Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick. And Hey, as I mentioned
Speaker 2: in yesterday's Listener Mail episode, we have got some vault
Speaker 2: episodes for you this week. We're out a few days
Speaker 2: this week, so we're bringing you some older episodes of
Speaker 2: the show. This is part one of our series on
Speaker 2: the gray whale, which originally published on March second, twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three.
Speaker 1: Hope you enjoy.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. This episode
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, and I suppose the
Speaker 1: next one as well, we'll be dealing with gray whales.
Speaker 1: This is a topic that I was inspired to cover
Speaker 1: because my family was fortunate enough to get to go
Speaker 1: on a trip to Mexico to the next state of
Speaker 1: Baja California, sir to one of the breeding lagoons that
Speaker 1: the gray whales migrate too every year. Specifically, we went
Speaker 1: to Ojo de Labra lagoon that means eye of the
Speaker 1: hair due to the way it's shaped. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: got to see these magnificent animals close up, got to
Speaker 1: observe them for a couple of days. It was absolutely
Speaker 1: fantastic and certainly ignited my curiosity about these creatures.
Speaker 2: I didn't get to see your photos because I'm not
Speaker 2: on the Gramd, but Rachel was raving about them to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I will once this episode comes out off to
Speaker 1: share some maybe in the discussion module the Facebook group
Speaker 1: or our discord for the show, And if you don't
Speaker 1: have access to those, just email us and we'll hook
Speaker 1: you up. But yeah, I got some great footage, My
Speaker 1: wife got some great footage, and more than anything, we
Speaker 1: just got to take in this amazing location, this amazing landscape,
Speaker 1: and and these amazing animals.
Speaker 2: So this lagoon is one of their calving grounds, and
Speaker 2: and you were out in boats getting to observe them
Speaker 2: right up close, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah. This this is one of several different lagoons where
Speaker 1: where where this particular population goes to. When we were
Speaker 1: visiting there, there were hundreds of whales present in this lagoon.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty vast lagoon. It's surrounded on all sides
Speaker 1: with this kind of desolate and haunting landscape that's full
Speaker 1: of like salt, sand and bramble. I mean it's there
Speaker 1: are there are organisms there either, coyotes around and other creatures,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's a unique landscape. Like just flying
Speaker 1: into Guerera Negro, the nearest town, was was really breathtaking
Speaker 1: just because the landscape is so beautiful. But the first
Speaker 1: morning we went out on these boats, there were also
Speaker 1: these intense fottamorgana mirages on the horizon that really added
Speaker 1: to the surreal feel of the place.
Speaker 2: What were they like images out Do they look like
Speaker 2: mountains or.
Speaker 1: They were the surrounding mounted like some of the peaks
Speaker 1: that were visible on the and also some of the dunes,
Speaker 1: so like dunes and peaks. So yeah, it was and
Speaker 1: it looked like floating islands on the horizon. Wow. And
Speaker 1: then of course closer in you have all of these
Speaker 1: breaching whales and spy hopping whales and it's amazing. Now,
Speaker 1: I do want to stress that in this particular situation,
Speaker 1: only a few boats were permitted on the water at
Speaker 1: a time. There was no chasing of the whales, there
Speaker 1: was no feeding of the whales that they don't eat
Speaker 1: while they are there. And we'll get into the reasons
Speaker 1: for this as we move through these episodes. But there's
Speaker 1: no need to chase and there's no need to try
Speaker 1: and bait them in, because they're very curious. They come
Speaker 1: up to the boats, they inspect the boats, and sometimes
Speaker 1: they're obviously scraping their skin against the holes of the boats,
Speaker 1: perhaps to relieve themselves some of the parasites that they have,
Speaker 1: the exo parasites, and we'll discuss that as well, probably
Speaker 1: well in this episode. Actually, other times, though they're not
Speaker 1: scraping against the boats. Sometimes they're just kind of pushing
Speaker 1: them around a little bit, like playing with them, I guess,
Speaker 1: to try and figure out what their mind might be.
Speaker 1: Other times they're just kind of breaching a little bit.
Speaker 1: They're spy hopping, and they seem to have some sort
Speaker 1: of interest in what's going on in the boats or
Speaker 1: with the boats. Humans will reach out and touch them,
Speaker 1: and it seems like the whales like this on some level.
Speaker 1: It's a very very very strange situation, Like it feels
Speaker 1: kind of like certainly there's a sense of curiosity on
Speaker 1: both sides, but there's also this, you know, if you
Speaker 1: want to get spiritual about it, there's almost this feeling
Speaker 1: of communion.
Speaker 2: So sometimes they'll kind of bring part of their body
Speaker 2: out of the water or breach. But also you said
Speaker 2: spy hopping is that when they raise their eyes above
Speaker 2: the water level to see what's above the surface.
Speaker 1: Well, in other species such as the orca, there's there's
Speaker 1: definitely more of an eye coming above the water with
Speaker 1: the with the gray whales, they're not even necessarily getting
Speaker 1: their eyes above water. So it's uh, and I think
Speaker 1: it's there. There's some different takes on why exactly they're
Speaker 1: doing this, but they'll, yeah, they'll kind of spy hop
Speaker 1: next to the boat, and they're spy hopping out further
Speaker 1: away from the boats as well. And and then yeah,
Speaker 1: sometimes they're rolling around in the water and kind of
Speaker 1: and you'll even like look into their eye that sometimes
Speaker 1: they are looking up through the water at you. And
Speaker 1: that's one of those moments where you're just you know,
Speaker 1: you're you're thinking about like what are they seeing? What
Speaker 1: are they possibly thinking as they look up at us,
Speaker 1: what do they think we are? And then you also
Speaker 1: look at this whale and you just, man, I was
Speaker 1: just thinking, like they've they've seen things I can't even imagine,
Speaker 1: you know, And this this particular whale is going to
Speaker 1: see things just in the months ahead that that I
Speaker 1: can scarcely imagine.
Speaker 2: So I'm very us of this experience, and I would
Speaker 2: love to see gray whales up close one day too.
Speaker 2: But I have seen plenty of video footage, and at
Speaker 2: least from what I've seen, several things stand out. One
Speaker 2: that they kind of I don't know if this makes
Speaker 2: any sense, but they look more like rocks than any
Speaker 2: other type of whale I can think of having seen,
Speaker 2: and that may be aided by the many barnacles attached
Speaker 2: to the outside of them, which is we'll talk about
Speaker 2: later on, are very characteristic of the species of whale,
Speaker 2: having a lot of barnacle loading on the outside, But
Speaker 2: in looking at them, they can look very much like
Speaker 2: a large gray boulder covered in lichen, almost where the
Speaker 2: barnacles are kind of like the lichen patches, or at
Speaker 2: least it seemed that way to me. And then the
Speaker 2: other thing being that their nostrils look more typically mammalian
Speaker 2: rather than the blowhole that you would see on the
Speaker 2: back of a lot of whales, where you might perceive
Speaker 2: at least as a single blowhole. Uh, the gray whale
Speaker 2: nostrils I recall seeing are very distinctly separate nostrils. They
Speaker 2: kind of flare more like a dog's nostrils might.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, this this is not your your cartoon whale.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. You have those those very nostril like blowholes
Speaker 1: on top of the head. And you if you're if
Speaker 1: you're out on one of these lagoons, you see see
Speaker 1: them a lot. In fact, a lot of people end
Speaker 1: up getting spra You're constantly misted by the spray from them,
Speaker 1: even if they're not super close to the boats. Uh,
Speaker 1: just because you know they're they're just coming up. They're
Speaker 1: they're blowing that blowhole. There's this mist in the air
Speaker 1: of water, and also I guess probably some some whale
Speaker 1: snut in there as well. But they do have to
Speaker 1: your point, they do have this kind of rocky appearance.
Speaker 1: Part of it's the barnacle load, but also that their
Speaker 1: their their skin is very modeled and and scarred and
Speaker 1: and it it could look like it is it is stone.
Speaker 1: When if you do touch it, I thought that it
Speaker 1: felt more or less like a big egg plant. That's
Speaker 1: the kind of feeling I had from it, Like there's
Speaker 1: a little like there's a softness to it, but there
Speaker 1: is also you know, it's like a that's kind of
Speaker 1: wet suit feeling as well. Another thing about their skin
Speaker 1: is I and we'll come back to this, but I
Speaker 1: was surprised by their whiskers. We've talked on the show
Speaker 1: before about the evolution of whales and the loss of
Speaker 1: body hair, so I wasn't prepared for the whiskers. Somehow
Speaker 1: I missed this leading up to this whale experience, but
Speaker 1: they have quite a few whiskers. The other thing that
Speaker 1: I was surprised about because on some level I was
Speaker 1: prepared for this gentleness, so I was prepared for this curiosity.
Speaker 1: I knew what I was getting into with that. But
Speaker 1: also you would see them moving underneath the water, and
Speaker 1: these are big animals. There were talking fourteen point nine
Speaker 1: meters or forty nine feet in length, weights of up
Speaker 1: to forty one tons or so. So these are like
Speaker 1: school bus sized organisms, and they're often very curious and
Speaker 1: gentle next to the boat, but they can move with
Speaker 1: such speed and strength, and you see that occasionally, especially
Speaker 1: when they're engaging in mating behavior further away from the boats.
Speaker 1: They'll they'll surge underneath the water and you're reminded just
Speaker 1: how powerful and how potentially destructive these creatures are if
Speaker 1: they had if they had reason to be destructive towards you.
Speaker 2: You know, it's funny. This reminds me of all these
Speaker 2: passages in Moby Dick describing whales. We know now from
Speaker 2: plenty of examples like this. Just like as a matter
Speaker 2: of habit do not seem to attack humans or do
Speaker 2: anything very aggressive, at least not most of the time,
Speaker 2: but described in these older documents with absolute horror, just
Speaker 2: like these whales are monsters. They are killers. They will
Speaker 2: crush you, they will swallow you whole.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And in fact I ran across this wonderful description.
Speaker 1: This is This is from a paper in The American
Speaker 1: Naturalist from eighteen eighty eight by J. D. Catton, titled
Speaker 1: the California gray Whale. The author writes, quote, of all
Speaker 1: the known species of whales, this is the most cunning, courageous,
Speaker 1: and vicious. So terrible is it that, with the old
Speaker 1: implements of harpoon and lance, but few whalemen would court
Speaker 1: an encounter with it, and it early received the name
Speaker 1: of the devilfish. I have no account that it ever
Speaker 1: maliciously attacked an unoffending object, yet when it found itself
Speaker 1: pursued where escape was difficult, even before it was struck,
Speaker 1: it has been known to turn upon pursuers and dash
Speaker 1: a boat to fragments with a single blow of its
Speaker 1: powerful flukes. And so has many a life been lost?
Speaker 2: Okay, well, at least this source acknowledges that this kind
Speaker 2: of behavior would be like in response to extreme distress,
Speaker 2: like when the whale is being attacked.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he is acknowledging that this is aggression that's
Speaker 1: coming out of obvious whaling scenario. And you know, the
Speaker 1: sad fact is, and we've touched on this in the
Speaker 1: show before, you can't you can't remove whaling from our
Speaker 1: understanding of these creatures. I mean, the history is intertwined
Speaker 1: there with our understanding of the organism, and so we
Speaker 1: have various things where the name comes from whaler observations, like,
Speaker 1: for instance, whale lice, which we'll discuss. They're not actually lies,
Speaker 1: but whalers compare them to lies, and that's where the
Speaker 1: name comes from.
Speaker 2: I do believe grey whales specifically are thought to have
Speaker 2: once been much more abundant, right, but that whaling in
Speaker 2: particular reduced their populations to present levels where there's a
Speaker 2: sustainable number of grey whales in the population on the
Speaker 2: western coast of the American continent, but the population that
Speaker 2: lives on the other side of the Pacific, on the
Speaker 2: eastern coast of the Asian mainland is much more reduced,
Speaker 2: but in both cases reduced by whaling.
Speaker 1: And then there was once a North Atlantic grey whale population.
Speaker 1: These were thought to have fed around Newfoundland, the Gulf
Speaker 1: of Saint Lawrence, Iceland, and Europe's North Sea and for
Speaker 1: their winter breeding lagoons or refuges. It's thought that they
Speaker 1: might have visited the coasts of Georgia and the Carolinas
Speaker 1: here in the States, as well as uncertain spots along
Speaker 1: the coast of Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. But this population
Speaker 1: was essentially extinct by the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries,
Speaker 1: do at least in part to whaling. Interestingly enough, there
Speaker 1: have been proposals to try and introduce reintroduce the North
Speaker 1: Pacific gray whale into this region to restore the population.
Speaker 1: And I've also seen speculations about what might occur in
Speaker 1: the future due to climate change, that as we have
Speaker 1: less sea ice, it might enable the gray whales on
Speaker 1: their own to recolonize this part of the ocean.
Speaker 2: I guess it would be very difficult and expensive to
Speaker 2: try to force a recolonization by human intervention.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I mean nothing else. We're talking about enormous
Speaker 1: creatures and how are you going to get them there?
Speaker 1: I didn't look super hard at the proposals. They may
Speaker 1: have a very straightforward solution to this. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if they would be airlifting them or shipping them across
Speaker 1: land or exactly what the scenario is, but it has
Speaker 1: not become an actionable thing at least yet. Well, let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about the physical characteristics of
Speaker 1: the gray whale here. Because I guess we are an
Speaker 1: audio program. You can certainly look up lots of great
Speaker 1: images and footage and illustrations. One of the books that
Speaker 1: was one of my prime sources here as a book
Speaker 1: by Mark Carwoodine The Handbook of Wales, Dolphins and Porpoises
Speaker 1: of the World. Highly recommend this book for anyone out
Speaker 1: there who's into Wales, dolphins and porposes. Fabulous illustrations and
Speaker 1: some great photographs and just lots of wonderful information that
Speaker 1: you know can aid you just sort of in general
Speaker 1: general interest in these organisms, or if you're into citing
Speaker 1: them and has you know how to pick out these
Speaker 1: various creatures by their markings, by their spouts, by their flukes,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. So that's going to be one
Speaker 1: of the books I'm going to keep referring back to,
Speaker 1: for sure. But getting back to what we were talking
Speaker 1: about earlier. Yes, these are whales. These are large creatures,
Speaker 1: large whales by some rakings, I think they're only the
Speaker 1: eighth largest whale species. But considering that number one, the
Speaker 1: blue whale, is the largest animal that's ever lived, there's
Speaker 1: not really no shame in coming at number eight. Gray
Speaker 1: whale can reach forty nine feet in length. That's the
Speaker 1: fourteen point nine meters way about forty tons. The females
Speaker 1: are larger than the males, and even the newborns are
Speaker 1: approximately fourteen to sixteen feet long. It's roughly four point
Speaker 1: two to four point eight meters and weigh around two
Speaker 1: thousand pounds or around nine hundred and seven kilogram. So
Speaker 1: we're talking about big reachers here. Cannot stress that.
Speaker 2: Enough, And I guess it's helpful that the newborn calves
Speaker 2: are already big, because it's when a whale is young
Speaker 2: that it's most susceptible to predators, like the predation on
Speaker 2: adult gray whales, from what I understand, is pretty rare,
Speaker 2: whereas attempts by animals such as orches to prey on
Speaker 2: the calves is pretty common.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, because a healthy adult whale is a healthy
Speaker 1: adult gray whale is a formidable opponent unless conditions are
Speaker 1: just right. And then of course the young are going
Speaker 1: to be the primary focal point of predators. Okay, so
Speaker 1: we've established their big we should also come back to
Speaker 1: the fact that, yes, they are more or less gray
Speaker 1: in color.
Speaker 2: Often look like just a big old slab of granite,
Speaker 2: kind of like an obelisk in the water.
Speaker 1: Yes. Now, one initial question that came up for me,
Speaker 1: of course, especially as we were dealing in our notes here,
Speaker 1: was is it gray g R E y or is
Speaker 1: it g R A y.
Speaker 2: I generally assume those spellings are interchangeable. It's like American
Speaker 2: English or British English.
Speaker 1: That's how I, yeah read it. Yeah, and that's one
Speaker 1: of the main distinctions. Mark Cardawine in his book stresses
Speaker 1: that either is correct. You know, obviously g R E
Speaker 1: Y is more common in British English, and g R
Speaker 1: a y is more common in American English, and generally
Speaker 1: we're referring to what is perceived to be the color
Speaker 1: of the creature, though much of its gray appearance is
Speaker 1: due to those accumulated barnacles, skin lesions scarring their actual skin,
Speaker 1: though is still often described as light to dark gray,
Speaker 1: or maybe a gray brown. However, it's also acceptable to
Speaker 1: consider that we dub them gray whales in reference to
Speaker 1: British zoologist John Edward gray Gry who lived eighteen one
Speaker 1: hundred through eighteen seventy five, who placed the whale in
Speaker 1: its own genus in eighteen sixty four. On top of that,
Speaker 1: its scientific name is as Richtius robustus, referring to nineteenth
Speaker 1: century Danish zoologist Frederick Eschricht who lived seventeen ninety eight
Speaker 1: through eighteen sixty three.
Speaker 2: So it could have been the esh Richt whale. We're
Speaker 2: glad that it's the grey whale.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it rolls off the tongue for us at
Speaker 1: any rate a little easier. It's been known by other names,
Speaker 1: of course, the gray back, the muscle digger, the mud digger,
Speaker 1: the scrag whale, ripsack hard head, and of course by
Speaker 1: American whalers, the devilfish that was.
Speaker 2: The one referenced in that they quote from the article
Speaker 2: in the American Naturalists from the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: Correct. Yes, now there are no recognized forms or subspecies,
Speaker 1: though there are two possible sub populations according to Carwoodine,
Speaker 1: so we have the eastern North Pacific and the western
Speaker 1: North Pacific grey whale. But there also seems to be
Speaker 1: some cross breeding between these two populations in the Mexican lagoons.
Speaker 1: Now again you can put all of your sort of
Speaker 1: cartoon whale appearances to the side, because the reality is
Speaker 1: somewhat different, not only with the blowholes, but for starters,
Speaker 1: we should point out that this is a bleen whale,
Speaker 1: not a toothed whale. Baleen whales were once toothed whales
Speaker 1: earlier on in their evolution, and we do have fossil
Speaker 1: evidence of whales with both teeth and bleen, but they
Speaker 1: have adapted. The gray whales have adapted to thrive as
Speaker 1: pure filter feeders.
Speaker 2: So the balene is a bristly material that lives inside
Speaker 2: the whale's mouth which they use to filter feed by. Well,
Speaker 2: there are various different ways that different species do it,
Speaker 2: but by forcing water through these sort of sieves, natural
Speaker 2: biological sieves, the baileen hairs, which capture the plankton or
Speaker 2: the krill, or the small bits of organic matter that
Speaker 2: the whales live on.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and it's like these keratin balen plates. And
Speaker 1: this is something I hadn't given a lot of thought
Speaker 1: to before. But there are different strategies to use with
Speaker 1: your bayleen. There are two main strategies. Two of the
Speaker 1: main strategies anywhere are gulping and straining, both carried out
Speaker 1: near the water's surface by different species of whales. Baileen whales,
Speaker 1: like right whales, will swim through clouds of krill open mouth,
Speaker 1: skimming them from the water. Meanwhile, fin whales gulp up
Speaker 1: water full of fish and or krill and then push
Speaker 1: the water out as if through a sieve. But the
Speaker 1: gray whales are different. They're the only modern balen whale
Speaker 1: that dives down deep, and I mean this is deep
Speaker 1: relative to the waters they inhabit. These are not deep
Speaker 1: water whales. They're not like sperm whales. They tend to
Speaker 1: stick to coastal regions in the continental shelf, but they'll
Speaker 1: go down deep for these regions, and they'll feed as
Speaker 1: bottom feeders. They'll turn on one side, and interestingly they
Speaker 1: are there is like a right handedness to the gray whales.
Speaker 1: Most whales seem to favor their right side, but some
Speaker 1: do left instead, and they'll vacuum the water up, vacuum
Speaker 1: up water, mud, sand, and most importantly various organisms there
Speaker 1: in the muck. And then they'll use their tongue to
Speaker 1: push out the mud, sand and water.
Speaker 2: But retain all these little organisms and things they can
Speaker 2: digest in their billien.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's interesting apparently you can tell which side
Speaker 1: a particular grey whale favors because the side it favors
Speaker 1: is generally more scraped up and debarnicled, because that's the
Speaker 1: side that goes down in plows into the ocean floor.
Speaker 1: And also there bayleen plates are shorter than in other
Speaker 1: extant whales. So these other bayleen whales that use different
Speaker 1: feeding techniques, I think they tend to have longer baileen
Speaker 1: for straining out the things that they need to eat. Now,
Speaker 1: as for what they're eating out of the muck, Carbeting
Speaker 1: points out that a good eighty species of fish and
Speaker 1: invertebrates have been identified as gray whale prey. However, most
Speaker 1: of the prey that they consume consists of benthic and
Speaker 1: planktonic organisms. Planktonic meaning, of course, plankton and benthic organisms
Speaker 1: being various isopods that live abundantly in the sand. Apparently
Speaker 1: benthic amphipods make up a good ninety percent of their diet.
Speaker 1: But they're they're reasonably opportunistic and may also be shifting
Speaker 1: their foraging habits in Arctic waters due to climate change.
Speaker 1: So basically, my understanding based on the reading here is
Speaker 1: like they're going down to the mud and the muck
Speaker 1: and the sand to get most of their food, but
Speaker 1: if they happen to encounter some sort of plankton on
Speaker 1: the way up, you know they're going to breathe it in.
Speaker 1: They're going to go ahead and take that in as well.
Speaker 1: They're typically diving down thirty to sixty meters, but they
Speaker 1: may go up to one hundred and twenty or even
Speaker 1: one hundred and seventy, and again, opportunistic feeding may happen
Speaker 1: at any depth, but the seabed is their main target now.
Speaker 1: The summer is their prime feeding period, and of course
Speaker 1: they're large whales they're eating large meals. They'll eat anywhere
Speaker 1: from like one to one point three tons of the
Speaker 1: stuff per day, and the remainder of the year entails
Speaker 1: a lot of fasting, including their migrations too, and from
Speaker 1: these calving and mating lagoons.
Speaker 2: Okay, so they typically are going to be stocking up
Speaker 2: on food. They're eating, they're banging their heads into the
Speaker 2: sediment up in the Arctic waters, and then they migrate
Speaker 2: down south for calving and rearing young.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and yeah, so you might think of them
Speaker 1: as just this kind of enormous freight train of a
Speaker 1: creature that sucks up mud and anything in the mud
Speaker 1: and the sand from the waters that they inhabit and
Speaker 1: just eat all summer long and then go south through
Speaker 1: the winter.
Speaker 2: Kind of the catfish of whales.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they are. I thought about this as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're kind of because the catfish for the bottom feeders
Speaker 1: I grew up around and grew period about, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: they're kind of using the catfish strategy, but on an
Speaker 1: epic scale.
Speaker 2: But don't try to go noodling for gray whales.
Speaker 1: No, No, that doesn't sound like a good idea now,
Speaker 1: oncemall note I think I did read that there are
Speaker 1: some accepts. There seems to be some evidence that there
Speaker 1: are some whales that stay north through an extended period
Speaker 1: of time, but in general we see this migration occurring.
Speaker 1: Other important physical notes, just to describe them, they have
Speaker 1: slender and small heads even in relation to their body size,
Speaker 1: certainly when you compare them to famously big headed whales
Speaker 1: like the sperm whale, a toothed whale. They have a
Speaker 1: stocky body with a hump two thirds of the way
Speaker 1: down their back, along with eight to fourteen quote unquote knuckles.
Speaker 1: Further down. They don't have a dorsal fin. They just
Speaker 1: have a small hump. And like I mentioned earlier, they
Speaker 1: have whiskers, and apparently they have more whiskers than any
Speaker 1: other whale. I was not prepared for this, but the
Speaker 1: whiskers are very prominent, and I was reading about this
Speaker 1: on the NOAA website and they point out that these
Speaker 1: are more or less like the whiskers you'd encounter on
Speaker 1: any mammal. They are tactile sensors. Now, Carboning notes that
Speaker 1: in the older whales, though many of these whiskers are
Speaker 1: quote unquote obliterated by scarring and barnacles.
Speaker 2: However, oh, if the barnacles are in some cases obliterating
Speaker 2: their sensory organs, I feel like that offers some input
Speaker 2: on question we're going to address in a minute, which
Speaker 2: is about these barnacles. Now, we mentioned them earlier, but
Speaker 2: they're a very clear feature that people notice when they
Speaker 2: look at gray whales. It looks horrible. Some people think,
Speaker 2: you know, they look at this and they're like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, these poor whales. This must be a purely
Speaker 2: parasitic infestation where the whale is dying because of all
Speaker 2: these barnacles on it. I think it's more of an
Speaker 2: open question exactly what the symbiotic relationship between the whales
Speaker 2: and their barnacles is. Is it parasitism, is it mutualism?
Speaker 2: Is it a commensalism? Commensalism where the barnacle would get
Speaker 2: a benefit, but it just doesn't really matter to the whale.
Speaker 2: We're gonna address that in a minute.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's I know some of you might be thinking like,
Speaker 1: I just want to hear about the grey whales. I
Speaker 1: don't want to hear about the barnacles. I don't want
Speaker 1: to hear about the orca. But but here's the thing.
Speaker 1: You can't talk about the gray whale without talking about
Speaker 1: the orca, which we'll probably get into more in the
Speaker 1: second episode. And you can't talk about them without talking
Speaker 1: about their barnacles because they're just so so much a
Speaker 1: part of who they are and when what they look like.
Speaker 1: Now there again, there may be, like you said, there
Speaker 1: may be a little more nuance to exactly what the
Speaker 1: relationship might be between the barnacles and the whale lice
Speaker 1: and the whales, but for the most part, they're often
Speaker 1: referred to as exo parasites, so we're gonna probably keep
Speaker 1: using that term, even if we're going to, you know,
Speaker 1: put an asterisk by it and come back to it.
Speaker 1: They do have quite an exo parasite load, and newborns
Speaker 1: are born without any barnacles, without any lice. They're an
Speaker 1: almost uniform dark gray, almost black color, so aside from
Speaker 1: being smaller, you can definitely identify them in the water
Speaker 1: based on their coloration. But they swiftly obtain these parasites
Speaker 1: as well. In addition to of course scarring from not
Speaker 1: only the parasites but also from threats and feeding. It
Speaker 1: gives them a very highly variable appearance, and by feeding
Speaker 1: I mean their own feeding, going down and scraping themselves
Speaker 1: against the bottom of the sea floor. Before we get
Speaker 1: into the barnacle, though, I want to talk just a
Speaker 1: little bit about the whale lice, because this is all
Speaker 1: part of the exoparasite load, which, according to to Carwodine,
Speaker 1: adult gray whales carry more exo parasites than any other
Speaker 1: whale species on average, more than one hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: kilograms or three hundred and ninety six pounds of the stuff.
Speaker 2: So they got a lot living on them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I didn't do a breakdown of like how
Speaker 1: that would that sort of pair site load would be
Speaker 1: like for the human body. But I think a lot
Speaker 1: of our repulsion to barnacles and these rather large whale
Speaker 1: life is that we think about our cells, we think
Speaker 1: about our pets, and if those were on us, obviously
Speaker 1: we would want them removed pronto.
Speaker 2: Hold on, rob, I just tried to do the math
Speaker 2: on the loading of the barnacles and whale license stuff
Speaker 2: by weight. So if we're saying that adult gray whales
Speaker 2: can grow up to about forty tons, which is eighty
Speaker 2: thousand pounds, and then you compare that to you said
Speaker 2: they could have up to what like almost four hundred
Speaker 2: pounds of loading of bartaicles and stuff. That is about
Speaker 2: half a percent of the body weight. So if you
Speaker 2: translate that to a human I don't know human, somebody
Speaker 2: weighs one hundred and fifty pounds, what's half of one
Speaker 2: percent of that body weight on the outside of them? Oh,
Speaker 2: I don't know. It is having like, you know, three
Speaker 2: quarters of a pound of parasites on the outside view
Speaker 2: that bad.
Speaker 1: I don't know how many barnacles would that be. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Let's say it's one barnacle which you put
Speaker 1: up with.
Speaker 2: That's way more than one barnacle's that's a number of barnacles.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm being generous here, let's go ahead and pay
Speaker 1: it down to just one, maybe two barnacles. I feel
Speaker 1: like that would still feel like one or two barnacles
Speaker 1: too many for us. But then again, we don't live
Speaker 1: in the ocean. We don't have barnacles, so it's not
Speaker 1: appropriate for us to really make judgment calls like this.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, apologies for the rough math. I may have
Speaker 2: screwed something up there, but I tried.
Speaker 1: Now I think you captured the general feel of it,
Speaker 1: because again, we have to think about just how big
Speaker 1: these creatures are. And as we're probably get to do,
Speaker 1: the barnacles are not covering them head to toe. It's
Speaker 1: not like a suit of barnacles. They tend to be
Speaker 1: clusters in certain places like top of the head, right
Speaker 1: behind the head and other places.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they got patches, little colonies.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. They have to keep a low profile to
Speaker 1: keep from being pulled off by the water. Though again
Speaker 1: they'll they'll often scrape against things, and I'm off the
Speaker 1: top of my head, I'm not sure if they're necessarily
Speaker 1: scratching to remove themselves, remove the barnacles from their body,
Speaker 1: or if they're dealing with like general skin discomfort or
Speaker 1: it has to do with the lice, et cetera. But
Speaker 1: they end up scraping off the barnacles. Anyway, the one
Speaker 1: whale that we saw scraping against the bottom of the boat,
Speaker 1: there would be this colossal scraping sound and then like
Speaker 1: a cloud of pieces of barnacle, and like I guess,
Speaker 1: maybe some dried skin and probably some loose whale lice
Speaker 1: would come floating up through the water.
Speaker 2: That is gross. But to remind again you said earlier,
Speaker 2: I think you said that the lice on these whale
Speaker 2: are not actually lice in the sense that we usually mean,
Speaker 2: like the parasitic insects that can be found on land mammals.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, we call them lies because whalers saw them
Speaker 1: on the bodies of the whales they were slaughtering, and
Speaker 1: they just made the you know, I guess a natural
Speaker 1: comparison to be made to lice that occur on human bodies,
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, well, those are whale lice, but
Speaker 1: they're not lice. There actually a type of crustacean that's
Speaker 1: related more to the skeleton shrimp, an organism we've talked
Speaker 1: about on the show before.
Speaker 2: So what are the so called lice doing on these whales?
Speaker 1: Okay, So, if you pick up Carbadine's book, and again
Speaker 1: I recommend it for whale fans out there, he has
Speaker 1: illustrations of all four species of whale lies that you'll
Speaker 1: find on the gray whale. Three of them are only
Speaker 1: found on gray whales, and then there's another variety that
Speaker 1: is found on grey whales and bowhead whales. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there are these. They get kind of big. They can
Speaker 1: be anywhere between three and thirty millimeters long. So at
Speaker 1: the largest a little over an inch. A lot of
Speaker 1: the photographs you see of the barnacles on the bodies
Speaker 1: of grey whales, you can also see the lice clustered
Speaker 1: around them. They have this kind of the kind of
Speaker 1: like these kind of ridges on their bodies, though they
Speaker 1: may not be moving during the footage, and they live
Speaker 1: in populations up to seventy five hundred on a single whale,
Speaker 1: and they generally live and die on the same whale,
Speaker 1: though there is some degree of transference that takes place
Speaker 1: when the whales are in close confines with each other.
Speaker 1: But they have no free swimming stage in their development,
Speaker 1: no stage in their development at which they're swimming free,
Speaker 1: and they're running across other whales. If they're gonna jump ship,
Speaker 1: they've got to like jump ship straight to another whale. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but all this, like the branding of whale lies, it
Speaker 1: just made me sort of automatically assume, well, they're drinking
Speaker 1: whale blood, clearly, that's what they're doing, but that's not
Speaker 1: what they're doing. Carbodin notes that they don't drink blood.
Speaker 1: They eat whale skin that's come off just you know,
Speaker 1: like old essentially like eating dry skin, except in the water.
Speaker 1: They're possibly eating a little bit of bacteria and algae
Speaker 1: as well, and they'll also eat damage tissue, so, Carbodine writes, quote,
Speaker 1: though usually considered parasites, they might be more accurately described
Speaker 1: as cleaning symbians.
Speaker 2: Also maybe providing a benefit to the whale.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Now it's still worth noting that if there
Speaker 1: is an excessively large population, that might be an indicator
Speaker 1: of poor health for an individual whale. But you know
Speaker 1: that's you know, obviously, if an organism is in poor health,
Speaker 1: a lot of things are going to be out of whack,
Speaker 1: including the amount of creatures living on its hide.
Speaker 2: Yes, and that's true for organisms living on and in
Speaker 2: all kinds of other larger organisms. It's true for us,
Speaker 2: like our gut microbiome is useful to us. All of
Speaker 2: those bacteria in our guts are helpful. But if there
Speaker 2: something goes wrong with our immune system, they can turn opportunistic.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Now, coming back to the barnacles, Carbodine notes that quote.
Speaker 1: The barnacles are thought to be host specific to gray whales,
Speaker 1: though there are isolated examples on captive bottlenosed dolphins and
Speaker 1: beluga whales and one wild killer whale and their life
Speaker 1: cycle is synchronous with that of their hosts. And he
Speaker 1: knowes elsewhere that there are four species of whale acorn
Speaker 1: barnacles in general, in three genera, but we're talking about
Speaker 1: one particular species of acorn barnacle that is found on
Speaker 1: the skin of the gray whale, and that is Cryptolepis ratchionecti.
Speaker 1: Sorry barnacles if I butchered your scientific name a little
Speaker 1: bit there. Joe, you were kind enough to include a
Speaker 1: lot of close up images of ant of acorn barnacles
Speaker 1: in our notes here. Would you describe these for the listeners?
Speaker 2: Well, different barnacles have different outer appearances, and I guess
Speaker 2: this is because barnacles, much like coral, they are small
Speaker 2: marine invertebrates, but they are perhaps most visually notable for
Speaker 2: the external mineral structures that they build, and those ructures
Speaker 2: can sometimes be confused with the flesh of the animals themselves.
Speaker 2: But barnacles are actually crustaceans, so they are closely related
Speaker 2: to animals like shrimp and crabs. And when you've seen
Speaker 2: barnacles in the past, probably the main thing you've noticed
Speaker 2: are these external plates, which are made of calcium carbonate.
Speaker 2: They're made of the same material as eggshells or oyster
Speaker 2: shells or coral skeletons and so forth, and in barnacles,
Speaker 2: these calcium carbonate plates can have different appearances. Some kind
Speaker 2: of like flower buds made out of stone, or some
Speaker 2: look like cement pumpkins. Some look like tiny volcano calderas.
Speaker 2: If you zoom way out, some of the colonies look
Speaker 2: as I mentioned earlier, kind of like you know, groupings
Speaker 2: of lichen on a piece of granite. But if you
Speaker 2: zoom in and you see the shapes and you see
Speaker 2: the kind of holes at the top of each barnacle,
Speaker 2: they also kind of resemble the photos that people freak
Speaker 2: out about online. And I'm never sure how much of
Speaker 2: this freak out is kind of performative ironic thing, but
Speaker 2: about like trip to phobia images, you know, the lotus
Speaker 2: pod thing. I don't share this reaction, but while reading
Speaker 2: about barnacles, I came to glean that some people are
Speaker 2: deeply viscerally repulsed by the appearance of them. And I
Speaker 2: didn't even know if I was gonna mention this, but
Speaker 2: I was seeing a couple of cases where there'd be
Speaker 2: like an article on the internet about barnacles or that
Speaker 2: featured pictures of barnacles. Then you scroll down you look
Speaker 2: at the comments, and some people are reacting not just
Speaker 2: with disgust, I mean, there is plenty of that, but
Speaker 2: with like moral outrage at the author for posting these pictures,
Speaker 2: like you did something bad by showing me barnacles. I
Speaker 2: don't quite get that, but I think it may overlap
Speaker 2: with the triptophobia thing, which, as I said a minute ago,
Speaker 2: I still am not sure how much of that is
Speaker 2: kind of like the creepy clown thing, like like I
Speaker 2: fear that people are playing up on purpose to be funny,
Speaker 2: or how much like their moral rage is just like
Speaker 2: a genuine emotional overload reaction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not sure either, but I will say that,
Speaker 1: you know, with the particularly with the acorn barnacles here,
Speaker 1: they look a lot to me like the eye of sauron.
Speaker 1: They have that kind of appearance, so there's something a
Speaker 1: little unnerving about them. Also, I think it's one thing
Speaker 1: to see barnacles like this on say the hull of
Speaker 1: a ship, or you know, barnacles of another variety, but
Speaker 1: when they're on a living organism, I think maybe there's
Speaker 1: sometimes sort of category confusion going on, and particularly with
Speaker 1: these sort of round aperture appearing barnacles. I think our
Speaker 1: minds instantly go to poor anomalies. We think of like
Speaker 1: clogged pores, we think of pimples, we think of various
Speaker 1: openings that may occur in diseased flesh, and that's maybe
Speaker 1: where our mind goes, like, that's the nearest analogy that
Speaker 1: we have as surface dwellers and uh, and so we
Speaker 1: we think about all that when we see barnacles on,
Speaker 1: say a whale.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can understand that, and I certainly share that
Speaker 2: I react differently when I see them on an animal
Speaker 2: versus on just you know, growing on the you know,
Speaker 2: the the piling that a peer is resting on or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like you know, seeing the whales in the wild
Speaker 1: and seeing them close up, like they're close enough where
Speaker 1: you could you could touch the barnacles if you wanted to.
Speaker 1: I did not, and I only only touched the whale once.
Speaker 1: I'm like that's good enough. I only need to make
Speaker 1: physical contact with the gray whale once. I'm good. But
Speaker 1: you know, there is this kind of like feeling that
Speaker 1: that that you end up having. It's like should I help?
Speaker 1: Should I scrape. You know, not that you would, but
Speaker 1: you know you want to sort of help the creature. Again.
Speaker 1: You think of it almost like a dog, Whereas if
Speaker 1: your dog came up and your dog had some sort
Speaker 1: of always the seed pods or something stuck in its fur, like,
Speaker 1: you'd want to help it out. If your cat has
Speaker 1: a has something stuck in its fur, you're going to
Speaker 1: reach in there and and pull it out and get
Speaker 1: bitten as a thank you. But the whales, they're not
Speaker 1: asking for this treatment.
Speaker 2: Well, and as I'll get to in a minute, I
Speaker 2: think there's more ambiguity than we met realizing about exactly
Speaker 2: what the pluses and minuses of this relationship are, but
Speaker 2: a little a little more about barnacles themselves. So the
Speaker 2: life cycle of a barnacle goes like this. It begins
Speaker 2: as a microscopic larva that looks kind of like a
Speaker 2: cross between a flea and a shrimp. And in this
Speaker 2: larval stage, after being released by the parent, the barnacle
Speaker 2: swims around freely in the water column. So it begins
Speaker 2: life as a free swimming organism. It's just one of
Speaker 2: the trillions of zoa plankton bobbing around out there in
Speaker 2: the ocean, and as a larva, the barnacle's primary mission
Speaker 2: is to find a home. It's looking for real estate
Speaker 2: it can stake out where it will spend the rest
Speaker 2: of its life. It does this by exploring various surfaces
Speaker 2: and testing the properties of these surfaces. A lot of
Speaker 2: species are attracted to chemicals secreted by adult barnacles that
Speaker 2: let them know they have encountered a good place to
Speaker 2: swarm and congregate. And when the larva finds a surface
Speaker 2: it approves of, it proceeds to glue its head down permanently.
Speaker 2: So the barnacle secretes a form of quick drying adhesive
Speaker 2: from its antennae, and it cements itself and this is
Speaker 2: again head down to the place where it will spend
Speaker 2: the rest of its life. Apparently, barnacle cement is one
Speaker 2: of the strongest, if not the single strongest adhesive substance
Speaker 2: known in nature, so much that scientists have studied it
Speaker 2: in hopes of developing better synthetic glues for use in
Speaker 2: medicine and microelectronics, especially in conditions where you need to
Speaker 2: glue things together that are already wet. That's kind of
Speaker 2: interesting property, as like, so you're already under the water,
Speaker 2: both surfaces are wet, so how exactly do you glue
Speaker 2: this together effectively?
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 2: Once a barnacle is fixed to whatever surface it has chosen,
Speaker 2: it begins building its calcium carbonate outer plates, and it
Speaker 2: begins eating and growing. And the barnacles shell on the
Speaker 2: outside typically consists of plates that surround the animal on
Speaker 2: all sides to form a kind of cone, and then
Speaker 2: usually a few more plates on top that form a
Speaker 2: sort of door that the barnacle can close when it's
Speaker 2: threatened or closed to conserve moisture, say, if it's in
Speaker 2: an intertidal area, when the tide goes out, the barnacles
Speaker 2: exposed to the air can close up its door to
Speaker 2: keep some liquid inside, and then of course it can
Speaker 2: open them again when it is time to feed. Barnacles
Speaker 2: are filter feeders, much like bilein whales, but while whales
Speaker 2: feed by pushing water through their bleen, barnacles feed by
Speaker 2: waving their feet around in the water. Barnacles have these
Speaker 2: little legs called seeri, which are segmented like the pindages
Speaker 2: of other crustaceans, but covered in long little filaments, so
Speaker 2: they look like a cross between curly shrimp legs and
Speaker 2: peacock feathers. Rob I've attached some pictures for you to
Speaker 2: look at while I'm describing here. So they often get
Speaker 2: they'll kind of like fan these out, and they do
Speaker 2: really kind of look like a fan a bunch of
Speaker 2: these legs arranged in parallel with these little feathery kind
Speaker 2: of hairs coming off of them, and they essentially function
Speaker 2: like fishing nets. The barnacles wave these cirii through the water,
Speaker 2: collecting plankton and organic detritus and then drawing them into
Speaker 2: the shell to bring the food to their mouths.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this image is very delightful, and I guess it's
Speaker 1: harder to hate on barnacles as much if you think
Speaker 1: of them as like tiny old people who set down
Speaker 1: forever on you know, say the deck of a cruise ship,
Speaker 1: gluw their butts down and then begin to wave their
Speaker 1: fancily dressed legs in the air.
Speaker 2: Well, that's right. It wouldn't be gluing their butts, it
Speaker 2: would be gluing their foreheads down. So you would have
Speaker 2: to imagine the human analogy is if you live by
Speaker 2: gluing your forehead to a rock and then surrounding yourself
Speaker 2: with external bone places like you grow some bones on
Speaker 2: the outside. They're bones that live outside. You surround yourself
Speaker 2: with that. Then you wave your feet around in the
Speaker 2: air until you catch i don't know, something dead with
Speaker 2: your toes and your leg hairs, and then you bring
Speaker 2: that down to your mouth.
Speaker 1: Okay, well that sounds a little more monstrous again, we're
Speaker 1: skewing monstrous again. But it's still delightful.
Speaker 2: Another really amazing thing about barnacles is their sexual reproduction. Barnacles,
Speaker 2: typically in the same individual, have both male and female
Speaker 2: sex organs, but they can't reproduce asexually. They don't bud
Speaker 2: like some other sessile organisms. They have to find a
Speaker 2: partner to mate with. But they're barnacles. They are stuck
Speaker 2: to one place, remember, glued the forehead down, so they
Speaker 2: can't go wandering around to locate a mate. Other sessile
Speaker 2: organisms deal with the fact that they are immobile by
Speaker 2: simply kind of spamming the water with sperm and eggs
Speaker 2: and hoping to you, hoping that those sex cells meet
Speaker 2: up with opposite sex cels somewhere out there. This is
Speaker 2: known as broadcast spawning. I've read it alleged in many
Speaker 2: sources that barnacles never do this. They don't do exactly
Speaker 2: that with both sex cells, but it does seem some
Speaker 2: barnacles engage in sperm casting, or at least the sperm
Speaker 2: but not the eggs, are released into open water just
Speaker 2: in hopes that it will drift to an individual with
Speaker 2: an egg cell. This is according to one paper I
Speaker 2: found by Marian barizandai at All called Something Darwin Didn't
Speaker 2: Know About Barnacles Sperm cast Mating in a common stalked Species,
Speaker 2: published Proceedings of the Royal Society b Biological Sciences in
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen. This experiment found that Pacific intertitle Gooseneck barnacles
Speaker 2: do sometimes fertilize eggs by sperm casting. But this result
Speaker 2: was surprising, and the very reason it was surprising was
Speaker 2: that for the most part, barnacles have a different strategy.
Speaker 2: They actually physically copulate, or as the scientists call it,
Speaker 2: pseudo copulate, in order to exchange sperm, which means they
Speaker 2: have to find a mate by reaching. So for this reason,
Speaker 2: it has been suggested that barnacles probably have the longest
Speaker 2: penis to body size ratio of any animal on Earth,
Speaker 2: with penises measuring more than the rest of the total
Speaker 2: length of the body many times over. I've read different
Speaker 2: estimates for this. Exactly how much longer it is seems unclear,
Speaker 2: but a commonly cided figure is eight times body length.
Speaker 2: And these are used kind of how you might imagine.
Speaker 2: They sense around. They feel around at their neighbors to
Speaker 2: find neighbor to pseudocopulate with, and barnacles can act either
Speaker 2: as males or females for the purposes of mating, so
Speaker 2: they all possess these penises, and they are fascinating and
Speaker 2: remarkably adaptable organs depending on environmental conditions, so like one
Speaker 2: factor is the choppiness of the water around them, so
Speaker 2: they will grow longer in calmer waters, but shorter and
Speaker 2: thicker and choppy turbulent waters, because as you can imagine,
Speaker 2: long thin appendages are more difficult to control when the
Speaker 2: water is moving around a lot. But these the properties
Speaker 2: of this organ also depend on the density of barnacle population.
Speaker 2: So when neighbors are nearby, they don't need to reach
Speaker 2: as far, so they will be shorter and less elastic,
Speaker 2: But when neighbors are sparse, when the population is less dense,
Speaker 2: they grow very long and elastic.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I remember a friend of the show, Mara Hart,
Speaker 1: in her book Sex and the Sea as the whole
Speaker 1: section talking about barnacles and their reproductive strategies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember Mare having a lot barnacle penis is
Speaker 2: officially amazing, but anyway, so as filter feeders, barnacles usually
Speaker 2: attach themselves to stationary objects in places with a lot
Speaker 2: of activity, whether that's a rock or part of a
Speaker 2: human built structure or something else. They will attach themselves
Speaker 2: to a place where there's a lot of exchange of
Speaker 2: water back and forth. Because again they can't go out hunting.
Speaker 2: They need water containing their food to wash over them.
Speaker 2: So it's no good for a barnacle to sit around
Speaker 2: in calm, still waters. They want flow in exchange.
Speaker 1: Location, location, location, exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you want foot traffic. Oftentimes this means posting up
Speaker 2: in the intertidal zone where the tides are going to
Speaker 2: charge in and then drain out throughout the day. But
Speaker 2: if you're a really lucky barnicle, you could manage to
Speaker 2: attach yourself to a rock that moves, a rock that
Speaker 2: travels along its own course, causing water full of plankton
Speaker 2: and other goods these to wash over you. Constantly, and
Speaker 2: for this reason you will see barnacles do well by
Speaker 2: attaching themselves to the hulls of ships. This is a
Speaker 2: common problem in shipping. But for millions of years, before
Speaker 2: there were ships, there were whales, giant boulders that swim, and.
Speaker 1: Of course before whales, there were sea turtles. And I
Speaker 1: believe I was reading that whale barnacles derived from sea
Speaker 1: turtle barnacles.
Speaker 2: That's right. It is thought that whale barnacles evolved from
Speaker 2: what are called turtle barnacles, which don't just occupy turtles.
Speaker 2: They found them the shells of sea turtles, but also
Speaker 2: other things like the carapaces of crabs, and on some
Speaker 2: sirenians like manatees and so forth.
Speaker 1: But you can imagine the why this diversification takes place
Speaker 1: when whales become a possibility. Oh, these vast expanses of
Speaker 1: hide to colonize.
Speaker 2: So many whales, especially filter feeding whales, are known to
Speaker 2: accumulate barnacles, but gray whales really excel as barnacle hosts.
Speaker 2: In tons of pictures of these animals, again, they just
Speaker 2: you know, you will see them covered in patches of
Speaker 2: these things. There is one species of acorn barnacle you
Speaker 2: mentioned them earlier, called Cryptolipus rachianecti. These have been allegedly
Speaker 2: living off of gray whales in particular for millions of years.
Speaker 2: But looking at whale barnacles in general, I wanted to
Speaker 2: return to this question of what is the exact symbiotic
Speaker 2: relationship between whales and their barnacles. Are the barnacles actual
Speaker 2: parasites causing net harm to their hosts, or is the
Speaker 2: relationship an example of what biologists would call commensalism where
Speaker 2: the host is not really impacted one way or the other,
Speaker 2: but the barnacle gets a benefit. Or is it possible
Speaker 2: there are mutualistic benefits. Do both the whale and the
Speaker 2: barnacle get something good out of the relationship. It seems
Speaker 2: like for a long time experts thought that whales in
Speaker 2: their barnacles were generally an example of a commensal relationship.
Speaker 2: So the barnacles get a benefit, get the benefit of
Speaker 2: a moving substrate to bring them a steady flow of plankton,
Speaker 2: as well as getting general protection from predators. And you
Speaker 2: can see this reduced risk of predation when attached to
Speaker 2: a whale body in the fact that whale barnacles in particular,
Speaker 2: have evolved to possess a less defensively oriented outer plate
Speaker 2: structure they usually have rob If you compare pictures of
Speaker 2: different kind of barnacles, it seems like whale barnacles often
Speaker 2: just have more kind of fleshy bits poking out of
Speaker 2: their shells at all times. They don't close their plate
Speaker 2: doors completely or as completely, so they just seem like
Speaker 2: they have to be less focused on defense than some
Speaker 2: of the barnacles are.
Speaker 1: This probably also contributes to the disturbing quality to some
Speaker 1: to seeing barnacles on whales, because yeah, it's more obviously
Speaker 1: some sort of creature living on the the whales high
Speaker 1: and you can't just dismiss it as think some sort
Speaker 1: of stone like detritus that's built up there.
Speaker 2: Right, So what's undeniable is that the barnacles get a
Speaker 2: benefit from the relationship. But is it true that the
Speaker 2: relationship is basically nothing to the whale, neither helpful nor harmful. Well,
Speaker 2: this seems very debatable. For one thing, having barnacles on
Speaker 2: the skin would quite clearly reduce the hydrodynamic efficiency of
Speaker 2: the whale's movement. As a point of analogy, this is
Speaker 2: not a perfect analogy. But I was reading from the
Speaker 2: National Marine Sanctuary Foundation about the effect of barnacles on
Speaker 2: ships built by humans, and they write, quote, the US
Speaker 2: Navy estimates that heavy barnacle growth on ships can add
Speaker 2: weight and increase drag by nearly sixty percent, which can
Speaker 2: lead to as much as a forty percent increase in
Speaker 2: fuel consumption. Now, obviously those figures don't map exactly onto
Speaker 2: an organism like a whale, but the principle holds true.
Speaker 2: It seems clear that barnacles would make a way a
Speaker 2: less efficient swimmer, even if only by a marginal percent. Also,
Speaker 2: the fact that whales have been observed to engage in
Speaker 2: behavior that looks like an attempt to remove barnacles would
Speaker 2: probably also mean that they are at least somewhat perceived
Speaker 2: as a nuisance by the whale, at least assuming those
Speaker 2: interpretations of that behavior is correct. Now, Rob, I can't
Speaker 2: remember if you mentioned it earlier, but you had said
Speaker 2: something to me about observations of whales appearing to want
Speaker 2: to scrape barnacles off their body, maybe by rubbing up
Speaker 2: against things. And maybe we don't understand exactly what the
Speaker 2: purpose of that behavior is, but it's been interpreted as
Speaker 2: an attempt to remove barnacles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's my understanding. And they'll do this not
Speaker 1: only in the bottoms of boats and ships, but they'll
Speaker 1: do this on rocks in the sand, and also just
Speaker 1: through the act of feeding, because again, these are bottom
Speaker 1: feeders who scrape half of their body against the bottom
Speaker 1: of the sea. But yeah, I guess the thing we
Speaker 1: have to keep in mind is that it's not just
Speaker 1: the barnacles on the body, they are also the sea
Speaker 1: lies they're scarring. There's reason to believe that. I guess
Speaker 1: a whale could itch for other reasons, or have some
Speaker 1: sort of skin irritation for other reasons, and it might
Speaker 1: be pleasurable for other reasons for it to scrape its
Speaker 1: body against something, even if that scraping does in effect
Speaker 1: remove barnacles from its skin.
Speaker 2: Yes, so there are several ways where you might be
Speaker 2: able to interpret barnacles as parasites as causing net harm
Speaker 2: to the whales. However, I came across another idea that
Speaker 2: I thought was very interesting. Again, this is not certain,
Speaker 2: it's debatable, but some researchers have speculated there could be
Speaker 2: cases where whale barnacles are actually providing a benefit to
Speaker 2: the whale. Now what could that be? It's hard to
Speaker 2: imagine by looking at it. But what has been proposed
Speaker 2: is that barnacles may serve as a form of armor
Speaker 2: or as a weapon in some cases. Now, what would
Speaker 2: the evidence for this idea? Well, I was looking at
Speaker 2: a paper by John K. B Ford and Randall R.
Speaker 2: Reeves published in The Mammal Review in two thousand and
Speaker 2: eight called fight or Flight Anti predator strategies of billen whales. Now,
Speaker 2: something we've already alluded to and we're going to talk
Speaker 2: about more extensively in the next episode is orca predation
Speaker 2: on gray whales in particular. But orcas, also known as
Speaker 2: killer whales, are major predators to a number of mistacetti
Speaker 2: or billen whale species, and the authors of this paper
Speaker 2: argue that understanding the role of orcas as predators has
Speaker 2: been hampered by poor understanding of the different predator prey
Speaker 2: dynamics quote, including the relative vulnerability of different misseddeceit species
Speaker 2: and age classes to killer whales and how those prey
Speaker 2: animals avoid predation. So, what are the different patterns of
Speaker 2: behavior that different prey species of whales resort to when
Speaker 2: an orca starts threat them, or when a pod of
Speaker 2: orcas threatens them. The authors argue there are two main
Speaker 2: classes of behavioral response, and those are fight or flight.
Speaker 2: The flight strategy is fairly simple. When you spot kular whales,
Speaker 2: you get out of there. The authors describe the strategy
Speaker 2: as rapid monodirectional swimming away from the orcas at a
Speaker 2: pace of between twenty and forty kilometers an hour, a
Speaker 2: speed that the orcas cannot generally keep up with or
Speaker 2: will not keep up with usually, and this behavior has
Speaker 2: been observed in six species of the genus Baleinoptera, which
Speaker 2: contains animals like the mink, fin and blue whales. On
Speaker 2: the other hand, many different species exhibit what the authors
Speaker 2: call the fight strategy, which quote consists of active physical defense,
Speaker 2: including self defense by single individuals, defense of calves by
Speaker 2: their mothers, and coordinated defense by groups of whales. It's
Speaker 2: documented for five mystic seats, and they list the Southern
Speaker 2: right whale, the North Atlantic right whale, the bowhead whale,
Speaker 2: the humpback whale, and the gray whale. The authors argue
Speaker 2: that these strategies are not incidental, they are selected by
Speaker 2: evolution for each species to maximize survival odds based on
Speaker 2: the whale's other physical characteristics. Species that engage in the
Speaker 2: flight strategy have streamlined bodies that are capable of fast,
Speaker 2: sustained endurance swimming. They also quote tend to favor pelagic habitats,
Speaker 2: which that means open sea, deep water and calving grounds
Speaker 2: where prolonged escape sprints from killer whales are possible. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: they say that whales that engage in fight strategies tend
Speaker 2: to have more robust body shapes, and they tend to
Speaker 2: be slower swimmers, but they're also usually maneuverable swimmers, so
Speaker 2: they they might not be able to do monodirection, you know,
Speaker 2: swimming in one direction really fast for a long time,
Speaker 2: but they can kind of move around quickly within a
Speaker 2: small space if they need to, say, reposition their bodies
Speaker 2: or deliver a blow. These species also quote often calve
Speaker 2: or migrating coastal areas where proximity to shallow water provides
Speaker 2: refuge and an advantage in defense. Most fight species have
Speaker 2: either callosities, which are rough and hardened patches of skin,
Speaker 2: or incrustations of barnacles on their bodies, which may serve
Speaker 2: either primarily or secondarily as weapons or armor for defense.
Speaker 2: So I think that's a really interesting inference here. Specifically,
Speaker 2: whales that are more likely to fight predators rather than
Speaker 2: run from them also happen to be the ones that
Speaker 2: are more likely to have either callosities, these raised calloused
Speaker 2: patches of skin, or colonies of barnacles on their skin, which,
Speaker 2: of course, you know, a colony of barnacles, you do
Speaker 2: not want to bite into that or get slapped with it.
Speaker 2: And the authors right that humpback whales are believed to
Speaker 2: make use of these barnacle encrusted patches as weapons during
Speaker 2: fights between males at breeding grounds. They say, you know,
Speaker 2: there are many different kind of moves that humpback whales
Speaker 2: will do against each other when they're displaying aggressive behaviors
Speaker 2: to other males. They will do headbutting and ramming of
Speaker 2: each other, striking blows, and they will hit each other
Speaker 2: with long flippers and tail flukes. And the authors point
Speaker 2: out that these parts of the body where they will
Speaker 2: hit each other are also parts of the body areas
Speaker 2: where there are large encrustations of barnacles usually found. They say,
Speaker 2: quote a blow from a barnacle encrusted surface would likely
Speaker 2: have enhanced effectiveness in aggressive physical interactions, and from this
Speaker 2: they go on to argue that these same types of
Speaker 2: attacks are probably used by humpback whales against predatory orcas,
Speaker 2: and the barnacles probably provide an advantage in the same way. Now,
Speaker 2: the same is maybe not exactly true of gray whales,
Speaker 2: because they say gray whales don't fight quite as much.
Speaker 2: They don't show examples of intraspecific aggression associated with male
Speaker 2: competition like the humpback whales do, so the males are
Speaker 2: less often fighting each other like humpback whales. But they
Speaker 2: say that barnacles on the skin of gray whales could
Speaker 2: still help protect the whales as basically a type of
Speaker 2: defensive armor. So if an orca tries to ram the
Speaker 2: body of a gray whale and it's got an incrustation
Speaker 2: of barnacles on it, or they try to bite the
Speaker 2: gray whale and they bite them on an incrustation of barnacles,
Speaker 2: that seems much more likely to harm the attacking animal.
Speaker 1: This is fascinating. So on one level, yes, the mating
Speaker 1: of the grey whales, we'll probably get into that more
Speaker 1: in the next episode. But yeah, there definitely is more
Speaker 1: of a sort of a free love kind of a
Speaker 1: vibe going on among the gray whales. So the males
Speaker 1: are not necessarily competing with each other, it seems now.
Speaker 1: But on the same level, I mean, the whales are
Speaker 1: going to come into contact with each other and the
Speaker 1: barnacles to do scar other whales sort of at least incidentally,
Speaker 1: this was pointed out to us in Mexico by one
Speaker 1: of the local guides on the boats. Of course, they're
Speaker 1: covered in scars from various things, everything from orca attacks
Speaker 1: two barnacles scraping them via contact with other whales. And yeah,
Speaker 1: this is an interesting idea though, because on one level,
Speaker 1: a really good blow from a fluke or a flipper
Speaker 1: from a gray whale I've read it is enough certainly
Speaker 1: to kill a man, but also could potentially kill an
Speaker 1: orca in one blow as well. But I guess you're
Speaker 1: not necessarily going to get that killer blow every time.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you're just going to maybe make a lighter contact
Speaker 1: or a near my yes, and you can imagine those
Speaker 1: scenarios would be enhanced by some sort of barnacle encrusting possibly.
Speaker 2: Now to come back on that, you could imagine other
Speaker 2: reasonings as well that there might be this correlation where
Speaker 2: species that are more likely to stand and fight when
Speaker 2: attacked by orcos rather than run away, are also the
Speaker 2: ones more likely to be encrusted with barnacles. Maybe there
Speaker 2: is a common cause, like barnacles don't actually make useful
Speaker 2: armor or make useful weapons, but the slow swimming that
Speaker 2: makes a gray whale have to rely on fighting rather
Speaker 2: than rapid escape also makes it more susceptible to barnacle infestation.
Speaker 2: That kind of thing could be possible, But I think
Speaker 2: it's an interesting correlation, and it makes you wonder how
Speaker 2: you would test that further, Like could you compare different
Speaker 2: individual whales of the same species and look at maybe
Speaker 2: how much barnacle loading they have and then observe their
Speaker 2: relative success. It's a protecting calves from orcapods. Do mothers
Speaker 2: with more barnacles win more fights againsts and so forth?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's also worth noting in all of this
Speaker 1: that the young gray whales again have no barnacles. They're
Speaker 1: born without barnacles. They will accumulate barnacles, but it takes
Speaker 1: a little time for the hard barnacles to actually build up,
Speaker 1: so especially during the period when they're leaving those sheltered lagoons.
Speaker 1: This is when they are at their most vulnerable for
Speaker 1: a number of reasons.
Speaker 2: However, it's another thing the authors point out that I
Speaker 2: think is worth remembering is that whales, including gray whales,
Speaker 2: are not orcas only prey, and they are an especially
Speaker 2: dangerous and costly type of prey for the orcas to pursue.
Speaker 2: The author's right quote, the rarity of observed successful attacks
Speaker 2: by killer whales on bileen whales, especially adults, maybe an
Speaker 2: indication of the effectiveness of these anti predator strategies. Bileene
Speaker 2: whales likely offer low profitability to killer whales relative to
Speaker 2: some other marine mammal prey. High speed pursuit of flight
Speaker 2: species has a high energetic cost and the low probability
Speaker 2: of success, while attacks on fight species can involve prolonged
Speaker 2: handling times and a risk of serious injury. So the
Speaker 2: balen whales here are not helpless against these orcas like
Speaker 2: they put up a real fight. And if the orcas
Speaker 2: are going to eat a whale calf like the they
Speaker 2: will make them work for it.
Speaker 1: So of course, yeah, they will work for it. They
Speaker 1: are hard workers the orca, but as is often the case.
Speaker 1: We've discussed this with various predator prayer relationships, Like it's
Speaker 1: every little bit of deterrent that adds up to survival,
Speaker 1: Like anything that makes you a slightly more difficult meal,
Speaker 1: then you increase the odds that the predators will realize
Speaker 1: that this is not worth it. Yeah, and we will
Speaker 1: get into this in the next episode. But I mean,
Speaker 1: that's one of the reasons the lagoons are safe harbors,
Speaker 1: is that is that that they have found a place
Speaker 1: to go that do not favor the old Orcus and
Speaker 1: the Orca's intelligent pack or pod hunters that they are. Uh,
Speaker 1: they will attack their most one of their most dangerous
Speaker 1: prey when they have the optimal advantage, when they have
Speaker 1: everything lining up for them. Uh, they're not gonna They're
Speaker 1: not gonna do it if they if they don't have
Speaker 1: a key advantage.
Speaker 2: So I guess more on that next time.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wait, before we close out, what do you what do
Speaker 2: you think about the barnacle armor slash weapon hypothesis. You
Speaker 2: think that's got anything going for it or not?
Speaker 1: I like it. I certainly buy that at least partial
Speaker 1: encrusting with barnacles would perhaps provide this incidental extra level
Speaker 1: of defense or offense. I just I'm not as sure
Speaker 1: how that maybe factors into like the grander like evolutionary
Speaker 1: scheme of things.
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, and how it balances out against I
Speaker 2: guess negative impacts from say introducing drag and swimming and other.
Speaker 1: Things, yeah, or mating behavior and so forth. But I mean,
Speaker 1: they've they've been scraepy with barnacles for a long time,
Speaker 1: so they're accustomed to it. It is a part of
Speaker 1: who they are, which I think is one of the
Speaker 1: big take coms again for thinking about gray whales and
Speaker 1: their barnacles and their lice and their most notable predator, Like,
Speaker 1: these are creatures that are not only a part of
Speaker 1: their lives, but they have shaped the life of the
Speaker 1: grey whale. They've shaped what the gray whale is, and
Speaker 1: you can't remove them from the scenario. All right. Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna go ahead and call it
Speaker 1: for this episode. We'll be back in the next core
Speaker 1: episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind to discuss gray
Speaker 1: whales in greater detail. We'll talk about there there were
Speaker 1: more about the relationship with the orcas. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: some of the variety of orcas as well. We'll kind
Speaker 1: of go on an Orco's tangent and then we'll get
Speaker 1: into more details about their migration and their reproduction. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, we'd love to hear from everyone out there.
Speaker 1: Do you have experience is with grey whales that you
Speaker 1: would like to share with us? Write in we'd love
Speaker 1: to hear them. Heck, if you have any experience with whales,
Speaker 1: If you've any whale watchers out there and you want
Speaker 1: to tell us about other species of whales that you're
Speaker 1: super into, let us know. I'm all revd up on
Speaker 1: whales and dolphins and porpoises right now, so I'm excited
Speaker 1: to see your photos and hear your stories. A reminder
Speaker 1: that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science
Speaker 1: podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays
Speaker 1: we do listener mail, On Wednesdays we do a short
Speaker 1: form artifact or monster fact, and on Fridays we do
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema. That's our time to set aside most
Speaker 1: serious concerns and just talk about a weird film.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you
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