00:00Our next guest is pointing to a different culprit behind the whale deaths, climate change
00:07and shipping lanes, Regina Esmuda-Silvia, the executive director at Whale and Dolphin
00:12Conservation in North America.
00:14Regina, thank you so much for coming on, for sharing your expertise.
00:17I wanted to ask, in your opinion, what is causing these whale deaths?
00:23Based on the information that's available, based on the ability to do the necropsies
00:27and the examinations, most of the animals that have been examined have evidence of vessel
00:32strikes.
00:33We've seen a number of species that have had a change in distribution as a result of a
00:37change in climate and changing prey bases, where they're going to go look for food, where
00:40they're finding food.
00:42There's been some fishery management changes that have led to an increase in abundance
00:46of menhaden, the small schooling fish, particularly in the mid-Atlantic and the New York fight
00:50area.
00:51And we don't know how whales find their food, but they're good at it.
00:53So there have been an increase in the number of whales going into that area looking for
00:57food.
00:59There is an increase in activity.
01:00It's not a place that we would have probably had management measures previously, because
01:07that area wasn't considered to be a high use area for a lot of different whale species
01:10in the past.
01:11And so seeing more whale watching happening in that area regularly was another indication
01:16of the fact that whales are being sighted there on a more consistent basis, and more
01:20whales in an area, particularly in a place that has a lot of boat traffic, is unfortunately
01:25going to lead to issues where you're going to have vessel strikes.
01:29Is there anything else that you can point to, other than boats, entanglement, relocation
01:34because of climate change, that you can blame for the whale deaths?
01:39I mean, I think that it's really important for people to understand that it's not really
01:45super simple to always know why a whale died.
01:49These animals are warm-blooded animals.
01:50They are encased in a thick blubber layer.
01:52They start to decompose the second they die, and they're not dying on the beach.
01:56They're dying somewhere at sea, starting to decompose before the currents bring them up
01:59onto the beach.
02:00At that point, there are some really skilled stranding responders in the mid-Atlantic area
02:05in particular that are going out and trying to examine these carcasses.
02:09And a post-mortem on a large whale is a lot of work, and it's not something simple to
02:16do once the tissue starts to decompose.
02:19When they do do these post-mortems and they're looking inside of whales, they're looking
02:23for things like, is there bruising, are there broken bones, are there evidence externally
02:27on signs of entanglements, are there ligature marks, are there cases of disease?
02:33They're looking at organs, if they're intact enough to be able to examine them, doing histology,
02:37trying to figure out if there's parasite loads.
02:41The question of ears has come up quite a bit, and the small hairs that are on the ear decompose
02:48almost instantly after those animals die, so it's not so simple to have a carcass washed
02:58up on the beach and do the extensive exams that I think some of the public think are
03:02possible.
03:03So where those exams can occur and what they can find in those cases in that particular
03:10area really have been pointing to vessel strikes.
03:12Obviously, a lot goes into this, but we do appreciate you coming on and sharing your
03:16expertise.
03:18Thank you to Sylvia.
03:20Thanks for having me.
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