WEBVTT - The Gray Whale, Part 2 0:00:02.960 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.600 --> 0:00:14.880 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:17.680 name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're 0:00:17.720 --> 0:00:20.760 back with part two of our series on gray whales, 0:00:21.040 --> 0:00:24.720 inspired by a first end encounter that Rob had recently, Right, 0:00:25.239 --> 0:00:27.360 that's right. Yeah. I go into detail a bit more 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:32.400 about this in the first episode, but basically, the family 0:00:32.800 --> 0:00:36.680 and I got to go down to Baja California, Mexico 0:00:37.080 --> 0:00:42.040 to see gray whales in their their breeding lagoons and 0:00:42.200 --> 0:00:44.360 it was it was magical. We got to observe them 0:00:44.360 --> 0:00:48.080 in their their their most peaceful setting. Um and uh. 0:00:48.120 --> 0:00:49.920 And so we're gonna we're gonna talk a little bit 0:00:49.960 --> 0:00:53.720 about about that setting today, but also their their cycle 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:56.680 while they go through why they go through these migration 0:00:56.760 --> 0:00:59.520 cycles and so forth. Yeah, So if you haven't heard 0:00:59.520 --> 0:01:01.360 part one, you should probably go back check that one 0:01:01.360 --> 0:01:05.680 out first. In that we explored the basics of gray whales, 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:09.600 describe some of their their major characteristics, but we also 0:01:09.640 --> 0:01:14.240 talked about things like their relationship with barnacles. They have 0:01:14.280 --> 0:01:19.000 some obligate barnacles that they are usually encrusted with. Today 0:01:19.040 --> 0:01:22.520 we're going to focus some more on gray whale ecology, 0:01:22.640 --> 0:01:25.679 such as how they fit into their environment, especially with 0:01:25.800 --> 0:01:30.520 regard to predators. That's right, especially they're they're really their 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:35.199 primary predator, their main predator, and that is the orca, 0:01:35.480 --> 0:01:39.680 the killer whale, I guess, their main predator other than humans. Yes, 0:01:40.160 --> 0:01:42.600 aside from humans, and of course there have been fluctuations 0:01:43.400 --> 0:01:46.600 in the risk posed by by humans to gray whales. 0:01:46.600 --> 0:01:50.040 It certainly hasn't gone away. Our risk to gray whales 0:01:50.040 --> 0:01:54.920 go beyond merely whaling them. It also applies to other 0:01:54.960 --> 0:01:58.440 things we're doing to the environment. But yes, aside from us, 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:00.760 it's the orca that is the main I mean, it's 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:03.640 really the orc of that is, that is the threat 0:02:03.680 --> 0:02:06.960 posed to gray whales that have helped shape what the 0:02:07.000 --> 0:02:12.240 gray whale is. It's really difficult. It seems to overstress 0:02:12.760 --> 0:02:16.280 the importance of this predator's role in the life cycle 0:02:16.720 --> 0:02:22.480 of this whale in particular, but multiple whale species. So 0:02:22.520 --> 0:02:24.720 we've discussed the orc on the show before, I believe 0:02:24.760 --> 0:02:26.919 if they've come up, although I don't think we've ever 0:02:27.040 --> 0:02:30.400 really done a deep dive on them. They are an 0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:35.360 apex predator, They're an oceanic dolphin, and their range is 0:02:35.440 --> 0:02:39.440 nothing short of the world's oceans. If you look at 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:43.200 maps depicting where killer whales can be found, and it's 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:46.040 basically like, well, is the ocean there, well, then that's 0:02:46.080 --> 0:02:49.120 their range. Though that coverage has also been described as 0:02:49.160 --> 0:02:52.360 a bit patchy. It doesn't mean like the oceans just 0:02:52.440 --> 0:02:57.200 packed with them. And their conservation status is technically dated deficient, 0:02:58.120 --> 0:03:01.880 so you know, there's still some unknowns about about their 0:03:01.960 --> 0:03:06.840 their their cycles, and their whereabouts. But the orca itself 0:03:06.919 --> 0:03:10.120 has no natural predators. It is the absolute top of 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:12.880 the food chain. Now. The orca has long been creatures 0:03:12.919 --> 0:03:17.240 of reverence for many indigenous populations, especially those populations with 0:03:17.320 --> 0:03:20.400 ties to the sea, and many of these understandings have 0:03:20.520 --> 0:03:23.320 a more i would say, based on what I've been reading, 0:03:23.320 --> 0:03:27.679 more nuanced visions of the orcas and understandings of the 0:03:28.000 --> 0:03:31.880 orca compared to Western depictions that up until very recent times, 0:03:32.680 --> 0:03:36.600 depictions and understandings of killer whale, we're very much focusing 0:03:36.640 --> 0:03:41.960 in on their their savagery and also greatly exaggerating their 0:03:41.960 --> 0:03:47.080 potential threat to humans because we'll touch on this later, 0:03:47.120 --> 0:03:51.320 but there have been no documented cases of a killer 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:55.680 whale in the wild killing a human being, though there 0:03:55.680 --> 0:04:00.000 have been quite a few cases in captivity, right, Yeah, 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:02.600 and uh, and that's that's, of course a sad story 0:04:02.640 --> 0:04:04.200 in and of itself. Were probably not going to go 0:04:04.240 --> 0:04:05.880 into that much, but I did a fair amount of 0:04:05.880 --> 0:04:09.360 reading about that over the weekend as well. I watched 0:04:09.400 --> 0:04:13.040 the trailer for Blackfish, and it made just the trailer 0:04:13.080 --> 0:04:15.240 alone was a bit too much for me. I'm gonna 0:04:15.240 --> 0:04:17.720 have to build up my courage to actually watch a Blackfish, 0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:22.960 which is a documentary about captive orcas and some of 0:04:22.960 --> 0:04:26.880 the very tragic events and deaths that have surrounded that practice. 0:04:27.920 --> 0:04:30.839 But long before that was taking place, you had people 0:04:30.880 --> 0:04:33.360 like plenty of the elder, our old friend plenty of 0:04:33.360 --> 0:04:36.919 the elder chiming in on Orca. He describes them in 0:04:36.960 --> 0:04:40.760 detail in one chapter of the Natural History, stating that 0:04:40.800 --> 0:04:43.960 their form quote cannot be in any way adequately described, 0:04:44.360 --> 0:04:48.120 but as an enormous mass of flesh armed with teeth. 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:53.599 You could say that about almost any mammal. Yeah, I don't. 0:04:53.680 --> 0:04:59.040 It's a it's a strange description. I mean, we're we're fortunate, 0:04:59.080 --> 0:05:02.240 I guess, and that we we have so many wonderful photographs, 0:05:02.240 --> 0:05:06.960 so much great footage of Orca, and in many cases 0:05:07.279 --> 0:05:09.600 as well, a lot of people get to glimpse them 0:05:09.640 --> 0:05:12.440 in the wild. Uh, you know, from from a distance usually, 0:05:12.480 --> 0:05:14.680 I guess, but um. But still we have a better 0:05:14.720 --> 0:05:17.120 idea of like what a killer whale is, and we 0:05:17.160 --> 0:05:18.800 don't have to just think, well, I know there was 0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:22.359 flesh and I know there were teeth. I mean that 0:05:22.440 --> 0:05:25.799 image conjures to mind just like uh, one of those 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:28.719 tumors that grows teeth. But it's just like floating in 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:31.159 the ocean. Yeah, it sounds like some sort of science 0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:34.760 fiction monster. Um. But at the same time, this this 0:05:34.839 --> 0:05:37.359 chapter is definitely worth checking out for plenty fans because 0:05:37.600 --> 0:05:39.919 he goes into a little bit of detail though about 0:05:39.920 --> 0:05:45.480 their their hostility toward the palana towards the whales. And this, 0:05:45.560 --> 0:05:48.520 of course is very true or at least of of 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:51.200 some varieties of work in one variety in particular that 0:05:51.200 --> 0:05:54.039 we're going to discuss, and it's actually reflected in the 0:05:54.120 --> 0:05:59.440 name killer whale, which the author and naturalist Mark Carwardine 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:02.920 in his book A Handbook of Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises 0:06:02.960 --> 0:06:06.720 of the World. He points out that moniker killer whale 0:06:06.800 --> 0:06:11.440 is derived from whale killer. Now The species name for 0:06:11.520 --> 0:06:15.600 the orca is Orcanus orca, and this is an interesting 0:06:15.600 --> 0:06:18.680 assembly as well, with the ancient Roman use of orcanus 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:22.599 meaning belonging to the kingdom of the dead, and orca 0:06:23.000 --> 0:06:25.640 meaning either a kind of whale or a barrel. In 0:06:25.680 --> 0:06:28.880 the Greek, I've seen it also translated as like barrel whale. 0:06:29.920 --> 0:06:34.120 So orca may be the only true natural predator of 0:06:34.160 --> 0:06:37.440 the gray whale, though large sharks like gray white sharks 0:06:37.440 --> 0:06:40.719 have been known to attack calves and even adults. And 0:06:40.720 --> 0:06:42.760 then you have things like the cookie cutter shark. That 0:06:43.160 --> 0:06:47.040 makes a small shark species that may take bites out 0:06:47.080 --> 0:06:49.400 of adults. But these are you know, I think you 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:52.880 might think of these more as nuisances than like true predators. 0:06:53.240 --> 0:06:55.279 Though maybe I'm not being fair to the cookie cutter sharks. 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:57.039 I mean they are taking bites out of If something 0:06:57.080 --> 0:06:58.680 was taking a bite out of me, I would consider 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:01.719 it probably a predator. Depends how big the bite is. 0:07:03.320 --> 0:07:06.240 As the name implies, they're small bites and and they're 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:09.800 smaller I guess the bigger you are. But anyway, yeah, 0:07:09.840 --> 0:07:13.320 the orca are the very to say the least, a 0:07:13.400 --> 0:07:15.680 hell of a predator to have to deal with they are. 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:20.160 They are ruthless and cunning. Their employ various pack hunting 0:07:20.280 --> 0:07:22.200 or I guess you might call it called pod hunting 0:07:22.560 --> 0:07:26.560 attack strategies against their prey, and the list of possible 0:07:26.560 --> 0:07:29.840 prey for a killer whale is pretty long. Um, They've 0:07:29.840 --> 0:07:32.320 been observed to prey on great white sharks and the 0:07:32.360 --> 0:07:34.800 waters off the coast of South Africa and New Zealand, 0:07:35.400 --> 0:07:39.400 strategically targeting and removing the livers of these great whites, 0:07:39.480 --> 0:07:43.120 like tucking into them right behind the pectoral find and 0:07:43.480 --> 0:07:47.000 like removing the liver and then eating the liver from 0:07:47.040 --> 0:07:49.960 the great white. But when it comes to orcas and 0:07:50.080 --> 0:07:56.080 their diets, it gets intriguingly complicated. So orcas, as Carbadine describes, quote, 0:07:56.160 --> 0:08:00.840 have a bewildering array of ecologically distinct forms called ecotypes. 0:08:01.600 --> 0:08:04.080 And while they they're generally considered to be all of 0:08:04.120 --> 0:08:08.000 the same species again Orcanus Orca, you might think of 0:08:08.000 --> 0:08:13.360 them as genetically distinct orca cultures. This makes sense given 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:16.120 all of the different things I was reading about sort 0:08:16.160 --> 0:08:21.600 of uh, subgroups of orcas specializing in different types of prey, like, 0:08:21.840 --> 0:08:24.120 for example, while the orcas are one of the main 0:08:24.200 --> 0:08:28.400 predators of gray whales. Not all orcas would show any 0:08:28.440 --> 0:08:32.320 interest in a gray whale. That's right, um. And it 0:08:32.320 --> 0:08:34.920 gets even crazy when you look at again genetically distinct 0:08:35.080 --> 0:08:40.920 orca groups, these these ecotypes and then each they You 0:08:40.960 --> 0:08:44.400 may have two different ecotypes inhabiting the same waters, but 0:08:44.480 --> 0:08:48.120 they don't associate with each other. Each each ecotype has 0:08:48.120 --> 0:08:51.680 its own behaviors, its own diet, its own social structure, 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:57.640 its own vocal signatures, its own distribution patterns. So it 0:08:57.920 --> 0:09:01.360 gets really fascinating look at all the different examples. And 0:09:01.400 --> 0:09:03.880 I'm not going to go into all the different ecotypes here, 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:07.800 but of note, for our discussion of the North Pacific, 0:09:08.440 --> 0:09:12.200 there are two distinct ecotypes to consider. There's the resident 0:09:12.440 --> 0:09:15.880 or fish eating killer whale, and then there's Biggs killer 0:09:15.880 --> 0:09:18.760 whale also known as transient killer whales. But I think 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:22.240 Bigg's killer whale is the prefer tile. Okay, So I'd 0:09:22.240 --> 0:09:25.160 imagine it's some of those resident or fish eating killer 0:09:25.200 --> 0:09:27.760 whales that you know, gray whales might go right by 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:30.120 them and they're not going to mess with them. They're 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:32.600 not going to be interested. Yeah. As the name implies, 0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:36.080 members of the fish eating ecotype eat mostly fish and 0:09:36.120 --> 0:09:40.840 they usually ignore marine mammals, biggs killer whales though, yeah, 0:09:40.880 --> 0:09:44.640 these are the true whale killers, and it's fascinating. They 0:09:44.640 --> 0:09:49.000 live in smaller groups, usually just two to six. The 0:09:49.040 --> 0:09:53.480 groupings for other varieties of like fish eating orca tend 0:09:53.520 --> 0:09:57.720 to be larger. They're seemingly the biggs whales carbating rights 0:09:57.720 --> 0:10:00.400 are not interested in eating fish at all, though, I 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:02.920 have to say in his book there is a photo 0:10:03.120 --> 0:10:06.600 of one that's labeled as a is a big skiller 0:10:06.600 --> 0:10:08.880 whale that's playing with a salmon in its mouth. So 0:10:08.960 --> 0:10:10.720 I don't know. Maybe it's just playing with the salmon, 0:10:10.800 --> 0:10:13.200 maybe it's eating it a little bit. I don't know. 0:10:13.559 --> 0:10:17.800 Part of being such an intelligent apex predator is killer 0:10:17.800 --> 0:10:20.640 whales have been observed to play with their food a bit. 0:10:21.880 --> 0:10:24.679 The big skiller whale occasionally kill birds, but yes, as 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:28.959 the description implies, they mostly hunt whales, pinnipeds, and sea otters. 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:33.280 Now they are transient, they are kind of erratic, apparently 0:10:33.280 --> 0:10:35.960 in their movements. I couldn't help but think of this 0:10:36.120 --> 0:10:39.520 kind of like this roving band of bikers. Though I'm 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:43.839 over anthromorphizing here. And it's also worth noting that one 0:10:43.880 --> 0:10:46.839 of the reasons that biggs is preferred over the name 0:10:46.920 --> 0:10:50.199 transient is because apparently transient can be a little misleading, 0:10:50.240 --> 0:10:52.840 so that their movements are erratic, but they do follow 0:10:52.880 --> 0:10:55.280 the movements of their prey species, so they're not just 0:10:55.640 --> 0:10:58.920 They're not just completely random. There. I guess we might 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:01.559 compare them to the bankers in um what is it 0:11:01.800 --> 0:11:05.080 point break the mass bankrappers in the surfing movie. They're 0:11:05.120 --> 0:11:08.360 kind of like maks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, they're 0:11:08.880 --> 0:11:11.360 they may seem chaotic, but they have they have a code, 0:11:11.440 --> 0:11:15.720 and there there are certain patterns they're following. Now, I 0:11:15.760 --> 0:11:19.959 mentioned the genetic differences, carbon in mentions that the Biggs 0:11:20.080 --> 0:11:23.920 orcas are actually the most genetically divergent out of all 0:11:23.960 --> 0:11:26.960 these ecotypes, and there are actually strong arguments to be 0:11:27.040 --> 0:11:31.040 made for speciation. Here, he writes that DNA evidence has 0:11:31.040 --> 0:11:35.120 shown that Biggs killer whales began diverging some seven hundred 0:11:35.160 --> 0:11:38.959 thousand to seven hundred and fifty thousand years ago, So 0:11:39.000 --> 0:11:46.280 again the orca. It seems difficult to overstress how important 0:11:46.360 --> 0:11:50.079 a role they play in the shape of modern whales, 0:11:50.440 --> 0:11:54.400 the way that these whales have survived, because one of 0:11:54.440 --> 0:11:57.160 the things you have to survive in the world, as 0:11:57.240 --> 0:12:00.240 as a whale, or basically any organism that's to be 0:12:00.280 --> 0:12:01.760 in the same waters as the killer whale, you have 0:12:01.800 --> 0:12:03.959 to be able to survive the killer whale. And it's 0:12:03.960 --> 0:12:05.839 a heck of a thing to have to survive because 0:12:06.120 --> 0:12:08.280 I just kept thinking reading about them that it's like 0:12:08.320 --> 0:12:12.640 they seem like the absolute perfect oceanic predator. You know, 0:12:12.720 --> 0:12:16.920 like they're they're they're robust, they're fast, they're intelligent, they're 0:12:17.240 --> 0:12:20.760 they're social. Um, you know, you can you can compare 0:12:20.800 --> 0:12:23.040 them in some ways to something like a great white shark. 0:12:23.160 --> 0:12:25.839 But great white sharks are for the most part solitary, 0:12:25.880 --> 0:12:29.040 like they don't work together. They lack the uh the 0:12:29.080 --> 0:12:32.480 intellect of of of of of an orca. Uh. The 0:12:32.559 --> 0:12:35.360 orcas are just and then the orcas are also not 0:12:35.360 --> 0:12:37.040 not to say that sharks are set in their ways, 0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:39.440 but but like the orca have shown that they have 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:43.120 a have a real resiliency that they can they can change, 0:12:43.160 --> 0:12:47.559 they can alter uh there, uh you know whatever have 0:12:47.800 --> 0:12:50.960 if they're changes in available food sources, they may shift 0:12:51.000 --> 0:12:53.880 in what they're eating, that sort of thing. And so 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:56.640 for just a few examples of how this has affected 0:12:56.679 --> 0:13:00.199 the shape of modern whales, I was reading now their 0:13:00.200 --> 0:13:03.160 book Whales their biology and behavior by Hammond at all, 0:13:03.720 --> 0:13:09.079 and apparently their their threat factors into the audible world 0:13:09.200 --> 0:13:13.000 of the marine environment. So fish eating orca produce loud 0:13:13.080 --> 0:13:16.280 clicks that in many cases their prey can't hear. This 0:13:16.320 --> 0:13:18.720 is certainly seems to be the case with salmon, for example, 0:13:19.120 --> 0:13:22.480 and they use these clicks for echolocation. But the bigs 0:13:22.559 --> 0:13:27.520 killer whale while they're they're feeding mostly or exclusively on 0:13:27.640 --> 0:13:32.120 mammals that are acoustically sensitive, and so big killer whales 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:35.400 are quieter, and they use what they referred to in 0:13:35.440 --> 0:13:39.000 this book as a cryptic echolocation strategy that employs fewer 0:13:39.040 --> 0:13:43.120 clicks and irregular timing of said clicks. Oh so it's 0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:47.000 harder to detect that you are being clicked at right right, 0:13:48.040 --> 0:13:50.760 And the threat of the big killer whales is led 0:13:50.840 --> 0:13:53.720 to led various whale species to adopt the use of 0:13:54.160 --> 0:13:58.280 narrow band, high frequency clicks that orcas can't hear, So 0:13:58.400 --> 0:14:02.240 pygmy sperm whales, for example, this though they sacrifice signal 0:14:02.360 --> 0:14:06.240 range for stealth by making this change. Other whales, like 0:14:06.320 --> 0:14:10.280 beat whales, only use their echolocation at great depths below 0:14:10.400 --> 0:14:15.600 where the orcas hunt and there are also various anti 0:14:16.280 --> 0:14:20.400 anti predator strategies that various whales use. I think we'll 0:14:20.480 --> 0:14:22.840 end up discussing these in a bit. But basically, like 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:26.160 the orca posts such a threat, and such a complex 0:14:26.200 --> 0:14:30.560 and intelligent threat, like every whale species on the menu 0:14:30.640 --> 0:14:33.320 has had to adapt to that threat and come up 0:14:33.360 --> 0:14:37.000 with tactics for survival. Yes, though, I think, as we 0:14:37.080 --> 0:14:41.200 mentioned in the last episode, one thing that's very important 0:14:41.240 --> 0:14:44.400 to stress is that for most whale species we're talking about, 0:14:44.440 --> 0:14:47.040 there might be some a couple of exceptions, such as 0:14:47.080 --> 0:14:50.800 like maybe some of the Minka whales, but for most 0:14:51.400 --> 0:14:55.880 billen whale species, it is really only the young that 0:14:55.920 --> 0:15:00.360 are directly threatened by orcas. Orca's rarely try i to 0:15:00.600 --> 0:15:05.040 prey on healthy adults, and even even more rarely succeed 0:15:05.080 --> 0:15:07.400 and preying on healthy adults, right, I mean, you will 0:15:07.400 --> 0:15:09.360 find some accounts. I think there was a real I 0:15:09.400 --> 0:15:11.280 was just reading this before we came in here there 0:15:11.360 --> 0:15:14.680 was an account of what seemed to be a pack 0:15:14.720 --> 0:15:17.920 of work as attacking an adult blue whale. But yes, 0:15:18.000 --> 0:15:21.080 for the most part, this goes for I mean most 0:15:21.080 --> 0:15:24.720 predators species. What are predators going after? They going after 0:15:24.760 --> 0:15:28.280 the hardest thing possible to kill. Uh No, there's a there, 0:15:28.520 --> 0:15:31.720 there's a you know, the various economic factors that have 0:15:31.760 --> 0:15:33.680 to be taken into account. They want to go after 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:36.400 the easiest thing to get that will give them that 0:15:36.400 --> 0:15:40.520 that that nutrient payoff. And in the case of whales, 0:15:40.600 --> 0:15:44.520 the other calves are the best bet. They're smaller, they're weaker. 0:15:44.760 --> 0:15:47.280 If they can separate them, if they can get to them, 0:15:47.360 --> 0:15:50.200 if they have if they can tip the scales in 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:52.720 their favor, then that's what they're going to go for. 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:04.120 A paper that I'm going to talk about in a 0:16:04.200 --> 0:16:06.920 minute cites an older bit of research from Rice and 0:16:07.000 --> 0:16:10.800 Woolman published in the year nineteen seventy one, that included 0:16:10.920 --> 0:16:14.760 a survey of the bodies of three hundred and sixteen 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:18.920 gray whales that I think we're off the coast of California, 0:16:19.000 --> 0:16:23.120 and it found that of those whales, eighteen percent had 0:16:23.240 --> 0:16:26.600 scars from previous orca attacks. And these would have been 0:16:26.680 --> 0:16:29.920 orca attacks. I guess that the whales survived. That doesn't 0:16:29.920 --> 0:16:34.400 necessarily tell you how many whales did not survive orca attacks. Oh, 0:16:34.440 --> 0:16:40.160 that's this interesting. Carwodine writes that possibly every single gray 0:16:40.200 --> 0:16:43.600 whale alive has possibly been I think the way where 0:16:43.680 --> 0:16:45.720 it was in the mouth of a killer whale at 0:16:45.720 --> 0:16:48.600 one point or another. And certainly you see you see 0:16:48.600 --> 0:16:51.240 a lot of these rake like scars left by orca 0:16:51.320 --> 0:16:58.240 teeth on their bodies. They're apparently attacked by the orca 0:16:58.760 --> 0:17:02.520 at a greater rate and any other whale species and 0:17:02.680 --> 0:17:05.240 as far as the young go. According to Carveden, orca 0:17:05.320 --> 0:17:07.879 quote probably take up to thirty five percent of the 0:17:07.920 --> 0:17:12.560 gray whale calf population annually and most of those attacks, 0:17:13.040 --> 0:17:17.440 it is believed, occur on the migratory corridor. And we'll 0:17:17.480 --> 0:17:20.239 talk more about gray whale migrations in a little bit 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:22.880 or possibly in the next episode if the series goes 0:17:22.920 --> 0:17:27.320 to three parts. But yeah, there's like a migratory corridor 0:17:27.359 --> 0:17:31.200 for the eastern Pacific gray whale where they go back 0:17:31.200 --> 0:17:34.159 and forth between their northern feeding grounds up in the 0:17:34.240 --> 0:17:39.040 Arctic regions in the summertime, and then in the colder 0:17:39.040 --> 0:17:42.800 months they go south to areas like Baja California where 0:17:42.840 --> 0:17:45.800 they have their breeding grounds, their calving grounds and these lagoons, 0:17:46.320 --> 0:17:48.960 and it's during the travel back and forth that a 0:17:48.960 --> 0:17:52.800 lot of these attacks are going to occur, that's right, Yeah, well, 0:17:52.840 --> 0:17:54.479 we'll get into the specifics of that in a bit, 0:17:54.560 --> 0:17:57.800 but it but again, the orcas are cunning and they 0:17:57.800 --> 0:18:00.119 are going to choose the egg zach right time, in 0:18:00.240 --> 0:18:04.840 the exact right place to attack these these rather large 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:09.000 prey animals. But you know, briefly, you know again, why 0:18:09.119 --> 0:18:11.639 is this migration taking place. What's because when you have 0:18:11.680 --> 0:18:14.359 a threat like the orca as a mother whale, you 0:18:14.400 --> 0:18:17.680 can't just give birth anywhere. You have to go where 0:18:17.720 --> 0:18:22.280 the orcas cannot go or won't go. And that's where these, uh, 0:18:22.359 --> 0:18:26.480 these lagoons come into play. Um like the Ojo de 0:18:26.640 --> 0:18:30.440 Labre lagoon that I went to in Um near Guerrero Negro, 0:18:30.960 --> 0:18:35.600 in Um in Baja California, Mexico, place that is shallow, 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:39.919 too shallow to favor certain killer whale hunting strategies, but 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:44.080 also not so shallow that the whales themselves cannot move 0:18:44.119 --> 0:18:47.159 around in the waters. Now that being said, Um, I 0:18:47.440 --> 0:18:50.080 happened across a paper this came out just last year 0:18:50.119 --> 0:18:53.680 in October, and this was the title of this paper 0:18:53.760 --> 0:18:57.399 was new Peril for gray Whale survival question mark predatory 0:18:57.480 --> 0:19:01.000 orca is spotted in Baja Calvin Lagoon. It's a situation 0:19:01.080 --> 0:19:05.840 where observers there had not seen orcas venturing into the lagoon, 0:19:05.880 --> 0:19:10.480 but then there was a spotting of them, and it's 0:19:11.040 --> 0:19:13.960 it doesn't sound like much came of this. It doesn't 0:19:13.960 --> 0:19:16.560 seem like there was any real follow up coverage that 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:19.120 would indicate that the orcas came back and say, killed 0:19:19.119 --> 0:19:21.280 a bunch of calves or anything. I guess it was 0:19:21.320 --> 0:19:24.960 maybe more like a scouting mission, like maybe the orcas 0:19:24.960 --> 0:19:27.679 come in they kind of realize, Okay, well, these this 0:19:27.760 --> 0:19:29.760 is not optimal for hunting, even though the things we 0:19:29.800 --> 0:19:32.119 want to eat are here, and then they move around 0:19:32.119 --> 0:19:35.320 and go back. But anyway, in this paper that the 0:19:35.359 --> 0:19:39.080 author speaks with Stephen Schwartz, a primary researcher with the 0:19:39.160 --> 0:19:44.760 Lagunas send Ignacio Ecosystem Science project down there, and the 0:19:44.800 --> 0:19:47.439 way he describes that is, okay, you have the orca is. 0:19:47.760 --> 0:19:49.639 They're engaging in this. They engage in this kind of 0:19:49.640 --> 0:19:53.679 pack hunting behavior, but it's not two dimensional. It's three dimensional. 0:19:54.359 --> 0:19:57.919 Especially when they're going up against dangerous prey like the 0:19:57.960 --> 0:20:01.399 gray whale, something that can con pably kill them with 0:20:01.440 --> 0:20:04.960 a single blow of its tail. They need to be 0:20:04.960 --> 0:20:07.520 able to employ all of their strategies. They need to 0:20:07.560 --> 0:20:09.320 be able to you know, come at it from below, 0:20:09.480 --> 0:20:11.919 from the sides, etc. And we'll get into some of 0:20:11.920 --> 0:20:14.359 their tactics here in a bit, but basically they can't 0:20:14.440 --> 0:20:18.360 do that in the lagoon environment, right, and as surface 0:20:18.480 --> 0:20:22.640 dwelling animals, where it's not intuitive for us to think 0:20:22.640 --> 0:20:26.400 about physical conflict in this way. Really, you know, we're 0:20:26.520 --> 0:20:29.720 usually thinking about physical conflicts taking place with something on 0:20:29.760 --> 0:20:33.440 the same level as us on a plane, but in 0:20:33.440 --> 0:20:35.280 this case, it would be something more like you know, 0:20:35.400 --> 0:20:38.040 a space fight in like a Star Wars movie where 0:20:38.080 --> 0:20:42.639 there's you know, there is multidirectional attack exactly. Yeah. So again, 0:20:42.720 --> 0:20:47.240 the orcas are cunning, they're intelligent. They realize that this 0:20:47.320 --> 0:20:50.280 is not the battlefield where they will have the advantage, 0:20:50.520 --> 0:20:53.959 and they know that if they they waited out, there 0:20:53.960 --> 0:20:56.639 will come a time when the battlefield does tip to 0:20:56.720 --> 0:21:00.399 their advantage. Now, one thing we always try to do, 0:21:00.400 --> 0:21:02.399 at least when we remember is, you know, it's like 0:21:02.880 --> 0:21:07.760 when you're approaching the subject of predator prey conflicts from 0:21:08.080 --> 0:21:11.080 the origin point of the prey animal. Like we we 0:21:11.160 --> 0:21:13.680 started off talking about gray whales and then now we're 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:16.480 talking about orcas that can tend to kind of make 0:21:16.560 --> 0:21:20.200 you want to, even if you normally have have some 0:21:20.240 --> 0:21:25.320 protections against this, to unconsciously vilify the predator animal. Uh, 0:21:25.520 --> 0:21:27.400 you know, think like, oh, the orcas are so bad 0:21:27.440 --> 0:21:29.960 because they're attacking the gray whales we've been thinking about 0:21:30.000 --> 0:21:31.959 but of course, you know, we all that the orcas 0:21:31.960 --> 0:21:34.840 are are beautiful, wonderful animals in their own way, and 0:21:34.840 --> 0:21:37.040 they're also just trying to survive. That this is just 0:21:37.160 --> 0:21:40.359 what their ecological niche is their predators. Yeah, that's right. 0:21:40.400 --> 0:21:42.960 We can't think to think of it as as the 0:21:42.960 --> 0:21:45.080 heroes versus villains and all of this, though I know 0:21:45.080 --> 0:21:46.840 it's it's very tempting to do so, and I found 0:21:46.840 --> 0:21:50.400 myself sort of fighting off that feeling, especially when when 0:21:50.400 --> 0:21:53.960 observing the gray whales. But even in that that paper, 0:21:54.040 --> 0:21:56.440 that Los Angeles Times paper, an I want to credit 0:21:56.440 --> 0:21:59.680 the author on that. Suzanne rust is the author. In 0:22:00.440 --> 0:22:04.679 speaking with the Swarts like sports basically, you know, it 0:22:04.680 --> 0:22:06.560 says like, look, you know, this is just this is 0:22:06.560 --> 0:22:09.080 how it is. Uh, you know, we're we're not just 0:22:09.840 --> 0:22:12.560 looking out for the great whales here, We're also looking 0:22:12.560 --> 0:22:14.720 out for the orca like they're they're It's part of 0:22:14.720 --> 0:22:18.040 the natural cycle of things here. So we shouldn't Yeah, 0:22:18.119 --> 0:22:20.320 we shouldn't fall into that line of thinking where oh no, 0:22:20.480 --> 0:22:23.480 the the the the orca orcas or the enemy, and 0:22:23.480 --> 0:22:27.040 the gray whales are are the only heroes of the 0:22:27.200 --> 0:22:30.960 ecology story going on before us. That being said, let's 0:22:31.000 --> 0:22:35.000 get into some of the dastardly ways the orcas attack 0:22:35.800 --> 0:22:39.680 gray whales and other whale species. Not dastardly except in 0:22:39.720 --> 0:22:42.320 the sense that every organism is, I guess, dastardly, and 0:22:42.359 --> 0:22:45.840 it's in its quest for survival. But they're they're solving problems. 0:22:45.880 --> 0:22:49.479 They're solving problems. Okay, So I wanted to return to 0:22:49.520 --> 0:22:53.800 a paper that I brought up with a more narrow 0:22:53.800 --> 0:22:57.159 focus in the previous episode, and it was a paper 0:22:57.200 --> 0:23:01.840 called Fight or Flight Anti Predator Stress Rategies of Baleen Whales, 0:23:02.280 --> 0:23:04.760 published in The Mammal Review in the year two thousand 0:23:04.760 --> 0:23:09.560 and eight by John kb Ford and Randall are Reeves. Now, 0:23:09.600 --> 0:23:12.840 you might remember in the last episode the context was 0:23:12.880 --> 0:23:17.960 I was consulting this paper to explore whether the barnacle 0:23:18.119 --> 0:23:22.320 incrustations on gray whales should be thought of purely as 0:23:23.680 --> 0:23:27.560 either a parasitic type of infestation, where it's harming the whale, 0:23:28.160 --> 0:23:31.680 or as a commensal infestation where you know, the barnacles 0:23:31.720 --> 0:23:33.679 getting something out of it. It has a substrate that 0:23:33.760 --> 0:23:36.840 brings it water flowing over it so it can filter 0:23:36.920 --> 0:23:39.720 feed and it gets protection from predators, but the whale 0:23:39.840 --> 0:23:42.000 is not really affected one way or another. That would 0:23:42.040 --> 0:23:45.520