For The Wild - Dr. KATE STAFFORD on What the Whales Hear ⧸198

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00:00:30.000 hey community ayana here before we begin today's episode i'd like to share an exciting project

00:00:42.740 the for the wild team has been tending for the past few years some of you may remember

00:00:47.560 an episode called the day the water died back in 2018 with dune lankard a tribal elder of the

00:00:54.560 EAC Eagle clan, and lifelong conservationist. Well, that interview changed my life. I ended

00:01:01.240 up rafting down the Copper River in Alaska with Dune that summer, and since then, we've been deep

00:01:06.760 in strategy around protecting the temperate rainforest, glaciers, and waters of his ancestral

00:01:12.480 homelands. Right now, we face a pivotal moment in Dune's 20-year struggle to preserve 11,000

00:01:19.460 acres of the Bering River Coal Field, which remains extremely vulnerable to mountaintop

00:01:24.720 strip mining under its current private ownership.

00:01:28.420 Dune and his organization, Native Conservancy, have a short window of time to purchase the

00:01:33.320 coal title and to halt resource extraction.

00:01:36.480 We are putting out the call for large donors, organizations, foundations, or those who may

00:01:42.640 be connected to such funders to be in touch with us to partner in protecting the Copper

00:01:47.400 River Delta.

00:01:48.900 This is big.

00:01:50.200 This could mean the permanent protection of 3 million acres downstream of one of the wildest places left on the earth.

00:01:57.680 The enduring subsistence of the Iyak people and their salmon, eagle, bear, and all the other more than human kin depend on it.

00:02:06.420 There is a powerful shift afoot in the land back movement and we are here for it.

00:02:11.620 Get in touch at engage at forthewild.world and visit nativeconservancy.org.

00:02:18.000 Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today I'm speaking with

00:02:33.420 Dr. Kate Stafford, whose research focuses on using passive acoustic monitoring

00:02:38.780 to examine migratory movements, geographic variation, and physical drivers of marine

00:02:45.100 mammals, particularly large whales. She has worked all over the world from the tropics to the poles

00:02:51.980 and is fortunate enough to have seen and recorded blue whales in every ocean in which they occur.

00:02:59.380 And if you know anything about the marine environment, you might know that that light

00:03:03.760 doesn't travel very far through water. Scents, smells don't necessarily travel very far through

00:03:10.380 water, but sound travels far and efficiently through water. So all marine animals from

00:03:17.240 snapping shrimp to whales rely very heavily on sound. Kate's current research focuses on the

00:03:26.340 changing acoustic environment of the Arctic and how changes from sea ice declines to increasing

00:03:32.620 industrial human use may be influencing sub-Arctic and Arctic marine mammals. She is a senior

00:03:39.580 Principal Oceanographer at the Applied Physics Lab and Affiliate Associate Professor in the

00:03:45.520 School of Oceanography at the University of Washington in Seattle, and has degrees in French

00:03:51.060 Literature and Biology from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and Wildlife Science

00:03:56.980 and Oceanography from Oregon State University. Well, Kate, welcome to For the Wild. I am so

00:04:03.660 looking forward to this conversation and to hear the soundscapes of the ocean and to be

00:04:09.400 just engaged in this incredible world with you for the next hour.

00:04:15.120 Thank you so much, Ayanna. I'm really looking forward to our conversation as well.

00:04:18.880 Well, I'd like to begin our conversation in recognition of the many songs the ocean body

00:04:24.560 sings and holds. However, I also recognize that the question I'm about to ask you is temporal

00:04:31.480 in nature and that the ocean of today sounds radically different than the one that existed

00:04:36.420 pre-industrialization, pre-globalization, pre-conquest. So how does the underwater

00:04:42.700 soundscape vary? And can you speak to what sounds our oceans are filled with today and why they're

00:04:49.420 becoming increasingly louder? So sound travels really efficiently underwater. It can travel

00:04:55.400 much further underwater than it can in air. And sound underwater is created by natural events

00:05:03.320 like underwater earthquakes and volcanoes, or by the wind rushing on top of the water and creating

00:05:11.020 waves. We also have sound underwater that is created by the biology, the animals that live

00:05:16.680 underwater, the fish, snapping shrimp, whales, and seals. Increasingly, though, we're having more

00:05:24.320 what we call anthropogenic or human-driven sound in the water. And these are sounds from ship

00:05:30.760 propellers. They're sounds from oil and gas exploration. They're sounds from Navy sonars.

00:05:38.180 And because of industrialization and globalization and massive shipping, primarily commercial

00:05:44.220 shipping across the oceans, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, levels of sound in what

00:05:51.060 we would call the lower frequencies, so under about 1,000 hertz, have been on the increase,

00:05:57.060 and they've increased fairly rapidly, especially in the northern hemisphere.

00:06:01.300 For we humans, we hear from about 20 hertz, which is quite low, to 20 kilohertz. Most of us,

00:06:08.960 our hearing range is somewhere in the middle there. Something that's under 20 hertz, we would

00:06:13.900 consider subsonic, so below our hearing range, and that might be an underwater earthquake,

00:06:18.800 a volcano, the rumble of an elephant. Things that are above our hearing range are supersonic.

00:06:25.260 You might think of the really high notes of a piccolo or a dog whistle that the dog can hear

00:06:30.280 and we can't. When I'm speaking, I'm probably talking to around 3000 hertz. And the reason we

00:06:37.200 care about the frequency or the pitch of sound is different animals underwater make and receive

00:06:45.500 sounds in different frequency bands. And we're really interested in knowing the intersection of

00:06:52.920 where human noise overlaps the frequency bands that are used by animals in the water.

00:07:01.760 I wonder if you can give listeners a bit of a primer on the ramifications of increased noise

00:07:07.020 pollution when it comes to marine life. I think most of us understand the impacts of sonar on

00:07:12.520 marine mammals, but I wonder if you could describe just how loud human intervention

00:07:18.000 is in the ocean. How does noise pollution attack social networks and the survival rates of our

00:07:24.720 underwater kin? And to what extent is the consciousness, communication, and knowledge

00:07:30.300 of creatures like whales deeply dependent on acoustics? Sound is really the most important

00:07:38.120 sense for marine animals. We humans, not all of us of course, but we humans tend to be very visual

00:07:44.800 animals. The way we navigate our world, many of us, is through our sight. For animals that live in the

00:07:50.960 ocean, the way they navigate their world, the way they find mates, the way they find prey, the way

00:07:56.160 they move through their three-dimensional environment is using sound. And if you know

00:08:01.760 anything about the marine environment, you might know that light doesn't travel very far through

00:08:07.340 water. Scents, smells don't necessarily travel very far through water, but sound travels far

00:08:15.060 and efficiently through water. So all marine animals from snapping shrimp to whales rely

00:08:20.860 very heavily on sound. And as we increase sound levels in the ocean, what we're essentially doing

00:08:28.500 is decreasing the communication space over which these animals can communicate with each other.

00:08:35.980 A good analogy might be, if you live in a house that's underneath a freeway, you might have to talk louder to your family all of the time, or you might not hear something that's in the next room, versus living in the middle of a nice, quiet forest, although I certainly understand that forests are full of amazing natural sounds.

00:08:56.900 if you're in a room where there's a fan going on or if you've got air conditioning on and suddenly

00:09:03.680 that fan stops you just feel this sense of of relaxation suddenly when that noise that you

00:09:09.760 hadn't really noticed stops so it decreases your stress levels so we know that that increasing

00:09:16.720 sound levels in the same frequency ranges that are used by say whales for instance like ships

00:09:23.120 ships make noise in the same band, the same frequency band that whales need to communicate,

00:09:29.120 that decreases their ability to talk to each other. So either they have to change the frequency

00:09:36.320 or the pitch of the sounds they make, or they have to make louder sounds, which might take more

00:09:42.780 energy, or they stop talking altogether, which means we've essentially cut their communication

00:09:50.500 line. There have been a couple of really compelling research papers over the past decade that have

00:09:57.320 come out that have really underlined this to me. And the first one was led by a woman named

00:10:03.440 Roz Rowland, and she was studying North Atlantic right whales, which are probably the most

00:10:08.560 endangered large whale on the planet. And just after 9-11, after the terrorist attacks,

00:10:14.780 not unlike what's happening with COVID a lot of commercial shipping and of course most air

00:10:21.740 transport completely stopped but she continued to do her research on right whales where she was

00:10:27.360 gathering their poop to look at stress hormones in their feces and what she found when she looked at

00:10:33.840 noise levels in the ocean which had gone down after 9-11 was that North Atlantic right whale

00:10:39.540 stress levels also went down, which suggested that these right whales, and probably many large

00:10:46.720 whales that are subjected to constant commercial shipping, they were under constant stress from

00:10:52.700 these increased noise levels. There's another really interesting report from up in the Arctic

00:10:57.180 done by Susanna Blackwell and her colleagues, and she looked at how bowhead whales respond to

00:11:03.540 air gun pulses.

00:11:23.200 And she found that as an air gun was distant, but the bowhead whales could just hear it,

00:11:28.420 first they would increase their calling rates, but then as the noise levels got louder,

00:11:32.180 as the ship got closer, they essentially stopped calling altogether.

00:11:36.660 So they had a dual response to this noise

00:11:40.400 that was impeding their ability to communicate with each other.

00:12:02.180 it's so heavy to take this information in i remember being in conversation with hawk rosales

00:12:15.200 who's the executive director of the intertribal council sinkione he's been successful at stopping

00:12:21.180 the navy from bombing off the coast of california for the past five years and he was playing sounds

00:12:28.160 of what the bomb sounded like in the ocean

00:12:31.300 and just these horrific noises

00:12:34.840 that the whales would have to listen to

00:12:37.580 in preparation for the bombing.

00:12:40.980 And it's, yeah, it's really intense.

00:12:45.800 So thank you for going into that a little bit.

00:12:49.240 So just imagine we can plug our ears,

00:12:51.900 we can put a pillow over our head.

00:12:54.320 What if you can't escape that underwater?

00:12:56.320 Mm-hmm. Yeah, I remember hearing this noise that was almost like this high-pitched siren

00:13:02.880 that just didn't stop for prolonged periods of time. And I thought about that. They can't get

00:13:10.200 away. And the maddening, the crazy making, I know how that would impact me. It's just really

00:13:18.000 horrendous. And I've read that around 80% of communications for some species of whales have

00:13:24.140 been disturbed by noise. And I'm wondering about the prolonged chronic stress caused by this

00:13:30.680 constant noise, this disruption, especially in terms of reproduction. I've read that noisy

00:13:36.820 environments can hinder reproduction and parenting for other marine species. Can that be said for

00:13:43.040 whales as well? We don't really know. And part of that is because whales in the ocean are

00:13:49.480 extraordinarily difficult to study. They spend 95% of their lives underwater. And again, as I said,

00:13:56.540 we humans, we tend to largely be visual animals. And so our concept of what a pod of whales might

00:14:03.620 be is we see a few whales on the surface that are within a couple body lengths of each other,

00:14:08.520 and we assume that's a pod. But really, a pod or a group of whales might be a group of animals that

00:14:15.480 is spread out over many, many kilometers, you know, tens to even a hundred kilometers that

00:14:21.100 maintain contact through using sound. So our concept of what a pod is, is really restricted

00:14:28.500 by our human inability to conceive what's going on underwater. And that also restricts our ability

00:14:35.780 to really determine specific impacts. And that's why this study that Roz did with the hormone

00:14:43.280 levels in the feces, I thought was really, really important. And the study that Susanna did over

00:14:48.400 many, many years of acoustic data from the Arctic, we're really able to show these impacts. But

00:14:53.940 these are, unfortunately, we really need long-term studies because, like you said, stress levels can

00:15:01.020 certainly impact reproduction in humans, absolutely. You know, noise stress levels

00:15:05.680 impact us all the time, and we don't really think about it, I don't think.

00:15:10.240 but how do you tell that in the marine environment and that's one of the really

00:15:15.660 the really hard things to to figure out you know whales aren't going to to just all of a sudden

00:15:22.740 die through exposure to chronic ship noise but what does that do to their reproduction what does

00:15:28.260 that do to their communication even at this point despite our advances in technology and

00:15:34.040 research capabilities, we still don't have a really good idea.

00:15:39.060 At this point, we're all familiar with the many physical changes Earth is undergoing due to

00:15:44.320 climate change and habitat destruction. But I think it's much less common that we think about

00:15:49.560 the auditory changes happening around us, especially those underwater. And it's been said

00:15:55.080 that you're essentially listening to climate change in the Arctic. I'd love if you could

00:16:00.860 elaborate on what this means. How do warming waters correlate with a noisier ocean?

00:16:07.000 The Arctic is essentially warming two times as fast as the rest of the globe.

00:16:11.980 And the clear indication of global warming in the Arctic is the decrease in seasonal sea ice,

00:16:19.420 both the extent, the thickness, and the age. And this change in the extent of sea ice has

00:16:26.700 had a number of impacts on the soundscape so in the summer and fall which might be called the

00:16:35.400 open water season we're hearing changes in the atmosphere so we're hearing more wind noise in

00:16:40.940 the water because there's less sea ice you know a heavy ice will dampen the sound of wind and dampen

00:16:47.440 waves in the water so with open water you get more fetch you get more wind waves incidentally it also

00:16:54.720 causes more coastal erosion, which is problematic for people who live on the coast. And so you're

00:16:59.700 getting more sort of background fuzz noise in the ocean. Think of it as traffic, where you can't

00:17:06.240 distinguish one single truck or one single car, but you just hear the aggregate fuzz of all those

00:17:12.060 cars. So we're essentially hearing changes in the atmosphere. We're also hearing changes

00:17:18.520 in the biology of the arctic we're hearing more subarctic species so these are species that that

00:17:27.400 in the past might have come to the arctic in the summer just for a short period of time and then

00:17:32.560 left as sea ice extent increased those are humpback whales finback whales killer whales

00:17:38.860 minke whales we're hearing all of these species in the arctic now much later in the season and

00:17:45.180 much further north because there is no longer any sea ice in September, October, November

00:17:51.400 to push them out of the Arctic. So we're changing the underwater natural soundscape

00:17:57.660 of the Arctic, and we can hear that by listening. And of course, what we also hear, and this is one

00:18:04.760 of the biggest changes in the Arctic soundscape, is the increase in shipping, both commercial

00:18:10.940 shipping, from tourism, and oil and gas exploration. These are things that are increasing and are on

00:18:18.640 the increase. And certainly, I don't think that shipping will ever be as extensive in the Arctic

00:18:25.580 as it is, say, in the North Pacific or North Atlantic. But still, you're injecting all these

00:18:31.760 novel sounds at much higher levels into what used to be a fairly pristine environment in terms of

00:18:38.260 acoustics. So the animals in the Arctic have not evolved with lots of low-frequency shipping noise

00:18:45.240 or oil and gas noise. Now, on an evolutionary scale, neither have animals elsewhere, but animals

00:18:52.740 outside of the Arctic for the past several hundred years have been subjected to the Industrial

00:18:59.820 Revolution and increases in shipping. But the Arctic itself essentially used to be really quite

00:19:07.280 quiet. Now, that's not to say it's always quiet. Sea ice is very, very noisy. The animals in the

00:19:14.700 springtime are incredibly noisy. So at some times of year, the Arctic is a really noisy place,

00:19:19.640 but it's a noisy place of animals and ice. Now, other times of year, the Arctic is a noisy place

00:19:27.200 because we're hearing more wind and we're hearing increased shipping. And I should say we hear the

00:19:32.280 shipping at times when a lot of these species are migrating, and so they need to keep in contact

00:19:38.000 with each other. I'm wondering, are the noises that are being produced by warming waters as

00:19:43.520 impactful on marine life as the underwater noise pollution that comes from commercial or extractive

00:19:48.860 industry? And will our underwater kin simply become used to this new soundscape under changing

00:19:55.100 climate regimes? Animals are quite adaptive, most species. So they may indeed become used

00:20:03.840 to these sounds, but just because they're used to them doesn't mean it's necessarily good for

00:20:10.100 the species. I mean, they still will have to adapt to increased noise levels. And part of

00:20:16.180 the question comes, well, how do these noise levels, and you touched on this earlier, how do

00:20:21.440 they impact the overall population survival and again as i said we don't really know that but what

00:20:27.260 we do suspect is what are the cumulative impacts of all of these layers and levels of sound and new

00:20:34.080 sound in the underwater environment of the arctic and we just don't know

00:20:51.440 Thank you.

00:21:21.440 So I was reading in preparation for this interview that the world's ocean

00:21:44.420 have absorbed over 90% of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

00:21:49.780 And this tremendous increase is significantly altering migratory routes of many species.

00:21:57.020 Bowheads, belugas, and narwhales were once the only whales to be found in the Arctic,

00:22:02.760 but now we're hearing about orcas and humpback whales traveling up north as well.

00:22:09.000 There are so many conversations to be had on the implications of changing migratory patterns,

00:22:14.260 But I'm really curious for us to explore this in terms of how place-based soundscapes are changing based on migration.

00:22:22.900 With bowheads and humpbacks both singing, will this create a confusing atmosphere as more and more humpbacks cross paths with bowheads?

00:22:31.120 And are you beginning to see competition for food sources with the introduction of new apex predators like orcas?

00:22:38.720 Yeah, you've sort of hit on the crux of what I would say is my research right now.

00:22:45.560 And so I probably don't have any good answers for you.

00:22:47.840 But both bowhead whales and humpback whales, of all the large whale species,

00:22:52.480 they're the only two species to sing complex, varying songs that change year to year.

00:22:59.520 And with bowheads, they change within a year.

00:23:02.060 And so these are the two great singers of the ocean world.

00:23:05.980 and what we're hearing more and more is humpback whales moving north, spending more time in the

00:23:13.660 north, and they're there long enough that they start to sing. So singing behavior in humpback

00:23:19.140 whales we know is a male reproductive display, both as a means of mediating interactions between

00:23:25.640 different males, but we also suspect that females are eavesdropping, and we assume it's similar for

00:23:31.240 bowhead whales so this singing ability is really important for reproductive ability we assume or

00:23:40.640 for the possibility of of reproducing and as i said they both produce these complex songs that

00:23:47.780 are capable of changing and bowhead whales in particular seem to have incredibly varied songs

00:23:53.240 and they they change within a week within a month and they change completely between years

00:24:00.180 and so now that we are hearing the two singers overlap in the arctic the question is

00:24:05.800 what is this going to do to the acoustic ecology essentially of these species are humpback whales

00:24:13.080 going to suddenly start sounding like bowhead whales or vice versa and you know as somebody who

00:24:19.040 studies underwater recordings where often you don't see the animals at all like am i going to

00:24:24.400 be able to tell the difference between a humpback whale and bowhead whale eventually but more

00:24:27.800 importantly does this change in song how does this affect their ability to find mates and reproduce

00:24:33.860 and you know we just don't know with regards to to competition for resources whether that's food

00:24:41.600 or acoustic space again i think we're still right on the edge of all of these changes and

00:24:47.520 and you know with climate change we say there's going to be winners and there's going to be

00:24:51.920 losers so maybe these subarctic species that can now exploit all this prey that's in the arctic

00:24:58.460 that's novel to them they might do just fine you know subarctic species can keep moving north 0.94

00:25:04.020 but at some point you end up at the top of the world and there's there's not much further that

00:25:09.440 you can go if you're a bowhead whale or a beluga whale or a narwhal so we're we're really at a

00:25:17.640 point where things are changing almost so rapidly that I'm not sure we can predict what's going to

00:25:24.760 happen and I'm also what worries me is I'm not sure how we're going to mitigate this how how can

00:25:30.940 we help change the trajectory of this process and that's that's kind of something that keeps me up

00:25:40.600 at night a little bit. Yeah, it's interesting. When I first started to learn about more of the

00:25:49.940 details of the atrocities of what was happening to the earth, I thought I knew more or could find

00:25:57.680 more answers than I can now. And it's a really strange place to be in to understand that the

00:26:05.180 more that I learn, it almost feels like the less that I know. And with the speed that climate change

00:26:12.440 is taking, it's, yeah, it's so hard to know what to do at this point, because the systems of

00:26:22.100 destruction are so intertwined with one another. And they're huge. You know, we've, we're really in

00:26:27.780 a big mess right now with the Anthropocene extinction and climate change. And I appreciate

00:26:33.340 your humility and your devotion to the waters and the whales and the other creatures and just

00:26:42.060 being and listening so deeply to them. And so I really appreciate the humility that you come

00:26:48.480 to this with. And whales are kin that I think so many of us find incredibly captivating in their

00:26:56.200 behavior, their symbolism and physical manifestation. And I'm particularly moved by

00:27:01.720 the lifespan of bowheads as they're able to live up to 200 years old, which means that the bowhead

00:27:07.780 whales of today know of a natural world that was obviously not completely silent like we've been

00:27:13.800 talking about, but without the violent new disturbances of today. They're creatures that

00:27:19.700 have a living memory of something totally different. And of course, the bowhead is

00:27:24.880 vividly connected to every facet of life in the Arctic. So I'd love if you could share with us

00:27:30.160 your relationship with these creatures and how they are faring with an increase in noise you

00:27:36.060 know what is so special about the bowhead songs and what do future projections look like for bowheads

00:27:42.140 in regards to climate change although i know that we also are in this point where we can't

00:27:47.800 necessarily say but just in terms of what you've been able to research so far i have to say i feel

00:27:53.780 incredibly fortunate to have been able to spend so much time just listening to the underwater

00:28:00.720 soundscape of the arctic and to bowhead whales and and it's something that has really grabbed me

00:28:08.400 you know bowhead whales in any way you can possibly think about it are superlative animals

00:28:14.140 as you've said they can live 200 years or the inupiacs say they live two human lives

00:28:19.600 you know they're the only baleen whale so a whale with baleen which are keratin plates in their mouth

00:28:27.040 and they use those to feed it's the only baleen whale to live year-round in the arctic

00:28:30.740 they've got the thickest blubber of any whale they can break ice up to half a meter thick

00:28:37.020 and they've got the longest baleen too of any whale that helps them feed

00:28:42.540 and they sing these amazing amazing songs

00:28:47.840 and the songs they sing

00:29:15.320 as i said change frequently and we don't know if it's if individual whales have their own song or

00:29:21.680 if they're constantly changing songs but within a population if you listen over a winter you might

00:29:28.840 hear 60 or 70 very distinctly different songs and a lot of the reasons we don't know a whole lot

00:29:37.240 about bowhead whale singing behavior is it happens in the polar night it happens under 24 hours of

00:29:44.500 darkness and often, you know, 95 to almost 100% sea ice cover. So it's something we can only

00:29:50.900 listen to. We can't actually go out and see it. Although I would love to be in a submarine

00:29:57.360 under the water some winter just listening to whales. But bowhead whales are, you know,

00:30:03.240 they're truly remarkable animals, not only for their singing behavior and their physical

00:30:08.120 adaptations to the Arctic, but they are a keystone species in the Arctic. And they're

00:30:13.200 also incredibly important to the subsistence of arctic indigenous peoples and bowhead whales

00:30:18.760 provide subsistence they provide culture they provide community to lots of communities around

00:30:25.100 the arctic and and as you said a bowhead whale that lives 200 years certainly carries a lot of

00:30:31.380 history with it but so do the people of the whale who live with the bowhead whale they carry

00:30:35.660 traditional knowledge of thousands and thousands of years and so for me that makes the bowhead

00:30:41.120 all the more fascinating I won't say that that whales are necessarily any more special than

00:30:46.560 than bees or ants or pangolin or any of the animals that have adapted on our planet into

00:30:54.960 these little niches just for me they're really a species that that is so fascinating because we

00:31:01.180 know relatively little about them still there's still so much to know and yet I also have the

00:31:07.480 feeling, not unlike what you said just now, is, boy, the more I think I know, the more I realize

00:31:13.280 I don't know and I may never know. So bowhead whales are really this iconic animal of the

00:31:19.280 Arctic that I think a lot of people don't even know exist. And what's particularly bittersweet

00:31:26.400 about bowhead whales is like many large whales, particularly right whales, bowhead whales,

00:31:32.940 These are animals that were brought to the brink of extinction by commercial whaling, primarily in the 1700s and 1800s, so early on.

00:31:42.960 And they were hunted both for their baleen, which is sometimes referred to whale bone as whale bone, even though it's not bone at all.

00:31:50.640 Baleen is, say, the plastics of the 1800s.

00:31:54.620 It's flexible.

00:31:56.540 It lasts long.

00:31:57.700 baleen was used to make buggy whips and parasol ribs and and my favorite is ladies corset stays

00:32:05.380 so baleen was used for many many many things in the 17 and 1800s and the other reason that bowhead

00:32:12.520 whales were brought to the edge of extinction was their blubber which was boiled down for lubricant

00:32:18.420 for soap for lighting and so the irony is not lost on me that just as bowhead whales

00:32:27.840 were heading towards extinction due to commercial whaling not indigenous whaling commercial whaling

00:32:34.060 oil was discovered on land and we started pumping oil out of the earth and because the price of

00:32:42.580 kerosene then became less than the price of whale oil because of course whales were harder and

00:32:49.120 harder to find so whale oil became increasingly expensive and more expensive to to obtain the

00:32:55.540 discovery of oil on land may in fact have have saved some of these species like the bowhead

00:33:01.640 whale from extinction and yet now it's our exploitation of that oil on land that is really

00:33:07.800 one of the main drivers of climate change, which is now bringing us back to this idea of animals

00:33:13.100 being in trouble. It's a catch-22, right? I know that North America's largest oil field,

00:33:21.840 Prudhoe Bay, is found in Alaska, which is to say that the Arctic has experienced its fair share of

00:33:27.940 industrial activities regarding oil exploration, all of which has occurred with very little

00:33:33.180 recognition from global oil consumers. And I'm thinking about this moment right now when the U.S.

00:33:39.200 government is dying to continue icebreaking, drilling, and exploring in a cowardly attempt

00:33:45.420 at reviving the failing U.S. economy, with the Trump administration using emergency authority

00:33:51.120 to further gut the Endangered Species Act and a number of other environmental laws,

00:33:56.240 NEPA, etc. And so we really must remain vigilant. So I'm wondering, should we see another attempt

00:34:04.380 to allow offshore drilling? Can you speak to the ramifications of oil and gas exploration in the

00:34:09.700 Arctic? And how are oil and gas really driving a complete extinction of the Arctic in terms of

00:34:16.560 species culture and ice it seems sort of ridiculous that we're propping up

00:34:24.020 sort of a false economy by trying to drill every last drop of oil out of the earth

00:34:32.440 in the arctic it's problematic for a number of reasons and and i'm mostly familiar with the

00:34:38.300 pacific arctic which tends to be a relatively shallow shelf sea until you get into the deep

00:34:44.080 arctic basin but what i can tell you about the the u.s pacific arctic is beyond the noise of oil and

00:34:53.260 gas exploration and that includes both air guns which essentially so an air gun images the ocean's

00:35:00.720 bottom to look for pockets of gas essentially so the best analogy i've been able to come up with is

00:35:07.300 you make a really loud sound in the water it goes through the water column

00:35:10.900 into the sediment and then it bounces back and the bounce back tells geophysicists what they

00:35:18.240 think might be under the sediment so it's very similar to doing an ultrasound except a very low

00:35:25.660 frequency ultrasound of a fetus in in a woman's uterus so an ultrasound essentially uses sound

00:35:32.720 waves to image the fetus and the sound bounces off of tissues and bones of different densities

00:35:39.360 and gives you a picture of the fetus so essentially using an air gun is a way to get a picture of

00:35:47.100 potential oil and gas deposits underneath the ocean bottom and that can be a very very loud

00:35:55.860 endeavor that can go on you know they'll make an air gun pulse every 10 to 20 seconds for hours or

00:36:02.100 days in the arctic air guns are heard throughout the oceans of the world especially in the north

00:36:09.380 and south atlantic and the indian ocean and then you've got the ships that are affiliated with

00:36:14.040 those and then you've got drilling

00:36:15.820 that is also a fairly noisy endeavor so that all injects noise into the ocean and until recently

00:36:25.800 in the arctic it was noise that was limited to maybe a couple months of the year

00:36:31.600 because then the ice would come in and you'd have to move the ships out.

00:36:35.140 You'd even have to move the drill rigs out.

00:36:37.320 Off of Prudhoe Bay, they actually built an island in the Beaufort Sea

00:36:41.500 that stands above the sea ice.

00:36:45.380 So you've got that noise.

00:36:54.920 But then you've also got the risk of an oil spill.

00:36:57.980 and if you think about the the U.S. Arctic we don't actually have any deep water ports in the

00:37:07.780 Arctic we don't have any ports where you could respond rapidly to an oil spill you would have

00:37:15.360 to send ships up from Dutch Harbor which is 1600 kilometers south of of Bering Strait I need to

00:37:22.960 double check that. So there's just not the infrastructure to immediately respond to an oil

00:37:28.600 spill. And then of course, even though the ice is decreasing and things are warming, you are still

00:37:35.440 going to have sea ice formation in the winter. So suppose an oil spill starts at the very end

00:37:41.340 of the open water season. Essentially, as the ice comes in, you can't clean up. I mean, it took them

00:37:48.140 what was it five years to cap the deep water horizon oil spill and that was in the gulf of

00:37:54.720 mexico where they don't have sea ice and they've got lots of ports and they've got lots of of ships

00:37:59.820 that can be put on place in the arctic we don't have that so oil and gas both has a risk for

00:38:10.500 increasing noise in the water but also for massive ecological devastation if there is an oil spill

00:38:18.920 and it can't get cleaned up really quickly. I think it's important for folks to look at the

00:38:26.000 track records of these large oil companies and their spill responses because it's been horrendous

00:38:34.760 And anytime an extractive resource corporation tries to calm our worries about spill response, we have to be really diligent at looking at what they're offering.

00:38:56.840 is there money put aside if there was a spill response to happen where is the emergency

00:39:05.960 materials coming from like you were talking about in the Beaufort Sea it would be impossible to

00:39:13.060 respond immediately and probably not even within months you know I'm thinking even about the Exxon

00:39:18.900 Valdez spill 30 years ago. And just all of the mishaps that happened when the oil tanker

00:39:29.340 hit the ocean floor and created such a disaster and how long it took for them to respond. It was

00:39:37.160 the fishermen who went out first to respond with buckets trying to clean up the oil. And the

00:39:42.820 Herring have still not returned to the Prince William Sound 30 years later.

00:39:48.600 So I think spill response education for those of us who are wanting to spend our time devoted to protecting the oceans, we really need to be diligent.

00:40:01.540 And I'm grateful that you spoke to that.

00:40:04.400 and to continue on this thread i was noticing that over the past century the arctic has warmed

00:40:15.120 at a rate nearly twice that of the rest of the world and most scientists predict that the arctic

00:40:21.140 ocean will be ice-free in the summers over the next two decades so to me and to our listeners

00:40:28.340 the potential of an ice-free arctic is it's devastating you know not only will it forcefully

00:40:35.160 restructure the more than human world but it will also disseminate cultural ways and a body of

00:40:41.540 knowledge that has largely remained the same for millenniums but of course capitalism sees

00:40:46.980 opportunity in any disaster and shipping corporations are already eyeing an ice-free

00:40:52.500 arctic in terms of the possibility of new routes but just because we can do something doesn't mean

00:40:58.000 that we should. So can you speak to the possible increase in shipping routes? And is this

00:41:03.640 preventable? Or how will the ushering in of more transportation and noise further disrupt the

00:41:10.300 ecological, cultural and spiritual dimensions of the place, assuming that global trade even

00:41:15.900 exists in the next two decades? So for me, the Arctic is an incredibly special place. Like

00:41:24.820 There's no place I would rather be than out on the sea ice in the spring in the Arctic.

00:41:29.540 But I understand that that's actually a position of privilege for me to be able to do that.

00:41:35.780 For the people and animals who live in the Arctic,

00:41:39.040 now a lack of seasonal sea ice is going to be highly problematic.

00:41:43.400 I mean, that was the first, I think I read, was it last week?

00:41:47.080 The very first commercial ship went through the northern sea route,

00:41:51.540 which goes along the northern coast of Russia without an icebreaker escort.

00:41:56.540 And there are companies that are already eyeing not just the northern sea route

00:42:00.920 or the Northwest Passage, but actually a trans-polar route,

00:42:05.240 so going right across the pole, because that's a big shortcut

00:42:09.380 between the Pacific and Europe.

00:42:12.480 And, you know, we're going to have increasing noise, of course,

00:42:16.600 and increasing risk of oil spills.

00:42:18.520 Now, admittedly, the International Maritime Organization is trying to be really proactive.

00:42:25.500 And they've got a polar code that applies both to the Arctic and to the Antarctic.

00:42:30.540 So I feel like in some way, people are trying to get ahead of this.

00:42:36.440 And, you know, people I've talked to who live in the Arctic, they say they will adapt.

00:42:40.180 But if you think about no summer sea ice, you think about nowhere for walrus or ice seals to rest.

00:42:45.700 nowhere but land for polar bears to hunt so that's going to increase human wildlife conflicts and

00:42:52.720 yeah just because we can do something doesn't mean we should and and part of it is you know

00:42:59.540 you and I both live in a country that uses way more than our fair share of natural resources

00:43:06.720 So I think globally, we need to decide what is our priority as human beings. Is it one day shipping of plastic stuff to our house? Or is it maybe waiting an extra week and taking into consideration the Arctic and other areas that are being impacted by climate change?

00:43:30.680 Because really, at some point, it's up to each of us individually to be responsible for this.

00:43:37.380 But I also really think that one of the ways we need to think about the Arctic and the rest of the globe, and maybe this pandemic is giving us a chance to, some of us a chance to slow down and think about it, is what do we want to see our future like?

00:43:52.960 How do we affect change?

00:43:54.760 And more and more, I'm convinced that it's by encouraging people to get out and vote at all levels of government, local, national.

00:44:04.700 We have to think about putting people in charge who understand the value that the earth provides to us.

00:44:15.240 You know, the oceans provide almost half of our oxygen.

00:44:18.300 And we can live without Wi-Fi.

00:44:20.520 We can't live without oxygen.

00:44:22.060 we need to understand that the earth the earth's our home this is the best planet in our universe

00:44:29.380 i don't want to go to mars we have a planet that provides us oxygen and water and food and shelter

00:44:39.060 and we need to remember that and i think part of the reason people don't is because we are

00:44:46.900 disassociated from the wild right we don't get out in nature often enough and in some cases

00:44:54.260 that's because people can't because they're working two or three jobs or they have limited

00:45:00.700 mobility to get out from the environment but i think any way we can encourage people to think

00:45:06.200 about being in the wild helps us value what we get from nature not just in terms of

00:45:16.900 food and shelter but also in terms of a connectedness to the rest of the planet

00:45:23.120 i think it's complex and i do think there's a spiritual dimension

00:45:29.100 and a relational dimension of how we understand

00:45:33.420 how to be stewards how to be in reciprocity how to be in relationship with the earth

00:45:40.880 And when we try to separate ourselves in a multitude of ways that we have been in this modern dominant culture, we suffer and we are suffering and the earth is suffering.

00:45:53.580 And it's clear to so many more of us at this point than it was even two years ago, even six months ago.

00:46:01.380 And I think it will become more and more crystalline as we see more and more devastation and changes all around us.

00:46:10.880 And beyond these trade routes and these industrial commercial endeavors, I'm also reflecting on my time spent up in Alaska and just witnessing the inundation of cruise ships and how tourism and tourists are buying into this curated fantasy of what Alaskan life is like while simultaneously polluting and exploiting the area.

00:46:37.760 And while thankfully, I'm not sure if the cruise ship industry has any plans of reemerging as long as COVID-19 remains, I'm curious to hear or to understand or know about the extent of the tourist industry in terms of air pollution and disruption to the migratory route in the Arctic.

00:46:57.420 Well, I don't know that there has been enough tourism of massive boats yet to see that. Certainly, we had the Crystal Serenity, which was the largest ship to ever go through the Northwest Passage. Was it maybe four years ago?

00:47:13.760 but clearly tourism is on the rise because people want to see the arctic and they

00:47:18.800 they want to see it before it melts not really aware that going to see it might in fact

00:47:23.860 be contributing to that i don't know we have to see what i would say is right now particularly

00:47:31.200 in the alaskan arctic is the coast guard is looking at shipping routes they've got a ship

00:47:37.220 access route study and trying to figure out where is the best place to route both tourism

00:47:43.640 and commercial vessels. And I think commercial vessels will probably be much, a lot more tonnage

00:47:48.680 going through. So how can we do that to minimize the impact on coastal communities and species

00:47:55.480 migrations? And I think one way that we could start to address this is by looking at areas

00:48:04.380 that we think or that we know are important for critical life events for fish marine mammals

00:48:14.940 and essentially restrict access to those regions during those seasons restrict access to commercial

00:48:23.860 or tourism ships how do we come up with solutions as opposed to just thinking about the problems and

00:48:32.520 And part of the way we do that is to understand the problem.

00:48:35.860 So do we limit the number of ships that go through?

00:48:38.960 Do we slow ships down?

00:48:40.620 Because a slower ship is a quieter ship.

00:48:43.080 A slower ship can stop sooner.

00:48:45.780 What do we do?

00:48:46.920 It'll be really interesting, as you said, this summer, certainly up in Alaska, I think

00:48:51.840 almost all tourism in terms of large boats has stopped.

00:48:57.520 So can we then start listening underwater?

00:49:00.260 or can we continue listening underwater to areas that for the first time in maybe decades

00:49:07.060 are going to be really quiet, places like Glacier Bay in Alaska.

00:49:12.440 It's not up in the Arctic, it's in southeast Alaska,

00:49:14.520 but it's an area that regularly has lots and lots of cruise ships.

00:49:18.680 How is Glacier Bay going to sound this summer as opposed to last year,

00:49:22.840 the year before, or perhaps next year?

00:49:24.940 this interesting slowdown with covid may provide us with a means of understanding

00:49:32.820 what region sounded like 50 60 80 years ago and so it may give us a new baseline that we can strive

00:49:42.240 to maintain so if we understand this year that you know all of a sudden we're seeing or we're

00:49:50.740 hearing whales in areas that we used to hear them or didn't hear them before or seeing them,

00:49:55.460 is that a reaction to less noise? I don't know. It'll take some time to figure that out.

00:50:02.160 But I think we're kind of in the middle of a giant experiment right now. And this might be

00:50:08.900 our control year, especially with regards to tourism shipping. But the question is,

00:50:15.260 And I've always thought this about zoos. So do people being exposed to the beauty of the Arctic or the beauty of an animal in a zoo, does it make them more committed to help save that place? Does it make them feel more invested in saving a special place or special species in their day-to-day life?

00:50:42.680 what i'm equally concerned with these days i mean i think climate change is really the overwhelming

00:50:50.800 issue of the anthropocene and from climate change we see things like covid we see things like the

00:50:59.020 burning of the amazon but we're also seeing inequities both for other humans but also for

00:51:09.200 other animals so how how do we come up with a more equitable world it is the question of our time

00:51:19.000 and i'm grateful for all of the movement leaders and folks who are committed to sitting in the

00:51:30.000 complexity of that question even if we can't come up with solutions right away and maybe those

00:51:36.620 solutions look a lot different than what we thought. Maybe it's not about ingenuity or the

00:51:42.380 next idea or the next technology. Maybe it's much more about our relationships. Maybe it's much more

00:51:50.200 about slowing down and looking our addiction to fossil fuels straight in the eye and really

00:51:59.740 starting with ourselves, especially those in developed worlds who have the privilege to use

00:52:06.480 far more than the global majority and are really pushing this extinction crisis.

00:52:15.820 And yeah, these questions are complex. And I do want to mention that this month in June of 2020,

00:52:24.220 one of the largest petroleum spills in modern Russian history took place when a thermoelectric

00:52:31.960 power plant in the Siberian Peninsula spilled. Due to it being built on permafrost, that's now

00:52:38.000 melting. So, you know, I know that oil spills aren't your specialty, but as someone who has

00:52:43.520 spent a great deal of time in the Arctic, I wonder if you have anything to share on how dangerous

00:52:48.300 it is to be pursuing industrial development in the arctic or i mean we we have talked about that

00:52:54.800 a bit but you know even other reflections on the rate and scale of change that is unfolding in the

00:53:00.440 arctic today or any other clarity or details you have about what just happened in the russian

00:53:06.100 arctic what i can say is if you if you look at a map of the arctic fully half of it is the russian

00:53:13.420 Federation. And I would say we still have relatively little information coming out of

00:53:20.600 Russia about changes. And what we hear mostly is the Northern Sea Route and shipping. I would love

00:53:27.260 to hear more from my Russian scientist colleagues on the changes they're seeing in the Arctic.

00:53:33.300 As we mentioned earlier, you know, an oil spill is incredibly difficult to respond to and manage

00:53:39.620 in the arctic it's a remote area it does get cold it can be really foggy there aren't any

00:53:45.600 there are very few deep water ports there are some on the russian side actually

00:53:49.720 where you can send out ships that can respond to an oil spill cleanup and and that's really

00:53:56.380 problematic and a lot of it is problematic in that depending upon where you are in the arctic

00:54:02.600 you know oil will disperse in higher temperatures but it's still colder in the arctic it might

00:54:10.660 disperse under a lot of wind and if you've got sea ice that's gonna impact the dispersion

00:54:15.200 abilities a lot of the arctic food chains are built starting with ice algae and then flowing

00:54:22.500 down to the benthos to the bottom of the ocean as opposed to being a pelagic system where you've got

00:54:27.700 fish in the water column so especially in the pacific arctic you've got ice algae that then

00:54:34.660 feeds krill or maybe copepods and then the ice is also a nursery for arctic cod which were one of

00:54:43.260 the major prey species for many many species including other cod in the arctic but also

00:54:49.100 beluga whales and many of the seals bowheads eat copepods and krill primarily and so oil in the

00:54:57.680 Arctic is going to go into the sediments. And we've got gray whales and bearded seals and walrus

00:55:04.240 that are all, they're all bottom feeders. They're digging up the sediments, they're feeding the

00:55:08.220 sediments. So we don't know what such an oil spill that's coming essentially out of a river

00:55:12.720 into the Arctic Ocean could do. And as you mentioned the Exxon Valdez earlier, I mean,

00:55:18.540 the impacts of the Exxon Valdez have still been seen decades later. The same with the Deepwater

00:55:24.920 horizon spill those impacts are still being seen in coastal texas and louisiana even now and those

00:55:31.880 are areas where you could get to and actually do a cleanup we just can't do that efficiently in the

00:55:38.900 arctic not in time and then you know this the rupture of the tank was caused by melting

00:55:45.980 permafrost and melting permafrost is also impacting people's houses in the arctic in many areas

00:55:53.240 People who live in the coastal Arctic have ice cellars, which are essentially caves that have been dug out of the permafrost.

00:56:01.820 And that acts as your refrigeration throughout the year.

00:56:04.380 And that's where people store whale meat and seal meat.

00:56:08.600 And the ice cellars are collapsing.

00:56:11.140 So, yes, you could say, well, people should just use their freezers and their electricity.

00:56:15.420 But that costs a lot of money.

00:56:17.460 And by losing ice cellars, you're also kind of losing tradition.

00:56:23.240 And it's tricky. But so the question is, in all this doom and gloom, because there's a lot of doom and gloom, how do we find a sense of hope? Because we know that as a species, humans tend to not want to confront something that they see as impossible and tragic. You know, we need some glimmer of hope. I'm trying to find one. I'm just not being very good at it.

00:56:49.220 Well, I think that there's something about taking in the grief and not just jumping to the next false hope, which I think we have been inundated with false solutions and these forced glimmers of hope.

00:57:09.800 and we put a resources and energy and our dreams behind them and then we find out five ten years

00:57:19.560 later 20 30 years later that oh man that was not that was not the place we should have been putting

00:57:26.520 our energy that actually did not help so I think there is something about sitting with the enormity

00:57:33.040 sitting with the grief taking time even though we feel things are urgent but actually taking time to

00:57:39.240 realize how to move forward in a different way than we have. And so my hope, if I could say that

00:57:47.720 right now is, or where I find my, my way forward is in that, that relationship, that love for the

00:57:58.460 earth and just kind of getting myself out of that urgency mentality, not to say that I'm not doing

00:58:06.440 things every day. It's more of a framework in my mind than it is in terms of not actually

00:58:12.100 tangibly doing things. I think we need to be up to date with the Endangered Species Act and NEPA

00:58:17.980 have just been basically gutted by Trump under the COVID crisis, as he's putting it. And what's

00:58:25.020 happening with the trade routes, I think we need to stay educated. I think we need to push our

00:58:29.780 local governments and our national governments to do the right thing by voting, by educating

00:58:37.020 ourselves, by pushing, by protesting. I think all of that is still very necessary, but there I think

00:58:43.780 is a deeper component that we'll have to grieve through in order to come up with solutions that

00:58:52.420 feel more long-term and I know that there has been doom and gloom in our conversation but it's very

00:59:01.220 it's what is true and it's what we have to know and I don't think we would be respecting the 0.99

00:59:08.720 bowheads or the belugas or the narwhals or the orcas if we didn't actually sit in the truth 0.90

00:59:14.280 of what's happening to them and all of the other creatures in the waters and the oceans

00:59:19.560 But I think it would be nice to end our conversation with a story from you, perhaps a whale song that moved you in a way or an experience you had in the Arctic or otherwise, just anything that comes to mind in the moment that really sparked your love and your devotion to this place and to these more than human kin.

00:59:45.140 You know, I said earlier that my favorite place to be is on the sea ice in the Arctic in the spring.

00:59:53.860 And part of that is because you feel like that's when the Arctic is waking up from winter.

01:00:00.420 And you'll be out on the ice, and it's this landscape, seascape of white and blue, and hopefully it's not foggy.

01:00:11.540 And all you see is ice everywhere you look.

01:00:15.140 but when you put a hydrophone, which is an underwater microphone, down in the water,

01:00:20.980 it's as if there's this whole other world open up. You hear the trills of bearded seals, and you hear

01:00:26.800 the songs of migrating bowhead whales and beluga whales, and then later in the spring in the

01:00:32.800 Arctic, as the ice starts to break up, these leads open between the land and the sea ice,

01:00:38.580 and then there's this migration that I think probably rivals the migrations of the Serengetis,

01:00:44.680 where you have 10 or 20,000 bowhead whales swimming through

01:00:48.660 and 10 times that of beluga whales.

01:00:51.180 And you have hundreds of thousands of eiders flying through the sky.

01:00:55.040 And perhaps you'll see a polar bear off in the distance.

01:00:57.900 And it's just a place that is so beautiful and so special and so quiet.

01:01:04.760 I mean, it's really just the most magical place for me on the planet.

01:01:14.680 But it's an area that seems so cold and remote to us

01:01:42.620 and yet is so full of life.

01:01:44.680 and that's my favorite place in time on earth

01:02:14.680 Well, thank you, Kate, so much for taking this time with us and transporting us to the Arctic

01:02:26.300 with you and to be reminded that there are these absolutely incredible kin that are moving through

01:02:34.360 the waters every day, even when we don't remember that they are still very much a part of the

01:02:40.520 fabric of this world. And yeah, I appreciate your work and your devotion to them. So thank you again

01:02:49.100 for this time. Oh no, thank you very much. It's been a really nice way to spend an hour or so.

01:02:55.280 It sort of gives me some more energy to keep going.

01:03:10.520 thanks for listening to another episode of for the wild podcast i'm audio producer andrew stores

01:03:19.900 the music you heard today was by eliza edens i'd like to thank our host and founder ayana young

01:03:27.080 as well as the rest of our podcast production team francesca glassbell carter lou mcelroy

01:03:33.680 erica ekram and melanie younger

01:03:40.520 so the the sounds that i've that i've sent you were either recorded with a dipping hydrophone

01:03:57.840 which is just like a microphone on a wire that is put down into the ocean or from an instrument

01:04:03.460 that was moored or anchored underwater for a year in the Pacific Arctic.

01:04:10.120 And you'll hear the songs of bowhead whales.

01:04:26.400 And the trills of bearded seals, the knocks of walrus,

01:04:30.200 and even the high squeaks of belugas.

01:04:33.980 And in listening to these different sound sources,

01:04:36.600 sometimes they all occur at the same time.

01:04:51.360 You can hear how the different species

01:04:53.880 have essentially developed an acoustic niche in the ocean.

01:04:58.440 So they each have their own little acoustic niche

01:05:02.360 where their songs are amplified and radiate.

01:05:06.820 So they may overlap, but if you listen,

01:05:09.840 you can hear each of these different voices distinctly in the ocean.

01:05:28.440 Thank you.

For The Wild - September 02, 2020

Dr. KATE STAFFORD on What the Whales Hear ⧸198

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