

Every whale stranding is a loss.  But, along with this loss is a scientific opportunity to learn more about why whales strand generally and why these whales stranded in particular.  Marine mammals can strand for a variety of reasons including disease, starvation, entanglement in fishing gear, trauma from tactical sonar, and injuries from ship strikes.  We look forward to hearing the results of the detailed necropsies conducted on the animals that died during this event.  In addition to the animal welfare concerns, which are paramount, we see an important role for science to play in these strandings, because there are some tests that can only be conducted on animals while they are still alive. At a recent workshop on noise and stress, one of the biggest recommendations was that opportunities like this recent stranding need to be exploited to conduct stress-related research so that we can better understand the impact of human activities on whales.  Every time we attend a meeting on ocean noise and whales, we’re reminded that we are still missing basic information on hearing abilities in many marine mammal species.

We understand that these whales are suffering, and the last thing they need is some cold-hearted scientist poking and prodding it to take a blood sample.  These are inherently stressful situations.  But just as you learn a lot when your doctor takes a blood or urine sample, these tragedies present an important opportunity to learn what we can from living whales to help us figure out why whales strand and advance our knowledge on marine mammal physiology and biology so that we can better protect the survivors and their habitat.

The resulting information dramatically improves our ability to answer the questions that everyone will ask after a stranding:  Why did it happen?  How can we prevent it from happening again?

 

If you see a marine mammal stranding, please contact the authorities in your country.

In the US

NOAA Marine Mammal Stranding Networks:

In Canada

Marine Animal Strandings and Entanglement Response Program

Toll Free: 1-888-895-3003

 

In the UK

British Divers:

 

Happy World Oceans Day! The Secret to a Sound Ocean

by oceansadminAcoustics, Habitat, Human ImpactsPosted on 5 Comments

The Secret to a Sound Ocean

Oceans Initiative is a team of scientists on a mission to protect whales, dolphins and their habitat. To celebrate World Oceans Day, we’re releasing the main findings from our Ocean Noise project. Our clever friends at Column Five Media have helped us turn our cutting-edge acoustics research with Cornell University’s Bioacoustics Research Program into a simple, visual story.  Please feel free to download the infographic, or share our page with your friends.

The Secret to a Sound Ocean

 

We’ve been studying marine mammals since 1995, and much of the work we do involves estimating how many marine mammals are found in British Columbia waters, where they live, how human activities impact their lives, and how much food they need to thrive.

But whale habitat is more than physical space and food to eat.

 “The places in which these animals live are defined not only in terms of space, but in terms of sound – they live in an acoustic world and depend on that world for survival,” says Dr. Christopher Clark from the Cornell Lab’s Bioacoustics Research Program, who has been listening in on the whales to get a better understanding of how noise impacts their acoustic habitat. “Imagine living in a village where you can’t see each other or where you’re going. Instead, everyone relies on sounds and calls to go about your lives and to maintain the social network. What happens to your world as the smog of noise gets to the point where you cannot hear each other?”

We love partnering with smart, talented people to multiply our impact.  In 2008, we partnered with Dr Christopher Clark and Dimitri Ponirakis at Cornell University’s Bioacoustics Research Program to find out how ocean noise levels in British Columbia measure up to the rest of the world.  We wanted to find out whether the whales in BC have a relatively quiet ocean or if ocean noise levels are high enough to challenge the whales’ ability to hear each other and find food.

With the help of a few visionary funders and a very long list of generous friends (THANK YOU!) who helped us in the field, we used Cornell’s cutting-edge hardware (specialized underwater microphones) to record shipping noise and whale calls in strategic sites along the BC coast in 2008, 2008 & 2010.   The hydrophone recorders sit on the seabed for weeks or months, recording all ocean sounds (human and natural), then we navigate back to where the hydrophones were dropped, play a signal to them and the device pops up to the surface with a record of everything it heard during the deployment.

Once we retrieve the hydrophones, Dimitri Ponirakis works his magic in the Cornell lab, and turns thousands of hours of recordings, terabytes of data, into some results that we can use to quantify how noisy or quiet whale habitats are. We then asked the visionary team at Column 5 Media to help turn our decibels and decimals into a delightfully appealing infographic that communicates our results.

The Secret to a Sound Ocean infographic shows typical noise levels in three frequency bands.  Think of it this way:  the three bands represent what the noise levels may sound like to a killer whale (a soprano), a humpback whale (a tenor) and a fin whale (a bass).  What we’re finding is that some of the most important areas for killer whales (e.g., Robson Bight & Haro Strait) happen to be among the noisiest sites we sampled.  And some of the areas that are most important for humpback whales are fairly quiet (Caamano Sound, Kitkiata Inlet), but could get a lot noisier given the number of industrial developments planned for the area.  Our data for this important area are unique, and we are glad that our funders helped us collect essential baseline recordings while the area is still relatively quiet.

Our plans for this work is to put this all into a framework that allows us to answer the So What? question.  We’re able to model how much acoustic habitat these different whale species lose in sites with different noise levels.  Rob’s Fulbright Chair position explored the ocean noise issue from a policy perspective.  Now his Marie Curie fellowship at the University of St Andrews allows him to build mathematical models to explore how chronic ocean noise could affect the dynamics of fin, humpback and killer whale populations.

The thing we love most about this issue is that it is a relatively solvable problem that lends itself to creative solutions to make life quieter for marine wildlife.  Our current work identifies whether we can reduce noise levels by asking ships to slow down or avoid certain areas altogether.  We’re identifying whether some areas are so quiet that they should be recognized as national treasures:  acoustic refuges that we try to manage so they stay quiet.  Our mission is to identify noisy areas and to help make them quieter; and to identify quiet areas and to try to keep them quiet.

If you’d like to help our efforts do that, please spread the word.  Please share this page, subscribe to our newsletter, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or our Aeroplan Beyond Miles donation page.  Thanks again to everyone who has helped us do this work, and Happy World Oceans Day!!!!!

If you have any questions, please contact us:

-Rob Williams & Erin Ashe