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00:17It's not the well-known whale.
00:22It's not the whale of Moby Dick, and it's not the humpback whale.
00:26The singing whale that is breaching all the time with the long fins.
00:32I can only describe it as, it's almost like this prehistoric sound.
00:41We have a very limited view on right whales.
00:48These animals are capable of living along the entire Atlantic basin.
00:56They're so rare, we don't understand them.
01:01We should leave no trace, and the traces that we do leave should be good ones.
01:06And we're certainly not doing that with those species.
01:12The right whales are very much a metaphor, really, for the sea.
01:19And their decline tells us what is happening to this ocean.
01:25If we don't learn from their demise, we'll have to wait for another species to go extinct.
01:52So apparently there's one right whale out here, maybe two, based on what the sightings are.
02:01So apparently there's one right whale out here, maybe two, based on what the sightings are.
02:04Do you hear that?
02:05Do you hear that right there?
02:07Yeah, that's him.
02:08It's got to be.
02:09We'll get a good shot here.
02:10No one's around.
02:13Most people don't see a North Atlantic right whale for the first time as a first whale, but I actually
02:17did.
02:18When I was maybe eight, my parents and my grandparents brought me to an island in the Bay of Fundy
02:23called Grandma Nan.
02:25And we were surrounded by, like, 40 right whales, you know, surface active groups.
02:30And at the time, I was just like...
02:45The Bay of Fundy was the feeding ground.
02:47Two-thirds of the population was coming to the Bay of Fundy every summer and feeding.
02:52And then when I started working as a whale watching guide in my early 20s,
02:56it was at that kind of initial stages of those first years where they weren't showing up anymore.
03:05They were instead bypassing the Bay of Fundy, and they were going to the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
03:24One, then two, then six dead whales, and the death count hasn't stopped.
03:29With only hundreds left in existence, they've suffered a terrible blow.
03:34Unprecedented.
03:35That's how scientists describe this summer's death toll of 12 North Atlantic right whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence
03:41alone.
03:43This is one of the greatest animal ethical issues of our time.
03:52The fact that there's these, you know, highly intelligent animals out there that have a high capacity to feel pain,
03:58suffering for months, years.
04:06There's whales flying all over the world from entanglement and fishing gear and being hit by boats
04:11because we haven't found a way yet to coexist.
04:15We have this critically endangered whale species right off the eastern seaboard of the United States and Canada,
04:21and, like, barely anybody knows about it.
04:23You know, there's 400 of these animals left,
04:24and they're dying at a rate that's greater than the entire species' reproduction.
04:29If we don't do something right now,
04:31we're going to see the extinction of a great whale species.
04:46This is the only known calving area for right whales in the North Atlantic.
04:52And so this is where their conservation begins.
04:58The right whale count of calves born thus far is at 10.
05:02It's better than the seven last year, and two years ago when there was zero.
05:07It's nowhere near enough to get the population moving in a positive direction.
05:17All right, I'm moving in a little bit slower.
05:25Look how smooth it is.
05:28These calves are very weak swimmers when they're first born,
05:31and so these are real good conditions for the calves to learn how to swim.
05:41When they leave here, they have hundreds, thousands of miles to swim.
05:46They're going to need a really strong bond to make it there together.
06:02In Florida, we work closely with something we call the Volunteer Sighting Network.
06:07It's groups of citizen scientists who are extending the reach of our airplane,
06:12if you will, by going to the beach every morning
06:15and scanning the ocean for right whales, and it can be a huge help.
06:22The first thing I saw was a spout.
06:24As time went on, I started pointing it out to everybody.
06:28It started putting its flippers up, and then we saw that there were two spouts,
06:35and we were able to identify it as a right whale because of the V-shaped blow.
06:39That was a big one.
06:40But the first sighting that was all due to Lily.
06:43The first sighting that was due to our team, yeah, that's right.
06:53You guys get to see the whales from a distance,
06:55and you see that black thing out there, and you can see the nice blows.
06:59But I want to show you what we actually see from the drone,
07:02because it's...
07:02And so I've got a couple of videos.
07:07This is female 35, 60, named Snow Cone.
07:12So the calf's right up here by the head of the mom rolling around.
07:17It's just like any other mother with her baby.
07:21They're kissing.
07:29She's now been seen off Miami, and possibly the Keys.
07:34They're trying to confirm that.
07:35This year?
07:36Yeah, right now.
07:37Right now.
07:40But generally, it's just unusual behavior for any of the right whales to go south of Canaveral.
07:45So 35, 60 is going to keep us guessing for a while.
07:48Yeah.
07:48Yeah.
07:49And so the question is, will she turn around and come back,
07:51or will she go into the Gulf of Mexico?
07:54Right.
07:54And so they're trying to go inside.
08:17Do they want to go outside?
08:20Bye-bye.
08:21Bye-bye.
08:22Bye-bye.
08:23Bye-bye.
08:26he's right here he's right here we're out of gear oh my goodness all right stop right here
08:36there's one right next to us he's right right here under the bow here he is holy shenanigans
08:56we're seeing five here and we probably have 40 or 50 to the south of us in little groups
09:04feeding groups it's pretty special
09:12let me tell you something there's a lot of power in that
09:21that's gorgeous look at that mouth open god knows mouth is wide open whoa
09:35jelly like plankton they're catching we've estimated it's something around 125 pounds an hour
10:00we're in the path that the animal had been swimming pumping water from various depths
10:09collecting plankton that's coming in early on maybe a quarter of the population would come here
10:22but in the recent years the numbers have increased dramatically and so maybe 60 percent 70 percent of
10:31this population in this little tiny bay it's a tiny place that means that those whales have left
10:39somewhere where they used to go and is that because the offshore areas are failing
11:10it's a pretty sad sight
11:17so those are previous entanglement scars yeah that white there previous boat strike scar here
11:31this is really important work everyone knows it all too well I think in Canada now at this point we
11:38do
11:38not know what killed this animal that is the point of this entire thing there will be a lot of
11:41things
11:41discussed here especially with these guys the information doesn't go beyond here yet it is
11:46very important they get the full complete time to think about everything this whale has a significant wound
11:56on its back certainly indicates being hit by by a large large object so just will come down to the
12:05necropsy results I mean this is certainly not the way I want to cover right whales but as part of
12:14the story
12:14you know people need to see it I hope I can cover this and and do justice for her and
12:20and and this whale and
12:22its life but also I hope at some point I can bring some live whales to audience members and yeah
12:40yeah I mean it just hits home harder you know when you work so so closely with the animals and
12:49it's hard for me I can't imagine what it's like for the people behind me right now
13:29my grandfather was a cod fisherman and then they turned that to fish no crab
13:35and my father was next in the line and then me and my brother now are having the family business
13:41I have to say that I wish to not see too many whales because it means where I fish it
13:46will surely close
13:48in no longer once you have a vertical line and a whale in the same area well there's a risk
14:08no longer there's a risk in the right whale when they see a right whale they are closing an area
14:12not
14:12only the area where the right whale is seen but a really large area so in mid-may maybe there
14:21was
14:21only eight or nine whales in the Gulf pushing fishermen out of these spaces where fishing was good
14:29to go where others fishermen are with that it was creating a higher density of pots in the same area
14:36and lower catches so it was affecting fishermen a lot
14:42if we could know what they are doing in real time it would be easy to manage
14:47and mitigate the risk but the thing is we cannot follow the whale good enough to maximize the place
14:54fish fishermen can fish
15:04I am a fisherman and I want to continue fishing and if there's something that can prevent me to fish
15:10I need to find a solution
15:24we didn't hear how 3560 and cap got into the gulf of mexico the whales followed these depth contours and
15:32you can might imagine them following the depth contour into the florida keys and eventually into the
15:37deeper water of the gulf of mexico when they get into the gulf of mexico folks are not used to
15:43it
15:43there so it can create quite a buzz quite a stir because it's such an unusual event
15:49i'm a charter captain here in venice florida i was going to put my bait traps out for a charter
15:55that i
15:55had the following day and i hear hear the guys on the radio talking about a big whale so we
16:02shot over
16:02there real quick and sure enough it was a whale pretty big
16:11just like you see on tv you know the big blow of air you know i saw which way she
16:17was going and
16:18i kind of put my boat in line with where they were going and just stopped turn the motor off
16:23and they came right up to me and checked the boat out and the calf was kind of chilling and
16:28hanging out
16:34like she turned broadside to us
16:41and you could see i mean you could definitely see the eye you could see like her mouth and everything
16:51me and my son and a friend of mine we went out looking for a dolphin or mahi mahi and
16:57uh wahoo
17:00i had heard that there were some whales in the area but the odds of running into those two whales
17:06were just so slim i never expected that to happen it's like winning the lottery you know how lucky are
17:12we you guys i've seen some pretty amazing things but that one probably tops the list
17:24a lot of guys who've been doing this you know 20 30 years i've never seen anything like that in
17:29the
17:29gulf mother and her calf in such beautiful conditions and to have my son with me it was majestic
17:42he'll never ever forget that and neither will i
18:15so
18:24so
18:25so
18:36I don't know.
19:21I hate it when the whales don't get the memo.
19:26Yeah, coming up on 7.
19:29We've seen quite a lot of whales on about a six-minute dive time.
19:34So we were optimistic this whale would do the same, but...
19:41Whale's up!
19:43Whale's up.
19:44Okay.
19:45I shot it.
19:49Shot it!
19:51Keep going, keep going.
19:55Fluke.
19:56Stand by.
19:58Can't change.
19:5911 o'clock.
20:00The whale did a backflip.
20:02There's a...
20:04Belly-out.
20:04You can see the flippers.
20:05Flippers.
20:06That whale is having fun.
20:09Doing the survey with the scientists, you get to be curious about which one it is, and it's interesting.
20:16Okay, we're going to stop here.
20:18Copy that.
20:19Seems to be a lot of whales in the area here, but there's...
20:23It's only a third of the population that's here, not all of it.
20:26It's maybe, you see 140 individuals.
20:32The right whale has such a major impact on our fishery that I think that there's no way other
20:38than learning a lot about it to maybe help the situation.
20:48The thing about right whales that's so strange, they move around a lot in the ocean, and yet
20:56they seem to predictably return to the same area every year once they have discovered it.
21:04So there is some level of predictability.
21:08The North Atlantic right whale feeds on a rice-sized piece of fat-rich zooplankton called a copepod.
21:17Here we are in an area that's clearly important to them for foraging, but we don't really have
21:23a very good sense yet of what they're actually eating.
21:27When we used to do these studies in the Bay of Fundy, we'd be coming up with our nets absolutely
21:32full.
21:34Here, we're missing something.
21:39So that's why we brought an echo sounder to hopefully give us more insight into whether
21:46the plankton are actually aggregated in those last 10 meters.
21:51Brain out.
21:54Brain left.
21:56These questions are really, really important to get answers to.
21:59Brain down.
22:00Brain down.
22:00Because the right whales are here, this area is important to them, and we want to know
22:06why.
22:10Stop.
22:11Up.
22:12Up.
22:15Martan, what is the bottom depth here?
22:1975.5.
22:21You were at 6'4 meters, you're sure?
22:23Yeah, we hit the bottom.
22:27Okay, stop.
22:28Up.
22:30Looks fine.
22:31But we will do our best not to run into the bottom again.
22:34Okay, down.
22:35You should be able to say with pretty good certainty whether there's copepods near the bottom now.
22:41Think of it as a happy accident.
23:00I had heard about the calf from the travel into the Gulf of Mexico, which is really unusual
23:07for them.
23:09But I hadn't necessarily seen that calf prior to seeing it dead on the beach.
23:14Unfortunately, a lot of the necropsies I've done have been really young animals, two years
23:19or less.
23:20And all of those animals have been human impact deaths.
23:35I think that 3560's calf was the youngest of those that I had necropsied.
23:42About five or six months at that point.
23:45Yeah.
23:46Young.
23:47Little baby.
23:53When I read the news that Snowcone's calf had died, I mean, I actually cried.
23:57It was like losing a friend.
23:58And now it's sort of hard to look at the video from last year.
24:01It felt like losing a friend.
24:03It was really, really sad.
24:08To lose one, and one that was so special to us, it was a whale that we helped spot.
24:13It just kind of, I don't know, left a bitter taste.
24:17Like, what's the point?
24:19The whale had been hit once, was injured, starting to heal, and then the next fatal blow
24:26came.
24:32It kind of broke my heart a little bit.
24:34I didn't know that calf passed away.
24:35That sucks.
24:36I'm sorry.
24:44Wound series one consisted of 24 roughly parallel propeller chop wounds extending from the tip
24:50of the rostrum to the caudal thorax.
24:52Wound number 25 consisted of a single roughly linear defect along the dorsal aspect of the
24:58abdomen through which soft tissues had prolapsed at sea.
25:02I told you I'd cry.
25:04Based on the criticity of these lesions and their location, wound series one and wound
25:0925 were considered to be from a single vessel interaction that occurred weeks prior to death.
25:14This animal's acutely fatal injury was wound series number two.
25:19This dorsal view of the peduncle shows the propeller wounds, suggesting the propeller essentially
25:23traveled across or through the peduncle.
25:25This wound is considered the proximate cause of death and likely occurred within two to three days of the animal
25:31being found dead.
25:34What?
25:35What?
25:36What?
25:38That's better than once.
25:40Freighters?
25:41What?
25:42What?
25:42What?
25:43recreational boats our impact as humans on the world is totally wrong it drives me up the wall
25:54to be honest with you i can't stand it if i were to ever see one again down here i'd
26:01just leave them
26:02be let them do their thing man they travel the world they see things we don't see wow so yeah
26:10it was us i don't want to like anthropomorphize animals but think of what this does to the mother
26:20too we know other whales orcas have this connection with their family we see how close they are to
26:26their calves here and so we're causing all this
26:38i was the one that received the hotline call on snow cone
26:45going in what we knew was there was rope coming out of the mouth
26:50two trailing lines with a possible twist
27:07right whales are flexible enough that they can actually touch the tip of their
27:11their nose their rostrum with their tail and so if you're anywhere near the head
27:16of a right whale that is an extremely dangerous place to be
27:23essentially what i was trying to do is making sure that we weren't running over any of her
27:28entangling lines but also keeping the people on the bow as close to her as possible so that
27:35they could throw the grappling hook into her entanglement
27:41oftentimes we will add flotation to keep them at the surface
27:48and that's called kegging the exact same things that the whalers used to do
27:55now once that buoy was affixed to her entanglement her behavior changed entirely
28:01unfortunately when an animal is entangled they will try and bolt away from you it could just go
28:06in any direction totally erratic the real culprit in this is rope it is not a particular target
28:15species it's not a country it is rope in the places where these animals have to live
28:22at this point it makes it very difficult for a right whale or almost any whale to move through
28:28their environments without becoming entangled
28:38and any measure that would reduce the amount of rope would benefit whales
28:44i'm talking about reducing rope not reducing fishing
28:50our goal was just to cut the rope sort of shorter and sort of see if she can then shed
28:54it on her own
29:01so what i'm hoping to see the next time someone sees her is that there's no rope left at all
29:06so
29:06i'm
29:07i'm
29:34i'm
29:35i'm
29:35i'm
29:35i'm
29:40I don't know.
30:12Oh yeah, it's really got a lot of red on its tail.
30:17Looks sore.
30:19So I see lines in front of the blowholes, behind the blowholes, two more.
30:27There is trailing line with a dirty white buoy.
30:37So this whale is thrashing too much and too unsettled to put anybody in a small boat near this whale.
30:43So that's off the plate.
30:46What I'm thinking is a telemetry buoy, the green buoy that we attach.
30:53We'll get Guy to grapple and we'll get some of the other trained people to belay the line.
31:00I know Kelsey and I are trained.
31:03Okay, let's have Gina get the drone up so that we can look at it from here.
31:08Yeah, that's a good idea, I think.
31:16Ready to launch?
31:17Launching!
31:19Launching!
31:20Launching!
31:26Launching!
31:37Launching!
31:40Okay, there you go.
31:43Launching!
31:43So is there anything, doesn't look like there's anything behind that.
31:48We can't really see the trailing line.
31:52It looks like there's two lines coming out of the right-hand side of the mouth.
31:55One's going over the right-hand side of the tail, one's going over the left-hand side of the tail.
32:01so it's like she has it through her mouth
32:04and all coming out the right-hand side.
32:15Trying to figure if there's a bitter end here.
32:33Trailing line.
32:34We've got the trailing line.
32:36Okay, that's good.
32:37That's what we want.
32:39I see it.
32:43Gina got a really good visual on the trailing line.
32:46It looks like it's coming out of the right fluke blade,
32:49out from underneath the right fluke blade at times.
32:52But it looks like it's staying pretty close to the surface,
32:54so it does mean that we should have an option.
32:57I kind of would just...
32:59I mean, it's tough to watch,
33:01but I kind of just want to give it a little time
33:04to tire itself out and settle.
33:12I have never...
33:14In all of my years of seeing entangled right whales,
33:17I have never seen an animal react so violently.
33:25I think we've got lots of good information
33:27to give the whale rescue team
33:28to get back out and relocate this whale.
33:40When they find a whale entangled in the gear,
33:43and it's in the Gulf, and it's in the snow crab gear,
33:46they say, well, it's the snow crab's fault.
33:49And it's hard to say it's not when you see a buoy
33:53that comes from a crab pot.
33:56Two things we want to try here.
33:58Is the pop-up system working,
34:00and can we fish with trawls?
34:06I can now press recover,
34:10and it's going to send a signal, a command to recover.
34:16When you release that, it pops up.
34:19The buoy pops up.
34:23Show us the buoy.
34:24I thought there was a signal.
34:26Hmm.
34:29Oh, okay, we've got 50 minutes to move.
34:32That's it.
34:39Yeah, please.
34:50Going with the ropeless gear,
34:52you have no regular line.
34:54It's in Canavelle's lobster cage,
34:59when you release that, it pops up.
35:01The buoy pops up.
35:03I'm gonna hit that.
35:05Okay.
35:06And on that lobster cage, attached,
35:10you got 10 pots, one after the other.
35:13It's very different because once you catch the first buoy,
35:17you cannot stop.
35:19You're attached to the bottom.
35:20You gotta be really careful.
35:42It's positive because at first when we heard about those pop-up buoys,
35:47we said, hey, impossible.
35:48You know, push a button and a few seconds after you see a buoy.
35:52Can't work.
35:53But now we say, hey, well, it exists.
35:59The next step is for us to see if we can work safely and efficiently
36:03with those mechanisms.
36:16All right.
36:18What did I just drop?
36:20Just the measuring tape I got.
36:22Okay.
36:25I built this because it allows us to bring a camera close
36:30and get some of the social behavior
36:32that's never been filmed before.
36:34That should be good enough just to test.
36:37I think that'll be perfect.
36:40Watch the T-top.
36:48This will be the travel position.
36:50We can tilt this up.
36:52I can get the camera on.
36:54And then we lift, we put it off the front.
36:57That's the ticket, man.
36:58That's brilliant.
37:00Okay.
37:00Children gravitate towards other animals.
37:03They're completely enchanting to children.
37:05And somewhere along the line, we lose that sense of enchantment.
37:10And I think that's at the heart of all of these troubles.
37:14We're no longer enchanted by nature.
37:16That's what Nick and I are trying to do.
37:18We're trying to restore that sense of wonder.
37:21Because nature is incredible.
37:25There's so much beauty.
37:26There's so much complexity.
37:28And our lives can be so much richer when we let that in.
37:43Okay, now, if they get really close, and a tail comes up,
37:46you hit the deck, okay?
37:52Oh, my God.
38:07I can see her closing a blowhole.
38:09Yeah.
38:14It's amazing to see how social they are.
38:17Of all the whales, the right whales engage in this very interesting social behavior.
38:35So, thank you.
38:45Yeah.
38:47Yeah.
38:49Yeah.
38:51Yeah.
39:18What are you doing, bud?
39:26Holy shit.
39:30He's coming over to say hi.
39:43Oh my god.
39:59Look how incredibly gentle they are.
40:01Never even touched us.
40:11Doesn't get much closer than that, hey?
40:17We've been out here since 8 o'clock in the morning, and we're still trying to figure out the whole
40:24operation.
40:25We did get a lot of good stuff, so we did get some great aerial footage of the Surface Active
40:32Group before batteries died.
40:34We got to test out the ROV, but we had the whales, you know, and we had them in the
40:40best way possible.
40:43And then seeing the whales like that, it reminds you that's what you're out here to do.
40:47You're out here to bring that experience home.
41:00Our celebrity whale last year, 3560 was here, and now her sister's here.
41:08Maybe their mom always hung out close to shore, both what we call cooperative because they're in close where we
41:16can see them.
41:17So yeah, it could be a familial trait.
41:20Oh, there they are.
41:22Just for a sec.
41:48I view them as a mystery.
41:50They're rife with questions, and the answers are hard won.
41:56Having that happy accident where we sampled the last 10 to 15 meters.
42:01The prey is really concentrated near the seafloor.
42:04That makes me wonder, where did that right whale that was entangled pick that gear up?
42:09Did it pick that gear up because it had its mouth open near the seafloor?
42:20Five, four, three, two, one.
42:24Five, four, three, two, one.
42:35If these animals are present in our lives through media, through storytelling, when we talk about regulation changes, when we
42:42talk about changes in fisheries, in shipping, those changes are going to be more acceptable to a knowledgeable public, to
42:50a knowledgeable industry sector.
43:00When I first got into this, I thought, I'm going to be part of all of the answers, you know,
43:07and I'm going to work with government agencies, and we're going to get this done.
43:12And I guess I'm a slow learner, but after 30 years, it's dawned on me that governments can't do this
43:19on their own.
43:21It's going to take everybody.
43:23It's going to take everybody.
43:36It's going to take everybody.