Are These Whales Doing Better?

1
00:00:00,050 --> 00:00:02,300
For the first time in years,
the North Atlantic right whale

2
00:00:02,300 --> 00:00:04,400
population has stopped shrinking.

3
00:00:04,553 --> 00:00:08,633
Scientists have estimated about
372 individuals that remain up

4
00:00:08,633 --> 00:00:10,583
slightly from previous years.

5
00:00:10,643 --> 00:00:15,443
It's this fragile sign of hope for one
of the ocean's, most endangered giants.

6
00:00:15,593 --> 00:00:17,723
But before we celebrate too quickly.

7
00:00:18,323 --> 00:00:21,563
We need to ask ourselves,
what does this mean?

8
00:00:21,683 --> 00:00:24,569
The small increase mean
for this population?

9
00:00:24,599 --> 00:00:27,659
Are right whales finally
rebounding, or are we just

10
00:00:27,659 --> 00:00:29,549
buying them a little more time?

11
00:00:29,549 --> 00:00:31,739
We're gonna talk about that
on today's episode of the How

12
00:00:31,739 --> 00:00:33,029
to Protect the Ocean Podcast.

13
00:00:33,359 --> 00:00:34,379
Let's start the show.

14
00:00:36,509 --> 00:00:36,989
Hey everybody.

15
00:00:36,989 --> 00:00:39,899
Welcome back to another exciting episode
of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.

16
00:00:39,899 --> 00:00:42,239
I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and
this is the podcast where you find

17
00:00:42,239 --> 00:00:44,759
out what's happening with the ocean,
how you could speak up for the

18
00:00:44,759 --> 00:00:49,139
ocean, and what you can do to live
for a better ocean by taking action.

19
00:00:49,379 --> 00:00:52,199
And on today's episode, we're gonna be
talking about the endangered population

20
00:00:52,199 --> 00:00:54,959
of the North Atlantic white whale,
which sits in the North Atlantic.

21
00:00:55,093 --> 00:00:57,823
in the winter, it goes down to Florida
in the summer, it goes all the way

22
00:00:57,823 --> 00:01:02,353
up to the northeast coast of the
US and now into the southern part

23
00:01:02,353 --> 00:01:03,413
of the Gulf of the St. Lawrence.

24
00:01:03,563 --> 00:01:07,670
We're gonna talk a little bit about that
and why that is partly contributed to

25
00:01:07,670 --> 00:01:11,900
their decline in the 2010s, but we're
gonna talk about a population, think about

26
00:01:11,900 --> 00:01:17,213
whale populations before whale hunting
existed, like real whale hunting existed.

27
00:01:17,213 --> 00:01:19,613
'cause you gotta remember,
whales were hunted for oil.

28
00:01:19,913 --> 00:01:20,843
They were hunted for energy.

29
00:01:20,843 --> 00:01:24,433
That's how we got oil and that's how
we were able to light candles and have

30
00:01:24,433 --> 00:01:26,293
basically light at night, essentially.

31
00:01:26,293 --> 00:01:28,063
So whales were a big part of that energy.

32
00:01:28,063 --> 00:01:29,773
That's how we kept warm,
all that kind of stuff.

33
00:01:29,833 --> 00:01:33,463
And so before that, the populations of
the North Atlantic right whale was between

34
00:01:33,463 --> 00:01:36,223
9,000 individuals and 21,000 individuals.

35
00:01:36,223 --> 00:01:36,763
Imagine that.

36
00:01:37,313 --> 00:01:38,943
9,000 and 21,000.

37
00:01:38,958 --> 00:01:42,378
Here we are celebrating 372 individuals.

38
00:01:42,378 --> 00:01:45,415
So think about that when you
look at the entire context.

39
00:01:45,521 --> 00:01:50,111
Now as whale hunting happened,
a lot of whales decreased.

40
00:01:50,111 --> 00:01:55,286
Like to the point, some went extinct, some
near extinction, and some almost right.

41
00:01:55,286 --> 00:01:56,936
And then we have a rebound.

42
00:01:56,936 --> 00:01:59,756
We have the moratorium on whale hunting.

43
00:01:59,863 --> 00:02:02,743
And then in the 1980s there
was like low hundreds and

44
00:02:02,743 --> 00:02:04,573
recovering from the whale era.

45
00:02:04,573 --> 00:02:06,973
So like, you know, you're looking
at a couple hundred, which we

46
00:02:06,973 --> 00:02:09,613
don't know the exact number 'cause
they're really hard to find.

47
00:02:09,613 --> 00:02:10,453
They're really hard to monitor.

48
00:02:10,503 --> 00:02:12,813
They like to stay just below the surface.

49
00:02:12,903 --> 00:02:16,263
And so it makes it really difficult to
see if there's an animal there or not,

50
00:02:16,263 --> 00:02:19,053
especially when you're doing in the
1980s, you're not using radar, you're

51
00:02:19,053 --> 00:02:20,763
not looking at heat signals and so forth.

52
00:02:20,763 --> 00:02:22,686
Or we're not doing aerial surveys as much.

53
00:02:22,776 --> 00:02:24,576
And so in the 1990s we saw growth.

54
00:02:24,576 --> 00:02:27,336
We saw 200 to 400
somewhere in that region.

55
00:02:27,336 --> 00:02:30,696
So growing slowly, the population
increasing a little bit more

56
00:02:30,696 --> 00:02:32,316
similar to what it is today.

57
00:02:32,420 --> 00:02:36,560
You know, growth rate about
two to 3% from 1990 to 2007.

58
00:02:36,646 --> 00:02:41,116
Then around the 2010s, we were
looking at 480 to 500 individuals.

59
00:02:41,116 --> 00:02:44,836
The peak estimate before the decline
that we have been seeing over

60
00:02:44,836 --> 00:02:47,026
the last, you know, 10, 15 years.

61
00:02:47,173 --> 00:02:50,353
Then in the 2010s, we had another
decline period, so about 25 to

62
00:02:50,353 --> 00:02:53,696
30% decline from 2010 to 2020.

63
00:02:53,946 --> 00:02:57,366
Essentially going down to below,
you know, the three fifties.

64
00:02:58,066 --> 00:02:59,266
And that's obviously not good.

65
00:02:59,266 --> 00:03:03,676
And the reason that happened is we
started to see a shift in the population.

66
00:03:03,676 --> 00:03:07,006
Now, before we go that, let's talk
about why these animals are declining.

67
00:03:07,113 --> 00:03:11,443
When decline happened, or pre 1980s during
the whale hunting, it was whale hunting.

68
00:03:11,473 --> 00:03:12,853
That's what was killing these animals.

69
00:03:13,028 --> 00:03:16,838
Now between 2010 and 2020, it
was a decline due to two things.

70
00:03:16,838 --> 00:03:21,278
It was ship strikes, or it was
traps, like got caught in lines

71
00:03:21,278 --> 00:03:24,968
because of lobster traps, crab
pot traps, whatever it might be.

72
00:03:25,178 --> 00:03:29,228
These are fishing devices that
were getting bottom dwellers,

73
00:03:29,228 --> 00:03:31,958
you know, bottom invertebrates,
like crabs and lobsters and such.

74
00:03:32,198 --> 00:03:36,264
And so what happens is they take these
pots, right, these traps, they stick

75
00:03:36,265 --> 00:03:39,981
lines to them, and then they put
'em in the water and they sink 'em.

76
00:03:40,311 --> 00:03:42,801
And then the lines will
be attached to buoys.

77
00:03:42,801 --> 00:03:45,981
And the buoys will kind of give away
the position for the fishermen to come

78
00:03:45,981 --> 00:03:50,541
back and grab the buoy and then be able
to bring up the pot or the trap when

79
00:03:50,541 --> 00:03:53,271
it's time to get 'em and you get all
the animals that are in it and you can

80
00:03:53,271 --> 00:03:54,591
take 'em back and you can sell them.

81
00:03:54,691 --> 00:03:57,571
Especially on the northeast coast
of the US that's a huge thing.

82
00:03:57,621 --> 00:04:01,255
Even in Canada, lobsters, crab,
that's a big part of the fisheries.

83
00:04:01,255 --> 00:04:02,335
There's big unions for it.

84
00:04:02,551 --> 00:04:05,371
There's a big fishery for it,
and you know, it's a lobby for

85
00:04:05,371 --> 00:04:08,101
it as well because they wanna
protect their interest in fishing.

86
00:04:08,101 --> 00:04:11,551
And especially after the cod
dropped and the moratorium on cod

87
00:04:11,551 --> 00:04:13,291
happened, and we saw haddock fall.

88
00:04:13,401 --> 00:04:15,208
We saw a lot of other fish fall.

89
00:04:15,301 --> 00:04:17,375
It was very difficult to
find something that was good.

90
00:04:17,375 --> 00:04:19,985
So having these invertebrates, these
lobsters were just boom because

91
00:04:19,985 --> 00:04:21,365
less fish that would eat them.

92
00:04:21,461 --> 00:04:23,261
You're starting to see a boom
in population, especially

93
00:04:23,261 --> 00:04:24,431
lobsters, crabs and so forth.

94
00:04:24,431 --> 00:04:26,231
So they were fishing for them.

95
00:04:26,381 --> 00:04:27,176
Now with that said.

96
00:04:27,776 --> 00:04:30,866
You have two destructive things
that are happening to these animals.

97
00:04:30,866 --> 00:04:33,866
You get ship strikes, which it basically
means these animals are coming in.

98
00:04:33,866 --> 00:04:36,476
And remember when I said the whales
stay right below the surface for

99
00:04:36,476 --> 00:04:37,466
the North Atlantic right whale.

100
00:04:37,570 --> 00:04:38,500
The boats can't see them.

101
00:04:38,500 --> 00:04:42,300
They come in, they hit them, either
they have a big cut on them or they're

102
00:04:42,300 --> 00:04:44,370
bruised really badly or hit really badly.

103
00:04:44,456 --> 00:04:45,686
Think about getting hit by a boat.

104
00:04:45,746 --> 00:04:46,616
You know, just imagine that.

105
00:04:46,616 --> 00:04:50,006
And some of these are major, major
ships, like these are transport vessels.

106
00:04:50,006 --> 00:04:51,566
So they're like, four or 500 feet.

107
00:04:51,596 --> 00:04:55,526
They're moving quite fast and they're
not gonna be able to move last minute

108
00:04:55,526 --> 00:04:57,036
to be able to avoid a ship strike.

109
00:04:57,130 --> 00:05:01,023
And so these animals either end up dying
of their injuries or they die right away.

110
00:05:01,113 --> 00:05:04,738
You've seen some images of ships
coming in and the whales still being

111
00:05:04,738 --> 00:05:06,308
on the ship which is devastating.

112
00:05:06,308 --> 00:05:08,865
Nobody wants to see a
whale pass away that way.

113
00:05:08,958 --> 00:05:11,748
Nobody wants to see anything pass
away that way, let alone a whale.

114
00:05:11,808 --> 00:05:14,998
So, there's that problem, Then you
have the crab pots, they're swimming

115
00:05:14,998 --> 00:05:17,548
through the lines and they get the lines.

116
00:05:18,108 --> 00:05:20,868
Caught on their fins,
and that line digs in.

117
00:05:20,878 --> 00:05:21,718
They can't take 'em off.

118
00:05:21,718 --> 00:05:23,475
They don't have the
appendages to take them off.

119
00:05:23,578 --> 00:05:26,298
And they can't get their mouth over
there to take 'em They have these

120
00:05:26,298 --> 00:05:29,298
cuts along the lines where their fins
attached to their body, and they start

121
00:05:29,298 --> 00:05:33,318
to get cuts and infections and they
eventually die from their wounds, or

122
00:05:33,318 --> 00:05:36,125
they just get entangled where they
can't move and they end up drowning.

123
00:05:36,225 --> 00:05:38,633
It's, again, not a good way to go.

124
00:05:38,683 --> 00:05:41,750
And so there have been mitigation
measures for both of these things.

125
00:05:41,853 --> 00:05:44,763
Now in the summer of 2017,
we really saw a decline.

126
00:05:44,763 --> 00:05:49,386
We saw about 17 individuals die
up in the Gulf of St. Lawrence,

127
00:05:49,386 --> 00:05:52,345
not all 17, but most of them were,
those are the only 17 that we found.

128
00:05:52,710 --> 00:05:55,980
We found over the summer that 17
animals died, there's a huge monitoring

129
00:05:55,980 --> 00:05:59,670
program that's been out since the
1980s and maybe even before to monitor

130
00:05:59,670 --> 00:06:02,256
this populations, 'cause it's been
on the endangered species list.

131
00:06:02,346 --> 00:06:04,833
And so when they saw the decline
again, they were worried.

132
00:06:04,883 --> 00:06:08,213
They remapped the shipping tracks so
that ships wouldn't get into them.

133
00:06:08,309 --> 00:06:09,444
And this is in the northeast.

134
00:06:09,444 --> 00:06:13,164
And then we saw, you know,
changes in where you can fish

135
00:06:13,164 --> 00:06:14,484
based on where the whales are.

136
00:06:14,484 --> 00:06:17,038
As I said, monitoring programs
know where these whales go.

137
00:06:17,111 --> 00:06:18,731
They know their migration patterns.

138
00:06:18,731 --> 00:06:22,541
If you stay away from that and the
shipping lanes stay away from those areas,

139
00:06:22,661 --> 00:06:26,531
then we should be okay, for the most part,
should decrease the amount of strikes.

140
00:06:26,801 --> 00:06:30,941
In 2017, though, we saw a shift in
the migration and the distribution

141
00:06:30,941 --> 00:06:33,041
of these whales into the Gulf of St.

142
00:06:33,041 --> 00:06:36,111
Lawrence where these
animals started to pop up.

143
00:06:36,204 --> 00:06:36,999
Now, with that said, is.

144
00:06:37,419 --> 00:06:40,869
These ships were not ready
for these animals to pop up.

145
00:06:40,869 --> 00:06:42,346
They're moving at 20 knots.

146
00:06:42,456 --> 00:06:45,126
And when you're in these shipping
lanes or you're in these areas where

147
00:06:45,136 --> 00:06:47,536
these animals are supposed to be
the North Atlantic right whales, you

148
00:06:47,536 --> 00:06:49,366
should go down to about 10 knots.

149
00:06:49,516 --> 00:06:52,986
And so before we even discovered that
there were a good number of these

150
00:06:52,986 --> 00:06:57,576
animals, a few got tangled in crab
pots or lobster lines unfortunately.

151
00:06:57,576 --> 00:07:00,336
And so they weren't ready for that
from a management perspective.

152
00:07:00,336 --> 00:07:04,576
So mitigations went in temporarily
and we saw a decrease of these

153
00:07:04,576 --> 00:07:07,666
strikes and these entanglements
that we saw, that we discovered.

154
00:07:07,666 --> 00:07:09,796
You have to remember that a lot of
these North Atlantic white whales.

155
00:07:09,841 --> 00:07:11,641
We don't see what they could be.

156
00:07:11,641 --> 00:07:15,061
So like, just as much as the estimates
could be low or the fact that

157
00:07:15,061 --> 00:07:16,891
there could be a higher death rate.

158
00:07:16,984 --> 00:07:21,454
Also back before 2010 when we saw the 400
8500 numbers, there could have been more.

159
00:07:21,454 --> 00:07:22,354
We just didn't see them.

160
00:07:22,354 --> 00:07:26,034
They're a little bit elusive when it comes
to a massive animal, believe it or not.

161
00:07:26,034 --> 00:07:29,364
And so it's difficult to find out
how much there actually are, but

162
00:07:29,364 --> 00:07:31,064
we kind of know the overall trend.

163
00:07:31,171 --> 00:07:35,968
And we've hit the low point in the
early 2020s, around 356 to 358.

164
00:07:36,018 --> 00:07:38,718
With new studies, we're starting
to see that this population is

165
00:07:38,761 --> 00:07:41,671
up a little bit slightly to 372.

166
00:07:41,941 --> 00:07:45,661
We've seen a slight increase doesn't
mean that the population is rebounding.

167
00:07:45,761 --> 00:07:50,171
It just means what we're doing in terms
of mitigation works right now, for now.

168
00:07:50,264 --> 00:07:51,374
This is what we've discovered.

169
00:07:51,374 --> 00:07:52,304
It could just be a summer.

170
00:07:52,304 --> 00:07:53,684
We haven't really found them.

171
00:07:53,791 --> 00:07:56,581
If animals have died or they've sunk
down to the bottom of the ocean,

172
00:07:56,581 --> 00:07:57,848
so we may not have found them.

173
00:07:57,961 --> 00:07:59,731
The fact is we just found more of them.

174
00:07:59,821 --> 00:08:01,261
There's more effort to find them.

175
00:08:01,261 --> 00:08:01,831
Who knows?

176
00:08:01,831 --> 00:08:02,168
Right?

177
00:08:02,264 --> 00:08:05,129
So now we have slight
increase, which is a good news.

178
00:08:05,129 --> 00:08:06,269
This is positive news.

179
00:08:06,269 --> 00:08:09,186
It should be celebrated, but
also we shouldn't rest here.

180
00:08:09,186 --> 00:08:10,356
This is just the beginning.

181
00:08:10,466 --> 00:08:14,286
Just like I talked about the green sea
turtle last week a couple of episodes ago.

182
00:08:14,406 --> 00:08:15,426
You know, this is great.

183
00:08:15,576 --> 00:08:19,729
It was great news to see that they're
not endangered, They're just vulnerable.

184
00:08:19,789 --> 00:08:21,979
At least vulnerable, I think
is what their level is.

185
00:08:22,189 --> 00:08:23,389
And that's great to see.

186
00:08:23,543 --> 00:08:27,113
But, we still have a lot of work to do
because they could just go back down to

187
00:08:27,113 --> 00:08:32,453
endanger just as easily if we slightly
lift some of the mitigation factors or

188
00:08:32,453 --> 00:08:36,143
mitigation measures, like things that we
do to protect them up a little bit, or

189
00:08:36,143 --> 00:08:38,363
we don't go full throttle on protection.

190
00:08:38,363 --> 00:08:41,333
We need to continue the protection
so that we see that trend

191
00:08:41,333 --> 00:08:42,683
get more and more positive.

192
00:08:42,713 --> 00:08:44,093
That's what we're looking for here.

193
00:08:44,093 --> 00:08:47,736
So we'd like to see even higher
numbers next year in the estimate.

194
00:08:47,823 --> 00:08:50,523
Luckily, there are great research
programs that are going on.

195
00:08:50,523 --> 00:08:53,553
There's a lot of nonprofit organizations,
the government's involved in the US

196
00:08:53,553 --> 00:08:55,563
and Canada to monitor these animals.

197
00:08:55,563 --> 00:08:58,143
There's a lot of private consulting
that are monitoring these animals

198
00:08:58,143 --> 00:09:00,363
because we wanna make sure
that we are protecting them.

199
00:09:00,363 --> 00:09:04,329
That is an important aspect to what
we are doing here for these animals.

200
00:09:04,409 --> 00:09:07,739
And so the monitoring programs are
in, hopefully the money remains in.

201
00:09:07,859 --> 00:09:09,389
For monitoring these animals.

202
00:09:09,389 --> 00:09:10,769
We're gonna see what
happens in the states.

203
00:09:10,769 --> 00:09:12,029
We know there's a lot of cutbacks.

204
00:09:12,029 --> 00:09:15,399
Hopefully Canada can make up for
it on the north side of the border.

205
00:09:15,503 --> 00:09:16,913
But this is what we're looking at.

206
00:09:16,913 --> 00:09:20,963
This is a celebration that there has been
a first year in a while where there's been

207
00:09:20,963 --> 00:09:25,043
an increase and not a decline, and that
maybe these things are starting to rebound

208
00:09:25,043 --> 00:09:27,113
into something a little bit better.

209
00:09:27,468 --> 00:09:28,758
Monitoring needs to stay.

210
00:09:28,865 --> 00:09:31,415
We need to continue to make
sure that we are doing all the

211
00:09:31,415 --> 00:09:33,101
mitigation measures that we have to.

212
00:09:33,205 --> 00:09:37,584
We are looking at lobster pots and crab
pots, traps, whatever you want to call

213
00:09:37,584 --> 00:09:42,361
them to be mindless, meaning that they
go down in the water without any lines.

214
00:09:42,464 --> 00:09:45,495
They catch their lobster or crabs,
and then the fisher just kind of

215
00:09:45,495 --> 00:09:49,035
presses a button and it blows up these
balloons and they float to the top.

216
00:09:49,365 --> 00:09:50,265
Is it perfect?

217
00:09:50,385 --> 00:09:50,895
No.

218
00:09:51,035 --> 00:09:52,895
But is it starting to
get better and better?

219
00:09:52,895 --> 00:09:54,545
The technology's starting
to get better and better.

220
00:09:54,574 --> 00:09:54,994
Yes.

221
00:09:54,994 --> 00:09:58,175
And we're starting to see more
experiments and, more fishers are

222
00:09:58,175 --> 00:09:59,974
getting involved and trying these things.

223
00:10:00,064 --> 00:10:00,425
Now.

224
00:10:00,484 --> 00:10:03,601
I know the initial experiments
didn't go the way the fishers want.

225
00:10:03,601 --> 00:10:04,231
It's very difficult.

226
00:10:04,231 --> 00:10:05,941
Sometimes they didn't work
and all that kinda stuff.

227
00:10:05,941 --> 00:10:09,451
But as we continue to improve the
technology, we'll get better and

228
00:10:09,451 --> 00:10:12,091
better and hopefully we'll never
lead lines again and we don't have

229
00:10:12,091 --> 00:10:15,721
to worry about entanglement for a
lot of these whales and other animals

230
00:10:15,721 --> 00:10:16,861
like sea turtles and so forth.

231
00:10:16,861 --> 00:10:19,921
And we'll see better protections with
those and increase phishing yields if

232
00:10:19,921 --> 00:10:21,901
that's needed, hopefully managed well.

233
00:10:22,005 --> 00:10:25,095
but provide the fishers with the
income that they need to survive.

234
00:10:25,125 --> 00:10:27,795
That's essentially what we're looking
here for the better compromise.

235
00:10:27,795 --> 00:10:31,995
So, we can mitigate shipping lanes,
we can change those up as we need, but

236
00:10:31,995 --> 00:10:36,045
we also need the monitoring because
climate change is one of the factors in

237
00:10:36,045 --> 00:10:37,875
changing the distribution of these whales.

238
00:10:37,875 --> 00:10:39,075
We're gonna see that in fish.

239
00:10:39,075 --> 00:10:42,555
We're gonna see that in plankton, which
is why probably these animals, these

240
00:10:42,555 --> 00:10:45,165
North Atlantic white whales have probably
shifted north ' cause the plankton have

241
00:10:45,165 --> 00:10:46,965
shifted north and what they like to eat.

242
00:10:47,061 --> 00:10:50,091
And so we're gonna see animals shift
and we need to continue monitoring

243
00:10:50,091 --> 00:10:51,351
that so that we can mitigate

244
00:10:51,351 --> 00:10:55,161
any kind of disasters, like a
disastrous summer from 2017.

245
00:10:55,258 --> 00:10:56,968
We don't want a repeat of that.

246
00:10:56,968 --> 00:10:58,198
So we have to act fast.

247
00:10:58,318 --> 00:11:00,178
We have to adapt to the distribution.

248
00:11:00,298 --> 00:11:02,458
We have to monitor, monitor and adapt.

249
00:11:02,458 --> 00:11:03,268
That's the big thing.

250
00:11:03,268 --> 00:11:06,568
And continue to manage these animals
and hopefully we'll see a bigger

251
00:11:06,568 --> 00:11:09,718
increase next year and then the year
after that, and the year after that.

252
00:11:09,718 --> 00:11:12,718
And we just continue, even if it's
slight every time I'll be happy with

253
00:11:12,718 --> 00:11:14,435
that as long as it goes in the positive.

254
00:11:14,538 --> 00:11:16,515
These animals are slow growing.

255
00:11:16,625 --> 00:11:18,725
They don't reproduce very
much over the summer.

256
00:11:18,725 --> 00:11:21,495
It's one calf per female every summer.

257
00:11:21,615 --> 00:11:24,405
If we can get that, if that,
probably not, it's probably a lot

258
00:11:24,405 --> 00:11:25,695
lower than that at this point.

259
00:11:25,695 --> 00:11:28,275
But if we can get to very close
to that, that would be great.

260
00:11:28,335 --> 00:11:31,125
We're not gonna get close to that
anytime soon, but as the animals

261
00:11:31,125 --> 00:11:34,990
get healthier and as there's less
indirect or direct effects on them.

262
00:11:34,990 --> 00:11:37,510
Then maybe we can see
that growth even better.

263
00:11:37,510 --> 00:11:41,590
There's a probably, I think it's under
90, maybe even 80 reproductive females,

264
00:11:41,650 --> 00:11:43,600
so that needs to increase as well.

265
00:11:43,600 --> 00:11:46,690
So I think there were 12 calves
this year, which is great.

266
00:11:46,780 --> 00:11:47,656
Which is great to see.

267
00:11:47,760 --> 00:11:50,403
I feel like they're still
alive so far, so that's great.

268
00:11:50,403 --> 00:11:51,123
That's great news.

269
00:11:51,303 --> 00:11:52,293
Great news all around.

270
00:11:52,293 --> 00:11:56,083
I'd love to hear what your thoughts are
on this North Atlantic Right whales.

271
00:11:56,258 --> 00:11:57,008
What are your thoughts?

272
00:11:57,068 --> 00:11:59,095
Big increase or slight increase?

273
00:11:59,205 --> 00:12:00,885
What do you think we're
gonna see next year?

274
00:12:00,885 --> 00:12:02,175
I would love to hear your thoughts.

275
00:12:02,225 --> 00:12:04,145
Let me know in the comments in the video.

276
00:12:04,145 --> 00:12:06,505
But love if you're watching this on
YouTube or if you're listening to this

277
00:12:06,505 --> 00:12:10,405
on your favorite podcast app, you can
go to speak up for blue.com/contact.

278
00:12:10,501 --> 00:12:11,281
Just fill out the form.

279
00:12:11,281 --> 00:12:12,091
It goes right to my email.

280
00:12:12,091 --> 00:12:12,901
I'd love to hear from you.

281
00:12:12,901 --> 00:12:16,201
Or you can just DM me on Instagram
at how to protect the Ocean.

282
00:12:16,201 --> 00:12:16,381
That's.

283
00:12:16,436 --> 00:12:17,786
At how to Protect the Ocean.

284
00:12:17,786 --> 00:12:20,636
I wanna thank you so much for
joining me on today's episode of the

285
00:12:20,636 --> 00:12:21,776
How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.

286
00:12:21,776 --> 00:12:24,596
I'm your host, Andrew Lewin from
the True North Strong and Free.

287
00:12:24,596 --> 00:12:25,196
Have a great day.

288
00:12:25,196 --> 00:12:27,446
We'll talk to you next time
and happy conservation.