Northern Right Whale Hope Story: Why the Population Finally Rose and What It Means Next

0:00 The North Atlantic right whale is one of the largest whales on the planet with only 384 individuals left. But this year, for the first time ever, their population didn't drop. It actually went up slightly. It's a small glimmer of hope for these species pushed to the edge by ship strikes, fishing entanglement, and a rapidly changing ocean. So what's actually working and what still needs to change is what we're gonna be talking about on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. Let's start the show. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action.

0:42 On today's episode, we're gonna be talking about the North Atlantic right whale. I know we talked a little bit about it the other day when we talked about their slight increase in population numbers. I want to get to the bottom of it. I want to find out if this true, this number is truly something to hope for a 2% increase, or is it something that we still need to be cautious about? So I invited Nora Ives from Oceana to come on the podcast to talk about her campaign work about the North Atlantic right whale. She's a storyteller, she's an educator, she's a scientist, and she's a campaigner for Oceana. And she's here to talk all about the North Atlantic white whale. What we should be looking out for and what we need to know so that we can better protect these animals. We're gonna find that out all on this episode.

1:24 Before we do, I just want to remind you, I am putting out a campaign, a crowdfunding campaign to start another podcast in the podcast network for Speak up for Blue. This podcast is part of this network about seagrasses. I know we're talking about whales, but we're also talking about another productive habitat called seagrasses, and it's called the sea grass effect. I wanna put it out because we need to not only bring research, restoration efforts, and conservation efforts together for the sea grass world and for seagrass research, but we also need to have restoration efforts. And by contributing to this campaign, not only are you going to be contributing to information sharing across the world, but you're also gonna be contributing to a restoration for a particular site of seagrass that's being restored somewhere around the world.

2:06 We're gonna document it. We're gonna talk about it. It's gonna be amazing and I can't wait for you to find out. So if you go to speak up for blue.com/seagrass, you can contribute to that campaign. We're on the Balean platform, which is a new platform that is spurring ocean projects, independent ocean projects that are going on just like this Seagrass Effect podcast that I wanna start. So go to speak up for blue.com/seagrass. Take a look at other projects after you donate to mine. Now here's the interview with Nora Ives from Oceana, talking about the North Atlantic right whale. Enjoy, and I'll talk to you after. Thank you, Nora, for joining us on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. It was great to have you on the podcast. I just love to hear people's stories about how they came to where they are right now.

2:46 And Nora's story is just a unique one that we not necessarily have seen that particular path, but we've seen similar path of just kind of meandering through the life and being able to find something that you really want to fight for. And Nora has found that in these North Atlantic right whales, not only is she finding it from a scientific point of view, but also from a storytelling point of view. There's a lot of stories that we can tell, and with monitoring efforts that have happened and the ability to connect people with storytelling and these whales is just an amazing addition to the weaponry I guess we have for conservation. And I think it's something that is needed when we talk about conservation and we talk about humanizing in a way for humans to connect with these whales and to hear about ship strikes, to hear about whale entanglements, but also to hear about some of the amazing feats and distribution of like two individuals, as she mentioned, and then the other of like seeing a calf after, you know, a mother about seven or eight that's older, having a calf after a long time.

3:42 We're seeing those stories come to life through Nora's storytelling, and I just think that's wonderful. So I can't wait to have Nora back on the podcast to talk about North Atlantic right Whales. And I would love to hear your comments and your questions about that. Just let me know in the comments below if you're watching this on YouTube. If you're listening to this episode on your favorite podcast app, thank you so much. That's where we started. We're gonna always continue with the podcast. I mean, this is a podcast. We have a video podcast as well with the YouTube channel, but the audio podcast is always where it's at. It's always my roots, and I love talking on this microphone through audio, through video. It doesn't really matter. This is something that's always important. We need to connect with everybody. So if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast app, you can reach me by going to Instagram at how to protect the ocean that's at How to protect the ocean.

4:24 And of course, you can go to speak up for blue.com/contact. Fill out the form and go straight to my email. There's so many ways to connect with me online. I encourage you to do all of it. I'll put all the connections in the show notes. I wanna thank you so much for joining me and thanking Nora for joining us on this episode and thanking you for listening and sharing this episode if you think this is really important to share. And thank you so much for joining us on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin from the True Nord Strong and free. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.