top <\/em>of the water. <\/p>\n\n\n\nDP: So we\u2019re on the beach, at Half Moon Bay, and we see this massive thing. Coming toward the beach. Like some student maritime project. Is it an alien spacecraft? Look at that mother!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wave by wave, it seemed to be coming straight toward us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DP: It\u2019s right outta \u201cAlien.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I took a picture of it and tweeted: \u201cThis thing seems to be metal. No sea birds around. Any idea what it might be?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There were some funny answers. \u201cET\u2019s scout ship.\u201d \u201cThe Nautilus.\u201d \u201cA gigantic pill bug.\u201d And my favorite response, \u201cPoseidon\u2019s bike helmet.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But as the thing got closer, the shiny surface started looking darker, and the sphere loomed bigger and bigger on the waves. Eventually, it ran aground, just a few feet away from us at edge of the beech. With a huge spray of mist, it suddenly deflated, turning from that weird spherical spaceship shape to the shape of\u2026a huge dead whale. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A crowd gathered. Inevitably, a couple of dudes went up to it and took selfies with it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
DP: So it wasn\u2019t a space ship, it wasn\u2019t a student project, it wasn\u2019t Poseidon\u2019s bike helmet. It was, in fact, a whale carcass\u2014and now a tourist attraction.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nNicki called the Marine Mammal Center in San Francisco to report the incident. And within hours, stories online filled in the blanks for us. This was a 17-year-old female humpback whale, and she\u2019d been killed by a ship strike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But she wasn\u2019t just any humpback whale. She was the best-known, most photographed whale in California. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
TED: Her name was Fran and she had been photographed so many times. We knew she was born in 1997. She was seen every single year. She was a very well-loved whale.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nThis is Ted Cheeseman. He\u2019s the creator of a website called happywhale.com, an online photographic database of whales that ordinary citizens have spotted. He knew <\/em>our whale! I guess a lot of people did. <\/p>\n\n\n\nAnd what\u2019s really wild is that I did not interview him. You\u2019re listening to a completely unrelated \u201cCBS Sunday Morning\u201d interview, with a different correspondent. Conor Knighton. Complete coincidence. Neither of these guys had any idea that I had witnessed Fran\u2019s final appearance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
TED: Well, so sadly, she was killed by a ship. She washed up in Half Moon Bay. She washed up ashore. We saw the fluke. We identified her, found out \u2014 um, Marine Mammal Center out of San Francisco did a necropsy, found out she\u2019d been killed by a ship. Super sad, but we didn\u2019t know what had happened to her calf.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s right: just a couple of months before she died, Fran had had a daughter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
TED: Her calf was named Aria, got named Aria as a sort of a statement of hope. And then we didn\u2019t see Aria again after the \u2014 after \u2014 this was August 2022, Fran was killed, hadn\u2019t seen her calf.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nI\u2019d already felt terrible about Fran. But I really grieved for Aria. The poor thing was only a few months old; no telling if she survived her mother\u2019s death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Honestly, I hadn\u2019t even known that ship strikes are a thing. But not only does it happen all the time, 2018, 2019, and 2021 were the worst years on record for ship strikes off the West Coast. 2020 is missing from that list only because the pandemic happened, and shipping traffic dropped way off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
POGUE: We are gathered here today to talk about whales. I think in the common perception, people in the ancient days used to kill whales for their blubber and their oil. Have we stopped doing that?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nMARK: For the most part.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nMark Baumgartner is a marine ecologist, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
MARK: We\u2019re gonna talk a lot today about the North Atlantic right whale with only 340 whales. Deaths in that population is really quite concerning. So, no, there\u2019s no commercial hunting for\u2013 for those right\u2013\n\nPOGUE: Wait a minute. So\u2013 so there are only 340 right whales, where?\n\nMARK: Alive in the world. North Atlantic right whales, there are only 340 left\n\nPOGUE: What happened to them?\n\nMARK: They\u2019re called the right whale, we believe, because they were the right whale to hunt. They were slow moving, coastal, and pretty easy to approach and kill. And they floated when you killed them. So you could literally see a right whale out at sea, row your boat to them, harpoon them, hang on for a long time until the animal died, and then tow them back to shore.\n\nPOGUE: Wow. \n\nMARK: Blue whales, fin whales, humpback whales were too fast to be caught and killed. And if you killed them, they would sink. And so we weren\u2019t able to actually harvest those species until the invention of the exploding harpoon, which is around the end of the 19th century.\n\nPOGUE: OK.\n\nMARK: But right whales had been hunted for a long, long time. The population is in a pretty fast, serious, and very concerning decline since 2010, so from 500 animals just over 10 years ago to about 340 animals today.\n\nPOGUE: Wow. Okay. Now, don\u2019t hurt me, but (LAUGH) why should we care about this one species out of the millions of species of critters?\n\nMARK: For a couple reasons, I think, David. This is an iconic species, one that we can all sort of look at\u2013 I can show a picture of a whale to a child and they know what it is. This species represents many, many, many other species that are not nearly so visible.\n\nThe other reason is that whales provide these, what we call ecosystem services that we don\u2019t even really fully appreciate. \n\nPOGUE: So when you say the whales would sort of recycle nutrients, what\u2019s that mechanism? You mean they\u2013\n\nMARK: Pooping. (LAUGH)\n\nPOGUE: Nice to get a scientist who knows the lingo. (LAUGH)\n\nMARK: They eat. They poop. Those nutrients become available for algae in the ocean to grow, the plants of the ocean to grow, and on and on goes the cycle.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nOK. So whales perform an important service for the whole ocean, and <\/em>they\u2019re a poster child for all the damage we\u2019re doing to the planet. Great. So how can we save them?<\/p>\n\n\n\nWell, first, let\u2019s figure out why they\u2019re dying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
MARK: So right whales tend to get hit by ships and entangled in fishing gear. And these are the two major causes of death. So we\u2019re killing them faster than they can reproduce, at this point. \n\nPOGUE: All right. So ship strikes and nets. \n\nMARK: Fishing gear entanglements, not nets. So it\u2019s a common perception that the nets that we tow through the ocean are dangerous for whales. They\u2019re not. If you\u2019ve ever been to New England, and you\u2019ve gone out on the water, or even just gone to the beach and looked out on the water during the summer, one of the most beautiful things you can see in New England is this field of lobster buoys. Those buoys are attached to ropes that go to the sea floor. It\u2019s those ropes that are called buoy lines, or end lines, or vertical lines, that whales get entangled in. And because of the scale at which we are harvesting lobster and crab, there are literally millions of these lines in the ocean. And they are each, in their own right, a whale trap.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Has anyone not thought of a technological solution to these buoy lines for the lobster traps?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nMARK: In fact, they have. And there\u2019s actually a lot of work being done on something called ropeless or on-demand fishing, ropeless meaning just take those end lines away. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nSo if you are fishing a lobster trawl and you want\u2013 ropelessly or on demand\u2014 And you would send an acoustic command down, s\u2013 specific for your gear, and say, \u201cI\u2019m here. I want my gear back.\u201d And it would\u2013 the device on the sea floor would hear that. It would say, \u201cMy fisherman\u2019s here. I\u2019m gonna release my end line.\u201d End line would come to the surface. And the fisherman would just pick it up as he normally would a persistent end line.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSo that part\u2013 for the last five years, that has sort of been developed, prototyped, demonstrated. That stuff works. And that\u2019s great. That\u2019s great progress. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nThe next challenge is\u2013 is how do we find that gear. And that\u2019s a system that we\u2019re working very hard on to sort of advance, so the fishermen will just\u2013 they just look down on their chart plotter, and they can see where all the gear is. And that\u2019s being developed today. And we\u2019re making good progress on that, as well.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nOK, that\u2019s great that they\u2019re working on saving the right whale, and that technology could soon save whales from getting killed by those lobster traps. But Fran wasn\u2019t a right whale, and she wasn\u2019t killed by a rope. She was hit by a ship. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s a much harder problem to solve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
POGUE: Don\u2019t whales have some kind of sonar that lets them know that a massive ship is coming?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nMARK: Telling where a source is\u2013 a sound source is in the ocean is a little more difficult than it is in air, partly because the sound travels a lot faster underwater than it does in air. So if you and I went out, put our heads underwater, and someone drove a boat at us, it\u2019d be very hard to tell what direction that that boat is coming from. And that\u2019s crucial information to know to be able to get out of the way of the path of a ship. The nerdy science reason is because that low-frequency noise has very long wavelengths that are much longer than the space between your ears. And so that directionalization is really hard. And\u2013<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: That\u2019s wild.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nMARK: So if you can\u2019t directionalize and you can\u2019t figure out how far away, it\u2019s really difficult for an animal to judge, \u201cOkay. There\u2019s a risk here.\u201d Also, right whales are exposed to ship noise all the time. They hear ships all the time. So whether a ship is close or far away, they\u2019re probably not paying attention \u2018cause that\u2019s just what they hear all the time.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Okay. So we\u2019ve covered why the whale can\u2019t see the ship. Why can\u2019t the ship see the whale?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nMARK: Right. Whales are difficult to see at sea, believe it or not. So if you\u2019ve ever looked down on the ocean on a windy day, what do you see? You mostly see white caps. Well, what does a whale look like when it comes to the surface? \/ You know, when they exhale, it\u2019s white. And it\u2019s difficult to see \u2018em.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nBut also these ships can be enormous. Imagine a tanker that\u2019s six\u2013 800 feet long and the\u2013 and the\u2013 the bridge is in the back, so the f\u2013 so the captain\u2019s looking out over 800 feet of ship before he even gets to the first patch of water that\u2019s in front of the ship. And so being able to see out in front of the\u2013 in front of the ship well enough to be able to detect a whale is a problem.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nBut then, what is he gonna do? He has an 800-foot-long ship. Let\u2019s say he sees a whale that\u2019s a half a mile in front of him. He has no chance whatsoever to avoid that whale. He can\u2019t stop. It\u2019s not like jammin\u2019 on the brakes in your car and the car stops immediately. He can\u2019t turn. He\u2019s got a giant, giant vessel filled with cargo. If he turns too sharply, the whole ship will go over. So it\u2019s a real safety issue for them to divert course. And so even if the captain could identify that there\u2019s a whale out there, it\u2019s likely very little that that captain can do to avoid it.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSo the whales don\u2019t know they\u2019re about to be killed, and the ship doesn\u2019t know when it\u2019s about to kill one. In fact\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
POGUE: So when a ship hits a whale, does the ship care?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSEAN: Most of the time, they have no idea that they have run over a whale. And the crews that we\u2019ve been talking to are really, really mortified by this. They\u2013 they\u2013 feel terribly when they discover there\u2019s a large, beautiful animal wrapped around the bow of their ship. They simply don\u2019t know. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nThis is Sean Hastings, who works for NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA is the U.S. agency in charge of ocean policies, and Hastings oversees some of its California programs. He\u2019s also not one to shy away from a good dad joke. Or\u2026 a bad dad joke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SEAN: What you haven\u2019t asked me, is what is the most sustainable way to ship.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Yeah. What is the most sustainable way to ship?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSEAN: Santa\u2019s sleigh. (LAUGH) <\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: We\u2019re gonna edit that right out. (LAUGH)<\/pre>\n\n\n\nBut I left that in here so you wouldn\u2019t be super depressed as we head into the ad break. I mean, so far, it sounds like we\u2019re just going to keep hitting whales with ships, right? I mean, 90% of everything in your life was brought to America in a container ship. Those things make 200 million voyages a year. What chance do the whales have?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I can answer that question. And I promise it\u2019s not depressing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2<\/strong>nd<\/sup><\/strong> Ad Break<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nOK. So before the break, we were talking about whales dying without ever knowing what hit them. But we<\/em> know what hit them: ships. <\/p>\n\n\n\nAlso before the break, I had just introduced NOAA\u2019s Sean Hastings, who\u2019s put together two solutions that just\u2026might\u2026work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SEAN: So the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration\u2013 my parent agency here off the California coastline\u2014 well, we recognized this threat a little over a decade ago of ships hitting whales. And so we started to work with industry\u2013 the shipping industry. We started working with scientists and all sorts of concerned parties to determine what could we do to reduce fatal ship strikes. And the two very somewhat obvious and beth\u2013 best ways to mitigate the risk is, one, separate ships and whales.And we have managed to adjust shipping lanes to move the ships farther offshore, concentrate shipping ideally away from where we see the whales coming to feed May through November and December of every year. So separating the problem is the first step. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nAnd sure enough: In places in the world where governments have established alternate routes for the ships to take, to avoid the whale-feeding times and places, a lot fewer whales get hit. Mark Baumgartner has seen it first-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
MARK: A good solution is just to move those shipping lanes around. That has happened outside the ports of Boston, as well as St. John in Canada, where I did my Ph.D. research. It was an aggregation of right whales in the in the Bay of Fundy that would happen every single year and they\u2019d be in the same place. And there was a major shipping lane that went right through that area. So, changing the route\u2013 added maybe 15 minutes to the ship\u2019s\u2013 to the ship\u2019s transit, but it reduced the risk of a ship strike by about 80%. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nAnd so, yes: Driving around the whale areas really works. Yay!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Small smattering of applause SFX<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe thing is, you can\u2019t always do that. The geography of the landmasses and oceans don\u2019t always offer room for alternate pathways into the harbor. In those situations, the ships have no choice but to plow through the whale feeding areas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In those cases, according to Hastings, there\u2019s Plan B.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SEAN: So the second-best approach that we\u2019re working on now is to slow ships down. By slowing ships down, it gives the whales more opportunity to get out of the way. And in the event that they are struck, there\u2019s a higher likelihood of survivorship. This is much akin to having a slow speed zone around a school.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: So how fast does a ship normally go? And how much are you trying to get them to slow down?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSEAN: They\u2019re traveling about 15 knots. And that\u2019s roughly about 18 miles per hour. And what we\u2019re asking them to do is to slow down to ten knots or about 12 miles per hour when they\u2019re coming through these critical whale feeding zones. A slow ship would reduce the impact of a fatal ship strike\u2013 by up to 50%. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nNow, on the East Coast, where those 340 remaining right whales are struggling to survive, slowing down during whale season is mandatory. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the West Coast, though, NOAA asked the shipping lines if they\u2019d be willing to slow down voluntarily. <\/em>It was a bust. Nobody bothered. So NOAA decided to sweeten the pot. <\/p>\n\n\n\nSEAN: We decided to change the approach. And we started to incentivize shipping companies to slow down off the California coast, May through December. We offered positive public relations, not shaming. We offered modest financial incentives if they cooperated at high levels. And what we\u2019ve seen over the last ten years is tremendous growth in cooperation. We recognize them with certificates and plaques, lots of positive press, and\u2013 what we\u2019re really heartened by is while we offered financial incentives in the past, most of the companies are declining the financial incentive. They\u2019re not doing it for the money; they\u2019re doing it because they know it\u2019s the right way to move the world\u2019s goods. \n\nThe other thing to mention is that slower ships emit less air pollution and reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they emit out of their stacks. Shipping globally accounts for 3% to 5% of greenhouse gas emissions. So there\u2019s a lot of co-benefits here to\u2013 having ships adjust their schedules as they come to the California coast; reducing fatal ship strikes on endangered whales, reducing air emissions, greenhouse gases, and also ocean noise. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nThe name of this voluntary program is Blue Whales\/Blue Skies, and it was Sean Hastings\u2019s brainchild.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SEAN: We\u2019re seeing cooperation across all shipping lines at around 65% to 70% of the total distance they travel\u2013 off California at ten knots. That\u2019s really, really promising. We still have a ways to go. We need cooperation rates at 100% to fully mitigate the impacts of ship strikes and air pollution from ships. \n\nPOGUE: So 65% to 70% of the ships are complying with the slow-down periods. Among the ones who are not complying, do you have any idea what they\u2019re thinking, what their stance is? \n\nSEAN: They claim that they can\u2019t adjust their schedule to accommodate for the slow speed zones and slow speed time frames.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nA key problem is that the slow-speed zones are dynamic. <\/em>The government makes these zones come and go, appear and disappear, depending on where the whales are. Mark Baumgartner, from Woods Hole, describes this problem like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\nMARK: So if you\u2019re a vessel that\u2019s traveling from Europe to the United States, and you only have another day of steaming to go, and you have all the resources that the port set up so that when you come in at 9:00 tomorrow, the longshoreman will be there, all the trucks will be there, everything will be ready to offload your ship, the cargo on your ship. Today, this morning, a slow zone goes up. You have to slow down to ten knots. I am going to\u2013 I\u2019m not gonna be getting to port tomorrow at 9:00, I\u2019m gonna be getting there at 1:00. Now, all those resources are just sitting there doing nothing for four hours. And there\u2019s a cost associated with that. And so for that reason, the commercial shipping industry is\u2013 is really not embracing these dynamic speed zones. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nSo the government is considering much more expanded mandatory ship speed slowdowns for the entire\u2013 US East Coast during the winter time. And so it\u2019s\u2013 it\u2019s a big deal that\u2019s happening right now. If a shipping company knows that in the last 100 miles of their trip they\u2019re gonna have to slow to ten knots, they can\u2013 they can plan for that. As they\u2019re coming across, they could speed up in the deep ocean and then slow down, you know, closer to shore. They\u2019re logistics companies; this is what they do. And so they can figure out a way to get to port exactly on time if everyone knows what the slowdown rules are.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Oh.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nMARK: So the mandatory system is almost better\u2013 m\u2013 mandatory in the sense that it\u2019s predictable is almost better for the\u2013 for the shipping industry. \n\nPOGUE: Does it have a chance of becoming law? \n\nMARK: I don\u2019t know. (LAUGH)<\/pre>\n\n\n\nOK. So maybe two-thirds of the shipping traffic is voluntarily slowing down to save whale lives\u2014that\u2019s pretty good. But not a single ship will slow down unless <\/em>NOAA can tell them that whales are nearby. <\/p>\n\n\n\nSo the success of the entire system depends on one little piece of data: Where are the darn whales? It\u2019s not like they\u2019re always in one place at one time. It\u2019s not like there\u2019s, you know, a bar where all the humpbacks gather on Friday nights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, one way is to look for them from the air. So once a month, Sean Hastings gets into a tiny plane and flies over the California shipping channels, looking out the windows for whales. I joined him and his colleague Jess Morten on one of these flights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
JESS: Oh, we got gray whales! I haven\u2019t seen gray whales in a long time! <\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Oh my god, that\u2019s incredible.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nJESS: Very close to the surface.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: So cool!<\/pre>\n\n\n\nOnce this tiny plane landed, Hastings and Morten immediately reported the whale sightings to the participating ships, so they\u2019d know it was time to slow down. HOWEVER\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SEAN: I can\u2019t be there all the time, looking for these whales. I fly once a month. That\u2019s one day a month. That\u2019s one data point.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nThey desperately needed some way of monitoring the whales\u2019 presence 24 hours a day. If they had that, they could feed that real-time information to incoming ships\u2026who could slow down\u2026and save the whales. And this, really, is my favorite part of the story. I\u2019m going to let Callie Leiphardt tell it to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
CALLIE: I am a project scientist at the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nThat would be Benioff as in Marc Benioff, the software billionaire, who started this ocean-science lab to find, quote, \u201csolutions to restore ocean health.\u201d And in the case of the whale-data problem, they worked with the Woods Hole Institute o come up with \u2026a buoy. A biiiiig yellow buoy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
CALLIE: The surface buoy itself is almost like a small car. Like a very\u2013 like a VW bug. Like it\u2019s\u2013 it\u2019s really big\u2013 for a buoy. And they are actually bo\u2013 battery operated. So they are designed to be autonomous at sea and operate without anyone having to go and, you know, mess with it, hopefully, for at least a year. \n\nSo we have this big, beautiful yellow buoy that sits on the surface. And 600 feet under water, we have a base that has a hydrophone\u2014so, an underwater microphone\u2014that is actually hooked up to a software that is trained to say, \u201cThat\u2019s a blue whale. That\u2019s a fin whale. That\u2019s a humpback whale.\u201d And we\u2019re getting all of those detected vocalizations in real time. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: So this microphone can tell the difference between different whale songs?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nCALLIE: Yep! If they are vocalizing in and around the shipping lanes, we\u2019re gonna detect it. And so that data is all sent to our system in, you know, ten minute increments. It\u2019s almost like weather forecasting for blue whales. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: So if I\u2019m a ship coming over from China, I will have some kind of screen or app or alert that says, \u201cI see a whale nearby\u201d?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nCALLIE: That\u2019s a call, a text, an email, however that company best sees fit to communicate with their fleet. So if I\u2019m a ship captain, I have a really nice understanding of: it\u2019s a medium, high, very high whale presence rating in the Santa Barbara Channel. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nThe Benioff folks have now deployed two of these buoys\u2014one in Santa Barbara, one in San Francisco, but there\u2019s no reason the technology couldn\u2019t be replicated everywhere. On the East Coast, in Woods Hole, Mark Baumgartner uses similar buoys to listen for whale song and warn incoming ships. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
POGUE: Can we hear what these sound like?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nMARK: Sure. This is a right whale sound. So right whales make an upsweep. (MAKES NOISE) And we can\u2013 we can\u2013 detect those\u2013 pitch tracks really well.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n(WHALE SOUNDS)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nMARK: That call is basically what we think of as a contact call. It\u2019s, \u201cIs anyone out there?\u201d And it might even be, \u201cIs anyone out there? This is Mark.\u201d It might be individually indentifiable for the animals. Everyone knows humpback whale songs. They are some of the most commonly known, and they\u2019re\u2013 they\u2019re really beautiful. <\/pre>\n\n\n\n(WHALE SOUNDS)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nMARK: It\u2019s males that are doing this singing behavior. And they\u2019re likely transmitting information to either other males or females to say, \u201cHow big I am. How fit I am. Maybe we\u2019d like to get a drink later,\u201d right? (LAUGH) It\u2019s all the things that men do to attract women is encoded in that song.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nThe last thing I\u2019ll play you is those 20\u2013 those fin-whale 20 Hertz calls. These are very low frequency. This is sped up 24 times. <\/pre>\n\n\n\n(WHALE SOUNDS)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nMARK: They\u2019re like the metronomes of the sea. It\u2019s a much simplified version of singing, but it\u2019s still a pattern of notes that conveys some information.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nBaumgartner\u2019s team also has a fleet of seven what he calls gliders: like seven-foot-long self-powered torpedoes, also equipped with whale microphones. They follow a programmed course in the ocean, listening for whales, for four months on a battery charge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
POGUE: I do notice (LAUGHTER) that on each of these, you\u2019ve written in Sharpie your phone number and email address, \u201cIf found, leave at sea.\u201d<\/pre>\n\n\n\nMARK: Yeah, so we\u2019ve had some interesting experiences where\u2013 mariners have found them, miraculously, and been able to get them on board, (LAUGH) and they take them home. Now, we\u2019re tracking it, of course. It has a GPS and it\u2019s sending us its position every two hours. So we know if someone puts it in a car and takes it home, we know exactly where they live. (LAUGH) So we go to their house, knock on the door, and say, \u201cCan we have our glider back?\u201d<\/pre>\n\n\n\nYou know what\u2019s even cooler? This WhaleSafe program doesn\u2019t just send the \u201cwhales in the house!\u201d alert to ship captains. They also post the data to a public website\u2014whalesafe.com. You can look at it whenever you want. You can look at it right now. Whalesafe.com.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The site shows exactly how many of each kind of whale are in each major California shipping channel right now. That site also shows you, by the way, a complete list of all the different shipping companies, and what percent of the time they respond to the alerts by slowing down. WhaleSafe even gives them letter grades! Some companies get Fs\u2014the ones with zero percent compliance, who don\u2019t slow down at all in the whale zones. Like Eagle Bulk Shipping, Woo Yang Shipping, and Atlantis Management Inc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Audience-booing sounds.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nThen there are the good guys: The companies who get A\u2019s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
POGUE: And since good press is one of the incentives for these companies to comply, here\u2019s our chance. Would you be willing to give us the names of some shipping lines that are doing well?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSEAN: Oh, absolutely. MSC has been the leader in our co\u2013 ship\u2013 program for the last three or four years, slowing down close to 90% of their entire fleet\u2013 in\u2013 in these whale zones. We have Evergreen, Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd. These companies are really demonstrating by example that they care. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nYou may not have heard of MSC, because the company doesn\u2019t do much consumer advertising. But it happens to be the world\u2019s biggest shipping company. It operates in 1500 ports in 155 countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DARR: We have about 750 cargo ships, 23 cruise ships, maybe 800 in total of various types.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nBud Darr runs Maritime Policy and Government Affairs for MSC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DARR: I\u2019ll start by saying, there\u2019s no one in our industry that wants to see any one of these magnificent creatures harmed or killed by anything we do. And\u2013 and we\u2019re a company full of seafarers too, (LAUGH) if you look at the leadership structure of our company. We believe in this very, very deeply. And if we can find a way that has manageable operational impacts, but it improves our environmental footprint, we\u2019re looking for those sorts of solutions every single day. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: I know you\u2019re not speaking for your competitors, but if you had to guess, what would the downside be of taking some of these whale protective steps for them?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nDARR: Well, depends on which one you\u2019re talkin\u2019 about. There is, of course, ins\u2013 speed reduction. There is some impact on the schedule. There is some impact on\u2013 on cost that probably comes with that. And that takes a lot of sophistication and planning to, you know, mitigate that and get that right.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nBut, you know, I really think, for the most part, this is more an issue of a lack of understanding than it is a lack of willingness to do the right thing once they do understand. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nAnd I\u2019ve seen the right signs. I mean, I\u2019ve seen certain ship owners from nationalities that haven\u2019t always known to be as whale-friendly as some others, you know, actually embracing this, and\u2013 and\u2013 and working with us to try and find solutions here. And so\u2026things are looking up. The mandatory slowdowns on the East Coast are giving the right whales a fighting chance at survival. The voluntary slowdowns on the West Coast are helping out the blue whales, fin whales, and humpbacks. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nUnfortunately, none of these experts can tell you exactly how successful these programs are. They can\u2019t even tell you exactly how many whales get killed every year! For one simple reason: Most whales sink once they die. Here\u2019s Callie Leiphardt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
CALLIE: For every one whale that we see floating or washed up on our beaches, we can almost estimate that ten is happening for every one that we\u2019re seeing. \/<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Internally, is there any anxiety over the fact that you can\u2019t really count how well it\u2019s working? <\/pre>\n\n\n\nCALLIE: I want to put my head down at night and say, \u201cI saved five whales today.\u201d (LAUGH) The ocean\u2019s just too large and too dynamic, right, to be able to really pinpoint that. So we have to find these other ways to measure success and wins. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nThe more ships that slow down, the less likelihood we are gonna have these fatal strikes. Compared to those worst years that we\u2019ve had in California, we\u2019ve seen a dip since then. So that\u2019s also a good sign.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: A dip in confirmed\u2013strikes?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nCALLIE: Confirmed strikes, yes. But it\u2019s still too many, you know? So it\u2019s\u2013 it\u2019s a win, but we\u2019re not quite, you know, to the finish line yet, so.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nEventually, Sean Hastings hopes to find ways for you to help, too, through your buying habits and your awareness of the good and bad players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
POGUE: Do I, as a consumer, have any way of knowing when I pick up a package?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSEAN: Not yet. And what we\u2019re working on, and what I would see in the future in the future\u2013 next holiday season\u2013 look for a whale tail symbol. Look for a symbol that says, \u201cThis was shipped across the ocean sustainably.\u201d<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Okay. So there\u2019s a logo program in the works?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSEAN: We\u2019re working on a campaign to raise brand awareness, as well as consumer awareness.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nYou know what else you can do? Ping your elected officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SEAN: Future regulations are probably necessary to close the gap between 70% cooperation and 100% of the ships slowing down off the coast. It\u2019s good for us, good for the whales, and it\u2019s not gonna impact industry. So I do see a future with speed regulation as being necessary.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Great. Yeah. I think\u2013 I think that logo\u2013 idea would make a big difference. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nSEAN: We\u2019ve done our homework: dolphin-safe tuna, fair-trade labor, organics. One of our ideas is to offer to the\u2013 the greatest performing crew and ship, paint a whale tail on their bow.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Oh!<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSEAN: Yeah, so that they receive the recognition, as well as coming under the Golden Gate, and you take that lovely walk with your wife, and instead of seeing a floating whale, you see a whale tail emblem on a ship.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nThat would be nice. Because I\u2019m still really affected by having seen Fran wash ashore with a huge gash in her spine. And ever since that day, I\u2019ve sometimes thought about her baby Aria. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Remember that interview with Ted Cheeseman of Happy Whale.com? The one that one of my \u201cSunday Morning\u201d colleagues had done for a story of his own?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His producer passed that audio file along to me just as I was putting this episode to bed. And I could not believe what it contained\u2014an update to the story of Fran the humpback whale and her orphaned daughter Aria. Some really amazing news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
TED: Somebody sent me the photo from out on a ship. They texted it to me from on the ship in Monterey Bay, just like, \u201cI think this is Aria, can you confirm it?\u201d And it was just \u2014 just joy, just celebration. It was just delightful. You know, I \u2014 OK, it\u2019s a bit nerdy, right? \u2014 but I started calling people and texting people that had known Fran, that had seen Aria. \u201cI saw the calf!\u201d Her calf survived! \n\nYou know, too many of the things that we do to the ocean are out of sight, out of mind. Until we can reach out there and see what we\u2019re doing and care about it, we\u2019re not gonna change what we do. And quite frankly, we\u2019ve done a lot. We\u2019ve done a lot to change the way we interact with the ocean, and it\u2019s because people care.<\/pre>\nhttps:\/\/unsung.davidpogue.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/unsungscience-20231013.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[Season 2 \u2022 Episode 21 \u2022 Published 10\/13\/23.] For the most part, we don\u2019t hunt whales anymore, but we\u2019re still killing them\u2014mostly by driving ships into them. One species, the North Atlantic right whale, is now extinct in most parts of the world; only 340 are left. But it may not be too late. An extraordinary…More <\/svg><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n
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