 And then turn it over to Bill Graven. Thank you, Nick. Hi, everyone. I'm Bill Graven from York County Audubon. And on behalf of myself and our board, we're delighted to have this program be presenting this program tonight. I have a quick item to start with. This is a first. We have not done this before. But I have a little promo to include. Each year, for several years now, our former board member, Marie Jordan, who's a wonderful birder and photographer, has been producing a calendar incorporating photos that she's taken of birds locally during the prior year. And then during our usually at our November meeting, she has donated a good number of these calendars to York County Audubon. And we sell them at our November meeting that we would normally hold at the Wells Reserve at Laudholm. But of course, we're not able to do that in person this year. So we came up with a way to do it by mail order. And what we're talking about is this calendar right here. Excuse me a second. This is a desk calendar. Hopefully you can see it. Let me make myself larger so that I can see it. This is it's in a plastic container. And it opens up to form a desk calendar. Has some beautiful images like these ones from 2020. This is an Osprey, some snow geese, and a beautiful Kate May Warbler. So if you're interested, information on how to order this is available on our website, yourcountyaudubon.com. The cost is $10. The proceeds go to your county Audubon, $10 plus postage. Great to put on your desk or dresser or anywhere or as a gift. So if you're interested, please check it out on our website. Thank you very much. And now on to tonight's program. We're delighted to have with us tonight, Zach Kleiver, who will be presenting a program on narwhals, as you know. He was born in Nairobi, Kenya, but grew up in Eastport, Maine, which probably not too many people who were born in Nairobi grew up in Eastport. I think that was a limited group of people, I bet. He's a graduate of College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor and has worked for 30 years as a whale watch naturalist, guiding whale and seabird watching tours on the Gulf of Maine and around the world. During that time, he's led over 3,000 trips. So we are delighted to have him here tonight. I will mention also that at the end of the program, we'll be having a Q&A session. So if you have any questions during the course of the program, just click on the Q&A button at the lower center of the screen and type them in at any time. And we'll do our best to get answers at the end. So with that, welcome to everyone. And Zach, delighted to have you here tonight. Okay, well, thank you so much, Bill and Nick. And it's a real pleasure to be with you. Thank you very much for this opportunity to share my interests and this project that I've been working on for a couple of years now, which my presentation today is based on a book that I am in the process of writing. So if anyone that is listening has any constructive feedback and would like to reach me or any ideas, I'm very open to that and would love to hear from you. The best place to find me is through my business website which is Blue Planet Strategies. If you go to Blue Planet Strategies, you can look up my contact information there. So again, thank you so much and we'll get going here. Okay, well, when Dave Doubleday contacted me from York County Audubon to speak, we had a phone call and then we had some emails and I gave him some options for presentations I could do. And we went back and forth and finally he got back to me and he said, okay, this sounds great, let's hear about your book and we'd like you to speak on November 17th. And then I said, sure, and then I realized, well, that's my mother's birthday. So I would like to dedicate this presentation to her. My mom's name was Joan Karen Dazman. She grew up in California and she was a great inspiration for me to love nature and animals. The presentation today is the Narwhals Tusk, the 10 most remarkable marine mammal adaptations. Number 10 is the Narwhals Tusk. There are over 4,000 religions in the world, most of which provide enlightenment as to how life on earth came into being. Science too gives us an explanation through the mechanism of natural selection, a process of sometimes slow, sometimes fast and punctuated change in random adaptation. However, if you ask what was before God, religion has no final answer. And if you ask what was before the Big Bang, science cannot tell you. We live in a vast and in many ways unknown and mysterious universe. Therefore, it is incredible that we share the earth with an animal that has a tusk on its head. Well, actually not a tusk, but a canine tooth that projects out from the left side of the upper jaw and lip. This tooth forms a spiral helix that is between five and 10 feet long and found on all male narwhals and also 15% of the females. The picture on the left is the throne chair of Denmark made with narwhal tusks in the year 1662 and found today in Copenhagen, Denmark. The Narwhals Tusk is the source of the story of the unicorn. Polar author and photographer Fred Brumer wrote in the narwhal unicorn of the sea. The Vikings hunted the narwhal and also obtained tusks in trade from Arctic natives. They sold these tusks as unicorn horns and said as little as possible about their true origin. Traders carried the tusks to Europe and the Middle East to China and Japan. At the peak of its prestige and popularity, unicorn horn was worth 10 times its weight in gold and for large horns, rulers paid what in today's terms would be millions of dollars. So why would a whale have a tusk-like tooth 10 feet long? The leading theory holds that the tusk defines a male's social rank and helps females in picking a mate that is mature, healthy, and dominant. In fact, males are occasionally observed using their tusks for jousting with two tusks crossed over like swords making loud clacking sounds. Interestingly, about one in every 500 males has two tusks. If one tusk attracts females, then what about two? Do the rare double-tust male narwhals get more dates? Another explanation came in 2016 when drone footage showed narwhals appearing to use their tusks to tap and stun fish, making the fish easier to catch. Also, recent anatomical research suggests that the tusk may have adapted to serve as a dual or additional purpose as a sensory organ. Anatomists have discovered that throughout the tusk outer layer, there are channels that allow seawater to enter a layer of dentine that contains small tubes. These tubes run to the innermost part of the tusk to an area known as the pulp, pictured in the diagram as the large white core around the dark hollow mill. The pulp is full of blood vessels and millions of nerve endings that run down to the base of the narwhals tusk and directly to the brain. In this way, the tusk could be a sensory organ used to identify the amount of salt and other chemicals in the ocean and aid them in understanding their ocean environment. This is my friend and colleague, Kate Lomac McNair who worked with me in Bar Harbor as a naturalist in the early 2000s. She is now an accomplished whale scientist who has worked on projects around the world, has received a master's degree studying blue whales and is completing a PhD. In the summer of 2015, Kate was chosen to be one of 58 scientists that were part of the Peterman expedition to Greenland. They traveled aboard this ship, the Odin, a Swedish research ship and icebreaker. This is a picture from the bridge that shows Kate's observer station from where she was responsible for locating and identifying all marine mammals. Additional research involves seismic data acquisition, multi-beam mapping, ice coring and seismic reflection profiling. The Peterman glacier sits atop Greenland. The research focus was the study of the central role of the Peterman glacier in climate change and to understand more about the potential pathways of relative warmer water influx towards the many outlet glaciers. The Peterman glacier sits at a critical location in the Greenland ice sheet and has decreased by one third in size in recent years. In 2010, a piece broke off Peterman that was 100 square miles that scientists named the Peterman ice island. They followed it for years as it tracked south all the way to Newfoundland. Scientists believe that understanding the history of the Peterman glacier will help in estimating the rate of sea ice loss and sea level rise. Climatologists have shown that during the last 45 years, the summer Arctic sea ice has decreased by more than 40%. Scientists are predicting that at the present rate of loss we could lose all summer Arctic sea ice in the next 30 to 50 years. For Narwhal, the ice is shelter. The ice is home. The shifting ice protects Narwhal families from their two greatest natural threats, human hunters and mammal-eating orca. Narwhal normally moved north with the summer ice to protect its sounds that are nursery areas for their young. With the loss of ice, orcas have been observed following them into the sounds and hunting down whole pods of narwhals. Present population estimates suggest there are 50 to 200,000 narwhals in the Arctic. What will the cumulative impact of the loss of ice be on them? It's an unknown and open question. Having only recently unraveled some of the mystery of the Narwhal's tusk, we are changing the world's climate to a point that may be unraveling the Narwhal's home. Number nine, the flipper of the humpback whale. Humpback whales are a whale watch favorite. They can be curious and playful. They spy hop, slap their tails, lift their tails when diving and they jump called breaching. A great place to see lots of humpback whales is in Alaska. Alaska is so big that most people fly from place to place. They have 16 times the number of planes per capita as the lower 48 states. A few years ago, an Alaskan float plane was taking off from the ocean and just got airborne when a humpback whale jumped out of the water directly in front of it. They just missed each other and it was nearly a mid-air crash between a plane and a whale. There is one adaptation of humpback biology that genuinely sets them apart from all other whale species. No other whale has flippers as long as the humpback proportionally to their body. The average length is nine to 13 feet and the record length is 20 feet for each flipper. These flippers appear to allow the humpback to fly through the ocean on wings. In fact, the scientific name is Magaptra novionglie, mega meaning big, terra meaning winged and novionglie meaning New Englander or big winged New Englander. Their flipper is very similar to your arm. They have many of the same bones including the scapula, humerus, ulna, radius and carpals. They also have four fingers with extra knuckles that both help lengthen the flippers and make them more rigid and not flexible like ours. The leading edge of the flipper has tubercles or bumps. On average, there are between nine to 11 tubercles with the first and fourth being the largest. In 1988, a professor of biology named Frank Fish, I'm not kidding, wandered into a gallery with sculptures of wildlife. Upon seeing the tubercles on the flipper's leading edge of the humpback artwork, he thought it must be a mistake. He was stunned when he was learned that it wasn't. Why would the flipper be shaped like this? Why not a straight leading edge that would help cut through the water and be more hydrodynamic and efficient? I had the pleasure of meeting Frank at a marine mammal conference and talking to them to him. And he told me he put it in a request to the Smithsonian for a humpback whale flipper. A few years later, they called to say a young humpback had washed up on the shore and to bring an electric saw and come get the flipper. Over many hours, he cut up the flipper and wrapped it in garbage bags and loaded it into the back of his small hatchback car. Eventually, he and colleagues produced exact replica models of the flipper and received permission to test them in a Navy wind tunnel in Annapolis, Maryland that is used to test wing design efficiency. During the testing, they discovered the humpback flipper is the most efficient wing design with the least drag ever tested at low wind speeds. Drag was reduced by 32% and lift increased by 8%. The bumps along the leading edge channel the water flow so that it speeds up and creates greater lift, providing an angle of attack 40% steeper than a straight edge. This means the whale can tilt its flippers at a high angle without stalling when banking and turning while chasing fish. Frank's research team immediately took out a patent on the humpback whale flipper. Prototypes of wind turbine blades adding the tubercle type edge have been shown to be up to twice as efficient, more stable, quieter and as durable as conventional blades. Industrial ceiling fans, mimicking the whale flipper are 20% more efficient while circulating airflow better. This flipper design is also being explored for use on boat rudders, submarine propeller blades, water turbines for hydro power, airplane helicopters and surfboard skis. This fascinating field of engineering and science where you take designs inspired from nature and apply them to human causes is called biomimicry. The number eight, the longevity of the bowhead whale. The bowhead whale lives in the Arctic and subarctic oceans. For this reason, it is also known as the Greenland right whale. It can reach a length of 60 feet and weigh over 200,000 pounds. They are called the bowhead whale because of the bowed lower jaw, but really it's the upper jaw along with the skull that is most impressive as together they form a battering ram that allows bowheads to break through thick ice. Inuit claim up to two feet thick. Bowheads are world record holders in many regards. Their tails can be 25 feet wide, which are the widest of any whale. They have the longest baleen of any whale up to 14 feet. They have the thickest blubber of any whale at 17 to 20 inches. And they live longer than any other whale. More on that in a moment. This is my friend and colleague, Sasha Erdle, who worked as a naturalist with me and then went on to work for the Chucks He Sea Environmental Studies Program. This was a long-term research program funded by Shell, Statoil and Tonico Oil to survey the Chucks He Sea environment with hopes of drilling for oil that recently came to an end a few years ago when Shell pulled out. For many years, Sasha would annually fly to Wainwright, Alaska and board a ship to conduct marine mammal and seabird surveys. Wainwright has a population of 550 mostly Eskimo people and every house has a team of sled dogs and Sasha says the dogs bark a lot and are not very friendly. Wainwright have been hunting bowhead for 4,000 years and today are allowed to kill between 25 and 40 annually for food along the North slope of Alaska. A wildlife biologist named Craig George who works for Alaska Wildlife has had a career of studying the bowhead whales, the Eskimos kill. During the 80s and 90s, at least six whales were taken by whalers that were then found with jade or ivory harpoon heads as shrapnel in their body. The last time the Eskimos claim they had used implements to hunt like these were in the 1870s as they had switched to metal harpoons when the Yankees, Yankee whalers arrived. This led George to think the bowhead whales with these artifacts might be incredibly old. Now, some baleen whales can be aged through a waxy ear plug that takes it on annual growth rings like the ring of a tree. However, deciding what counts as a ring or a year can be difficult and for the bowhead, it seems impossible. So George turned to Scripps Institute in California who have the ability to age any mammal using an amino acid group found in the lens of the eye. The lens of the eye is made up of dozens of layers of protein, much like an onion laid down over the mammal's life. By measuring the ratio of right to left-handed amino acids and knowing the rate they have been laid down, scientists can age mammals with accuracy and a small margin of error. Scientists in the early 2000s aged 42 bowhead whales using this amino acid dating and were surprised to find one whale that was 135 years old. They also found one that was 159. And one of the whales was an amazing 172, but that's not the end. One bowhead whale taken in Wainwright, Alaska was aged at 211. This study was completed in 2006, which means that that whale would have been born when George Washington was president of the United States. In July, 2016, I was hired by Sasha and the Chukchi Project to work as a marine mammal observer on a vessel traveling from Gnome, Alaska, up into the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. We were sent to conduct multi-beam side scan sonar to find and collect a dozen truck-sized anchors that had been placed in the sea to anchor off drilling rigs testing for oil. It was within sight of Barrow, Alaska, now known as Ute Ka Guvik that I saw my first bowhead whale, a remarkable moment in life for me. During that trip, I would witness ice flows jam-packed with Wallace, hundreds of ice seals, and dozens of gray whales feeding along the Arctic pack ice. You're never really prepared to see a polar bear in the wild, but we did see many magnificent polar bears and some of them up close. This one was photographed one morning a few miles from me from the bridge of another vessel working with us. My first sighting was a big male swimming in the Beaufort Sea. He immediately stopped side scan sonar work as the male came right at us and swam right down the side of the vessel with no fear. This big magnificent male proceeded to climb up on an ice flow. He was truly awesome. He was powerful, determined, and radiating confidence. He paused to smell the air as he was downwind of us. He turned and went away and I watched him through my binoculars as he swam and climbed over ice flows. Within 10 minutes of first sighting him, he was a mile away and a blip on the horizon. In the mornings, I rose early and went out on the deck to scan the ice flows from horizon to horizon. It was here in the silence of the shifting ice and the beautiful pink soft light that I had an epiphany. This, this is the original cold war. Bears have been hunting seals and seals have been fleeing from bears for 150,000 years. Our cold war was a period of geopolitical tension between the Soviet Union and the United States and the respective allies that lasted 44 years, a blip in time. We humans can be so myopic and self-focused. Yet here in the ice, these species are locked in the original and never-ending cold war, graced with remarkable adaptations that give each the opportunity to survive. Number seven, the diving ability of the Southern Elephant Seal and Cuvier's Beak Whale. The South Pole is twice the size of Australia. It has an average ice cover of over one mile thick and has 70% of the world's fresh water. Visiting Antarctica is like going to another planet. It is the coldest, driest, and windiest continent on Earth. If you go, you will surely stop and land on sub-antarctic islands or South Georgia and see male Southern Elephant Seals, which are the largest seals on Earth. I have had a chance to encounter Southern Elephant Seals when I worked as a guide on eco tours going to Antarctica. Large elephant seals can reach lengths of 16 feet and weigh over 6,000 pounds. Having a big body means they need to eat a lot and elephant seals spend upwards of 80% of their lives in the ocean diving deep in search of fish and squid. Adaptations that allow them to do so include blood-rich in hemoglobin and muscle-rich in myoglobin, which allow them to store tremendous amounts of air before diving deep. Elephant seals are known to have the highest blood volume of any mammal and with it have a larger proportion of oxygen-carrying red blood cells. Their average dives are one to 2,000 feet and typically 20 minutes for females and 60 minutes for males. However, the record is 7,835 feet and two hours. That is the equivalent of five and a half times the size of the Empire State Building. Elephant seals can hold their breath longer than any other non-whale mammal on Earth while they search for the bioluminescent organs of deep sea squid that are their preferred prey. In 2011, a member of the Rare Tribe of Deep Diving Pelagic Whales joined the Guinness Book of World Records. The Cuvier's Beak or Boost Beaked Whale is the most cosmopolitan of the Beaked Whales and grows to 16 to 23 feet and up to 5,000 pounds. Researchers off California track one that go for two hours and 17 minutes and to a depth of 9,816 feet. This year, researchers from Duke tagged a Cuvier's Beaked Whale off North Carolina that stayed underwater for a remarkable three hours and 42 minutes. Cuviers also have the capacity to store oxygen-rich blood and they rely on the marine mammal diving reflex. Reflex works in this way. At a certain point, their flexible ribs collapse around the lungs and force all the air out of the lungs into the head and throat. At this point, they stop the exchange of blood into their lungs, which would lead to nitrogen, narcosis, or the bends. Their heart rate may slow to 8 to 12 beats per minute so they use less oxygen. They also have evolved bradycardiae, an intricate system of veins and arteries that cut off blood flow when stressed for oxygen and send it to where it is most needed, the muscles that get them back up to the surface and to their brain. These incredible physiological adaptations could only have evolved over millions of years of diving and changes in their bodies leading to greater streamlining, thicker bone structure, and a tolerance for withstanding immense pressure. Number six, sperm whale echolocation. The sperm whale has got to be in the discussion for the world's most remarkable animal on earth. The star of Moby Dick is also the largest predator on earth. Their populations, stocks, tribes, pods, and individuals are found in all the world's deep water oceans. They form matriarchal pods with female leaders that both have complex language and culture. The scientific name is feister macrosephalus, meaning blowpipe or blowhole big head. And that head holds the largest brain of any animal on earth, a brain about five and a half times the size of human brains. The earliest human lineage dates back five to seven million years ago. Sperm whales have been on earth in their present shape and form for 22 million years, which means if you arrived here from another planet 15 million years ago looking for intelligent life, you would have found no humans, but you would have found sperm whales. If you wanna see sperm whales, one of the best places to see them is in Kayakora, New Zealand. For 25 years I dreamed of going there as I heard many stories from my whale watching passengers who had been there. In Kayakora, the whale watching companies are Maori owned and operated. And here the mountains are more than a mile high and the Kayakora Canyon, a coastal canyon, is two thirds of a mile deep. In this case, my expectations were surpassed. Sitting atop the sperm whale skull is positioned a large complex of organs filled with a liquid mixture of fats and waxes called spermaceti. A large male could yield 500 gallons of sperm oil which was prized as a lubricant in machinery for oil lamps and to make smokeless candles. The organ complex and oil are an adaptation that aid in the production of powerful and focused clicking sounds which this sperm whale uses for both communication and echolocation. They produce a blast of sound through a pair of large lips found below the entrance to the blowhole in the head that send the sound traveling back through the head case through the oil chamber to reflect off the frontal sac in the front of the skull. Now, the posterior wall of the frontal sac is covered with fluid filled knobs that aid in making it an exceptional sound mirror which is important as the mirror helps capture the sound and send it back out through the front of the head. The sperm whale's clicking vocalizations may be as loud as 230 decibels. Making it the loudest sound produced by any animal. This sound is used to stun their prey which include deep sea sharks, squid and giant squid species. Giant and colossal squid can range in size to upwards of 40 to 50 feet in length and may weigh up to 1500 pounds. So one can imagine that some monumental battles have taken place between sperm whales and squid deep in the ocean on dark moonless nights. Number five, the size of a blue whale. Blue whales are the largest animals to ever live on earth. They can be 110 feet in length and weigh as much as three to 400,000 pounds. To give you a sense of scale if we lined up eight to 11 school buses each with 50 high school students that is about the weight of a blue whale. This picture of a blue whale's tail is one I took in Baja, Mexico where I sometimes lead trips to see blue whales during February and March with a company I started called Fluke's. The tail of a blue whale can be 24 feet wide which is the width of a professional soccer net. A blue whale can eat eight to 16,000 pounds of krill in a day. That is more than 40 million krill and they have a tongue that can weigh thousands of pounds and is so big an African elephant would have room to stand on it. Baja and the Sea of Cortez are a phenomenal place to see blue whales in calm, clear water. Seeing a blue whale up close is both mind boggling and completely exhilarating at the same time. Personally, on blessed occasions when I have been close to a blue whale, I feel joy and awe and I feel profoundly connected to an ocean and universe that could create and nourish such an amazing life. The first time I saw the breath of a blue whale I knew it was instantly. No whale has a blow as big, a blow that can be 30 to 40 feet high. Long time renowned whale scientist, Roger Payne had been studying whales for 20 years when he encountered his first blue whale. He said, it was so big compared to other whales it made me feel like I had never even seen a whale before. On my most recent trip to Baja, my guests saw a special sightie, a mother and calf. A baby blue whale weighs 6,000 pounds at birth and is 20 to 27 feet in length. During the first few months of their life they can drink 100 gallons of milk a day and grow 200 pounds a day. We also saw a whale named Nubbin. Nubbin is the oldest known blue whale who was first photographed off California by a sport fisherman in 1970. Already physically mature, which would add at least five to seven years to his life. This suggests he was born between 1963 to 1965 and is in the age of 55 to 57 years. When whales dive, they leave enormous footprints on the surface of the ocean. These are created by the movement of their tail up and down as they dive. The fast moving water being pushed to the surface with each stroke of their tails. Now blue whales are so big that they are constantly shedding skin as they swim. And after a dive, you can go into the footprint and see small flecks of skin floating to the surface. One day when we were with Nubbin, after he dove, we edged the boat over to the footprint and sure enough, I was able to reach down, pick up a small fleck of blue skin from the water and hold a piece of the oldest known living blue whale on earth in my hand. Number four, gray whale migration. In Baja, on the days the wind blows and the sea builds on the Sea of Cortez, we drive across the peninsula, the opposite side, to Magdalena Bay and the sheltered lagoons to go gray whale watching. Gray whales spend the winter months in the lagoons behind barrier islands, mating and giving birth to their young. It was here that whalers discovered them and nearly drove them to extinction through whaling. They called them devil fish because they fought so hard once they were harpooned. When not harpooned, it turns out they are an ocean angel and can be very friendly. Here, you can see one playing at the surface with its mouth open showing its baleen. In the 1970s, a Mexican fisherman named Pacheco Mayarel was out fishing and had a gray whale swim up to his boat with a calf. He was struck with fear and he didn't know what to do. But after a few minutes, he got up his courage and he reached out and touched the whales. He reported back to his friends and soon he was taking paying customers out to go whale watching and started what is now a multi-million dollar industry in Baja. Through the world's great surprise, many mother gray whales are incredibly friendly with their calves. It is truly a special experience to have an animal so beautiful and big take a personal interest in you. On a trip I led, every one of our guests touched a friendly baby gray whale. At one point, the mother was directly under the boat so I reached over and touched her back. It turns out gray whales feel squishy, like a Nerf football. Eventually in the late winter, many mothers start north with calves and toe for the long five to 6,000 mile migration to British Columbia, Alaska and Russia. It was once thought that there were two distinct populations as shown here, but recent photo ID surveys and satellite tagging are now suggesting that many or most of the Russian gray whales are going to Mexico. Gray whales were hunted out of the Atlantic Ocean hundreds of years ago. However, in 2010 and 13, gray whales showed up again. One was seen off of Israel on May 8th, 2010 and then on May 30th off of Spain. Another was seen off the coast of Nambia in 2013. It is very likely that we will see more of this if the ice in the Arctic keeps melting and the Northwest Passage continues to open up late in the year. Traveling from Mexico to Africa or Israel is about 8,000 miles each way. Migration for gray whales is an amazing adaptation that is a compromise which allows their calves to be born in sheltered warm water and allows the adult to travel back to cold water, nutrient rich feeding grounds. Number three, North Atlantic right whale reproduction. I started feeding and watching birds when I was 11 years old. By the time I went to college, I was committed to becoming an ornithologist. However, as a freshman, I signed up for a Bay of Funday whale watch excursion. That day we saw nine right whales including a mother and calf who swam up and along the side of the boat and a couple of right whales that breached continually and completely out of the water. Since then, I have watched right whales for 35 years. I have seen right whales on dozens of whale watching trips off Maine and described their natural history to thousands of people. I worked for 10 years as a right whale observer between the Carolinas and Florida during the winter months which is the mating grounds for most female right whales. And in 2010-11, I assisted Dr. Mo Brown pictured here in the upper left in conducting winter right whale surveys off the coast of Maine. And on one trip, we saw 35 right whales. Those surveys were a search for the unknown mating ground of the right whales. Right whale mating is a chaotic and crazy event. It starts with a female right whale singing. She sings out her song more like a loud moan and male right whales come swimming in from all directions as fast as possible, about seven miles per hour. Eventually, the males circle the female and start bumping and pushing and jousting for position to mate with her. And the female does everything possible to make sure none of them mate. She rolls over on her back and belly and turns. And it's thought that this is a way to make sure that only the most fit, the adult and strong whales are able to mate with her and not older or younger or weaker mates. Although small populations are expected to lose genetic diversity and this population numbers less than 400, through genetic drift and inbreeding, a number of mechanisms exist that may minimize genetic decline. Genetics has been exposing an option based on fertilization patterns biased toward genetically dissimilar gametes. This pattern is not due to pre-copulatory mate choice but rather genetically dissimilar mates. Instead, this results from post-copulatory selection for gametes that are genetically unsimilar. Tim Frazier's lab at the University of St. Mary's in Halifax has shown this to be true for right whales. And that the long-term implementation is that heterozygosity has slowly increased in calves born as opposed to a slight decline that was expected. Therefore, this adaptation represents a natural means that acts at the level of the gametes through which small populations can mitigate the loss of genetic diversity over time. Number two, the social structure of orca. In recent years, there has been much debate and interest in the diversity of orca populations and their social structures. Presently, there are three types of orca, residents that feed on fish, mostly coastal salmon or herring, transients that feed on marine mammals and discovered in 1988, a third group known as the offshores that feed on fish, skates, and sharks. The three types differ in morphology, ecology, behavior, and genetics. In fact, a recent genetic study suggests that transient orcas separated from all other killer whales approximately 750,000 years ago and represent a separate species which researchers are now calling big killer whale in honor of the pioneering researcher, Michael Big. Bob Pittman works for NOAA out of San Diego and on many research cruises to Antarctica came to realize that there were at least four diverse subspecies or what he and colleagues are calling ecotypes. There is a type A that feeds on minke whales, a type B that hunts whettle seals, a type C that feeds on fish, and an offshore type D with a very small eye patch that also feed on fish. Things get more confusing when you add the two North Atlantic ecotypes. As the Antarctic type A is more similar to the North Atlantic type two than the North Atlantic type one is to the North Atlantic type two. Killer whales are exceptional for their complex societies. Only elephants and higher primates live in comparably complex social structures. Resident orcas live with their mothers for their entire lives. These family groups are based on nature lines consisting of the eldest female matriarch and her sons and daughters and the descendants of her daughters. These matrilineal groups are mostly highly stable. Closely related matrilines form loose aggregations called pods usually consisting of one or four matrilines. Clans, the next level of resident social structure are composed of pods with similar dialects and common but older maternal heritage. The final association layer, perhaps more arbitrarily defined, is called a community and is defined as a set of clans that regularly mingle. Now, an interesting example of the supreme intelligence of Orca comes from the Antarctic ice-loving orcas. Researchers wondered where they went when they disappeared for weeks at a time. So they tagged them with small limpid tags on their fins. Scientists tracked them from space and discovered they regularly leave the pack ice of Antarctica for the warm waters of Brazil and Uruguay. They swim in a straight line. Upon arriving, they stay for a few days and then they swim straight back. Scientists believe these represent periodic maintenance migrations. As all the yellow diatoms and algae that have grown and accumulate on their bodies in cold water fall off in the warm spa-like waters off South America. You can think of this as an Orca having its own version of a car wash. In fact, one tagged individual made a non-stop round trip of over 5,000 miles in just 42 days. Scientists now believe there are 10 or 11 ecotypes and there is much debate as to whether these are separate species or subspecies. Like us, Orca have different languages, dialects, food preferences, behavior, and culture. And number one adaptation is to live sustainably with their environment, the world's oceans. In the 1970s, the theory of Gaia was proposed that living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a synergistic and self-regulating complex system that helps to maintain and perpetuate the conditions for life on Earth. I was taught to question this and many biologists still approach this with great caution. While geophysical scientists and biologists will continue to debate the Gaia theory, more recently, many marine mammal scientists have shown that when it comes to whales, the link between their populations and productivity in the oceans and improve conditions for life on land is truly miraculous. It's no surprise that whales eat a lot and therefore that whales go to the bathroom a lot and when they do it is often at the surface when west resting or breathing. Scientists call these foculent fecal blooms. Much of their feces comes from the food they have gathered deeper in the ocean and is rich in nitrogen. The ecosystem scientist, Dr. Joe Roman, has calculated that whales provide more nitrogen than all the rivers combined, some 2,300 metric tons per year. This in turn becomes food for phytoplankton. Phytoplankton provide half the oxygen we breathe and are also incredibly important as food for zooplankton, which are then eaten by huge schools of fish and fish populations increase. Roman says the whales presence can increase nutrients and help fisheries and the health of systems wherever they are found. It's counterintuitive, but around the world, scientists are finding that whales increase fish populations and that plant plankton, which give off oxygen and the whales in turn help capture and sequester carbon from man-made climate change. One of every two breaths you breathe comes from ocean plankton. So even for people living far from the ocean, your lives too are fundamentally connected to the health of whales and the oceans and they are able to live their lives in a sustainable way. What a great example for us. Many passengers on whale watching tours I have led have asked me questions about whale intelligence. I believe all whales have an intelligence about the ocean that we couldn't possibly understand. They must understand things about the currents and storms and life in the deep sea that we can't possibly understand. Whales are ancient and wondrous and deserve our admiration, our protection and our respect. They deserve a healthy, vibrant ocean that is not overfished, polluted and marred by man. Their adaptations show us how remarkable life is. If we protect them and their habitat, they will continue to inspire us and reveal their astonishing adaptations. Thank you. Thank you, Zach. That was great. That was really exceptional. We have a few questions. I'd like to just start by again, by mentioning that if anyone's interested in this desk calendar, please take a look at our website for information on that. And we certainly also encourage you to maintain, to join Maine Audubon slash your County Audubon, your membership is what enables us to continue to do all the work that we do. So thank you for that. The first question I'd like to start with is you mentioned, obviously it's so important to protect these mammals and ocean life. Are there any organizations in particular that you would refer people to that you feel are particularly valuable in the work they do? Yes, there are a lot of wonderful organizations that are doing incredible work on behalf of whale conservation. Some groups that come to mind right away would be Oceana, Whale and Dolphin Society, the International Fund for Animal Welfare. I think the New England Aquarium is a fantastic organization. They are really focused on the protection of the right whale. And that's one of our local and important species. I think the Natural Resources Defense Council, another organization that's terrific. And there's so many, there's a lot of local organizations and wonderful groups doing a lot of really great things. Great question, thank you. Yeah, when you get a chance, if you would email me such a list, I'd be happy to post it on our website. Okay, yes. One question we have that seems to perhaps challenge your assertion that the blue whale is the largest species ever. There's a question referring to the megalodon, which is, I believe, a more recently discovered dinosaur. Are you familiar with that and whether that might be larger than a blue whale? Megalodon, I thought megalodon was a shark. Okay, it may well be. Okay, yeah. My understanding about the megalodon, that it can be up to 50 feet in length. So I think it's still, as far as I know, I'm not aware that any were over 100 feet in length, but if somebody has some information that I'm not aware of, I would love to know that would be quite incredible. I think whales and megalodon were together at the same time and a lot of scientists speculate that megalodon probably was a significant predator that whales had to contend with during that time before they went extinct. Great. How about any comments on the actions that are being taken to protect white, white whales in the Gulf of Maine? Is enough being done? Are the right actions being taken? Wow, that's a great question. And so the population had been increasing slowly for the North Atlantic white whale. At one time they were around 300 back in the 1980s and the population was increasing at a slow rate up until about 2010, so for 30 years. But since 2010, the population has been in a steep decline. So it peaked at about 488. That's what scientists believe roughly or around 500. And now it's dropped. The recent estimate that was just released by the science center suggested that the population in 2019 was somewhere around 366. So the number has gone down quickly in 10 years. And we know the two things that have been, the predominant two reasons why white whales have been, populations have been suffering. We know what they are. They're both human-caused. One is ship strikes and one is entanglement in fishing gear. Because of the tremendous number of white whales that have died in recent years, NOAA has undertaken a rule-making process which has been unfolding over the last couple of years. And that rule is about to be released which could have some very significant impacts on the fishing industry. The rule is focused on fishing, addressing the fishing issue because they found that about 60% of the mortality in the last 20 years has come from entanglements and 40% from shipping. So I think that there's a great opportunity for everyone to pay attention to that rule coming out. And there's going to be anywhere from 45 to 90 days to have an opportunity to write a letter or submit a public comment in support of the conservation. And that would be really fantastic for people listening today. I'd be happy to share information when it becomes available. I can send you, Bill, the release of that rule and information about it if people want to weigh in. But that would be an opportunity to help in the recovery. There's a lot of concern that it's dropping so fast and we really need to correct it with some very strong conservation. We have a question from nine-year-old Summer in Kittybunkport who would like to know what is your favorite marine mammal and why and that their favorite is the bottlenose dolphin because they're very playful. Yes, yes. Well, the picture, I don't know if the picture is still up on the screen I have. Those are bottlenose dolphins from Baja and they are incredible there. They just, they leap and leap incredibly high over the water. You have to protect your camera because they're splashing down all around you all the time. So if you like bottlenose dolphins, that's a place you'll want to put on your list to go is Baja. Well, thank you very much for that question. That's a wonderful question. I've struggled with this question a lot because there's so many admirable things about and so many exciting things about all the different whales but I feel, or in recent years, before I went to Alaska, I started to get the sense that the bowhead whale because of all the incredible things, all the record-breaking things and because of the beautiful environment it lives in would be my favorite whale and then when I saw them in the Arctic, I realized it was. I think there's just something, the longevity of the bowhead and the fact that it lives up in the Arctic, in among the ice and the things it's capable of. It was the last of the very large whales species that for me that are more, I mean, there may be one or two other species that are still out there that I haven't seen but I've seen all the large whales and I think the bowhead is my favorite. Well, that leads right into the next question. Someone was asking what type of whale lives the longest again which was the bowhead but when they tested the eye protein to age them, were these tests done on whales that were deceased? That's correct. These were taken from the whalers that after they died they were, Craig George was there with the research team and they were able to collect the eyeballs immediately and put them in a freezer and then send them to the lab in California to have that work done. That's exactly right. And another question on the right whale in the Gulf of Maine, are they being impacted by climate change? Yeah, and this is a part of the, there's so much to say about them. I didn't address this in the earlier question but what's happened in since 2010 is the water in the Gulf of Maine has been warming faster than any place else on earth and the water, a terrific paper was just published by a gentleman named Nick Bigelow at Bigelow, excuse me, Nick record at Bigelow Labs. And the paper really helped us understand what was happening in the Gulf of Maine. In around 2010, a lot of very warm deep water from the Gulf stream started penetrating the northern part of the Gulf of Maine coming in through the Northeast channel and then warming the Gulf of Maine and this resulted in a decrease in productivity of the ocean in the Gulf of Maine. And that resulted in a decrease in the food that right whales eat, which are copepods. Copepods are a small type of zooplank that look kind of like cocoa pops of cereal and right whales feast on them, take thousands of pounds a day. Well, in the place where they normally would spend a lot of time feeding, it was very productive for them up in the Bay of Funday, this year there were virtually no right whale seen there. In the last 10 years, they vacated and they started to move up into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. And because they were moving more and searching more for food, they started encountering more ships and more nets and up in Canada they weren't prepared for them. They hadn't put in all the rules that we had developed here over a long period for slowing ships and addressing entanglement. And in 2017, they had 12 right whales die up in the Gulf of St. Lawrence that we know of or probably many more that we don't even know of. So climate change is having a big impact. And I did help host, I organized and hosted a workshop at the World Marine Mammal Conference in Barcelona on the effects of climate change on marine mammals back in December. We had 70 participants, we had 15 speakers and we had people from 24 countries. And it was incredible to hear from all over the world how climate is affecting marine mammals. Their ranges are shifting, species in the north are moving north, species in the south, their ranges are extending south. Some species are doing better, some are losing out, massive heat waves are having an enormous impact in Australia, California, the West Coast. It's truly incredible what's happening with climate change globally and it's the way it's changing the world's oceans. So we really do need to address it. And I think there is an opportunity here where we could help so that the change isn't so rapid that we lose species like the narwhal or the polar bear. Do you have a website that people can follow what you're up to? Yes, thank you. My website is blueplanetstrategy.com. I have an ocean science conservation and consulting business with environmental lawyer and his name is Roger Fleming and we work on ocean conservation work. So yes, you can follow us there and reach out and get in touch with me if I can help you with anything or if you have any questions for me and I would love to hear from you. And any update on timetable for publishing your book? Well, I've decided I would really like to do a lot of work on it this winter. And so I'm very hopeful that I'll have it done by the end of this year and it may be published sometime around Christmas or next year, that's my goal. That's great. And one last question. You've seen so many incredible things. Are there, is there something that you dream of seeing that you haven't seen yet? Yes, great question. To go to, there's still a number of places in the world that I haven't been, you know? And I think travel is so enriching and it's so exciting to see marine mammals all over the world. I'd really like to go to Iceland and I'd really like to go to Japan. I think those are two places that are really rich in marine mammals and the beauty ways. Both of them. Thank you so much for your program here tonight. It was absolutely wonderful. Thank you. Make any closing remarks? No, I just want to say, you know, you're a real world traveler when you pause that long to think of something else you want to see. That's fantastic. Thank you so much. This is really intriguing. I want to go out on the water right now. Great. Thank you. Thank you to everyone for joining us here tonight. And we will see you again. We will not have a program in December, but we expect to have one in January. Best wishes to everyone. Catherine asked a question really quickly. Will you be able to see a copy of the recording? Yes, we'll put it on the York County Audubon site very soon. Take care, everybody. Thank you, Zach. Thank you.