are harmful algal blooms disoriented in whales to the point where it's putting them in danger? That is the question that we're going to ask today. There's an article on Manga Bay News that asked this question and there's some studies that suggest this might happen, but maybe a little controversy because it's really difficult to tell. We're going to find out all about that controversy on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's
start the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. And this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. And on today's episode, we're going to be talking about whales and are they being affected by harmful algal blooms? That's going to be the subject. It's going to be
interesting. I'm really looking forward to it. But before we get into that, let's talk about why you're here. You're here to find out how to protect the ocean. And this is one episode, depending on the platform that you're watching this or listening to, whether you're on YouTube or Spotify, or if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast app, but there are more episodes and I want you to
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And if you want some of that information to your inbox, you can go to speak up for blue.com forward slash newsletter and get all that information to your inbox Monday to Friday, 8am Eastern. All right, let's get back to the show. We're going to be talking about whales and we're going to be talking about harmful algal blooms also known as habs, not the Montreal Canadians as known as habs.
These are harmful algal blooms. Although if you're a leaf fan, you might want to refer to the Montreal Canadian habs as harmful algal blooms. I'm not sure. It's a Canadian joke. It's an NHL joke. Okay. This is a dad joke, I guess. I don't know. Let's just get on with the show. So here's the situation. So there was a study that was published in frontiers in marine science in November. And this was from an author that was independent.
So his name is Greg Silver. He co-authored it with his daughter, Katie Silver, and they wanted to explore the link between habs, harmful algal blooms, and whale deaths. Which is really interesting because those have never really been put together. If you don't know what I have is harmful algal blooms, essentially what it is. It's a number of cells that have come together in the ocean due to wind patterns and heat in the ocean, as well as the right mix of nutrients.
So phosphate and nitrates that allow this bloom to happen and this algal when it blooms together, it forms a toxin that can be hurtful to not only marine animals, but also humans. We've seen them and I've discussed them on the podcast along Florida's coastline.
We've seen them happen a lot because of the nutrients that are disposed of into the ocean, as well as the increased sea surface temperature from climate change and wind patterns, bringing them all together, mixing up into a really nasty harmful algal bloom. So we've seen these not only in the Gulf Coast, but also on the Atlantic, on the Pacific side, and the authors here
studied this. Katie is an ecologist at the Institute of Applied Ecology in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and they studied the timing location of the hab events alongside large whale mortalities and injuries along coastal waters. So they analyzed the data from the East Coast from 2000 to 2021 and the West Coast from 2007 to 2021 from UNESCO's harmful algal database and NOAA's National Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program.
So both of these carry this large database of information, one on marine mammals, one on harmful algal blooms. They decided to put that together and they looked at only cases of whale injury or death attributed to human activity. So that's excluding those attributed to natural or unknown causes. So essentially what happens in these strandings is a whale will come on to the shore and it'll most likely die.
Hopefully sometimes they're okay and they can be put back into the ocean with the stranding teams. But a lot of the times they're stranded, they're dead and they have to do a necropsy. So some of the time they can find out what it is, not all the time, but some of the time they can find out what was the cause of death, whether it's a ship strike or whether they see fishing ropes along the body of a whale. That's actually cutting into the whale. All that stuff is looked at, right?
Now, I should mention that a lot of the necropsis come back with no cause or there's so many causes, it's difficult to tell what the cause of. They could have ingested plastic pollution. They could have been really thin from malnutrition. They could have been hit by a ship that may or may not show that they're hit by a ship and they may have some kind of entanglement or signs of an entanglement. But we're not sure if it's an actual rope or a line or what have you.
So it's very difficult to tell, but they only went with the ones where they knew that it was a human activity that causes the ship strikes or entanglement. So they're finding they said the number of mortality and injuries was frequently higher in years of large scale or severe habs. So in other words, areas where there were hab events that were also overlapped by strandings or deaths caused by those human activities, they could attribute it.
They basically came back and attributed it to the harmful algal bloom, the hab event, having an impact on the whale. They didn't really go and say, hey, you know what? There was actually signs of habs like of these harmful algal blooms in the whales. But they just basically assumed that if there was one around in the spatial area of where this fatality occurred, then this was one of the reasons.
And their interpretation was that some of the toxins that are produced from the harmful algal blooms could disorient the whale. So that's it. So one of the toxins, the most common genus on both coasts was saxy toxin producing dinoflagellate called alexandrium. So experts know that this toxin can affect marine mammals nerves and muscles dulling their senses and reducing the ability to move properly.
So if you're trying to get away, if you see a ship and kind of gone through this harmful algal bloom, you get enough of those toxins to actually make a difference. It disorients you a little bit. It causes some muscle failure. You can't get out of the way the ship and boom, you get hit by ship. That could be a problem. Right? That makes sense. If you are interpreting it in that kind of way.
The runner up was pseudo nitsia that the study found, although it was more common on the west coast than the east coast, this diatom produces damoic acid toxins that can cause marine mammals to become confused, move strangely and even have seizures. So again, these algal toxins could affect the way this animal moves through the water to be able to get away from a ship or even identify and move away from a line.
Just a note, having a line like go up and down in the water column is very difficult to tell just from humans. Imagine a whale trying to travel through that and gets caught on its fin on his pectoral fin. And then all of a sudden, you're like, Whoa, hold on a second. Like, this is actually hurting. It's digging into my pectoral fin. What am I going to do?
So that's a problem as well. You don't want to fly into those things, especially if you feel disoriented or kind of moving strangely, you don't really have control over your body. So the authors essentially concluded that swimming through these harmful algal blooms can influence the ability of these whales moving out of the way of danger, whether it be a ship strike or whether it be an entanglement with the fishing gear.
That was the interpretation, essentially, based on the spatial distribution of the Habs event as well as where these whale fatalities were. A NOAA research ecologist by the name of Elliot Hansen, who was not involved in the study, expressed skepticism over the explanation for the increased whale deaths and injuries due to human cause during Habs.
For instance, Hansen said warm water can cause Habs, but can also drive anchovies and their whale predators closer to shore where pot fishing is more common, thus potentially increasing the risk of entanglement. So the correlation is the dominant factor with warm water often leading to increase Habs and ensure compression of whale prey. On the other hand, Hansen says fishery closures resulting from Habs can actually reduce entanglement risk further complicating the picture.
Similarly with vessel strikes, Hansen said that while it's possible that Habs that cause democ toxicity in krill eating whales that impairs their ability to avoid ships, there is no evidence to support or refute it. So again, the enabling conditions of warm water may have effects on both parts of the ecosystem. What Hansen is saying essentially is, yes, this could happen, but there's no real evidence to say it does or it
doesn't. You would almost have to find a way to make sure that there are Habs in the whales to say, yes, Habs is actually one of the causes of these whale deaths that disorient them and cause them to not avoid ship strikes or entanglements from fishing gear. But the real cause here is warm water that's caused by climate change that helps these harmful algal blooms develop.
Right? Like I said at the beginning, harmful algal blooms developed by a combination of warm water, wind pattern and nutrients coming in at the right time to form this red tide or harmful algal blooms that becomes toxic in the water and can kill and affect a lot of animals. Elliot Hansen also wanted to clarify that it is difficult to detect and document entanglements and ship strikes,
especially when it's further offshore. It makes it even harder to definitively determine whether Habs are behind the whale injuries. In other words, it's difficult to say, hey, there's ship strikes and there's whale entanglements offshore. That's what's causing the death of this whale. It's difficult to say that because they're further offshore. It's harder to monitor. Now imagine throwing Habs on it.
So here's the thing. We have authors that were published in a journal article that was peer reviewed that says, Hey, you know what? There could be something to this, but it's still at a very beginning stage in understanding the effects of Habs in the cause of whale deaths and around ship strikes and fishing gear entanglement. So the question really asked is like, is this a bad science move? Are the authors moving and just being like, we're just assuming this. This happens all the time.
We see this in science. And what we'll see is that something is published. A scientist will critique the article or two or three or four. Usually they have to go through an editorial process and then people will have a debate back and forth. There's no emotions. There's no disrespect in there for the most part. But essentially what happens is a science
gets better as we go along. What we've determined here is that in even the authors suggest that the more research needs to be done to determine the effect of Habs on these deaths with ship strikes and fishing gear entanglements. But this is science. This is the way science works. I want to highlight this article specifically because it has some controversy around it. I'm going to be focusing on this topic next episode, but we've seen science really come into
question. Not only in marine science, but we've seen science in medical science, also in nutritional science. Everything is being questioned, which I get. You have to ask questions. But the reason why you're asking questions, you're trying to determine an answer. And when somebody comes up with the answer, which hopefully they will soon enough when more research is done, then you can ask questions. And if more research is done, then we'll
be able to have those answers. The crux of the matter is, is when you get the answers, will you accept it? That's really what it comes down to. And some people will and some people won't. But this is what science is all about. It's to provide evidence. You can start and suggest stuff and it may or may not work. You come up with a hypothesis. You test that hypothesis to see if you can falsify
it, to see if it's wrong. And when you find out it isn't wrong or it is wrong, you interpret it accordingly. And then you do more research based on what the answer is and how you're going to interpret it. So that's science. That's the beauty of science. And I wanted you to have a taste of this just to get to see what this is all about. So that's it for today's episode. I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode. If you have any questions or comments on this article or
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