0:00:00.000,0:00:03.000
Thank you so much. I'm going to try to take you

0:00:03.000,0:00:06.000
on a journey of the underwater acoustic world

0:00:06.000,0:00:08.000
of whales and dolphins.

0:00:08.000,0:00:10.000
Since we are such a visual species,

0:00:10.000,0:00:12.000
it's hard for us to really understand this,

0:00:12.000,0:00:14.000
so I'll use a mixture of figures and sounds

0:00:14.000,0:00:16.000
and hope this can communicate it.

0:00:16.000,0:00:19.000
But let's also think, as a visual species,

0:00:19.000,0:00:21.000
what it's like when we go snorkeling or diving

0:00:21.000,0:00:23.000
and try to look underwater.

0:00:23.000,0:00:25.000
We really can't see very far.

0:00:25.000,0:00:27.000
Our vision, which works so well in air,

0:00:27.000,0:00:30.000
all of a sudden is very restricted and claustrophobic.

0:00:30.000,0:00:32.000
And what marine mammals have evolved

0:00:32.000,0:00:35.000
over the last tens of millions of years

0:00:35.000,0:00:37.000
is ways to depend on sound

0:00:37.000,0:00:39.000
to both explore their world

0:00:39.000,0:00:41.000
and also to stay in touch with one another.

0:00:41.000,0:00:43.000
Dolphins and toothed whales use echolocation.

0:00:43.000,0:00:45.000
They can produce loud clicks

0:00:45.000,0:00:48.000
and listen for echoes from the sea floor in order to orient.

0:00:48.000,0:00:50.000
They can listen for echoes from prey

0:00:50.000,0:00:52.000
in order to decide where food is

0:00:52.000,0:00:55.000
and to decide which one they want to eat.

0:00:55.000,0:00:57.000
All marine mammals use sound for communication to stay in touch.

0:00:57.000,0:00:59.000
So the large baleen whales

0:00:59.000,0:01:02.000
will produce long, beautiful songs,

0:01:02.000,0:01:04.000
which are used in reproductive advertisement

0:01:04.000,0:01:06.000
for male and females, both to find one another

0:01:06.000,0:01:08.000
and to select a mate.

0:01:08.000,0:01:10.000
And mother and young and closely bonded animals

0:01:10.000,0:01:13.000
use calls to stay in touch with one another,

0:01:13.000,0:01:15.000
so sound is really critical for their lives.

0:01:15.000,0:01:17.000
The first thing that got me interested in the sounds

0:01:17.000,0:01:19.000
of these underwater animals,

0:01:19.000,0:01:21.000
whose world was so foreign to me,

0:01:21.000,0:01:23.000
was evidence from captive dolphins

0:01:23.000,0:01:26.000
that captive dolphins could imitate human sounds.

0:01:26.000,0:01:28.000
And I mentioned I'll use

0:01:28.000,0:01:30.000
some visual representations of sounds.

0:01:30.000,0:01:32.000
Here's the first example.

0:01:32.000,0:01:34.000
This is a plot of frequency against time --

0:01:34.000,0:01:36.000
sort of like musical notation,

0:01:36.000,0:01:39.000
where the higher notes are up higher and the lower notes are lower,

0:01:39.000,0:01:41.000
and time goes this way.

0:01:41.000,0:01:43.000
This is a picture of a trainer's whistle,

0:01:43.000,0:01:45.000
a whistle a trainer will blow to tell a dolphin

0:01:45.000,0:01:47.000
it's done the right thing and can come get a fish.

0:01:47.000,0:01:50.000
It sounds sort of like "tweeeeeet." Like that.

0:01:50.000,0:01:52.000
This is a calf in captivity

0:01:52.000,0:01:54.000
making an imitation

0:01:54.000,0:01:56.000
of that trainer's whistle.

0:01:56.000,0:01:58.000
If you hummed this tune to your dog or cat

0:01:58.000,0:02:00.000
and it hummed it back to you,

0:02:00.000,0:02:02.000
you ought to be pretty surprised.

0:02:02.000,0:02:04.000
Very few nonhuman mammals

0:02:04.000,0:02:06.000
can imitate sounds.

0:02:06.000,0:02:08.000
It's really important for our music and our language.

0:02:08.000,0:02:11.000
So it's a puzzle: The few other mammal groups that do this,

0:02:11.000,0:02:13.000
why do they do it?

0:02:13.000,0:02:15.000
A lot of my career has been devoted

0:02:15.000,0:02:17.000
to trying to understand

0:02:17.000,0:02:19.000
how these animals use their learning,

0:02:19.000,0:02:21.000
use the ability to change what you say

0:02:21.000,0:02:23.000
based on what you hear

0:02:23.000,0:02:25.000
in their own communication systems.

0:02:25.000,0:02:28.000
So let's start with calls of a nonhuman primate.

0:02:28.000,0:02:30.000
Many mammals have to produce contact calls

0:02:30.000,0:02:33.000
when, say, a mother and calf are apart.

0:02:33.000,0:02:36.000
This is an example of a call produced by squirrel monkeys

0:02:36.000,0:02:38.000
when they're isolated from another one.

0:02:38.000,0:02:40.000
And you can see, there's not much

0:02:40.000,0:02:42.000
variability in these calls.

0:02:42.000,0:02:44.000
By contrast, the signature whistle

0:02:44.000,0:02:46.000
which dolphins use to stay in touch,

0:02:46.000,0:02:49.000
each individual here has a radically different call.

0:02:49.000,0:02:52.000
They can use this ability to learn calls

0:02:52.000,0:02:55.000
in order to develop more complicated and more distinctive calls

0:02:55.000,0:02:57.000
to identify individuals.

0:02:58.000,0:03:01.000
How about the setting in which animals need to use this call?

0:03:01.000,0:03:03.000
Well let's look at mothers and calves.

0:03:03.000,0:03:05.000
In normal life for mother and calf dolphin,

0:03:05.000,0:03:08.000
they'll often drift apart or swim apart if Mom is chasing a fish,

0:03:08.000,0:03:10.000
and when they separate

0:03:10.000,0:03:12.000
they have to get back together again.

0:03:12.000,0:03:15.000
What this figure shows is the percentage of the separations

0:03:15.000,0:03:17.000
in which dolphins whistle,

0:03:17.000,0:03:19.000
against the maximum distance.

0:03:19.000,0:03:21.000
So when dolphins are separating by less than 20 meters,

0:03:21.000,0:03:23.000
less than half the time they need to use whistles.

0:03:23.000,0:03:25.000
Most of the time they can just find each other

0:03:25.000,0:03:27.000
just by swimming around.

0:03:27.000,0:03:30.000
But all of the time when they separate by more than 100 meters,

0:03:30.000,0:03:33.000
they need to use these individually distinctive whistles

0:03:33.000,0:03:36.000
to come back together again.

0:03:36.000,0:03:38.000
Most of these distinctive signature whistles

0:03:38.000,0:03:40.000
are quite stereotyped and stable

0:03:40.000,0:03:42.000
through the life of a dolphin.

0:03:42.000,0:03:44.000
But there are some exceptions.

0:03:44.000,0:03:46.000
When a male dolphin leaves Mom,

0:03:46.000,0:03:48.000
it will often join up with another male

0:03:48.000,0:03:51.000
and form an alliance, which may last for decades.

0:03:51.000,0:03:54.000
As these two animals form a social bond,

0:03:54.000,0:03:56.000
their distinctive whistles actually converge

0:03:56.000,0:03:58.000
and become very similar.

0:03:58.000,0:04:01.000
This plot shows two members of a pair.

0:04:01.000,0:04:03.000
As you can see at the top here,

0:04:03.000,0:04:05.000
they share an up-sweep, like "woop, woop, woop."

0:04:05.000,0:04:07.000
They both have that kind of up-sweep.

0:04:07.000,0:04:10.000
Whereas these members of a pair go "wo-ot, wo-ot, wo-ot."

0:04:10.000,0:04:12.000
And what's happened is

0:04:12.000,0:04:14.000
they've used this learning process

0:04:14.000,0:04:17.000
to develop a new sign that identifies this new social group.

0:04:17.000,0:04:19.000
It's a very interesting way that they can

0:04:19.000,0:04:21.000
form a new identifier

0:04:21.000,0:04:23.000
for the new social group that they've had.

0:04:23.000,0:04:25.000
Let's now take a step back

0:04:25.000,0:04:27.000
and see what this message can tell us

0:04:27.000,0:04:29.000
about protecting dolphins

0:04:29.000,0:04:31.000
from human disturbance.

0:04:31.000,0:04:33.000
Anybody looking at this picture

0:04:33.000,0:04:35.000
will know this dolphin is surrounded,

0:04:35.000,0:04:38.000
and clearly his behavior is being disrupted.

0:04:38.000,0:04:40.000
This is a bad situation.

0:04:40.000,0:04:42.000
But it turns out that when just a single boat

0:04:42.000,0:04:44.000
is approaching a group of dolphins

0:04:44.000,0:04:46.000
at a couple hundred meters away,

0:04:46.000,0:04:48.000
the dolphins will start whistling,

0:04:48.000,0:04:50.000
they'll change what they're doing, they'll have a more cohesive group,

0:04:50.000,0:04:52.000
wait for the boat to go by,

0:04:52.000,0:04:54.000
and then they'll get back to normal business.

0:04:54.000,0:04:56.000
Well, in a place like Sarasota, Florida,

0:04:56.000,0:04:58.000
the average interval between times

0:04:58.000,0:05:01.000
that a boat is passing within a hundred meters of a dolphin group

0:05:01.000,0:05:03.000
is six minutes.

0:05:03.000,0:05:06.000
So even in the situation that doesn't look as bad as this,

0:05:06.000,0:05:08.000
it's still affecting the amount of time these animals have

0:05:08.000,0:05:10.000
to do their normal work.

0:05:10.000,0:05:13.000
And if we look at a very pristine environment like western Australia,

0:05:13.000,0:05:15.000
Lars Bider has done work

0:05:15.000,0:05:18.000
comparing dolphin behavior and distribution

0:05:18.000,0:05:21.000
before there were dolphin-watching boats.

0:05:21.000,0:05:24.000
When there was one boat, not much of an impact.

0:05:24.000,0:05:27.000
And two boats: When the second boat was added,

0:05:27.000,0:05:29.000
what happened was that some of the dolphins

0:05:29.000,0:05:31.000
left the area completely.

0:05:31.000,0:05:34.000
Of the ones that stayed, their reproductive rate declined.

0:05:34.000,0:05:37.000
So it could have a negative impact on the whole population.

0:05:37.000,0:05:40.000
When we think of marine-protected areas for animals like dolphins,

0:05:40.000,0:05:42.000
this means that we have to be

0:05:42.000,0:05:45.000
quite conscious about activities that we thought were benign.

0:05:45.000,0:05:47.000
We may need to regulate the intensity

0:05:47.000,0:05:50.000
of recreational boating and actual whale watching

0:05:50.000,0:05:53.000
in order to prevent these kinds of problems.

0:05:53.000,0:05:55.000
I'd also like to point out that sound

0:05:55.000,0:05:57.000
doesn't obey boundaries.

0:05:57.000,0:06:00.000
So you can draw a line to try to protect an area,

0:06:00.000,0:06:02.000
but chemical pollution and noise pollution

0:06:02.000,0:06:04.000
will continue to move through the area.

0:06:04.000,0:06:06.000
And I'd like to switch now from this local,

0:06:06.000,0:06:09.000
familiar, coastal environment

0:06:09.000,0:06:12.000
to a much broader world of the baleen whales and the open ocean.

0:06:12.000,0:06:15.000
This is a kind of map we've all been looking at.

0:06:15.000,0:06:17.000
The world is mostly blue.

0:06:17.000,0:06:19.000
But I'd also like to point out that the oceans

0:06:19.000,0:06:21.000
are much more connected than we think.

0:06:21.000,0:06:24.000
Notice how few barriers there are to movement

0:06:24.000,0:06:26.000
across all of the oceans compared to land.

0:06:26.000,0:06:28.000
To me, the most mind-bending example

0:06:28.000,0:06:30.000
of the interconnectedness of the ocean

0:06:30.000,0:06:32.000
comes from an acoustic experiment

0:06:32.000,0:06:34.000
where oceanographers

0:06:34.000,0:06:37.000
took a ship to the southern Indian Ocean,

0:06:37.000,0:06:39.000
deployed an underwater loudspeaker

0:06:39.000,0:06:41.000
and played back a sound.

0:06:41.000,0:06:43.000
That same sound

0:06:43.000,0:06:46.000
traveled to the west, and could be heard in Bermuda,

0:06:46.000,0:06:49.000
and traveled to the east, and could be heard in Monterey --

0:06:49.000,0:06:51.000
the same sound.

0:06:51.000,0:06:53.000
So we live in a world of satellite communication,

0:06:53.000,0:06:55.000
are used to global communication,

0:06:55.000,0:06:57.000
but it's still amazing to me.

0:06:57.000,0:06:59.000
The ocean has properties

0:06:59.000,0:07:01.000
that allow low-frequency sound

0:07:01.000,0:07:03.000
to basically move globally.

0:07:03.000,0:07:06.000
The acoustic transit time for each of these paths is about three hours.

0:07:06.000,0:07:09.000
It's nearly halfway around the globe.

0:07:09.000,0:07:11.000
In the early '70s,

0:07:11.000,0:07:13.000
Roger Payne and an ocean acoustician

0:07:13.000,0:07:15.000
published a theoretical paper

0:07:15.000,0:07:17.000
pointing out that it was possible

0:07:17.000,0:07:20.000
that sound could transmit over these large areas,

0:07:20.000,0:07:23.000
but very few biologists believed it.

0:07:23.000,0:07:25.000
It actually turns out, though,

0:07:25.000,0:07:28.000
even though we've only known of long-range propagation for a few decades,

0:07:28.000,0:07:31.000
the whales clearly have evolved,

0:07:31.000,0:07:33.000
over tens of millions of years,

0:07:33.000,0:07:36.000
a way to exploit this amazing property of the ocean.

0:07:36.000,0:07:38.000
So blue whales and fin whales

0:07:38.000,0:07:40.000
produce very low-frequency sounds

0:07:40.000,0:07:42.000
that can travel over very long ranges.

0:07:42.000,0:07:44.000
The top plot here shows

0:07:44.000,0:07:46.000
a complicated series of calls

0:07:46.000,0:07:48.000
that are repeated by males.

0:07:48.000,0:07:51.000
They form songs, and they appear to play a role in reproduction,

0:07:51.000,0:07:53.000
sort of like that of song birds.

0:07:53.000,0:07:56.000
Down below here, we see calls made by both males and females

0:07:56.000,0:07:59.000
that also carry over very long ranges.

0:08:00.000,0:08:02.000
The biologists continued to be skeptical

0:08:02.000,0:08:04.000
of the long-range communication issue

0:08:04.000,0:08:06.000
well past the '70s,

0:08:06.000,0:08:08.000
until the end of the Cold War.

0:08:08.000,0:08:10.000
What happened was, during the Cold War,

0:08:10.000,0:08:13.000
the U.S. Navy had a system that was secret at the time,

0:08:13.000,0:08:16.000
that they used to track Russian submarines.

0:08:16.000,0:08:18.000
It had deep underwater microphones, or hydrophones,

0:08:18.000,0:08:20.000
cabled to shore,

0:08:20.000,0:08:22.000
all wired back to a central place that could listen

0:08:22.000,0:08:24.000
to sounds over the whole North Atlantic.

0:08:24.000,0:08:27.000
And after the Berlin Wall fell, the Navy made these systems available

0:08:27.000,0:08:29.000
to whale bio-acousticians

0:08:29.000,0:08:31.000
to see what they could hear.

0:08:31.000,0:08:33.000
This is a plot from Christopher Clark

0:08:33.000,0:08:36.000
who tracked one individual blue whale

0:08:36.000,0:08:38.000
as it passed by Bermuda,

0:08:38.000,0:08:41.000
went down to the latitude of Miami and came back again.

0:08:41.000,0:08:43.000
It was tracked for 43 days,

0:08:43.000,0:08:45.000
swimming 1,700 kilometers,

0:08:45.000,0:08:47.000
or more than 1,000 miles.

0:08:47.000,0:08:49.000
This shows us both that the calls

0:08:49.000,0:08:51.000
are detectable over hundreds of miles

0:08:51.000,0:08:53.000
and that whales routinely swim hundreds of miles.

0:08:53.000,0:08:55.000
They're ocean-based and scale animals

0:08:55.000,0:08:57.000
who are communicating over much longer ranges

0:08:57.000,0:08:59.000
than we had anticipated.

0:08:59.000,0:09:01.000
Unlike fins and blues, which

0:09:01.000,0:09:03.000
disperse into the temperate and tropical oceans,

0:09:03.000,0:09:05.000
the humpbacked whales congregate

0:09:05.000,0:09:08.000
in local traditional breeding grounds,

0:09:08.000,0:09:11.000
so they can make a sound that's a little higher in frequency,

0:09:11.000,0:09:13.000
broader-band and more complicated.

0:09:13.000,0:09:15.000
So you're listening to the complicated song

0:09:15.000,0:09:17.000
produced by humpbacks here.

0:09:17.000,0:09:19.000
Humpbacks, when they develop

0:09:19.000,0:09:21.000
the ability to sing this song,

0:09:21.000,0:09:23.000
they're listening to other whales

0:09:23.000,0:09:26.000
and modifying what they sing based on what they're hearing,

0:09:26.000,0:09:29.000
just like song birds or the dolphin whistles I described.

0:09:29.000,0:09:31.000
This means that humpback song

0:09:31.000,0:09:33.000
is a form of animal culture,

0:09:33.000,0:09:35.000
just like music for humans would be.

0:09:35.000,0:09:38.000
I think one of the most interesting examples of this

0:09:38.000,0:09:40.000
comes from Australia.

0:09:40.000,0:09:42.000
Biologists on the east coast of Australia

0:09:42.000,0:09:45.000
were recording the songs of humpbacks in that area.

0:09:45.000,0:09:48.000
And this orange line here marks the typical songs

0:09:48.000,0:09:50.000
of east coast humpbacks.

0:09:50.000,0:09:52.000
In '95 they all sang the normal song.

0:09:52.000,0:09:54.000
But in '96 they heard a few weird songs,

0:09:54.000,0:09:57.000
and it turned out that these strange songs

0:09:57.000,0:09:59.000
were typical of west coast whales.

0:09:59.000,0:10:02.000
The west coast calls became more and more popular,

0:10:02.000,0:10:04.000
until by 1998,

0:10:04.000,0:10:07.000
none of the whales sang the east coast song; it was completely gone.

0:10:07.000,0:10:09.000
They just sang the cool new west coast song.

0:10:09.000,0:10:11.000
It's as if some new hit style

0:10:11.000,0:10:13.000
had completely wiped out

0:10:13.000,0:10:15.000
the old-fashioned style before,

0:10:15.000,0:10:17.000
and with no golden oldies stations.

0:10:17.000,0:10:20.000
Nobody sang the old ones.

0:10:20.000,0:10:23.000
I'd like to briefly just show what the ocean does to these calls.

0:10:23.000,0:10:26.000
Now you are listening to a recording made by Chris Clark,

0:10:26.000,0:10:29.000
0.2 miles away from a humpback.

0:10:29.000,0:10:32.000
You can hear the full frequency range. It's quite loud.

0:10:32.000,0:10:34.000
You sound very nearby.

0:10:34.000,0:10:36.000
The next recording you're going to hear

0:10:36.000,0:10:38.000
was made of the same humpback song

0:10:38.000,0:10:40.000
50 miles away.

0:10:40.000,0:10:42.000
That's shown down here.

0:10:42.000,0:10:44.000
You only hear the low frequencies.

0:10:44.000,0:10:46.000
You hear the reverberation

0:10:46.000,0:10:48.000
as the sound travels over long-range in the ocean

0:10:48.000,0:10:51.000
and is not quite as loud.

0:10:51.000,0:10:54.000
Now after I play back these humpback calls,

0:10:54.000,0:10:57.000
I'll play blue whale calls, but they have to be sped up

0:10:57.000,0:10:59.000
because they're so low in frequency

0:10:59.000,0:11:01.000
that you wouldn't be able to hear it otherwise.

0:11:01.000,0:11:03.000
Here's a blue whale call at 50 miles,

0:11:03.000,0:11:05.000
which was distant for the humpback.

0:11:05.000,0:11:08.000
It's loud, clear -- you can hear it very clearly.

0:11:08.000,0:11:11.000
Here's the same call recorded from a hydrophone

0:11:11.000,0:11:13.000
500 miles away.

0:11:13.000,0:11:16.000
There's a lot of noise, which is mostly other whales.

0:11:16.000,0:11:19.000
But you can still hear that faint call.

0:11:19.000,0:11:21.000
Let's now switch and think about

0:11:21.000,0:11:23.000
a potential for human impacts.

0:11:23.000,0:11:26.000
The most dominant sound that humans put into the ocean

0:11:26.000,0:11:28.000
comes from shipping.

0:11:28.000,0:11:30.000
This is the sound of a ship,

0:11:30.000,0:11:32.000
and I'm having to talk a little louder to talk over it.

0:11:32.000,0:11:35.000
Imagine that whale listening from 500 miles.

0:11:35.000,0:11:37.000
There's a potential problem that maybe

0:11:37.000,0:11:39.000
this kind of shipping noise would prevent whales

0:11:39.000,0:11:41.000
from being able to hear each other.

0:11:41.000,0:11:43.000
Now this is something that's been known for quite a while.

0:11:43.000,0:11:46.000
This is a figure from a textbook on underwater sound.

0:11:46.000,0:11:48.000
And on the y-axis

0:11:48.000,0:11:51.000
is the loudness of average ambient noise in the deep ocean

0:11:51.000,0:11:53.000
by frequency.

0:11:53.000,0:11:56.000
In the low frequencies, this line indicates

0:11:56.000,0:11:59.000
sound that comes from seismic activity of the earth.

0:11:59.000,0:12:01.000
Up high, these variable lines

0:12:01.000,0:12:04.000
indicate increasing noise in this frequency range

0:12:04.000,0:12:06.000
from higher wind and wave.

0:12:06.000,0:12:09.000
But right in the middle here where there's a sweet spot,

0:12:09.000,0:12:11.000
the noise is dominated by human ships.

0:12:11.000,0:12:13.000
Now think about it. This is an amazing thing:

0:12:13.000,0:12:16.000
That in this frequency range where whales communicate,

0:12:16.000,0:12:19.000
the main source globally, on our planet, for the noise

0:12:19.000,0:12:21.000
comes from human ships,

0:12:21.000,0:12:24.000
thousands of human ships, distant, far away,

0:12:24.000,0:12:26.000
just all aggregating.

0:12:26.000,0:12:29.000
The next slide will show what the impact this may have

0:12:29.000,0:12:31.000
on the range at which whales can communicate.

0:12:31.000,0:12:34.000
So here we have the loudness of a call at the whale.

0:12:34.000,0:12:36.000
And as we get farther away,

0:12:36.000,0:12:38.000
the sound gets fainter and fainter.

0:12:38.000,0:12:41.000
Now in the pre-industrial ocean, as we were mentioning,

0:12:41.000,0:12:43.000
this whale call could be easily detected.

0:12:43.000,0:12:45.000
It's louder than noise

0:12:45.000,0:12:47.000
at a range of a thousand kilometers.

0:12:47.000,0:12:50.000
Let's now take that additional increase in noise

0:12:50.000,0:12:52.000
that we saw comes from shipping.

0:12:52.000,0:12:54.000
All of a sudden, the effective range of communication

0:12:54.000,0:12:57.000
goes from a thousand kilometers to 10 kilometers.

0:12:57.000,0:12:59.000
Now if this signal is used for males and females

0:12:59.000,0:13:02.000
to find each other for mating and they're dispersed,

0:13:02.000,0:13:04.000
imagine the impact this could have

0:13:04.000,0:13:07.000
on the recovery of endangered populations.

0:13:07.000,0:13:09.000
Whales also have contact calls

0:13:09.000,0:13:12.000
like I described for the dolphins.

0:13:12.000,0:13:14.000
I'll play the sound of a contact call used

0:13:14.000,0:13:16.000
by right whales to stay in touch.

0:13:16.000,0:13:18.000
And this is the kind of call that is used by,

0:13:18.000,0:13:20.000
say, right whale mothers and calves

0:13:20.000,0:13:22.000
as they separate to come back again.

0:13:22.000,0:13:24.000
Now imagine -- let's put the ship noise in the picture.

0:13:24.000,0:13:26.000
What's a mother to do

0:13:26.000,0:13:28.000
if the ship comes by and her calf isn't there?

0:13:28.000,0:13:31.000
I'll describe a couple strategies.

0:13:31.000,0:13:33.000
One strategy is if your call's down here,

0:13:33.000,0:13:35.000
and the noise is in this band,

0:13:35.000,0:13:38.000
you could shift the frequency of your call out of the noise band

0:13:38.000,0:13:40.000
and communicate better.

0:13:40.000,0:13:43.000
Susan Parks of Penn State has actually studied this.

0:13:43.000,0:13:46.000
She's looked in the Atlantic. Here's data from the South Atlantic.

0:13:46.000,0:13:49.000
Here's a typical South Atlantic contact call from the '70s.

0:13:49.000,0:13:52.000
Look what happened by 2000 to the average call.

0:13:52.000,0:13:54.000
Same thing in the North Atlantic,

0:13:54.000,0:13:56.000
in the '50s versus 2000.

0:13:56.000,0:13:58.000
Over the last 50 years,

0:13:58.000,0:14:00.000
as we've put more noise into the oceans,

0:14:00.000,0:14:02.000
these whales have had to shift.

0:14:02.000,0:14:04.000
It's as if the whole population had to shift

0:14:04.000,0:14:07.000
from being basses to singing as a tenor.

0:14:07.000,0:14:09.000
It's an amazing shift, induced by humans

0:14:09.000,0:14:11.000
over this large scale,

0:14:11.000,0:14:13.000
in both time and space.

0:14:13.000,0:14:15.000
And we now know that whales can compensate for noise

0:14:15.000,0:14:18.000
by calling louder, like I did when that ship was playing,

0:14:18.000,0:14:20.000
by waiting for silence

0:14:20.000,0:14:23.000
and by shifting their call out of the noise band.

0:14:23.000,0:14:25.000
Now there's probably costs to calling louder

0:14:25.000,0:14:27.000
or shifting the frequency away from where you want to be,

0:14:27.000,0:14:29.000
and there's probably lost opportunities.

0:14:29.000,0:14:31.000
If we also have to wait for silence,

0:14:31.000,0:14:34.000
they may miss a critical opportunity to communicate.

0:14:34.000,0:14:36.000
So we have to be very concerned

0:14:36.000,0:14:38.000
about when the noise in habitats

0:14:38.000,0:14:40.000
degrades the habitat enough

0:14:40.000,0:14:43.000
that the animals either have to pay too much to be able to communicate,

0:14:43.000,0:14:45.000
or are not able to perform critical functions.

0:14:45.000,0:14:48.000
It's a really important problem.

0:14:48.000,0:14:50.000
And I'm happy to say that there are several

0:14:50.000,0:14:53.000
very promising developments in this area,

0:14:53.000,0:14:56.000
looking at the impact of shipping on whales.

0:14:56.000,0:14:58.000
In terms of the shipping noise,

0:14:58.000,0:15:01.000
the International Maritime Organization of the United Nations

0:15:01.000,0:15:04.000
has formed a group whose job is to establish

0:15:04.000,0:15:06.000
guidelines for quieting ships,

0:15:06.000,0:15:08.000
to tell the industry how you could quiet ships.

0:15:08.000,0:15:10.000
And they've already found

0:15:10.000,0:15:13.000
that by being more intelligent about better propeller design,

0:15:13.000,0:15:16.000
you can reduce that noise by 90 percent.

0:15:16.000,0:15:19.000
If you actually insulate and isolate

0:15:19.000,0:15:21.000
the machinery of the ship from the hull,

0:15:21.000,0:15:24.000
you can reduce that noise by 99 percent.

0:15:24.000,0:15:27.000
So at this point, it's primarily an issue of cost and standards.

0:15:27.000,0:15:29.000
If this group can establish standards,

0:15:29.000,0:15:32.000
and if the shipbuilding industry adopts them for building new ships,

0:15:32.000,0:15:34.000
we can now see a gradual decline

0:15:34.000,0:15:36.000
in this potential problem.

0:15:36.000,0:15:39.000
But there's also another problem from ships that I'm illustrating here,

0:15:39.000,0:15:41.000
and that's the problem of collision.

0:15:41.000,0:15:44.000
This is a whale that just squeaked by

0:15:44.000,0:15:47.000
a rapidly moving container ship and avoided collision.

0:15:47.000,0:15:49.000
But collision is a serious problem.

0:15:49.000,0:15:52.000
Endangered whales are killed every year by ship collision,

0:15:52.000,0:15:55.000
and it's very important to try to reduce this.

0:15:55.000,0:15:58.000
I'll discuss two very promising approaches.

0:15:58.000,0:16:00.000
The first case comes from the Bay of Fundy.

0:16:00.000,0:16:02.000
These black lines mark shipping lanes

0:16:02.000,0:16:04.000
in and out of the Bay of Fundy.

0:16:04.000,0:16:06.000
The colorized area

0:16:06.000,0:16:09.000
shows the risk of collision for endangered right whales

0:16:09.000,0:16:11.000
because of the ships moving in this lane.

0:16:11.000,0:16:14.000
It turns out that this lane here

0:16:14.000,0:16:17.000
goes right through a major feeding area of right whales in the summer time,

0:16:17.000,0:16:20.000
and it makes an area of a significant risk of collision.

0:16:20.000,0:16:22.000
Well, biologists

0:16:22.000,0:16:24.000
who couldn't take no for an answer

0:16:24.000,0:16:26.000
went to the International Maritime Organization

0:16:26.000,0:16:28.000
and petitioned them to say,

0:16:28.000,0:16:30.000
"Can't you move that lane? Those are just lines on the ground.

0:16:30.000,0:16:32.000
Can't you move them over to a place

0:16:32.000,0:16:34.000
where there's less of a risk?"

0:16:34.000,0:16:36.000
And the International Maritime Organization responded very strongly,

0:16:36.000,0:16:38.000
"These are the new lanes."

0:16:38.000,0:16:40.000
The shipping lanes have been moved.

0:16:40.000,0:16:43.000
And as you can see, the risk of collision is much lower.

0:16:43.000,0:16:45.000
So it's very promising, actually.

0:16:45.000,0:16:47.000
We can be very creative about thinking

0:16:47.000,0:16:49.000
of different ways to reduce these risks.

0:16:49.000,0:16:51.000
Another action which was just taken independently

0:16:51.000,0:16:54.000
by a shipping company itself

0:16:54.000,0:16:57.000
was initiated because of concerns the shipping company had

0:16:57.000,0:17:00.000
about greenhouse gas emissions with global warming.

0:17:00.000,0:17:03.000
The Maersk Line looked at their competition

0:17:03.000,0:17:06.000
and saw that everybody who is in shipping thinks time is money.

0:17:06.000,0:17:08.000
They rush as fast as they can to get to their port.

0:17:08.000,0:17:10.000
But then they often wait there.

0:17:10.000,0:17:12.000
What Maersk did is they worked ways to slow down.

0:17:12.000,0:17:15.000
They could slow down by about 50 percent.

0:17:15.000,0:17:18.000
This reduced their fuel consumption by about 30 percent,

0:17:18.000,0:17:20.000
which saved them money,

0:17:20.000,0:17:23.000
and at the same time, it had a significant benefit for whales.

0:17:23.000,0:17:26.000
It you slow down, you reduce the amount of noise you make

0:17:26.000,0:17:28.000
and you reduce the risk of collision.

0:17:28.000,0:17:30.000
So to conclude, I'd just like to point out,

0:17:30.000,0:17:32.000
you know, the whales live in

0:17:32.000,0:17:34.000
an amazing acoustic environment.

0:17:34.000,0:17:36.000
They've evolved over tens of millions of years

0:17:36.000,0:17:38.000
to take advantage of this.

0:17:38.000,0:17:41.000
And we need to be very attentive and vigilant

0:17:41.000,0:17:43.000
to thinking about where things that we do

0:17:43.000,0:17:45.000
may unintentionally prevent them

0:17:45.000,0:17:48.000
from being able to achieve their important activities.

0:17:48.000,0:17:50.000
At the same time, we need to be really creative

0:17:50.000,0:17:53.000
in thinking of solutions to be able to help reduce these problems.

0:17:53.000,0:17:55.000
I hope these examples have shown

0:17:55.000,0:17:57.000
some of the different directions we can take

0:17:57.000,0:17:59.000
in addition to protected areas

0:17:59.000,0:18:02.000
to be able to keep the ocean safe for whales to be able to continue to communicate.

0:18:02.000,0:18:04.000
Thank you very much.

0:18:04.000,0:18:06.000
(Applause)