 Well, good morning, everyone. And, uh, welcome. We decided to do something a little bit different here today. I'm Delia Lake. I am one of the curators at the Abyss Observatory. Um, Jan Lauria is also, and he is here. And, um, Jan and I transformed the Science Circle Amphitheater into an undersea studio for this presentation this morning. And the whales and dolphins that you see above you and around you are part of the collection that normally live at the Abyss Observatory. And after this they will return. We are in voice this morning. I will do some typing if needed. And, uh, otherwise, instead of having a highly formal presentation, this is much more of a conversation. So, I have prepared slides, um, but really this is about whales, dolphins, porpoises, and us. We humans. How, how, what we know about them, what we don't know about them, um, and more of an exploration than anything else. Above, excuse me, above on the surface of the water here, there are little balls for diving, little bits and bobs, diving balls. So feel free to get up off your chair and try one of those. Also, the two orcas, the, um, the mother and calf orca, mostly will let people swim with them or on them. So, if you click one of them swimming above you and want to take a little ride, they will be pretty willing to oblige, I think. If you do that, if you choose to ride on one of the orcas, um, we only have the two of them here today. So, if you would take a little ride and then let someone else take a turn, that would be super. When Jess and Chantel asked if we would do the, uh, this presentation or this discussion today, I was delighted to do this. And that is because I have been interested in whales and dolphins and cetaceans in general for, for many years. So, one of the most poignant experiences for me was now, um, gee, 16 years ago when I was on a whale watch, um, off a cod in, um, right near Stelwagen banks, which is one of the, um, feeding zones and nurseries for the North Atlantic along the US coast. So, this is what I posted because this was really quite an experience for me. I'd seen whales, I'd been on whale watches before, um, but this was different. When we were first out, um, a bunch of, well, a small pod of fin whales zipped by, they're very, very fast, but they didn't stay. But a young humpback whale decided that we humans on the boat were pretty interesting and curious creatures. And he or she wanted to check us out. So for a good 15 minutes, this humpback was performing, jumping, um, bringing his face out of the water so he could look at us. I snapped a few pictures, but, uh, and one of them is on the slideshow behind us, but mostly I was just entranced. And at the end of the 15 minutes, this humpback raised itself out of the water, turned to the side just a little, and looked directly at us. I was probably 30 meters at the most from this marvelous, marvelous creature, and you knew, I knew there was somebody sentient there. So that's an experience that never left me and probably, I never will. So I don't know if anyone else has had that kind of experience, but this is an opportunity for us to talk together and share. So I ask, are the people here, have you ever seen a whale or a dolphin live? For those who have, what was it like? Were they in the wild? Were they in captivity? What was it like for you? What do you think it might have been like for them? They're magnificent creatures, beautiful, beautiful. So we'll talk a little bit about whales in the wild and a little bit about them in captivity. Citations, whales, dolphins, and porpoises are marine mammals. And here are just a few of the many, many species. So take a minute and look through them, the pictures here. And are any of them familiar to you? Are some of them unfamiliar? They come in various sizes and shapes and capabilities. Some are enormous, some are as small or smaller than we are. If you live on the coast, you've probably seen harbor porpoises. The blue whale is the largest of these creatures. It's not actually blue. It's more of a mothled gray and white that takes on the reflection of the water and grow to 30 meters. So think about that. How long actually a little bit longer? How long is 30 meters? My house is not 30 meters long. And 190 tons. If you want me to try to move it up a little bit, I can do that. If that's going to make it easier for people, I can, yeah. That's easy enough. Let me stand underneath it. Okay. Yeah, that's fine. So most whales have a very extensive territory. They migrate. And they may migrate thousands of miles. They're not hundreds of miles, but thousands of miles. And 50 years is probably a conservative estimate. There is some evidence that some whales live 80, 90, 100 years. They feed in the cold waters, either in the Arctic or Antarctic areas or areas of the North Sea, the Stelwagen banks, any of the highly productive cold water areas that have nurseries for small fish and lots of plankton. They also longer childhoods and become adults around 10 or 15 years of age. Some of this is hard to pinpoint exactly because there are no whales in captivity, not large whales in captivity. So although they're tagged, some of the research is not exact. It takes a lot of food for a very large whale. There are tons of food today. And so they typically have only one calf every couple of years. It takes a lot to feed the calf as well. The smallest of the cetaceans is the New England, New Zealand dolphin. And there are four different species of them. Most of them are highly endangered. They're very small and live along the coast of New Zealand. They go out about 50 kilometers at the most from the coast. Whales, dolphins, porpoises, and ancestors that were land mammals. So when you look at a whale or a dolphin or a porpoise and you see the flippers, if you could see inside, if the skin and muscles were transparent, you could see limbs, often with bones that look like fingers. So about 50 million years ago in the Iosane, these land mammals began to evolve into sea-dwelling creatures. It didn't happen overnight. Little by little, they lost a lot of the genes for hair. They also increased their ability to hold their breath so that although these are air-breathing mammals, they can be underwater for often hours. And a couple of interesting things that they no longer sleep like we sleep, like other mammals sleep. Your dog, your cat as well will curl up and go to sleep for a number of hours, although my dogs and cats are more alert in their sleep than I am in mine. We don't really know what drove the transition. The evidence, the fossil evidence, the oldest fossil evidence of this transition is in the area of India and Pakistan that was shallow sea at the time. We don't really know what drove them. We just know that from what we have found in the fossil records that the transition took roughly 12 million years. So if you look closely at the right-hand side of this slide, you'll see drawings, estimations of what the creature transition might have been. One of the things that I find really interesting is that while land animals have genes for clotting blood, so our blood doesn't just flow out, that is a disadvantage for a deep-diving sea mammal. So they've lost some of their blood clotting ability. If they didn't lose that, they would have blood clots in their arteries from the nitrogen, from the deep dive and rise. They would have the same kind of effect that human divers have. So the only way for them to survive is to not have these same kinds of blood clotting genes. So the other interesting thing to me is that the closest relatives today of whales, dolphins and porpoises are hippopotamuses. So there are two distinct groups here. They're toothed whales and they're baleen whales. Notice I have more than one number here for the number of species. That's because there are a number of estimates as to how many species there are. So it's roughly 70 to 75, but we're not actually sure. Just recently they have assessed that some of the orca population that had previously been lumped together are in fact separate species. So this number is a changing number. And although we speak of them as different, dolphins and porpoises are actually toothed whales. Most of them are ocean dwelling, but not all of them. There are five dolphin species that live in freshwater and one porpoise. So in the Amazon, in some of the South Asian, Southeast Asian, Chinese rivers, you will have dolphins. My daughter has been swimming with the dolphins in the Amazon. They have to eat a lot. They're huge animals. So they spend a good part of their waking hours finding food. This is one of the ocean dolphins. Blackfish is the general name for the larger ocean dolphins. That's probably true that they could grow larger because of the buoyancy of the water, but it also is going to depend on the availability of food. Because if you have to find tons of food a day, that takes energy in and of itself. So the toothed whales eat a whole variety of different creatures. They eat little tiny things. They eat crabs. They eat small fish. They also eat larger fish. They will go for seals and sea lions and sharks even. So you'll find on occasion that an orca will be going for a shark almost the same size as it is. They lean whales are the largest of the whale cetacean family species. They are the blue whale, the gray whale, humpback. All of the whales that were almost hunted to extinction. Now of course without teeth they have to feed somewhat differently. They don't go hunting their prey with echolocation like the toothed whales do. They just go to the place where there is an abundance of plankton and small fish like anchovies. And open their mouths, scoop it up. And as they close their mouths and the water flows out the baleen holds all of the edible creatures, which are swallowed whole. For a long time they thought that the baleen whales developed first and toothed whales developed from those. But that seems not to be so. The current research shows that toothed whales developed first and baleen whales evolved from them. But imagine here again we have a 190 ton gray whale and this is what it eats and how it eats. How much time would you have to spend eating in order to get sufficient energy to power that size of a creature? India has done what no other country has done to date. And that is recognized dolphins as non-human persons. So think about that for a minute. You see in the news that people are proposing that primates other than besides human primates should be designated as non-human persons with all of the rights of persons. But India has recognized dolphins now with those rights. And so that puts them with a different level of respect and care than they have in many other countries. So we didn't really talk about it. But the basic difference between dolphins and porpoises is that dolphins tend to be beat and porpoises are not. But porpoises have been studied so far as their sonar capabilities go and studied a lot. It's astonishing, amazing that they have the sophistication of their echolocation. That they can sense things that even our most sophisticated human technology is unable to do. So the U.S. Navy, for instance, has worked with porpoises for years and in their research has monitored them, has tagged them to begin to understand how the porpoises do what the Navy and their submarines are unable to do yet. Yeah, wouldn't it be nice? And maybe that will happen that we will stop hunting them. Many countries have stopped hunting them, but not yet Russia and Japan. Wales also live in social groups. They live in complex, sophisticated social groups, very much like many other mammals do, humans included. They know their families, they know their family members always. They also know their friends and yes, Wales do have friends. So that it has been observed that Wales that are tagged and haven't seen each other in a long time due to migration patterns. When they get together, when they gather in large groups, large communities of a number of different pods that they greet each other. Glad to see each other just as we would do. Yeah, I should go back to that on the echolocation. Then the porpoises not only have the ability to manipulate the pressure waves in the water, but they also can change the shape and the internal structure of their heads. So that they can control the sounds and how the echo of the sounds by how they are able to shape their own heads. It's just astonishing. Imagine, just take a minute and try to shape anything on the inside of your own head. I've tried, there's no possible way I could do that. They do this all the time. We don't actually know how they do this. Still, still to be determined. As I said earlier, their capabilities are so far beyond anything that we humans, even with our technologies are able to do. Yeah, I like that they have social relations too. And the culture of families are different, just like the culture of human families are different. So if you go across the globe and you go to different countries, different areas, different regions, you'll find different types of communities and social structures for humans. You also find this for whales. So that how they form their social groups is dependent, is cultural, and how they speak with one another is also cultural. They have dialects. They're smart. Really smart creatures. Now, of course, they have a leg up on us in length of time of evolution. We're looking back many more millions of years for citations than for humans. So I guess it shouldn't be surprising that they are in some ways far ahead of us. They have large complex frames and complex social structures. Yeah, they do remember, it's more than just remembering faces. Dolphins can identify themselves in a mirror, just like a gorilla or a human. So if they see themselves in a mirror, they recognize themselves as distinct from other dolphins. Yeah, really. They are also capable of identifying their body parts related to human body parts. So, you know, arms, belly buttons, that sort of eyes, if they can distinguish, they can relate. Dolphin eyes, oh yeah, humans have eyes too. Amazing, amazing, amazing. Because they have complex, important lifelong social structures, it's not surprising that they would grieve their dead. And this is, the picture is of a striped dolphin mourning a companion, but they're also, this is only one, there are numbers of instances. And recently you may have seen some video postings the last couple of years of an orca mom whose calf died. And the orca mom carried, you know, pushed, kept with her the calf for weeks. And then it was almost, when she let the calf go, it was almost a ritual letting go, just like it would be for a human. Yeah, people are working to develop communications with other species. Yeah, you see this with elephants, you see it with all of the primates. Not surprising that any creature that would have, well, you know, you even see it with birds. This is again on the side, but it was years ago, and near where I was living along the side of the road, there was a Canada goose that had been hit by a car and died. And for days, the mate of that goose stood by the dead mate. And so it happens in most species where you have an attachments. Another interesting thing about some of the dolphins, and this is a particular group of dolphins that has been, the bottlenose dolphins that has been observed. So cuttlefish are squid related creatures. But they have an internal bone. That's the bone that you will often see in pet stores in bird cages for birds and sharpening or smoothing off their beaks. It seems kind of a shame to use another marvelous creature just for that. And hopefully somebody will, if they haven't already, will invent a non-killing way to provide the beaks moving for birds. So the cuttlefish has an internal bone, but it also has ink. And the ink is not edible for the dolphins. So not only do these particular bottlenose dolphins kill the cuttlefish to eat, they have a whole process for removing the bone. And to shake the all of the ink out. And it's not just one. This pod of dolphins and the community of dolphins nearby are all doing this. Other bottlenose dolphins don't seem to be doing it. So the guess is that this is taught learned behavior. Dolphin culture, yes. Dolphin meal preparing culture. Another pretty amazing thing. We know quite a bit about bird songs. Whale songs are at least as complex, if not more. So that whales do communicate because they have the, they're able to make low sounds, the sounds carry for miles. Yeah, we will put the PowerPoint slides so that the links work up on the Science Circle site so that people can actually read some of these articles and listen to these wonderful sounds. But the interesting thing here is that whales have dialects, but they also, because they are social creatures and speak not only in the family pods are the the tribes, so to speak, but also gather in large groups, particularly for the breeding seasons. They learn songs from each other so that recently they found that they can, scientists can track where whales go, back their journeys through their sounds, so that they pick up riffs like jazz musicians from other groups, from other whale communities. And they are just beginning to track these through through mapping, which is quite amazing. So if you go to the links when we put up the slides and you go to the links you'll be able to hear on the SoundCloud some of the variations of these themes. I've listened to it a number of times and I find it absolutely fascinating. Yeah, yeah, whales will, they're curious about us, just like we're curious about them. And you gotta think, I gotta think anyway, that that whales are trying to communicate with us. I certainly got that feeling with the first experience that I shared here this morning about the humpback whale coming up to the boat that I was in and just looking at us, just looking around. And it was as though this performing young humpback was on a stage and connecting with the audience one by one by one by one. Yeah, yeah, copyrights for whales, yeah, yep. Oh God, if I could only make such a sound, which of course I can't. Of all kinds are under great stress. Ron, you were talking or mentioning the Chesapeake Bay on the eastern coast of the United States when we first gathered here this morning. And that is under stress for all of the creatures there, but climate change and particularly the warming of the ocean water because the oceans are absorbing most of the carbon dioxide. Most of the carbon dioxide that we are spewing into the air does not remain in the atmosphere but is absorbed by the oceans. So that is a twofold problem. One is because we are warming the globe in general, the oceans are also warming, but two, because the oceans are absorbing carbon dioxide, they are becoming more acidic. So why would that be such a problem for whales and any of the creatures? And they've shown now that the shelled creatures have softer or porous shells and so they are not as healthy, but it's even down to the microscopic algae and diatoms. All of the phytoplankton, phytoplankton, and we've talked about this on some of the tours that I've given at the abyss. And when the cells are weaker, the creature, the tiny microscopic creature is less healthy. They also store less carbon and they are smaller in size in the warmer waters. In very cold waters of the Arctic and Antarctic, there is a fatty content to the phytoplankton that makes them those phytoplankton and the smaller fish more nutritious. For the whales. So that here, they don't have the same nutrition value and we are finding whales that are undernourished. You have whales and dolphins that are on porpoises that are washing up on beaches and they are starving. It's both Shiloh. It's related but a problem, but the acidity is something that is not talked about a whole lot when the, and if you drop, for instance, a baby tooth into a glass of Coca-Cola or any kind of soda like that carbonated soda, it will disintegrate over time, over a short time, where it wouldn't in regular salt water. Yeah, the acidity is from the dissolved CO2 and the oceans have absorbed a lot of CO2. So we have a carbon sink in the water of the oceans that is only beginning to be taken into account in some of the climate modeling. And as the water temperature increases, the oceans will not only absorb less carbon, but they will begin to release carbon dioxide, which is another, going to be another contributor to increased warming of the atmosphere. Yeah, frightening. You know, no kidding. Very frightening. So there's another problem here before we leave this slide that is happening and it, it has shown up a lot of places, particularly they started studying this a number of years ago on the wild coast of South Africa. And that's the eastern coast of South Africa. And that's one of the areas of high marine productivity so far as multiple fish species and cold water and churn. And what they found was that some of the fish, larger fish and dolphins and whales were becoming undernourished because the warmer seas were had interrupted the migration and reproduction cycles. So that it would be as if on land, the bees came to the, the apple tree after the flowers had already passed and the tree was starting fruit. I mean, it's killing the creatures because the normal, the adapted cycle is out of sync from what it was for eons. So that the dolphins and the sardines might not arrive at the same time. So you can see it roll this through the kind of disastrous circumstance that this produces. And this is not just happening on the wild coast. It's happening all over the world in the oceans. And it is most of the time unseen. Somebody mentioned plastic. Yeah. Plastics, plastic trash is a horror. So 100 years ago, 200 years ago, we had significant hunting of whales. And we hunted humans hunted some whales, almost to extinction, and they hunted them for meat, but they also hunted them for, for blubber or oil. Many of the countries that first developed lighting used whale oil as light and light energy. So, yeah, the baleen is what they used for corset stays. So imagine you are killing this magnificent preacher and you are using the baleen or tightening the wastes and shrinking the wastes of a small set of female humans. Awful. So, because the low sounds travel, it interrupts, it not only breaks the eardrums of the whales and dolphins, but it interrupts their communication. And just like all of the human noises on land is changing the way birds communicate, some of them are becoming nocturnal because there's less noise at night. But the depth charges of the navies around the world is very, very, very damaging. The smaller whales, the dolphins, the porpoises are killed in bycatch so that if there's hunting, particularly by the large factory ships for tuna or any of the larger fish, the dolphins are caught in that. But let's go back to the plastic for a minute. It's the micro plastic, but it's also the large plastic and this is starving the whales. The whales look at this as something that might be edible. It moves around and many, many whales now have been found on the beaches and full of plastic. This is our problem. Yeah, we have done this. We are doing all of this. So that with the whale hunting, when people stopped hunting the whales, any particular species of whales, for instance, the right whale, the species came back because all of the other conditions were still there. They still had food. They still had their migratory patterns. They still, everything was still in sync. But we have interrupted all of the patterns now so the chances that they can come back are not anywhere as near as good as they used to be. One of the documentaries that has changed some of the awareness and some of the conversations about these magnificent creatures is the 2013 documentary Blackfish. And this is because it's still available about an orca that was in captivity at SeaWorld and has since died. But since these are such intelligent social creatures with enormous territories to confine them in solitary, without companionship, without the ability to go more than tens of meters, think about it, what would happen to a human left in solitary confinement for a year after year after year? They develop psychological problems and it is not surprising. So that now there is a more realistic awareness of what we are doing to these animals by capturing them. Back to the dolphin mourning the companion. Imagine if you are taking a calf from the mother. The mother, the wild mother is going to be berserk and the calf is going to be bereft. So there is a movement all over the world to free these creatures. Most very recently in the last year or so they have been freeing them in Russia and this is really wonderful. This is excellent. Hopefully all of the confined whales, cetaceans will be freed. Yeah, it's just like any other circus, Shiloh, just like any other circus. There are people who are working on this. In our own tiny way, Jan and I, in building the habitats on the Abyss Observatory and putting the information there are trying to raise awareness of what it is like to be in a tiny way experience the freedom and the joy of swimming with some of these marine creatures. And even though it is a virtual experience, it still provides that emotional touch and the memory of being there and doing that. Whale and dolphin, this is one of the whale and dolphin conservation organizations. So if you want to know more about what is being done, this is only one of them, but I wanted to put it up here so that people could actually go to the site and learn more and follow what is being done in advancing the conservation of these magnificent creatures. And if you want to join us at the Abyss, these creatures above us will go back there. And I am there often, Jan is there often. We are available to answer questions, have conversations or just play in the wonderful waters there. And we do absolutely encourage people to come over and visit Hangout as often as you can. So I am going to put the link here if you don't already have a landmark. And thank you all for coming today. It was a pleasure doing this. I loved it. I had a great time and I am very glad to be able to share this with all of you. Yeah, because the orcas will eat white sharks. They, you know, it's not always their prey, but that is one of their prey animals. Yes, we did. That was fun too. Yes. Yeah, the microplastics, that's an enormous issue and they're finding microplastics throughout the oceans. And this is what happens when plastics begin to disintegrate. And it's not only in the oceans at this point, it is everywhere. So it is in the, you're finding, we are finding microplastics in the freshwater supply. We are finding microplastics that have in the air that from when the waters have evaporated and carried on to the highest peaks of the Himalayas and the Arctic. And all over the world, there isn't a place on the globe now that is doesn't have some microplastic deposit. They are also finding microplastics in muscles of fish so that wild fun fish. You're probably eating some microplastics and if you extrapolate from that, it's probably in our muscle tissue as well. Atrazine, it's concentrated in the lakes and rivers, but because the oceans are so vast, it hasn't concentrated there like it has in a number of the lakes, the freshwater lakes. Oh yeah, there are lots of hormone disruptor chemicals, but it tends, you know, there are a lot of variables too with proximity and concentration. Yeah, mine too, Jan, and this is happening in all of the cold water areas that the nutrient upwelling is not as nutritious anymore. When the water is warmer, the critters are smaller and it's not as nutritious. Yeah, yeah, that is true George, places where humans have never visited are now strewn with plastic. My guess is, Ariane, that the bleaching of the coral has an indirect but not a direct effect and it would have an indirect effect because coral reefs also provide nursery safety for fish species. And then the corals bleach and the water is warmer, the nurseries also disappear. And so there are fewer of the prey species for the marine mammals to eat. Oh, my pleasure Chantel, my pleasure. Jan did some of the decoration too, so as I said, these are critters that normally live at the abyss, so come and visit them there. Yes, teamwork. Yeah, for sure. None of us could do this alone. I did the sea level rise one time a number of years ago when I had the Center for Water Studies on Better World Island when Better World was still here. And we were doing something on the glacial melts and the sea level rise. And so I actually set up an exhibit so that the glaciers would melt and raise the level of the sea around the island. I raised it like five meters and all of a sudden everybody there was under water. It was another example of how a virtual space can give a sense of being there, an experience. Thank you, Shiloh. People are of course welcome to stay, but my very young dog, the solid world, is nudging me to get up and go take him out. So thank you again for coming. I had a great time and I'm glad you all liked it. See you soon. I'll be back later today, Chantel, to nudge the marine mammals back to the abyss.