Speaker 1: From Bloomberg News and I Heart Radio. It's the big Take.
Speaker 1: I'm West Cassova today. Whales, sharks, and bees. What do
Speaker 1: these three creatures have in common. The answer to that
Speaker 1: question all of them are under threat. Endangered whales getting
Speaker 1: hit by container ships, sharks dying on hooks intended for
Speaker 1: other fish. And bees. Well, we all know bees are
Speaker 1: getting closed by pesticides and of course climate change. But
Speaker 1: they've got something else in common too. In each case,
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs or scientists are testing new ways to use artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence and other technologies to try to protect these species
Speaker 1: from harm. Let's go from big too small and start
Speaker 1: with whales. My co league Todd Woody writes about the
Speaker 1: environment from Bloomberg Green, and he's here with me from
Speaker 1: San Francisco to tell us about our project that warrens
Speaker 1: ship captains when they're on a collision course with giant
Speaker 1: underwater mammals. Todd, you've written about this new technology called
Speaker 1: Whales Safe, which is intended to stop giant container ships
Speaker 1: from hitting and killing whales. I have to admit I
Speaker 1: didn't know that this was a big problem. How big
Speaker 1: a problem is it for endangered whales? Ship strikes are
Speaker 1: one of the leading causes of death. So it's a
Speaker 1: huge problem, particularly because, for instance, blue whales, their migratory
Speaker 1: patterns and routes cross major global shipping lanes. Scientists aren't
Speaker 1: quite sure, but whales tend to feed in certain spots.
Speaker 1: They may not hear the ship or the noise, you
Speaker 1: might drown out their ability to get out of the way. Definitely,
Speaker 1: it's a major issue. Where's the worst place in the
Speaker 1: world for this? Where does this happen the most. It's
Speaker 1: a global problem. I don't know if there's one particularly
Speaker 1: place it's worse than others. A study that came out
Speaker 1: in recent years tracked or mapped migration patterns for whales
Speaker 1: across the world, and it really did show that they
Speaker 1: coincide with the major shipping lanes. So how does Whale
Speaker 1: safe work? How does it actually protect the whales. It's
Speaker 1: operating in two locations, one in the Santa Barbara Channel,
Speaker 1: which is a major blue whale feeding ground and also
Speaker 1: a major super highway for ships heading toward Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: and also off the coast of San Francisco. And what
Speaker 1: they do is they place a hydrophone, which is an
Speaker 1: underwater microphone out in the ocean, which can detect whale vocalizations.
Speaker 1: It's a whale song get whale songs, and so that
Speaker 1: data is beamed to computer servers somewhere and artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: program matches it against library of tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: other whale sounds to identify the type of species, and
Speaker 1: one that species is identified and located, it beams that
Speaker 1: information to ship captains so they can take action like
Speaker 1: slowing down. And so are all the shipping companies now
Speaker 1: tied into this network. It's a totally voluntary program, but
Speaker 1: I think around sixty percent have agreed to use this
Speaker 1: information off California. And since they implemented this has there
Speaker 1: actually been a drop in the number of whales that
Speaker 1: are being struck by these ships. The probably was only
Speaker 1: a couple of years old, but in Santa Barbara, the
Speaker 1: first full year it was an operation, they did show
Speaker 1: a drop in ship strikes. Scientists say it's too early
Speaker 1: to say if you know that this is the causal effect,
Speaker 1: but they say it's good news. Nonetheless. One thing you
Speaker 1: write in your story, which I found really fascinating, is
Speaker 1: that because whales are so depleted after many, many years
Speaker 1: of their populations falling that even just one whale that's
Speaker 1: killed can have a huge effect on the future survival
Speaker 1: of the species. Yes, particularly of blue whales, is only
Speaker 1: like one point to whales per year in certain areas
Speaker 1: would affect the sustainability of the species. We only recover
Speaker 1: the bodies of very tiny portion of whales that are
Speaker 1: hit by ships. Most are hit in the open ocean
Speaker 1: and they sink to the bottom of the ocean, so
Speaker 1: scientists basically have to estimate how many are killed each year. Tad,
Speaker 1: you also write about how important whales are to limiting
Speaker 1: the effects of climate change. You gotta say that was
Speaker 1: a surprising one to me. How do they do that? Yes,
Speaker 1: it's still a developing science, but scientists have quantified how
Speaker 1: much carbon whales absorbed sequester in their bodies, which are huge,
Speaker 1: and when they die, that carbon the bloodies sink to
Speaker 1: the bottom of the ocean where it's sequestered. That probably
Speaker 1: a bigger impact is when they poop. They spawned big
Speaker 1: phytoplankton blooms and phytoplanks sequesters some thirty seven billion tons
Speaker 1: of c O two every year. Top predators like whales
Speaker 1: and sharks are not in disimportant because they're sort of
Speaker 1: charismatic creatures we like to see, but they're vital to
Speaker 1: keeping ocean ecosyst some healthy because they regulate predator prey populations.
Speaker 1: All the things that we're talking about here kind of
Speaker 1: point to a sort of urgent need for action when
Speaker 1: it comes to just protecting biodiversity in oceans to keep
Speaker 1: things from becoming severely imbalanced, losing species that play important roles.
Speaker 1: There have been any number of international efforts, including by
Speaker 1: the U n to try to protect marine in life.
Speaker 1: How is that going. We don't actually hear about it
Speaker 1: all that much with so many other things happening in
Speaker 1: the world. Since delegates to the United Nations have been
Speaker 1: negotiating a treaty to protect the biodiversity of the High
Speaker 1: Seas that would be accomplished mainly by creating marine protected
Speaker 1: areas and requiring environmental impact assessments that potentially harmful activities
Speaker 1: in international waters. The treaty was supposed to be finalized
Speaker 1: in two but agreement could not be reached. The next
Speaker 1: and supposedly final negotiating session begins February, and you talked
Speaker 1: about the high seas and when we think theres kind
Speaker 1: of romantic pirates and the high seas, but that's actually
Speaker 1: a term. What are the high seas? The high seas
Speaker 1: are the areas beyond national jurisdiction, so area of the
Speaker 1: ocean that's beyond the two mile limit of countries exclusive
Speaker 1: economic zone. And what would this agreement, if they're able
Speaker 1: to reach one, what would actually do. What are the
Speaker 1: provisions in it. One of the main provisions that would
Speaker 1: help conserve species would be it would allow the creation
Speaker 1: of marine protected areas on the high seas, so areas
Speaker 1: where fishing could be banned, where other harmful activities could
Speaker 1: be banned. The other aspect would be requiring these environmental
Speaker 1: impact assessments, So before say some big fishing operation or
Speaker 1: some extractive operation could be done, you would have to
Speaker 1: do an assessment to see what the impact would be
Speaker 1: on marine species in the area. And do you think
Speaker 1: it's likely that we're going to see an agreement? Seeing
Speaker 1: how it keeps getting pushed back. They're very close on
Speaker 1: a lot of things. There's some other aspects of the
Speaker 1: treaty that are more controversial that sort of hung up negotiations.
Speaker 1: So it was supposed to be done in the pandemic
Speaker 1: push that back. They met last March that was supposed
Speaker 1: to be the final negotiating session. They did not reach agreement.
Speaker 1: They met again in August, did not reach agreement. So
Speaker 1: there's really there's a lot of pressure on to wrap
Speaker 1: this thing up in February and March of this year,
Speaker 1: given the lack of action by international organizations and governments
Speaker 1: of the world. It seems like the things we're talking
Speaker 1: about here are companies and scientists stepping in to fill
Speaker 1: the need. Are there other examples of companies or scientists
Speaker 1: kind of employing new technologies, AI and other sorts of
Speaker 1: things to help. Yes, there's one very simple technology that's
Speaker 1: been put out there for experimenting that seems to work
Speaker 1: as led lights that are attached to fishing lines, and
Speaker 1: that has been shown to deter sea turtles. So all
Speaker 1: seven of the world's sea turtle species are endangered. So
Speaker 1: these are like lights for some reason, it makes the
Speaker 1: sea turtles stay away from the nets. Is there a
Speaker 1: lot of investment in this or companies putting money into
Speaker 1: developing these technologies or is it just very expensive and
Speaker 1: it's difficult to profit from it. Right now, it's mainly
Speaker 1: scientists who are developing these technologies. I would say there's
Speaker 1: not a you know, not a private investment, but ocean
Speaker 1: companies do have an interest in lowering the impact on
Speaker 1: marine species. I mean, for instance, it's not a good
Speaker 1: look when a cruise ship steams into port with an
Speaker 1: endangered whale wrapped around a bow, which happened in southern
Speaker 1: California a couple of years ago. So there's definitely an
Speaker 1: interest for them too, you know, for instance, like for
Speaker 1: the Whale Safe to sign up for those alerts. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back, Tad. You've written another story about a
Speaker 1: company in the UK that's trying to come up with
Speaker 1: a solution to what's called shark bycatch. That's when sharks
Speaker 1: are caught on hooks that are intended for other fish.
Speaker 1: It's this device called shark Guard. What exactly is it?
Speaker 1: So it's a small slender advice is attached to phishing
Speaker 1: hooks for like long long line tuna vessels, which will
Speaker 1: deploy like miles and miles of phishing hooks, and it
Speaker 1: admits an electric field that shark's consents and it repels
Speaker 1: them because they want to stay away from that field.
Speaker 1: Our producer, Frederica Roman Yellow went to visit phish Tech Marine,
Speaker 1: the company that invented shark Guard, to see how it's made.
Speaker 1: I'm endeavor and I'm here with Pitt Keble. He is
Speaker 1: the co founder of Phish Tech Marine and the managing
Speaker 1: director of the company. The other co founder of the
Speaker 1: companies is brother Ben Kibble. One of the things that
Speaker 1: you are trying to put out in the market is
Speaker 1: something called shark Guard. And you're holding the fourth prototype.
Speaker 1: You're saying, right, yes, that's right. So this is number four,
Speaker 1: hopefully the final prototype. So after this while we're now
Speaker 1: currently working on the sort of final commercial version, if
Speaker 1: you like. So, this device is the shark Guard, generates
Speaker 1: a electric pulse every couple of seconds, generates an electric
Speaker 1: sort of field around the baited hook. The sharks are
Speaker 1: extremely sensitive to electric currents, thousands of times more sensitive
Speaker 1: to electric fields than say, teleost fish things like tuna, herring, card,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So the device just literally clips in. This prototype.
Speaker 1: Shark Guard has a small lithium battery and it's designed
Speaker 1: to last for I think it's about sixty or seventy
Speaker 1: hours of pulsive sixty seventy hours six to seven days
Speaker 1: of fishing, which typically could be a fishing trip, if
Speaker 1: they're going out a day or two, steaming fishing for
Speaker 1: a week and then steaming back. The holder is fitted
Speaker 1: on the branch line when they're rigging the gear, and
Speaker 1: the shark guard can be removed when you need to
Speaker 1: replace a battery. Let's describe the actual shark guard itself.
Speaker 1: It's a fairly small, maybe ten fifteen centimeter cylinder with copper,
Speaker 1: I think that bronze. These electrodes, and these are sort
Speaker 1: of positive negatives of creating the electric field in a
Speaker 1: clear tube. And you can see the drive circuit here, capacity, battery,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So that's detecting when it's in the water
Speaker 1: and then activating every couple of seconds. It generates a
Speaker 1: thirty forty vault pulse and that's what deters the sharks.
Speaker 1: And how does that work? How does it deter sharks?
Speaker 1: Why are sharks the turd? But say tuna or what
Speaker 1: people want to fish is not the turd. So sharks
Speaker 1: have a system of electro receptors ampili of Lorenzini, tiny
Speaker 1: little pits around the snout in the mouth of the shark,
Speaker 1: and they use this to detect, for example, the tiny
Speaker 1: electric currents generated by fish, by prey. So whenever muscle
Speaker 1: twitches or muscle moves, you've got your neurons, your nerve
Speaker 1: cells and activate the muscle. You get these these tiny
Speaker 1: little currents generated. And the sharks developed a very very
Speaker 1: sensitive system of electro receptors so it can detect the
Speaker 1: currents that are generated by prey. So sharks have a
Speaker 1: detection threshold if you like, where they can detect the
Speaker 1: electric field and it might actually attract them. Above a
Speaker 1: certain voltage field strength if you like, then it deters them.
Speaker 1: It's too strong, too powerful. So a bit like you know,
Speaker 1: our ears, for example, are designed for picking up sound,
Speaker 1: you know, communicating, you know, speech, et cetera. They're quite
Speaker 1: sensitive organs. If someone's yelling in our ear, it's not
Speaker 1: very comfortable, so we tend to move away. So the
Speaker 1: sharks got very sensitive organ system if you like, these
Speaker 1: electro sensors receptors, but if they're over stimulated, gets to
Speaker 1: the point where it's uncomfortable, so they'll move away from
Speaker 1: that field. There was a study conducted in corporation with
Speaker 1: the University of Exeter, which is not too far away
Speaker 1: from here. What did the study find? So the shark
Speaker 1: guards were deployed in a commercial French blue fin tuna
Speaker 1: fishery in the Mediterranean. The fishery has I think that
Speaker 1: about forty fifty vessels active in the fishery and they
Speaker 1: do have an issue with blue shark and pelagic ray
Speaker 1: cartilaginous fish so in the same family as sharks, if
Speaker 1: you like. So we're trying it in the fishery at
Speaker 1: two commercial vessels, five hundred shark guards, five hundred control
Speaker 1: hooks if you like, without shark guards. The results were
Speaker 1: pretty pretty astonishing. So we had over ninety reduction in
Speaker 1: blue shark bycatch and about a se reduction in pelagic
Speaker 1: ray bycatch. And do you anticipate a lot of uptake
Speaker 1: in terms of companies that might be interested in this.
Speaker 1: There will probably be relatively few fishes that would willingly
Speaker 1: kitten their vessels out with a shark guard system. I
Speaker 1: think the big driver here though, is going to be
Speaker 1: the massive push for shark conservation. So at the moment,
Speaker 1: the plagic fleets are supplying tuner and swordfish too supermarkets
Speaker 1: around the world. Now there's a significant shark by catch
Speaker 1: issue associated with every kiload of tuner and swordfish that
Speaker 1: essentially derived from pledgical longline operations. So my feeling is
Speaker 1: that if there's longline fleets that are currently interacting with
Speaker 1: sharks want to carry on supplying your kind of top
Speaker 1: shelf supermarkets with all the environmental, social, corporate drivers, they're
Speaker 1: going to have to improve their act in terms of
Speaker 1: reducing shark bike catch. And I would hope that over
Speaker 1: the next few years that starts to manifest and we
Speaker 1: start to see more uptake of these, you know, shark
Speaker 1: of shark guard systems in these vessel Todd, we've just
Speaker 1: heard how tech could potentially save sharks from being killed
Speaker 1: each year. Was it so important to protect sharks? Since
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, scientists estimate that shark populations have fallen, and
Speaker 1: they estimate around a hundred million sharks are killed each year.
Speaker 1: Often they're killed by being entangled or ensnared in fishing lines.
Speaker 1: It's a huge issue because sharks, again like whales, are
Speaker 1: top predators in the ocean. Todd Woody, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for talking with me. Thank you. When we come back
Speaker 1: from C to air, can technology help save honey bees?
Speaker 1: So we talked about tech solutions to help save whales
Speaker 1: and sharks. Now we're gonna talk about bees. I'm joined
Speaker 1: now by my colleague Coco Lu in New York. Coco,
Speaker 1: you've written a story about a company called bee Flow
Speaker 1: which is helping to restore the populations. Could you tell
Speaker 1: us what this company does. B Flow is California based
Speaker 1: to startup, and then it used the biotechnology to help
Speaker 1: these survive under the current threat and also help the
Speaker 1: remaining be population to pollinate to the right crops as
Speaker 1: a way to help farmers increase the crop output. The
Speaker 1: way to do is it has two types of supplements.
Speaker 1: So once I learned from the reporting is that hallibees
Speaker 1: actually don't do very well in code weathers. It's performance
Speaker 1: drops significantly when the temperature is called. Just like humans
Speaker 1: take a supplement to post it's immune system, b Flows
Speaker 1: created supplements using plant based ingredients to help hallibees also
Speaker 1: posted their emune system so they can keep working even
Speaker 1: though the temperature is UH is low. So they essentially
Speaker 1: feed the bees this kind of like vitamin boosts supplement
Speaker 1: to get their energy. Yet it's kind of like that,
Speaker 1: so it's a kind of supplement what the company is
Speaker 1: trying to achieve. So one is to give this extra
Speaker 1: nutrition or the nutrition that bees are miss currently missing
Speaker 1: because of the loss of habitat, So bees can you know,
Speaker 1: survive better in under the current environment. And another thing
Speaker 1: is they have a second supplement which is kind of
Speaker 1: for like a memory conditioning supplement. The way it works
Speaker 1: is with smell flower, which is a smell flower, but
Speaker 1: that smell actually contains different signals two different animals. So
Speaker 1: scientists bill flow do is to fund the right signal
Speaker 1: that talks to hardibees and then the creator supplement with
Speaker 1: that signal. Whenever the face of this supplement to the
Speaker 1: bees and the b's are exposure to the smell of
Speaker 1: the flower they give the hardibe is a sugar syries.
Speaker 1: Hardibis are trained to associate at the smell with the food,
Speaker 1: so whenever the bis go out to the field, they
Speaker 1: were just actively you know, thick that smell rather than
Speaker 1: being dured away by wilder flowers. By doing so, it
Speaker 1: kind of increased the efficiency of hardi peopoulation for agriculture.
Speaker 1: This is an attempt to try to increase the population,
Speaker 1: increase I guess be productivity. Given the current threat, can
Speaker 1: you talk just a little bit about what that threat is,
Speaker 1: like why do we need this. Basically, what has happened
Speaker 1: in the past two decades under were probably unfortunately to
Speaker 1: continue to happen, is that the global population has declined
Speaker 1: significantly worldwide, and then that was caused by a combination
Speaker 1: of factors like the loss of habitats and the use
Speaker 1: of pesticides, and of course climate change. Hardi bis usually
Speaker 1: don't do very well in cold weathers, so the extreme
Speaker 1: code slabs could kidle of our peace. Why is it
Speaker 1: so important now to protect these from cold weather? Why
Speaker 1: is that a problem now when it wasn't a problem before.
Speaker 1: We have said an increase in extreme weather events, so
Speaker 1: that makes its most important for us to detection now.
Speaker 1: China recently got hit by record low temperature in North China,
Speaker 1: and then we have said that in other parts of
Speaker 1: California and then other landing Europe as well. So all
Speaker 1: of those extreme weather events well of fact the survival
Speaker 1: of peace. Including hartebees. You have found in reporting that
Speaker 1: there is actually a correlation between a dropping honey bees
Speaker 1: and sort of dropping pollination in deaths. So one reason
Speaker 1: the study found that insufficient decoordination is causing about five
Speaker 1: hundred thousand earlier's a year around the world. The way
Speaker 1: to think about is that you know, if we don't
Speaker 1: have peace to pollinate to the plants and we we eat,
Speaker 1: then our diet would be forced to change, and then
Speaker 1: the loss of nutrition would affect our health. If all
Speaker 1: the HARDI bias guidet for good this period for good,
Speaker 1: humans probably wouldn't go extinct. But it's about the change
Speaker 1: of our diet and the loss of nutrition. We need
Speaker 1: to keep our healthy and high for on non life
Speaker 1: and better quality of life. Our bee keepers around the
Speaker 1: world looking at similar sorts of things to help their
Speaker 1: own be populations. And how big is the worldwide push
Speaker 1: to conserve bees. I think it's a global move. Beflow
Speaker 1: is just one company offering you know uh service to
Speaker 1: hardibe's survival. There are also other companies like there is
Speaker 1: a startup in Europe that provide in high fool smartest
Speaker 1: sensor for be capers. Basically, the idea is if there
Speaker 1: is something out of lormal in the bee hive, the
Speaker 1: company will sending a neard to be capers to interfame
Speaker 1: before it's too late. So that's another way to help
Speaker 1: be survival in this environment. And then I know us
Speaker 1: startup it's also developing vaccines for bees against the deadly disease.
Speaker 1: And I think both seeing UK and Russia that are
Speaker 1: companies doing the so called early warning system because you know,
Speaker 1: the pesticide distribution is a huge issue for the survival
Speaker 1: for bees. But as a big caper, how do you
Speaker 1: know the farm next to you will spread pesticides. So
Speaker 1: there are internet companies collecting data from farmers and then
Speaker 1: send the learned to be capers to say, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: you probably want to move your heife because they're going
Speaker 1: to spread pesticide in the next hour. Coca Lu, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for coming on the show. Thank you. You
Speaker 1: can read more from Todd Woody and Coco Lu and
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com. Thanks for listening to us here at
Speaker 1: The Big Take. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more shows from I Heart Radio,
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Speaker 1: you listen. And we'd love to hear from you. Email
Speaker 1: us questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg dot net.
Speaker 1: The supervising producer of The Big Take is Vicky Burgolina.
Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Katherine Fink. Our producer is Frederica
Speaker 1: Roman Yellow. Our associate producer is Zenob Sidiki. Hilla Garcia
Speaker 1: is our engineer. Our original music was composed by Leo Sidrin.
Speaker 1: I'm Westcasova. We'll be back tomorrow with another big take.