Protecting Whale Migratory Corridors: A Call to Action

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Scientists have been yelling at the top of their lungs for decades

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to get whale migratory corridors protected so

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that these whales can be protected from their tens

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of thousands of kilometers of where they travel summers and

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winters, and make sure that specific areas, special areas

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are protected where they feed, where they breed, where they rear their

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young, and where they need best protection. And now with

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the melting of the Arctic and Antarctic, it's getting more

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and more sort of critical to get these

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corridors protected and to help these whales out. We're going to talk about that

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on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's

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start the show. Hey

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everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the

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Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's

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happening with the ocean, how you could speak up for the ocean, and what you can do

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to live for a better ocean by taking action. And

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I am back from a vacation, a well-deserved vacation, and

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I'm rested. I'm a little bit more tan. I'm not sure if you can see

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that. Lots of sun, went up to a cottage with the family and some

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friends, and we had a great time, great weather. Love

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it up in Northern Ontario, sort of Northern Ontario,

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down near Georgian Bay and Parry Sound. It was a great time, really,

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really loved it, and look forward to going back next year.

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So but now that I'm back and rested, I'm relaxed, I've

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got a new sort of energy about me and I'm ready to give

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you ocean news. And today's ocean news has to do with

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protecting whales and whale corridors. If you don't know what a

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whale corridor is, is whales will go and they will migrate from

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one place to another over the year. So for instance, humpback whales

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will migrate from Hawaii where they go in the winter to

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Alaska where they go in the summer. so that they can

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feed and breed and do all the things that they need to do along the

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way. And they will feed and go into special areas,

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I like to call them, and a lot of scientists like to call them distinctive areas, so that they

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can stop over just while they're going on these corridors.

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Now, these corridors, they're stressful times. It's a long way to

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go. It's a lot of body to move through the water. And

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these animals, these whales, need the protection

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from other sort of human activities, especially shipping, especially

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fishing, all these different types of activities that

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could cause harm that are human-induced, direct human-induced. So

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the call has been there for a long time. And I'm gonna take

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you back in time a little bit. I'm gonna take you back. to

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the early 2000s when I was a graduate student and

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I was doing my work on marine protected areas. My supervisor was

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Dr. John Roth. I almost forgot his name. It's been a

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long time. My supervisor was Dr. John Roth at Acadia University. He

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had worked at the University of Guelph for quite a long time. Great guy,

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really great supervisor. He, along

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with John Day from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park at the time, wrote

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a document for World Wildlife Fund, who

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is the author of the call now

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for this new protection of whale blue

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corridors. John

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Day and John Roth, they wrote this document that

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talked about two different types of marine protected areas

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that we needed. And I've talked about this before, but I'm going to go over it because

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if you're new to this podcast, first of all, welcome. And if you're not

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new, you've heard this before, but you probably want to hear it again because it takes

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a while to get into people's systems because it's not something we talk about each

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and every episode. But essentially what you have is you have two types

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of areas that you like to protect. You have the representative areas and you

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have the distinctive areas. Now the representative areas are areas where

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you'd expect to see, you know, fish, invertebrates

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like crabs, lobster, octopus, squid,

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shrimp, those types of things, those types of animals. And then

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you have, that's where you find it. So you find those representative areas,

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what you would expect to see in an area. So along the

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Nova Scotian Shelf and along the Bay of Funny, you're expected to see a

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certain type of animal. And sometimes you

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expect to see assemblages of these animals. So communities of

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these animals that are getting together, that are dominated by one

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or two species, and then they have the rest that kind of fall in line. Those

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things will change every once in a while, those areas, but overall, those

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areas stay the same. The research that I did when I was a graduate student

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was looking at macroinvertebrate areas, so like I

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said, crabs, lobsters, shrimp, squid, octopus,

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you know, that type, those types of animals. And then to see over

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a four-year period, what was the representative areas? How many

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were there? What was it dominated by? Did they change over

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those four-year periods? And I'm not going to go into my

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thesis, but essentially, we had four, sometimes five typified

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areas. And so those are the ones that we expected to see. Now,

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you have those types of assemblages. If you do the workup, you

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have it for fish, demersal fish, which was done. by somebody

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previous to me, and then you have all over the country you'll

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have these types of assemblages and representative areas of what

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you'd expect to see in particular areas. Now,

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the distinctive areas is what we're going to talk about today. The distinctive areas are

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areas that are not normally found. It's kind of

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like special areas. And they're usually typified by an activity or

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something that's special in the area. So it could be a nursery habitat.

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It could be a breeding ground, spawning area, depending on the species.

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It could be an upwelling that provides a lot of food

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for fish, sea turtles, whales, dolphins,

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seabirds, sharks, tuna, like all these different types of

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animals that will congregate and aggregate in one area

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because it's a great stop along their migration period,

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right, or their migration corridor. See where I'm getting at, how it ties into

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this? Now there is an article on www.ca, so

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the Canadian Wildlife Federation, Foundation, I'm getting the wrestling federation,

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WWF, which

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is now WWE, World Wildlife Foundation. And

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essentially what they did, they came up with this article for a new call

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for protecting whale migratory

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corridors, so specially managed areas. These

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are specific areas that are distinct Because they

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are these corridors that are necessary for

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marine mammals, for whales to travel up

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or travel down depending on the time of the year. These

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are really important areas and we've seen these

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types of corridors protected before. Not necessarily directly,

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as in like here's where the whales are, but we've actually seen human

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activities be managed around those areas. So for

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instance, the North Atlantic right whale distribution

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area was managed through shipping lanes. So the shipping lanes

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of the ports that were along those areas where this North Atlantic right whale

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would travel and migrate. Those were controls. So

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they would look at, hey, here are the traditional shipping

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routes. Here are where the North Atlantic right whales go based

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on their patterns. And it would be a lot of data. So looking at airborne

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sort of observations. And there would be autonomous

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drones and things like that that would actually travel and spot and

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preserve these types of animals. And

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then we would map where they are. So we kind of knew their patterns. And

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they usually stick to specific patterns because they want to go to

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these distinctive areas at certain times of the year so that they

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can feed and rest and recoup and then move along their

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whale corridor. So the North Atlantic right whale would start off in

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Jacksonville, Florida, in and around there. And they'd end up

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sort of north of Maine. And they

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would get into Canada. and so forth and so and

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now the Gulf of St. Lawrence and you know those needed

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to be protected now there's a lot of shipping that goes along there there's the transatlantic area

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that gets that there's a lot a ton of shipping and we know

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the mapping of that through AIS and so we

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know where these and where these boats go so we can say

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hey for the time during this time the boats

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are going to be the shipping lanes are going to be here and that's where we're going to map them

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out and you have to follow that so all shipping all any type of

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shipping vessel that comes through has to go through those areas and

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so it decreased in noise it decreased in ship

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strikes and that was the idea the help now We

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know that migratory corridors can shift based on

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where the upwellings are, where the special areas are, how

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the temperature is, how the currents are going. It really

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depends on where these animals will go. And so these shipping

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lanes need to be managed on an annual basis or even semi-annually

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to make sure that the migratory routes of

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these ships and these whales do not

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conflict. And so that was just with one species, an

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endangered species, or critically endangered species. Now

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we're talking about, in this article, they're talking about the gray whales as

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an example, which is the Pacific gray whale population, which

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goes from Southern California all the way up to Alaska. In

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the summers, they'll go up to Alaska to feed on fish. They'll

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go up there. There's plenty of fish to get.

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They feed and they stock up on all these fat deposits and

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things, and then go back down to do their breeding and so

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forth. And it's a very important population. It's

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a huge population. But unfortunately, as

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the Arctic is melting,

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and there's more shipping that's happening in

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these areas, this poses a huge

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risk for these whales. This is not something that's

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easy. It's not just gray whales. You get humpback whales as well. There's bowhead whales

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and beluga whales that are up there. And there are a number of seals and

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sea lions that are up in the Arctic that can be affected by

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these ships, that could be affected by the warm water, the lack of

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sea ice. Now, when you have lack of sea ice, you have lack of plankton. So

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these baleen whales that are up there looking for plankton, you're not going to

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get as much phyto and zooplankton. So

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there's always there's always a loss of food. There's a loss of production and

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fish as more and more people are going to be fishing in these areas. There's

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going to be a loss of fishing in that if it's not managed properly. And

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let's be honest. this is not that great.

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And at the end of a long migration that these gray whales and humpback whales

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are taking, it's believed to be like

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one of the primary causes of unusual mortality event

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declared by the US government between the years of 2018 and 2021 for

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the gray whales, during which time more than 500 malnourished

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gray whales washed up along the coast of these blue corridors. The

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size of the gray whale population dropped by half from around 28,000 to 14,000. That's

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a huge huge loss when we're looking at species that are

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long-lived species. This is these are species where It

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takes a long time for them to get to the size that they are, to

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get to reproducing, to get them healthy. And then you have other things

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like climate change. You have plastic pollution that can affect them. You

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have fishing, where they can get entangled by fishing gear like crab

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pots and lobster pots, as well as nets like gill

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netting and things like that, long lining. There's a lot of

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different things that can affect them. And then, of course, there's shipping. And

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there's noise that throw off their migratory patterns. So

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many things need to be managed around these

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whales that are human-induced that we have to

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be able to manage those. So these corridors, this call from

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WWF to manage these corridors is extremely important

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and of course is the timing can't be more

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perfect. I mean, the timing would have been perfect. It was done in the early 2000s or even before

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that when there was a call to do that. But right now it's needed,

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especially now because, you know, things have just

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doubled, you know, over the last 10 years in terms of, you

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know, volumes like shipping volumes and

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fishing fleets and things like that. have pushed deeper into

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Arctic waters. And so, you know, the

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time is now to recognize migratory corridors as

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essential components of ocean connectivity and

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marine species conservation, and to include these in

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ocean protection measures. Now, the timing of this call is

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kind of timed to the, there's a

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new meeting in October 2024, of

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the Conference of the Parties to the Convention of

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Biological Diversity. It'll be the 16th meeting, where

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this is an internationally recognized convention on

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biological diversity. It's ratified by

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a lot of countries, including Canada and the US, as well as other countries around

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the world. And so there has been

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sort of this international pressure for these countries to

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do what's possible to protect these areas. And now

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when there's that, there's the International High Seas Treaty. There's

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also the need to protect 30 by 30, so 30% of

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land and oceans by 2030. There is

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a lot of pressure for countries such as Canada and the U.S., especially when we're

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talking about the Great Whales, to protect their waters, including whale

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corridors. So not just you know these representative areas

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where there are some interesting areas or what we expect to see

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but also not just hydrothermal vents where nobody's

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really been in that area in the past so it's a little bit of low-hanging fruit.

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These corridors are going to be difficult to put in as marine protected areas

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but they're going to be necessary and they're going to shift As

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climate change changes everything with wind patterns and currents,

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migratory corridors are going to change. That means shipping lanes

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are going to have to change. The fishing fleet is going to have to change over

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time. And obviously, the way we manage water

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quality in terms of plastic pollution and nutrients and so forth, that's

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going to have to be really managed as well. There are a lot

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of things that need to be managed, but the big initial thing is let's protect these corridors,

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whether they be at certain times of the year or they're all

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year round, something has to be done. And I'll be honest, I

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agree with WWF here. I feel like this call, you know,

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WWF is where I'd worked with, you know, on my, when I did my

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research on graduate research at a Canadian university, they've been

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working on the East coast and West coast and Arctic, you

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know, to get more marine protected areas for decades. And

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it's something that they've been pushing for a long time into the call for this. you

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know, during this time when there's going to be a meeting in October is going

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to be really important. It's not going to be the last that we hear of

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this. I'm going to try and get some of the contacts at WWF to come on the

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show to be able to talk more about this and why the

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timing now, why October 24th, why the 16th

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meeting on the conference of the parties to the convention on biological diversity.

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in October 2024. Why are we going to be worried

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about this? Obviously, there's going to be other things that are going along in the world. You

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know, the US election is going to happen too. But we need countries

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to really put forth solutions and to act

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on these protections. And hopefully, these corridors can be a big

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part of the conversations that go on at the convention. And

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it's going to be something that we need to talk about. Now, one thing

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that's interesting, too, in terms of marine protected areas and connectivity, one

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of the things that I was going to do in my PhD, I never ended up doing it. I decided to

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go to just kind of start my life and start all

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the things that I need to do during my time as

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a marine scientist. But one of the things I was going to do is look at connectivity

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in terms of how these areas, these network

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of marine protected areas, just similar to the Great Barrier Reef, how

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we could put that elsewhere and how everything is so unique in

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different spots and how it would be and how like the politics would

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work and how the stakeholder engagement work with fisheries and

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other ocean users as well as protecting habitats and

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environments. One of the things I was going to look at was that connectivity between

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the different areas in a marine protected network. area

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network. give

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way to larvae and eggs. And they would

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go through the currents. And some would go really far. Some wouldn't go that far.

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Some would go like hundreds of kilometers. Some would go maybe a kilometer. Some

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would go tens of kilometers. And so we would look at where,

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based on models, we would look at where those areas were. And that's

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how we kind of did our, that was how we were

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going to do our prediction of where specific areas needed to

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be in our network. I never ended up going through it, of course other people have

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and there's been lots of research on that and it's been really cool to

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see. Paul Snellgrove is a really big player in that. When I

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was at Acadia University and I was going to go to Dalhousie to

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do that, it was quite interesting work and I'm looking forward to

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catching up and seeing what's happening with that. The ocean

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is connected, you know, it's three-dimensional. There's a water column

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to worry about, there's the depths, there's the surface, and

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everything in the middle, and it's very difficult to manage, very complex system,

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and we have to be careful of how we manage it, but one thing we know is we need

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to manage it. We need to put more of these sort

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of legislative tools in place to be able to protect them, especially

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over international boundaries, especially when we talk about complex migratory corridors

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that go over boundaries, multiple boundaries, whether they be state,

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provincial boundaries, or even international boundaries. These

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are things that we need to talk about. These are things that we need to meet

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on. And there are regions like the Gulf of

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Maine, It has a committee that looks at that

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on the East Coast of North America. I'm sure they have some on

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the West Coast and the Salish Seas. And it's

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really interesting to see how these are managed by each country and how

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a combination of countries manage these corridors or how they will manage these

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corridors or just conservation in general. But I want to kind of just give you an update

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on that and let you know about these corridors and this call for more

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protection of these corridors. It's obviously needed, especially now with

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the melting of the Arctic, for these whales, these gray whales,

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as well as others. And so something we need to keep an

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eye on. So I thought I would share that

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story with you. I'd love to hear what you think. You can go on

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Spotify, if you're listening to this on Spotify or watching the video on Spotify, and

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you can leave a comment. You can also go on YouTube and leave a comment there.

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This episode will be up there. And of course, if you want to get a hold of me, and

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you're not on Spotify, you're not on YouTube, and you want to

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just kind of get in touch with me, you can just hit me up on Instagram, DM me

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at HowToProtectTheOcean. Let me know your thoughts on these corridors and

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the protection and how you would protect them. But I would love to

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hear from you about these episodes, so don't be

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shy. Feel free to reach out. I'd love to have a conversation with

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you, because that's what this episode is all about. It's what this podcast is all about, starting

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a conversation about the ocean, sharing news, and getting you to

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listen to news and getting your feedback on it. So thank

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you so much for listening to this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm

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your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time, and