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MICHAEL DUNNE: I'm Michael Dunne. I count myself lucky to live in Oregon, and a big reason for that is easy access to the Oregon coast. Recently, I was even more fortunate to be invited onto the Pacific storm OS using a research vessel to join with researchers and local high school students to venture out miles off the Oregon coast in search of whales. The scientists on board are photographing whales to learn more about their habitat and record scarring from entanglements with fishing gear. The students are part of the OSU Sea Grant program to teach kids about amazing careers in STEM fields. And I was there to record our adventure. Bring it back to you. It was a rough day, and a few of us, including yours truly, got a little green around the gills, but it was an amazing journey from the deck of Oregon State University's research ship the Pacific storm. I was invited to join both marine mammal researchers and a group of students to venture out beyond the breakers and search for whales that inhabit the waters far off of Newport. Our destination was about 15 miles off the coast, to an area known by the scientists and crew as a good habitat for our humpback whales. The researchers are interested in seeing how the habitat is conducive to these giants, as well as photographing them to determine how they might be scarred by fishing gear and other man-made obstacles. Lindsay Wickham, a post-doctoral scholar at OSU, explains why they're studying entanglements and why that's important. Talk about your specific area of study.
LINDSAY WICKMAN: So, I'm involved in a couple of projects researching the issue of large whale entanglement on the Oregon coast. So one of those projects is Opal. It stands for overlap predictions about large whales. And in that one, we are trying to understand where the whales are and create models to predict where these large whale species are. So that's fin whales, humpback whales and blue whales, and then overlapping those predictions with fishery effort so that we can better understand where the risky areas for potential entanglement in Oregon are and when, so that we can prevent entanglements from happening. And then the other project I'm working on is called slate, and that one stands for scar based long term assessments on trends and entanglement. And in that one, we're taking photographs of humpback whales and then looking at those photos for evidence of scarring that could be caused by temporary entanglement in fishing gear. And that's to get a better idea of the actual prevalence of entanglement in Oregon and how that's changing over time, since we know our probability of actually seeing an entangled whale was so low, we can get a better idea of the scope of it by looking at photographic evidence.
MICHAEL DUNNE: What is your research suggesting thus far regarding the problem of whales off the Oregon Coast getting entangled in fishing nets and other types of gear. Do you have a generalized hypothesis of how, how big of a problem it is, and its impact on our both our permanent and visiting whales?
LINDSAY WICKMAN: It's really tricky. So there has been an increasing trend and reported confirmed entanglements over time. So that's when we see a whale with gear on it. And from the photographic work that we've been doing on entanglement scars, the number of whales that are getting entangled at some point in their life is more, a lot more than what we're seeing from these confirmed entanglements. But what's really tricky is we're not exactly sure where they're getting entangled when they get entangled during their life, and that's where we are gathering all this additional evidence around the overlay. The risk of exposure to fishery gear in Oregon is, I think, going to help a lot with that question.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Okay, do you think that through your research, you and other scientists as well as the fishing community, do you think that it will lead to solutions to reduce the conflict, and is it a simple matter of, you know, trying to remove gear from where whales are, or could there be other solutions so that the fishing community can still do what they need to do, but also can reduce the conflicts between whales and fishing gear?
LINDSAY WICKMAN: Absolutely and no one wants to entangle whales. Fishermen don't want to entangle whales, and I feel really lucky to be part of a project that has great collaborative relationships with the Dungeness crab fishing community here and other fishing agencies and a huge goal of this research too is, how can we prevent entanglements with the least amount of harm to the fishing industry? So the better we can predict where whales are and when they're there, the more fine scale we can get at that management. So instead of closing the fishery down everywhere for long periods of time, the more knowledge we have about overlap, the finer scale we can get with things like closures, and that means lower impact on those industries.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Okay, so we were out on the boat today, and you and your colleague were up in the crow's nest all day taking photographs, you know. Talk about, you know, the work, but, but talk about sort of, you know, what you love about doing what you do.
LINDSAY WICKMAN: Oh my gosh, the excitement of it. You never know what you're going to see out there. And honestly, I was looking at the weather forecast, and I was thinking, oh, we'll be lucky if we see anything today. Everyone's just going to be feeling sick. Am I going to get sick? I get seasick sometimes, and it's always a surprise. And I think I've never ended a field day feeling worse than I started, because you always encounter something interesting. And today was extra special, because not only did we see humpback whales, which we were originally planning for, but we saw gray whales, a blue whale in the distance, and a fin whale, and days like these. This is just what energizes me. Because most of the time I'm, you know, by the computer, but I just, I get so much energy.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I'm glad you brought that up, because I'm thinking, you know, it seems to me that your job is both, you know, data collection, i.e., photographs and other things. And then, of course, the research component. Talk about both the sort of the pluses and minuses. Of Sure, you're out on a boat today, you know, the wind in your hair, it's a sunny day, and you're seeing these great things. But of course, you've got to take those photos back and then do something with them. Talk about sort of the, I don't know, the yin and yang of being out doing the data collection, but then also, as you said, sitting by your computer and making it more than just some photographs.
LINDSAY WICKMAN: Yeah, and maybe this is cheesy, but honestly, I find that part in some ways more exciting than being in the field. I will say I did look at my camera after we were done and I was and I thought, oh my gosh, 1300 photos. I bet Dawn has a very similar number of photos as well. I will be downloading those photos. I'll be looking at every single one. I'll be pulling out the best images for ID purposes, so those Fluke photos, and also pulling out any images that will help us look at entanglement scarring, and then all of those photos will be processed labeled. We are also collecting GPS data and data on an iPad, on where we were, our group sizes. I have to go through all of those notes. There are so many typos. When you are doing this kind of work and the boat's rocking, everything has to be double checked. The first kind of round of going through the field data usually takes, you know, maybe one or two hours, depending on how much you've collected, but then that is all going into a very large database of sightings that we have surveys. There are other boat-based surveys, helicopter surveys, and then doing data. Analysis, and that's the exciting part, where you actually see patterns and get to see images of where these whales are overlap with fishing the exciting stats.
MICHAEL DUNNE: My last question for you is this, you know, we were out on a boat, and there were students here, many of them, first time ever being on a boat, did you, I know you were busy doing the work that you needed to do, but was there a moment when you kind of looked and said, Oh, you know, that could have been me when I was their age or is it that, you know, kind of you'd like to see more programs like this with kids being exposed to this kind of an experience?
LINDSAY WICKMAN: Yes, absolutely. Maybe this is also, it sounds a little bit selfish, but it's energizing to me, seeing the ocean and the whales through their eyes, and seeing them experience this for the first time is also very energizing for me, and I find it very rewarding. And yes, I wish that there were lots more programs like this, because it's not only I think is it useful for them, but we also collected a bunch of extremely valuable data for our research work, and it's something that I would have absolutely loved to have gotten to do when I was at their career stage too.
MICHAEL DUNNE: The two researchers spent the entire day high up on the ship's crow's nest, talking with the captain via walkie talkie to find the whales and taking 1000s of photos to ID them. Dawn Barlow, a research associate at OSU marine mammal Institute, explains why understanding whale habitat is so important to research.
DAWN BARLOW: I and the lab group that I'm part of, one interest of ours is to understand where animals like whales are and why. So what? What about a certain patch of ocean makes it a good place for this whale to be here and to be here at this particular time. What about the habitat? What about the food? What about the oceanography is making it so that they're here? And if we can understand why an animal is where it is, we can get to a point of being able to make predictions. So, can we predict under what conditions where they'll be? And that really becomes useful, in sort of more of a conservation context, to be able to understand their overlap with other uses of the ocean, or risk or threats that they might face.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Okay, and during the course of your research, are you even starting to see some changes, like, for example, you might have seen a particular area where whales were comfortable in doing what they need to do, and now they've shifted because of, perhaps, I don't know, other types of changes, perhaps, whether it's related to climate change or the rise in the temperature of the sea. What are some of the things that you've seen that show that it's a static or, excuse me, a dynamic environment.
DAWN BARLOW: Yeah, well, you really led right into it there with use of the word dynamic. So here off the Oregon coast, this is part of the Northern California Current, which is a productive coastal upwelling ecosystem. So, these, these winds here that we experience all summer long on the Oregon coast, they push the surface water offshore that's replaced by this deep, nutrient, rich water, and that really kick starts this incredible productivity that supports a whole range of animals all the way up to the largest whales, and also productive fisheries that Coastal communities rely on and so, but that process of, you know, upwelling, kick starting, this whole food web, is incredibly dynamic. It's dynamic in space and time, and so any sort of impacts to that really important upwelling system, and the cold water, the nutrients the prey like the krill, and the predators like the whales, if that's impacted, then it's going to change, sort of where they are in space and time. So an example is, many folks in this area will remember the infamous what became called the blob, so that, indeed, this marine heat wave, so really a large mass of anomalously warm water that came really close to shore and that really had ecosystem wide impacts. People were catching warm water fish, you know, one fishing off the coast here, for example. But that also changed the distribution of where animals were found and so that, like you said. It is in some parts of the California current system that may have brought whales into closer contact with risk from entanglement and fisheries, and in other places, not because the whales moved away.
MICHAEL DUNNE: What is the health if there's a I should say it this way, if you're seeing in your research healthy whales, what does that mean for the entire ecosystem?
DAWN BARLOW: That's a great question. Marine predators like whales have oftentimes been called sentinels, or ecosystem sentinels, which, if you think about sort of all the events that had to take place for a whale to be where it is. You can tell a whole lot about the ecosystem by understanding where, where a whale is and how it's doing, because that means that there had to be, in this case, you know, good upwelling that started, that brought nutrients into the into the light, and that supported phytoplankton growth, that then led to the krill that then they're there to feed on. And so by understanding, okay, here is a whale, and it's feeding and it looks like it's in good body condition, you can tell a lot about the ecosystem that supports it.
MICHAEL DUNNE: So, the follow up question would be, what are you seeing out there in terms of the whales that you study, is this a healthy ecosystem? Is it an ecosystem in transition? How would you characterize off the Oregon Coast what you're seeing?
DAWN BARLOW: That's a great question, and that's a big question. And as an ecologist, my favorite answer is, it depends. Okay, fair enough. And so I think that that question sort of depends on when you ask it. It depends on who you're asking about, whether you're asking about the near shore gray whales that respond to slightly different processes than the slightly more offshore humpbacks and blue and fin whales. It depends on, sort of when you ask it, with regards to how the ecosystem is doing, where the colder warm water temperatures are, and we do see these sort of inter annual changes, or within a year, we see changes of where the whales are, and that has to do with them coming and going from this area. And between years, we do see the impacts of the increasing frequency of these warm water events, like these marine heat waves, and then over longer time scales, we're seeing both the impacts of these populations making many of them making a really amazing recovery, post commercial whaling, paired with a changing climate that They're that they're sort of growing back into so as much as that's probably not a satisfying answer to say, how is the ecosystem doing and how the whales are doing. It's a dynamic system, and I would say they're sort of, they're responding to it to the best that they can.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Okay, it was fascinating to watch you and your colleague today taking the photos that you did. It was real excitement in your voice as you were spotting these whales. Talk about that, because obviously, I mean, you've done this for a while. You've seen many, many whales, but talk about the fact that it's still exciting.
DAWN BARLOW: Yeah, absolutely. And thanks for asking that, because oftentimes, sort of, we're asked about the implications of the work that we do, which is which motivates a whole lot of what we do. But there's also something to be said for just feeling incredibly lucky and grateful to get to spend time around these animals. And yeah, I mean, over a decade, I've been spending time on the water looking at whales, and it's never the same. And so, from one day to the next, I mean, today, when you got on board, I think I tried to give a sort of a caveat of, you never know what we're going to see. We don't know what's going to be out there. And we had an amazing day out there. We saw humpback whales and a blue whale and fin whales, and the fin whales were sort of hanging around in this one area and got really good looks at such a big and beautiful animal. And sure, I've seen them before, but it doesn't get old.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Because I think that you have an intimate knowledge of whales that very few people will ever have. So contextualize these animals for us. I mean, we know what whales are, we've seen them. You know, some of us are lucky enough to see them in person, like today, but also on television or film or something like that. What is it about a whale that first captivated you? And it does? It still captivates you today, after 10 years of doing this?
DAWN BARLOW: Sure, I think a couple things captivate me. I think spending time on the water, spending time at sea, has always captivated me, and the mystery of these animals captivates me, and I think captivates a lot of people. They're in some cases, like with blue whales, the largest animal ever to have lived on earth. And there are so many fundamental things we don't know about them, and that's sort of a big mystery to keep chasing and keep chipping away at. And so, I think what captivates me about spending time on the water with these whales, is just, well, the time spent on at sea and in their presence, that doesn't get old. But also, to going back to one of your earlier points, to think about them as this sort of Sentinel of the ecosystem that they live in, all the things that had to happen for this giant animal to be here right now that also doesn't really get old.
MICHAEL DUNNE: And while research is the primary mission on this boat, education and exposure to STEM careers is another important function. Tracy Crews, Associate Director of Education for the Oregon Sea Grant at Oregon State University, explains.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Tell us what Sea Grant is.
TRACY CREWS: Sea Grant is a cooperative program between National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Oregon State University. So we get about two thirds of our funding from NOAA, and the additional funding comes from OSU and from the state legislature through the extension program.
MICHAEL DUNNE: And what's the purpose? What's the reason you exist?
TRACY CREWS: The reason we exist is to help support thriving coastal ecosystems and our coastal communities and economies. So, we have four focus areas. One is to support sustainable fisheries and aquaculture. One is to support healthy coastal ecosystems, also workforce development and environmental literacy and coastal hazards is also a focus area of ours as well.
MICHAEL DUNNE: So, tell listeners, what is the health of the Oregon Coast ecosystem? How are we doing?
TRACY CREWS: Well, that is a very interesting question. So, there are certain ecosystems that are doing better than others. You probably have heard a lot about our urchin barrens and the kelp forests that are struggling, but we do have some bright spots as well. So here in Oregon, we have a lot of sustainable fisheries, so we work very closely with our fishing community, and we support research, and we support training that really focuses on providing opportunities to connect our fishing community to as supporting here I am rambling, but to help reduce by catch, for instance, what we're doing right now on this particular cruise looking at ways that we can collect data and help reduce whale entanglements. For instance, the more that we can reduce conflicts for our fishing community, the more they are able to then harvest and make sure that they are not impacting the ecosystem in a negative way. So really looking towards the future and making sure that our coastal ecosystems and our fisheries are able to sustain themselves well into the future.
MICHAEL DUNNE: And talk about sort of the history of that, I imagine, decades ago, there was no program to sort of find the right balance between the needs of fisheries and the environment. Talk about how, talk about the successes of that kind of a program.
TRACY CREWS: So yes, decades ago, actually, before I had this position, I was a fisheries biologist. And so, one of the interesting things when I first started as a fisheries biologist was that we were trying to manage fisheries without having a lot of the necessary data. And so trying to manage fisheries and absence of data really is not an effective way to do that, so you end up either erring on the side of caution and closing fisheries before you know they really needed to be closed, or you know, if you don't have the appropriate data, sometimes you over fish and then you end up having collapse of fisheries. Yes, and so in the last few decades, between all of the research at Oregon State University and all of the partnerships with NOAA and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and National Marine Fisheries Service, we really have gotten much better in our data collection and working with fishermen and the fisheries industry to make sure that what we are proposing, as far as regulations, really is a collaborative effort, that they're on board and that it is supporting that sustainable fisheries.
MICHAEL DUNNE: And so, your part of this cruise today where we have young adults coming out to sort of learn about what's going on. Talk about outreach, talk about, talk about, you know, not just education, but also just general outreach to the public about what you do and why it's important.
TRACY CREWS: So, Oregon Sea Grant, we support research, we also support, as you mentioned, outreach and education. And so, our goal is really to connect our industries, including the fishing community, with researchers, so researchers better understand what the needs are of the communities and the fisheries, as well as to help them communicate their science. And so if you have research and lots of data being collected, but it's not in a usable fashion, then really you're not, you know, meeting your goals. And so part of what we do, also I mentioned, was workforce development and environmental literacy, so students aspire to what they know, and if students are not aware of the variety of opportunities and careers out there related to marine science and the blue economy, then they're less likely to pursue them. And so, we are experiencing a grain of the fishing fleet, but also a grain of our scientific researchers. And so, we are really trying to lay those pathways and get students aware of the variety of career options that exist in our area.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I'm not asking you to weigh in on the politics of anything, but obviously there's, there's concern about cuts at the federal level, and NOAA is certainly part of that. And I, I just wanted you to sort of explain the importance of what this program is and how critical funding is to keep it going.
TRACY CREWS: So, Oregon Sea Grant, as I mentioned, we get about two thirds of our money from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and we are facing funding cuts. The way that our cooperative program works is that we are able to leverage federal funds with state funds, and we do a lot of grant writing as well. We have a lot of foundation funding that we are able to get to support these projects, including this one, we have about a return on investment of about eight to one. So for every federal dollar that's invested, about eight are returned, which is really, I think, pretty impressive. And so a lot of the funding that we are able to get and leverage is focused on programming, but really what we need is that base federal funding to support the staff in order to be able to continue these programs.
MICHAEL DUNNE: All told, we had a great day, despite some seasickness, we were treated to sites of gray whales, humpback whales, and even rare sites of fin and blue whales. For several of the students, it was a first time on such a boat, and a first time ever seeing whales, and it left them wanting more.
AVA: My name is Ava.
When I heard that we were gonna try to get some photos of whales and like research work, I thought that was pretty cool. And I've also never been on a boat in the ocean before, I just thought it was really cool.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Well, tell me about what you saw out here.
AVA: Oh, I saw at least four different whales. We saw a bunch of humpback whales, and I think they looked like a blue whale, and we saw a bunch of like their fins. Was it like a hunch of their back? And I actually saw a whale's mouth. So that was pretty cool. That's cool, yeah, and we saw a sea lion, yeah, in the water. It was a lot of different, like, species.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Going out on the boat like you did today. Is this something that you think, hey, maybe this? This could be part of my future, whether it's working on a boat or getting a degree in oceanography or marine biology, something like that, actually.
AVA: Yeah, when I was out on the boat taking photos or just looking out, it was really really beautiful, looking at all the animals and just seeing how the work was done. And. Is something I might want to do actually, you know, with animals, because I just like animals.
MICHAEL DUNNE: And what was your favorite part of the trip?
AVA: My favorite part was seeing and getting up close to the wildlife, actually, because I've never been up this close, so I never got this opportunity before.
NIKOLAI: My name is Nikolai.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Why did you want to come out here today?
NIKOLAI: I wanted to come out here because I had, like, this fascination with the ocean ever since I was really small. I wanted to see what it was like to be on the waters, because you'd stand on the shoreline and you watch from the coast. It's kind of like, Hey, I wonder what it's like out there. That's kind of why I came. Well, what was it like out here? It was fun. It was something I've never seen before, and kind of always wanted to experience.
MICHAEL DUNNE: It's obviously a beautiful day, but kind of rough. I mean, how did you handle that?
NIKOLAI: I handled it pretty well. Um, other than maybe nearly falling over a few times.
MICHAEL DUNNE: So, I, I assume, having never been on a boat this size and probably out this far, had you ever seen whales this up close and personal? Not once. No, what was that like, just to kind of see these huge animals?
NIKOLAI: Oh, it was cool. I've never seen anything like it. So it was, it was a lifetime experience for that.
MICHAEL DUNNE: So, you know, given that you did this and you got to experience, like you said, seeing what, what it's like on the water, what do you think is this? Is this potentially something you'd want to do in the future, whether it's work on a boat, or maybe become a scientist that studies marine mammals, something like that?
NIKOLAI: Oh, definitely. I mean, if I were given the opportunity to be out here just about every day, I think I definitely would.
MICHAEL DUNNE: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon On The Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Tomorrow on the show, we'll hear about how the University of Oregon's historic debate program faces cuts amid university budget deficits. I'm Michael Dunne, and you've been listening to Oregon On The Record from KLCC. Thanks for listening.
