00:00:00.000Welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. This week we are rebroadcasting our
00:00:06.060interview with Dr. Kate Stafford, originally aired in September of 2020. We hope you enjoy
00:00:12.160this special encore episode. Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young.
00:00:25.620Today I'm speaking with Dr. Kate Stafford, whose research focuses on using passive acoustic monitoring to examine migratory movements, geographic variation, and physical drivers of marine mammals, particularly large whales.
00:00:42.580She has worked all over the world, from the tropics to the poles, and is fortunate enough to have seen and recorded blue whales in every ocean in which they occur.
00:00:52.420And if you know anything about the marine environment, you might know that light doesn't travel very far through water.
00:01:00.820Scents, smells don't necessarily travel very far through water, but sound travels far and efficiently through water.
00:01:09.060So all marine animals, from snapping shrimp to whales, rely very heavily on sound.
00:01:14.680kate's current research focuses on the changing acoustic environment of the arctic and how changes
00:01:24.260from sea ice declines to increasing industrial human use may be influencing subarctic and arctic
00:01:31.200marine mammals she is a senior principal oceanographer at the applied physics lab
00:01:36.820and affiliate associate professor in the school of oceanography at the university of washington
00:01:42.660in Seattle, and has degrees in French literature and biology from the University of California
00:01:48.460at Santa Cruz, and wildlife science and oceanography from Oregon State University.
00:02:48.820It can travel much further underwater than it can in air.
00:02:53.000And sound underwater is created by natural events
00:02:57.460like underwater earthquakes and volcanoes
00:02:59.900or by the wind rushing on top of the water and creating waves.
00:03:06.100We also have sound underwater that is created by the biology,
00:03:09.680the animals that live underwater, the fish, snapping shrimp, whales, and seals.
00:03:16.380Increasingly, though, we're having more what we call anthropogenic or human-driven sound in the
00:03:22.440water. And these are sounds from ship propellers. They're sounds from oil and gas exploration.
00:03:29.360They're sounds from Navy sonars. And because of industrialization and globalization and massive
00:03:36.580shipping, primarily commercial shipping, across the oceans, especially in the Northern Hemisphere,
00:03:42.860levels of sound in what we would call the lower frequencies, so under about a thousand hertz,
00:03:49.440have been on the increase, and they've increased fairly rapidly, especially in the Northern
00:03:54.080Hemisphere. For we humans, we hear from about 20 hertz, which is quite low, to 20 kilohertz.
00:04:02.240Most of us, our hearing range is somewhere in the middle there.
00:04:05.700Something that's under 20 hertz, we would consider subsonic, so below our hearing range.
00:04:10.880And that might be an underwater earthquake, a volcano, the rumble of an elephant.
00:04:16.240Things that are above our hearing range are supersonic.
00:04:19.400You might think of the really high notes of a piccolo or a dog whistle that the dog can hear and we can't.
00:04:25.700When I'm speaking, I'm probably talking to around 3,000 hertz.
00:04:29.400And the reason we care about the frequency or the pitch of sound is different animals underwater make and receive sounds in different frequency bands.
00:04:43.720And we're really interested in knowing the intersection of where human noise overlaps the frequency bands that are used by animals in the water.
00:04:55.300I wonder if you can give listeners a bit of a primer on the ramifications of increased noise pollution when it comes to marine life.
00:05:03.200I think most of us understand the impacts of sonar on marine mammals, but I wonder if you could describe just how loud human intervention is in the ocean.
00:05:13.320How does noise pollution attack social networks and the survival rates of our underwater kin?
00:05:19.680and to what extent is the consciousness, communication, and knowledge of creatures
00:05:25.020like whales deeply dependent on acoustics? Sound is really the most important sense
00:05:32.740for marine animals. We humans, not all of us of course, but we humans tend to be very visual
00:05:38.940animals. The way we navigate our world, many of us, is through our sight. For animals that live
00:05:44.840in the ocean, the way they navigate their world, the way they find mates, the way they find prey,
00:05:49.680the way they move through their three-dimensional environment, is using sound.
00:05:55.160And if you know anything about the marine environment,
00:05:57.700you might know that light doesn't travel very far through water.
00:06:02.480Scents, smells don't necessarily travel very far through water,
00:06:07.020but sound travels far and efficiently through water.
00:06:10.420So all marine animals, from snapping shrimp to whales, rely very heavily on sound.
00:06:16.360and as we increase sound levels in the ocean what we're essentially doing is decreasing
00:06:24.560the communication space over which these animals can communicate with each other a good analogy
00:06:31.360might be if you live in a house that's underneath a freeway you might have to talk louder to your
00:06:37.820family all of the time or you might not hear something that's in the next room versus living
00:06:43.440in the middle of a nice quiet forest, although I certainly understand that forests are full of
00:06:48.920amazing natural sounds. If you're in a room where there's a fan going on, or if you've got air
00:06:56.820conditioning on and suddenly that fan stops, you just feel this sense of relaxation suddenly when
00:07:03.040that noise that you hadn't really noticed stops. So it decreases your stress levels. So we know that
00:07:09.720That increasing sound levels in the same frequency ranges that are used by, say, whales, for instance, like ships, ships make noise in the same band, the same frequency band that whales need to communicate, that decreases their ability to talk to each other.
00:07:26.920So either they have to change the frequency or the pitch of the sounds they make, or they have to make louder sounds, which might take more energy, or they stop talking altogether, which means we've essentially cut their communication line.
00:07:45.020And there have been a couple of really compelling research papers over the past decade that
00:07:51.340have come out that have really underlined this to me.
00:07:54.960And the first one was led by a woman named Roz Rowland, and she was studying North Atlantic
00:08:00.760right whales, which are probably the most endangered large whale on the planet.
00:08:05.900And just after 9-11, after the terrorist attacks, not unlike what's happening with COVID, a
00:08:12.000lot of commercial shipping, and of course, most air transport completely stopped. But she continued
00:08:19.260to do her research on right whales, where she was gathering their poop to look at stress hormones
00:08:24.320in their feces. And what she found when she looked at noise levels in the ocean, which had gone down
00:08:30.280after 9-11, was that North Atlantic right whale stress levels also went down,
00:08:36.060which suggested that these right whales, and probably many large whales that are subjected
00:08:41.820to constant commercial shipping, they were under constant stress from these increased
00:08:48.540There's another really interesting report from up in the Arctic done by Susanna Blackwell
00:08:52.760and her colleagues, and she looked at how bowhead whales respond to air gun pulses.
00:09:11.820and she found that as an air gun was distant that the bowhead whales could just hear it
00:09:22.380first they would increase their calling rates but then as the noise levels got louder as the ship
00:09:27.260got closer they essentially stopped calling altogether so they had a dual response
00:09:32.820to this noise that was impeding their ability to communicate with each other
00:09:37.740it's so heavy to take this information in
00:10:04.620And I remember being in conversation with Hawk Rosales, who's the executive director of the Intertribal Council, Sinkione.
00:10:13.380He's been successful at stopping the Navy from bombing off the coast of California for the past five years.
00:10:19.460And he was playing sounds of what the bomb sounded like in the ocean and just these horrific noises that the whales would have to listen to in preparation for the bombing.
00:12:57.920You know, noise stress levels impact us all the time, and we don't really think about it, I don't think. But how do you tell that in the marine environment? And that's one of the really hard things to figure out.
00:13:12.900You know, whales aren't going to just all of a sudden die through exposure to chronic ship noise, but what does that do to their reproduction? What does that do to their communication? Even at this point, despite our advances in technology and research capabilities, we still don't have a really good idea.
00:13:31.520at this point we're all familiar with the many physical changes earth is undergoing due to
00:13:38.460climate change and habitat destruction but i think it's much less common that we think about
00:13:43.660the auditory changes happening around us especially those underwater and it's been said that you're
00:13:50.300essentially listening to climate change in the arctic i'd love if you could elaborate on what
00:13:55.760this means. How do warming waters correlate with a noisier ocean? The Arctic is essentially warming
00:14:03.000two times as fast as the rest of the globe. And the clear indication of global warming in the
00:14:10.040Arctic is the decrease in seasonal sea ice, both the extent, the thickness, and the age. And this
00:14:17.600this change in the extent of sea ice has had a number of impacts on the soundscape so in the
00:14:26.660summer and fall which might be called the open water season we're hearing changes in the atmosphere
00:14:32.960so we're hearing more wind noise in the water because there's less sea ice you know a heavy ice
00:14:38.520will dampen the sound of wind and dampen waves in the water so with open water you get more fetch
00:14:45.760you get more wind waves incidentally it also causes more coastal erosion which is problematic
00:14:51.140for people who live on the coast and so you're getting more sort of background fuzz noise in
00:14:57.600the ocean think of it as as traffic where you can't distinguish one single truck or one single
00:15:02.780car but you just hear the aggregate fuzz of all those cars so we're essentially hearing changes
00:15:09.040in the atmosphere. We're also hearing changes in the biology of the Arctic. We're hearing more
00:15:18.640subarctic species. So these are species that in the past might have come to the Arctic in the
00:15:23.600summer, just for a short period of time, and then left as sea ice extent increased. Those are
00:15:29.980humpback whales, finback whales, killer whales, minke whales. We're hearing all of these species
00:15:35.260in the Arctic now, much later in the season and much further north, because there is no longer
00:15:42.180any sea ice in September, October, November to push them out of the Arctic. So we're changing
00:15:49.760the underwater natural soundscape of the Arctic, and we can hear that by listening.
00:15:56.000And of course, what we also hear, and this is one of the biggest changes in the Arctic soundscape,
00:16:01.020is the increase in shipping, both commercial shipping from tourism and oil and gas exploration.
00:16:09.660These are things that are increasing and are on the increase. And certainly, I don't think that
00:16:16.420shipping will ever be as extensive in the Arctic as it is, say, in the North Pacific or North
00:16:21.780Atlantic. But still, you're injecting all these novel sounds at much higher levels into what used
00:16:29.400to be a fairly pristine environment in terms of acoustics so the animals in the arctic have not
00:16:35.620evolved with lots of low frequency shipping noise or oil and gas noise now on an evolutionary scale
00:16:43.120neither have animals elsewhere but animals outside of the arctic for the past several hundred years
00:16:50.980have been subjected to the industrial revolution and increases in shipping but the arctic itself
00:16:58.280essentially used to be really quite quiet now that's not to say it's always quiet sea ice is
00:17:06.060very very noisy the animals in the springtime are incredibly noisy so at some times of year
00:17:12.120the arctic is a really noisy place but it's a noisy place of animals and ice now other times
00:17:19.600of year the arctic is a noisy place because we're hearing more wind and we're hearing increased
00:17:24.180shipping. And I should say we hear the shipping at times when a lot of these species are migrating,
00:17:30.680and so they need to keep in contact with each other. I'm wondering, are the noises that are
00:17:35.420being produced by warming waters as impactful on marine life as the underwater noise pollution
00:17:40.960that comes from commercial or extractive industry? And will our underwater can simply become used to
00:17:47.300this new soundscape under changing climate regimes? Animals are quite adaptive, most species.
00:17:54.800So they may indeed become used to these sounds, but just because they're used to them doesn't mean it's necessarily good for the species.
00:18:05.120I mean, they still will have to adapt to increased noise levels.
00:18:09.760And part of the question comes, well, how do these noise levels, and you touched on this earlier, how do they impact the overall population's survival?
00:18:19.300And again, as I said, we don't really know that.
00:18:21.140But what we do suspect is what are the cumulative impacts of all of these layers and levels of sound and new sound in the underwater environment of the Arctic?
00:19:18.780So I was reading in preparation for this interview that the world's ocean have absorbed over 90% of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
00:19:43.920And this tremendous increase is significantly altering migratory routes of many species.
00:19:51.140Bowheads, belugas, and narwhales were once the only whales to be found in the Arctic.
00:19:56.800But now we're hearing about orcas and humpback whales traveling up north as well.
00:20:03.140There are so many conversations to be had on the implications of changing migratory patterns,
00:20:08.400But I'm really curious for us to explore this in terms of how place-based soundscapes are changing based on migration.
00:20:17.280With bowheads and humpbacks both singing, will this create a confusing atmosphere as more and more humpbacks cross paths with bowheads?
00:20:25.260And are you beginning to see competition for food sources with the introduction of new apex predators like orcas?
00:20:32.100yeah that you've sort of um hit on the crux of what i would say is my research right now
00:20:39.080and so i probably don't have any good answers for you but both bowhead whales and humpback whales
00:20:44.260of all the large whale species they're the only two species to sing complex varying songs that
00:20:52.500change year to year and with bowheads they change within a year and so these are the the two great
00:20:58.140singers of the ocean world and what we're hearing more and more is humpback whales moving north
00:21:06.300spending more time in the north and and they're there long enough that they start to sing so
00:21:11.880singing behavior in humpback whales we know is is a male reproductive display both as a means of
00:21:18.040mediating interactions between different males but we also suspect that females are eavesdropping
00:21:23.380And we assume it's similar for bowhead whales. So this singing ability is really important
00:21:30.500for reproductive ability, we assume, or for the possibility of reproducing.
00:21:38.360And as I said, they both produce these complex songs that are capable of changing. And bowhead
00:21:43.400whales in particular seem to have incredibly varied songs. And they change within a week,
00:21:50.420within a month and they change completely between years and so now that we are hearing the two
00:21:57.540singers overlap in the arctic the question is what is this going to do to the acoustic ecology
00:22:04.540essentially of these species are humpback whales going to suddenly start sounding like bowhead
00:22:09.120whales or vice versa and you know as somebody who studies underwater recordings where often you
00:22:16.460don't see the animals at all it's like am i going to be able to tell the difference between a humpback
00:22:19.920whale and a bowhead whale eventually but more importantly does this change in song how does
00:22:25.400this affect their ability to find mates and reproduce and you know we just don't know
00:22:29.600with regards to to competition for resources whether that's food or acoustic space
00:22:37.100again i think we're still right on the edge of all of these changes and and you know with
00:22:43.060climate change we say there's going to be winners and there's going to be losers so maybe these
00:22:48.300subarctic species that can now exploit all this prey that's in the arctic that's novel to them
00:22:53.720they might do just fine you know subarctic species can keep moving north
00:22:58.140but at some point you end up at the top of the world and there's there's not much further that
00:23:03.580you can go if you're a bowhead whale or a beluga whale or a narwhal so we're we're really at a
00:23:11.780point where things are changing almost so rapidly that I'm not sure we can predict what's going to
00:23:18.900happen and I'm also what worries me is I'm not sure how we're going to mitigate this how how can
00:23:25.080we help change the trajectory of this process and that's that's kind of something that keeps me up
00:23:34.720at night a little bit. Yeah, it's interesting. When I first started to learn about more of the
00:23:44.080details of the atrocities of what was happening to the earth, I thought I knew more or could find
00:23:51.800more answers than I can now. And it's a really strange place to be in to understand that the
00:23:59.300more that I learn, it almost feels like the less that I know. And with the speed that climate change
00:24:06.580is taking, it's, yeah, it's so hard to know what to do at this point, because the systems of
00:24:16.240destruction are so intertwined with one another. And they're huge. You know, we've, we're really
00:24:21.720in a big mess right now with the Anthropocene extinction and climate change. And I appreciate
00:24:27.460your humility and your devotion to the waters and the whales and the other creatures and just
00:24:36.180being and listening so deeply to them. And so I really appreciate the humility that you come
00:24:42.620to this with. And whales are kin that I think so many of us find incredibly captivating in their
00:24:50.320behavior, their symbolism and physical manifestation. And I'm particularly moved by
00:24:55.840the lifespan of bowheads as they're able to live up to 200 years old which means that the bowhead
00:25:01.920whales of today know of a natural world that was obviously not completely silent like we've been
00:25:07.940talking about but without the violent new disturbances of today they're creatures that
00:25:13.820have a living memory of something totally different and of course the bowhead is vividly
00:25:19.480connected to every facet of life in the arctic so i'd love if you could share with us your
00:25:24.480relationship with these creatures and how they are faring with an increase in noise you know
00:25:30.280what is so special about the bowhead songs and what do future projections look like for bowheads
00:25:36.260in regards to climate change although i know that we also are in this point where we can't
00:25:41.920necessarily say but just in terms of what you've been able to research so far i have to say i feel
00:25:47.900incredibly fortunate to have been able to spend so much time just listening to the underwater
00:25:54.840soundscape of the arctic into bowhead whales and and it's something that has really grabbed me you
00:26:02.640know bowhead whales in any way you can possibly think about it are superlative animals as you've
00:26:08.920said they can live 200 years or the inupiacs say they live two human lives you know they're
00:26:15.200the only baleen whale so a whale with baleen which are keratin plates in their mouth and they use0.59
00:26:21.800those to feed it's the only baleen whale to live year-round in the arctic they've got the thickest
00:26:26.600blubber of any whale they can break ice up to half a meter thick and they've got the longest
00:26:34.280baleen too of any whale that helps them feed and they sing these amazing amazing songs
00:40:34.300But if you think about no summer sea ice,
00:40:36.100you think about nowhere for walrus or ice seals to rest.
00:40:40.480nowhere but land for polar bears to hunt so that's going to increase human wildlife conflicts and
00:40:46.860yeah just because we can do something doesn't mean we should and and part of it is you know
00:40:53.660you and I both live in a country that uses way more than our fair share of natural resources
00:41:00.860So 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?
00:41:24.800because really, at some point, it's up to each of us individually to be responsible for this.
00:41:31.500But I also really think that one of the ways we need to think about the Arctic and the rest of
00:41:36.800the globe, and maybe this pandemic is giving us a chance to, some of us a chance to slow down and
00:41:42.340think about it, is what do we want to see our future like? How do we affect change? And more
00:41:49.680and more, I'm convinced that it's by encouraging people to get out and vote at all levels of
00:41:56.200government, local, national. We have to think about putting people in charge who understand
00:42:03.320the value that the earth provides to us. You know, the oceans provide almost half of our oxygen
00:42:11.760and we can live without Wi-Fi. We can't live without oxygen. We need to understand that the
00:42:18.940earth the earth's our home this is the best planet in our universe i don't want to go to mars
00:42:25.400we have a planet that provides us oxygen and water and food and shelter
00:42:33.180and we need to remember that and i think part of the reason people don't is because we are
00:42:41.020disassociated from the wild right we don't get out in nature often enough and in some cases
00:42:48.480that's because people can't because they're working two or three jobs or they have limited
00:42:54.840mobility to get in the environment but i think any way we can encourage people to think about
00:43:00.560being in the wild helps us value what we get from nature not just in terms of
00:43:09.080food and shelter but also in terms of a connectedness to the rest of the planet
00:43:17.240I think it's complex. And I do think there is a spiritual dimension and a relational dimension of how we understand how to be stewards, how to be in reciprocity, how to be in relationship with the earth.
00:43:35.020and when we try to separate ourselves in a multitude of ways that we have been in this
00:43:42.560modern dominant culture we suffer and we are suffering and the earth is suffering and it's
00:43:48.180clear it's clear to so many more of us at this point than it was even two years ago even six
00:43:54.920months ago and I think it will become more and more crystalline as we see more and more devastation
00:44:03.000and changes all around us. And beyond these trade routes and these industrial commercial endeavors,
00:44:14.420I'm also reflecting on my time spent up in Alaska and just witnessing the inundation of cruise ships
00:44:20.640and how tourism and tourists are buying into this curated fantasy of what Alaskan life is like
00:44:28.680while simultaneously polluting and exploiting the area.
00:44:32.820And while thankfully, I'm not sure if the cruise ship industry has any plans of reemerging
00:44:38.320as long as COVID-19 remains, I'm curious to hear or to understand or know about the
00:44:45.540extent of the tourist industry in terms of air pollution and disruption to the migratory
00:45:08.960But clearly tourism is on the rise because people want to see the Arctic and they want to see it before it melts.
00:45:14.980Not really aware that going to see it might, in fact, be contributing to that.
00:45:20.540I don't know. We have to see. What I would say is right now, particularly in the Alaskan Arctic, is the Coast Guard is looking at shipping routes. They've got a ship access route study and trying to figure out where is the best place to route both tourism and commercial vessels.
00:45:39.540And I think commercial vessels will probably be much, a lot more tonnage going through.
00:45:44.100So how can we do that to minimize the impact on coastal communities and species migrations?
00:45:50.220And I think one way that we could start to address this is by looking at areas that we think or that we know are important for critical life events for fish, marine mammals, and essentially restrict access to those regions during those seasons, restrict access to commercial or tourism ships.
00:46:19.340how do we come up with solutions as opposed to just thinking about the problems and part of the
00:46:27.220way we do that is to understand the problem so do we limit the number of of ships that go through
00:46:32.980do we slow ships down because a slower ship is a quieter ship a slower ship can stop sooner
00:46:39.200what do we do it'll be really interesting as you said this summer you know certainly up in Alaska
00:46:45.500I think almost all tourism in terms of large boats has stopped.
00:46:51.660So can we then start listening underwater, or can we continue listening underwater to areas that for the first time in maybe decades are going to be really quiet?
00:47:06.540You know, it's not up in the Arctic, it's in southeast Alaska, but it's an area that regularly has lots and lots of cruise ships.
00:47:12.480How is Glacier Bay going to sound this summer?
00:47:15.500as opposed to last year, the year before, or perhaps next year.
00:47:19.560This interesting slowdown with COVID may provide us with a means of understanding
00:47:26.960what regions sounded like 50, 60, 80 years ago.
00:47:33.220And so it may give us a new baseline that we can strive to maintain.
00:47:39.260So if we understand this year that all of a sudden we're seeing or we're hearing
00:47:45.180whales in areas that we used to hear them or didn't hear them before or seeing them is that
00:47:50.040a reaction to less noise i don't know it'll it'll take some time to figure that out but
00:47:56.540i think we're we're kind of in the middle of a giant experiment right now and this might be our
00:48:03.180control year especially with regards to to tourism shipping but the question is and i've always
00:48:10.320thought this about zoos. So do people being exposed to the beauty of the Arctic or the
00:48:21.780beauty of an animal in a zoo, does it make them more committed to help save that place?
00:48:30.340Does it make them feel more invested in saving a special place or special species in their
00:48:36.040day-to-day life. What I'm equally concerned with these days, I mean, I think climate change
00:48:42.120is really the overwhelming issue of the Anthropocene. And from climate change,
00:48:49.640we see things like COVID. We see things like the burning of the Amazon.
00:48:55.980But we're also seeing inequities, both
00:48:58.800for other humans but also for other animals so how how do we come up with a more equitable world
00:49:07.980it is the question of our time and i'm grateful for all of the movement leaders and
00:49:19.680folks who are committed to sitting in the complexity of that question even if we can't
00:49:26.540come up with solutions right away. And maybe those solutions look a lot different than what
00:49:32.440we thought. Maybe it's not about ingenuity or the next idea or the next technology. Maybe it's
00:49:40.680much more about our relationships. Maybe it's much more about slowing down and looking our addiction
00:49:49.200to fossil fuels straight in the eye and really starting with ourselves, especially those
00:49:56.160in developed worlds who have the privilege to use far more than the global majority
00:50:03.180and are really pushing this extinction crisis.
00:50:09.940And yeah, these questions are complex.
00:50:12.020and I do want to mention that this month in June of 2020 one of the largest petroleum spills in
00:50:21.580modern Russian history took place when a thermoelectric power plant in the Siberian
00:50:27.820peninsula spilled due to being built on permafrost that's now melting so you know I know that oil
00:50:35.300spills aren't your specialty but as someone who has spent a great deal of time in the Arctic
00:50:39.400I wonder if you have anything to share on how dangerous it is to be pursuing industrial development in the Arctic or, I mean, we have talked about that a bit, but, you know, even other reflections on the rate and scale of change that is unfolding in the Arctic today or any other clarity or details you have about what just happened in the Russian Arctic.
00:51:00.540What I can say is if you look at a map of the Arctic, fully half of it is the Russian Federation. And I would say we still have relatively little information coming out of Russia about changes. And what we hear mostly is the Northern Sea Route and shipping.
00:51:20.100I would love to hear more from my Russian scientist colleagues on the changes they are
00:51:26.060seeing in the Arctic. As we mentioned earlier, you know, an oil spill is incredibly difficult
00:51:31.020to respond to and manage in the Arctic. It's a remote area, it does get cold, it can be really
00:51:38.480foggy, there aren't any, there are very few deep water ports, there are some on the Russian side
00:51:43.520actually, where you can send out ships that can respond to an oil spill cleanup. And that's
00:51:50.280really problematic. And a lot of it is problematic in that, depending upon where you are in the
00:51:56.360Arctic, oil will disperse in higher temperatures, but it's still colder in the Arctic. It might
00:52:04.800disperse under a lot of wind. And if you've got sea ice, that's going to impact the dispersion
00:52:09.340abilities. A lot of the Arctic food chains are built starting with ice algae and then flowing
00:52:16.620down to the benthos, to the bottom of the ocean, as opposed to being a pelagic system where you've
00:52:21.680got fish in the water column. So especially in the Pacific Arctic, you've got ice algae that then
00:52:28.780feeds krill or maybe copepods. And then the ice is also a nursery for Arctic cod, which were one of
00:52:37.380the major prey species for many many species including other cod in the arctic but also
00:52:43.220beluga whales and many of the seals bowheads eat copepods and krill primarily and so oil in the
00:52:51.840arctic is going to go into the sediments and we've got gray whales and bearded seals and walrus
00:52:58.380that are all they're all bottom feeders they're digging up the sediments they're feeding the
00:53:02.340sediments so we don't know what such an oil spill that's coming essentially out of a river into the
00:53:07.360Arctic Ocean could do. And as you mentioned the Exxon Valdez earlier, I mean, the impacts of the
00:53:13.360Exxon Valdez have still been seen decades later. The same with the Deepwater Horizon spill. Those
00:53:20.860impacts are still being seen in coastal Texas and Louisiana even now. And those are areas where you
00:53:27.060could get to and actually do a cleanup. We just can't do that efficiently in the Arctic, not in
00:53:34.240time and then you know this the rupture of the tank was caused by melting permafrost and melting
00:53:41.280permafrost is also impacting people's houses in the arctic in many areas people who live in the
00:53:48.540coastal arctic have ice cellars which are essentially caves that have been dug out of
00:53:55.100the permafrost and that acts as your refrigeration throughout the year and that's where people
00:53:59.260store whale meat and seal meat and the ice sellers are collapsing so yes you could say well people
00:54:06.640should just use their freezers and their electricity but but that costs a lot of money
00:54:11.580and by losing ice sellers you're also kind of losing you're losing tradition it's tricky but
00:54:18.600so the question is in all this doom and gloom because there's a lot of doom and gloom how do
00:54:23.260we find a sense of hope? Because we know that as a species, humans tend to not want to confront
00:54:32.120something that they see as impossible and tragic. We need some glimmer of hope. I'm trying to find
00:54:39.620one. I'm just not being very good at it. Well, I think that there's something about
00:54:47.900taking in the grief and not just jumping to the next false hope, which I think we have been
00:54:57.760inundated with false solutions and these forced glimmers of hope. And we put a resources and
00:55:06.880energy and our dreams behind them. And then we find out five, 10 years later, 20, 30 years later
00:55:15.100that oh man that was not that was not the place we should have been putting our energy that
00:55:21.320actually did not help so I think there is something about sitting with the enormity
00:55:27.180sitting with the grief taking time even though we feel things are urgent but actually taking
00:55:32.800time to realize how to move forward in a different way than we have and so my hope if I could say
00:55:41.600that right now is or where I find my my way forward is in that that relationship that love
00:55:51.160for the earth and just kind of getting myself out of that urgency mentality not to say that
00:55:59.600I'm not doing things every day it's it's not it's more of a framework in my mind than it is in terms
00:56:05.280of not actually tangibly doing things I think we need to be up to date with that the endangered
00:56:11.100Species Act and NEPA have just been basically gutted by Trump under the COVID crisis, as he's
00:56:17.460putting it. And what's happening with the trade routes, I think we need to stay educated. I think
00:56:21.940we need to push our local governments and our national governments to do the right thing by
00:56:29.240voting, by educating ourselves, by pushing, by protesting. I think all of that is still very
00:56:35.660necessary, but there I think is a deeper component that we'll have to grieve through in order to come
00:56:44.340up with solutions that feel more long-term. And I know that there has been doom and gloom in our
00:56:53.520conversation, but it's very, it's what is true and it's what we have to know. And I don't think
00:57:01.380we would be respecting the bowheads or the belugas or the narwhals or the orcas if we didn't actually1.00
00:57:07.500sit in the truth of what's happening to them and all of the other creatures in the waters and the
00:57:13.320oceans but I think it would be nice to end our conversation with a story from you perhaps a whale
00:57:23.320song that moved you in a way or an experience you had in the arctic or otherwise just anything that
00:57:30.700comes to mind in the moment that really sparked your love and your devotion to this place and to
00:57:37.700these more than human kin? You know, I said earlier that my favorite place to be is on the sea ice in
00:57:45.700the Arctic in the spring. And part of that is because you feel like that's when the Arctic is
00:57:52.080is waking up from winter and you'll be out on the ice and it's this this landscape seascape of
00:58:00.320white and blue and hopefully it's not foggy and all you see is ice everywhere you look
00:58:09.060but when you put a hydrophone which is an underwater microphone down in the water
00:58:13.840it's as if there's this whole other world open up you hear the trills of bearded seals and you hear
00:58:20.920the songs of migrating bowhead whales and beluga whales and then later in the spring in the arctic
00:58:27.300as the ice starts to break up these leads open between the land and the sea ice
00:58:32.140and then there's this migration that i think probably rivals the migrations of the serengettes
00:58:38.820where you have 10 or 20 000 bowhead whales swimming through and 10 times that of beluga whales and you
00:58:45.440of hundreds of thousands of eiderts flying through the sky. And perhaps you'll see a
00:58:50.360polar bear off in the distance. And it's just a place that is so beautiful and so special
00:58:56.760and so quiet. I mean, it's really just the most magical place for me on the planet.
00:59:15.440But it's an area that seems so cold and remote to us