Tracking Cetaceans in the San Francisco Bay (Why it's Important) with Bill Keener, Marine Mammal Center (Sausalito, CA USA) Cetacean Field Research Associate

Recorded late Oct '24, this podcast is a deep dive into the history of whales, dolphins, and porpoises in the San Francisco Bay, and up the Pacific coast. 

Keener joined The Marine Mammal Center in the 70s as an animal care volunteer and later served as Exec. Dir. in the early 80s. In his current role as a Research Associate on the Center’s Cetacean Field Research Team, he focuses on the study of whales, dolphins and porpoises.

A co-founder of the former nonprofit Golden Gate Cetacean Research, Bill’s career highlights include the first-ever humpback whale and bottlenose dolphin photo-id catalogs for the Bay, and a multi-year project to document the return of harbor porpoises to the Bay after an absence of 65 years. His latest scientific publications concern the porpoises’ social / feeding behavior based on observations made from the Golden Gate Bridge. 

Bill’s other research experience includes assisting with the first harbor porpoise census for the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary in the late 80s. He has worked as a whale watch naturalist for the Oceanic Society and recently retired from the U.S. EPA.

My mission is not only to study our local whales, dolphins and porpoises, but to introduce people to this wildlife spectacle in their own ‘backyard’ of San Francisco Bay. Scientific data and public awareness are both critical to ensure that these unique species are given the protections they deserve.

Planet Centric Media (non-profit)
Media for a Healthier Planet: Elevating The Interconnectedness of Life & Value of Natural Resources.

Mendonoma Whale & Seal Study
Founded by Scott & Tree Mercer to document the occurrence, diversity, & behavior of marine mammals.

Sea Storm Studios, Inc.
An audio/visual production company in the Sea Ranch, CA (US)

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;23;13
Speaker 1 - Leigh Anne Lindsey
(INTRO WITH MUSIC) Welcome to Resilient Earth Radio, where we host speakers from the United States and around the world to talk about critical issues facing our planet and the positive actions people are taking. We also let our listeners learn how they can get involved and make a difference.

00;00;23;15 - 00;00;44;05
We are resilient. Earth radio, a project, a planet centric media.

00;00;44;07 - 00;01;03;12
Speaker 2
(Intro by Seve Cardosi) Today on Resilient Earth Radio, host Leigh Anne Lindsey, along with Tree and Scott Mercer, are joined by guests Bill Keener a cetacean field research associate at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California.

00;01;03;15 - 00;01;16;06
Bill's career highlights included the first ever humpback whale and bottlenose dolphin photo identification catalogs for the San Francisco Bay.

00;01;16;08 - 00;01;26;13
Bill is also organized a network of citizen scientists to help keep track of these magnificent beings.

00;01;26;15 - 00;01;41;22
Their conversation delves into the history of the San Francisco Bay from the 40s to now, and the effects it had on whales, dolphins and porpoises.

00;01;41;25 - 00;01;57;28
All that and so much more today on Resilient Earth radio.

00;01;58;00 - 00;02;00;05
Speaker 1
(Host Leigh Anne Lindsey) Welcome to the show, Bill.

00;02;00;12 - 00;02;02;24
Speaker 3
(Guest Bill Keener) Thank you very much. Great to be here.

00;02;02;26 - 00;02;19;28
Speaker 1
(Host Leigh Anne) It's really good to have you again. And thank you. Scott and Tree for setting this up for us today. Bill, you have extensive knowledge, obviously. Can you bring us up to speed on what you've been doing lately and some of the scope of your work?

00;02;20;01 - 00;02;41;05
Speaker 3
(Guest Bill) Yeah. So I've spent a lot of time looking at, San Francisco Bay and as well as the Marin Coast. I live in Marin County, and the changes that I've seen over the decades is really pretty astonishing. So if you think back to when I was a boy growing up in San Francisco, I was born in San Francisco.

00;02;41;07 - 00;03;07;03
Speaker 3
I remember going across the Bay bridge when I was very young, and it would smell like a cesspool. In the evenings, there was unchecked sewage running into the bay. There was industrial discharge. There were no laws against it in the 50s. And that was really at a time when, you know, you could not certainly not go out and see cetaceans, which was the family of whales and dolphins and porpoises in San Francisco Bay.

00;03;07;06 - 00;03;33;27
Speaker 3
It took many years. I started at the Marine Mammal Center looking mostly dealing with seals and sea lions. That was what we were rescuing and rehabilitating and releasing back to the wild. And we really didn't concentrate on the cetaceans, because in San Francisco Bay, they weren't any..there were certainly some along the coast, and we would do necropsies that is, you know, an autopsy on stranded dead whales or dolphins at the time.

00;03;34;00 - 00;04;13;21
Speaker 3
But it wasn't until around 2007 and eight that we started to see harbor porpoises as the very first of the cetaceans to come back into the bay. The reason I know that they've returned is because they used to be there... the reason we know they used to be there because people saw them in the 1930s. We even have indigenous peoples midden mounds in that Emeryville shell mound that has bones of harbor porpoises in them, and that was built over 2000 years from about 700 BC to about 1300 A.D. so we know there was harbor porpoises in San Francisco Bay.

00;04;13;23 - 00;04;34;27
Speaker 3
Then around World War two. That was the last of them for a long time. 1 or 2 might be seen every once in a while, but they certainly were not using the bay on a daily basis. It took many years for the laws to take effect that clean the bay like the Clean Water Act, the grassroots efforts, people wanting to save the bay, stop filling the bay.

00;04;35;03 - 00;04;57;03
Speaker 3
And for us to really appreciate the bay for what it is. And that restoration, that clean up allowed fish to proliferate in the bay. And that's what attracts all the animals. I mean, it's all about the food, right? They are interested in efficient resources so they can eat. And if there's food in the bay, they will come into the bay and feed,

00;04;57;03 - 00;05;23;14
Speaker 3
And that's what happened around 2007-08. We started seeing harbor porpoises come back, and now they're here every day. I've done work where I've studied them from the Golden Gate Bridge, which is a great platform to see them. You're just 220ft up, and you don't interfere with any of their natural behaviors. And a couple of hours I'll spend on the bridge, you might see, you know, 50 or 100 porpoises going by.

00;05;23;16 - 00;05;31;22
Speaker 3
So it's really an amazing turnaround for San Francisco Bay. And that's just one of the four cetaceans we're studying that use the bay. Now.

00;05;31;24 - 00;05;40;29
Speaker 1
(Co-Host Tree Mercer, Mendonoma Whale & Seal Study, Mendocino & Sonoma Coasts, Northern CA) Wonderful. And Bill, isn't there some sort of a barrier at the entrance of the bay that was set up by the military at one point?

00;05;41;01 - 00;06;05;00
Speaker 3
(Guest Bill) Right. So I didn't get into all the bad things that happened to the Bay, but let's let's think about them in order. So in the 1800s, well, actually in the 1700s, when the very first Spanish colonists arrived, they actually saw whales in San Francisco Bay. They report them from the very, very first time they come. And this is just about whale spouting in the distance.

00;06;05;03 - 00;06;29;18
Speaker 3
And then by the 1800s, after the gold rush, when so many people were coming into the Bay, the US government was very interested in getting rid of all these rocky knobs, these little islets in the bay, because they were hazardous to navigation. So they would blast these huge rocks into the air. And starting in the late 1800s into early 1900s.

00;06;29;21 - 00;06;59;05
Speaker 3
And that is exactly the kind of concussion, the sudden noise that disturbs cetaceans. They're acoustic animals. They make a living by their ears, by their hearing. And these large, loud noises. And this has been proven. It's still in Europe right now where construction, say, for a windfarm offshore, has negative effects on the porpoises nearby. They'll move away. So this was starting in the bay.

00;06;59;07 - 00;07;24;12
Speaker 3
Then you had this huge fill project called Treasury Island, where they were taking all this sand and dirt from near Angel Island and moving it over next to the Bay bridge that they were building in 1930s. What else were they building in the 1930s? They were building the Golden Gate Bridge, and they were blasting the foundations out in the South tower, making all kinds of noise.

00;07;24;15 - 00;07;53;26
Speaker 3
Then things get worse. A little thing called World War Two came along, and they mined the harbor outside of San Francisco Bay. They also built a huge anti-submarine net out of steel, and they stretched it from Sausalito to San Francisco, six miles long. Huge thing with floats. And then they also had rings on top of that to keep torpedoes from coming through the net.

00;07;53;26 - 00;08;14;24
Speaker 3
That keeps the submarines out. Anyway, it was a sort of a crazy thing. Mostly they built it in what is now called the iOS center, San Francisco State's Marine Laboratory campus. They used to be called a Romberg Center, so that was Navy property at the time, and it was called the Navy Submarine Depot. The Net depot, and they built the net there.

00;08;14;26 - 00;08;32;03
Speaker 3
They stretch it across the bay. Nothing could come in or out. They had a very small gate that the Navy would open and close for every single boat that would come in or out of the bay. So this would keep any large animals from moving through at all. So I think that was sort of really the end of it.

00;08;32;06 - 00;08;59;21
Speaker 3
But then think about all the traffic. So Kaiser was building Liberty ships in the bay. Bechtel was building Liberty ships in the bay in Sausalito. All this pollution was coming into the bay. The fish levels were really knocked down. And so the bay, I think, was just not as interesting for big animals to get fish. So that was sort of a sad story of our bay, but it's really turned around.

00;08;59;23 - 00;09;05;22
Speaker 1
(Host Leigh Anne) Could you describe again what era that you're talking about there? And when did they take those nets down to.

00;09;05;25 - 00;09;31;28
Speaker 3
(Guest Bill) Yeah. So those nets went up actually before Pearl Harbor happened. So they actually started realizing there, there could be war coming. So they actually started on the net a few months before Pearl Harbor, which was December of 1941. So the net was up until V-J day, which is victory over Japan, which was August 1945. So it was up there for about four years.

00;09;32;01 - 00;09;47;19
Speaker 3
So they literally started taking this thing out the day the war ended, because the fishermen _hated_ it. I mean, it was really interfering with commerce and fishing and stuff in the area. So they started pulling it out. The, the second, the war was over.

00;09;47;22 - 00;09;59;16
Speaker 1
(Host Leigh Anne) And they were building a lot in the bay, the Treasure Island, Golden Gate Bridge. Can you describe the stretch of time in the bay where this is disrupting the marine life there?

00;09;59;19 - 00;10;19;28
Speaker 3
(Guest Bill) Yeah. So this is the 1930s. So the 30s, you had Treasury Island being built. The Bay bridge was built and the Golden Gate Bridge. And so I remember my mother talking about it. She was there for the first day. The Golden Gate Bridge open and walked across it before they let the cars go across. And this is like 1937.

00;10;20;01 - 00;10;55;10
Speaker 3
And when she was like eight years old. So it was it was quite a big thing to connect commercially, the bay by these two great bridges and, you know, and they still had ferry service going across where the Richmond, the Richmond bridge didn't get built until the 50s. And so that that took a little while. But I think that in terms of the disturbance of the wildlife and even the way the water circulates in the bay, when you think about it, was affected by this massive new island, Treasure Island, that was put into the bay.

00;10;55;13 - 00;11;21;16
Speaker 1
(Host Leigh Anne) You're listening to the voice of Bill keener. He is with the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito and Marin County, Northern California, and he is an expert on all things whales, dolphins and porpoises. With me, Scott and Tree Mercer of the Mendonoma Whale and Seals Study. And that's what they do, too. They're constantly gathering data and information about the whale migration and patterns along our coast.

00;11;21;23 - 00;11;29;22
Speaker 1
Scott, you were telling me how you met Bill keener and some of the information you provide him. Could you describe some of that?

00;11;29;24 - 00;11;35;02
Speaker 4
(Co-Host Scott Mercer) Sure. Hi, Bill, thanks for finding the time to do this and agreeing to come do this today.

00;11;35;04 - 00;11;36;12
Speaker 3
(Guest Bill) My pleasure.

00;11;36;14 - 00;11;55;27
Speaker 4
(Co-Host Scott Mercer) I was just listening to you talking, and it appears that you and I were in Marin County about the same time I was in Mill Valley from 72 until late 70s, when I moved back to New England, and I had been in California from 67 to the late 70s, those years in Marin County. And I went to College of Marin.

00;11;55;27 - 00;11;59;01
Speaker 4
At the time, you might have known Al Molina and Gordon Chan.

00;11;59;04 - 00;12;00;07
Speaker 3
(Guest Bill) Absolutely.

00;12;00;10 - 00;12;20;24
Speaker 4
(Co-host Scott) Fantastic instructors. I was so lucky. The fact I can say they changed my life. I came up with a degree in English literature and no idea what I was going to do, and I met some friends in North Valley and we rented a series of houses over the years. So, enrolling in classes at College of Marin really changed things for me.

00;12;20;27 - 00;12;47;08
Speaker 4
That was starting to tell Leigh Anne at the beginning. How I Met You. You had just given a talk at the ACS conference, American Cetacean Society in Newport, and I walked up to the stage at the end of it to introduce myself, because I didn't know really anybody here on this coast. I remembered a few names, I walked up, I remember saying to you, I said, you guys don't know me from a hole in the ground, but I've been around forever.

00;12;47;11 - 00;13;08;19
Speaker 4
So I had started in 78 on the East Coast with, photographing humpback whales for College of the Atlantic, and started my own company back in New Hampshire in 1978. So, I had some experience, but I didn't know anybody. So you guys were really nice to me. I walked up to you and interrupted you. And part of the reason I walked up was during your talk.

00;13;08;19 - 00;13;32;18
Speaker 4
You were talking about Harbor Porpoise and Tree and I a week or two before, I just seen a string of harbor porpoise in Tomales Bay. And I wanted to tell you about that. And then about a week after we met at ACS, Tree and I were out where we stood with you. Years later, I on by the Lighthouse and Point Arena, and we saw 7 or 8 bottlenose dolphins.

00;13;32;18 - 00;13;54;19
Speaker 4
And now you had told us how important that was, that work. So I sent that report down to you at the time. So that was actually how we met back then. And I've been fortunate to spend time with you since then. And I guess the next time we saw each other was the biennial conference. You were at a table, right after that morning, and you let me store my poster with you until it was time to present.

00;13;54;21 - 00;14;22;15
Speaker 4
Anyway, that's how we met. I was telling Leigh Anne about the incredible work you guys have done with bottlenose dolphins. And that's what I wanted to ask you about. Was a little update on that. If that's if as many is still working their way up here. I remember when Shari Tarantino who used to work at the lighthouse and a couple of other places here, photograph some what she thought were common dolphins off the deck of her apartment in Puget Sound.

00;14;22;17 - 00;14;40;18
Speaker 4
And she emailed them to me and asked that I might like to see them. I thought they were bottlenose, so I shipped them down to you in Sausalito, and then you wrote back very excited about that. They were bottlenose. We haven't seen any bottlenose here in quite a while. And I was wondering, what's going on now with that work?

00;14;40;20 - 00;15;07;10
Speaker 3
(Guest Bill) Yeah. Yeah, sure. Happy to talk about bottlenose dolphins. We're still continuing our work to really investigate these this really interesting species. I mean, bottlenose dolphins are worldwide, but the California coastal bottlenose dolphin that's the stock or sub population that you're talking about. I think it's really interesting. For one thing, there's just not a lot of them. There are only maybe 600 or 700.

00;15;07;10 - 00;15;33;12
Speaker 3
In all of the state of California, their range stretches from Mexico, like Ensenada in Mexico, Baja north to right now we're saying their sort of northern range is about The Sea Ranch. There didn't used to be bottlenose dolphins in Northern California, like when I started in the 70s looking for cetaceans in our area. There were no bottlenose dolphins to be seen at all.

00;15;33;14 - 00;15;56;15
Speaker 3
They were all in Southern California. They never made it really further north in Point Conception, Santa Barbara area. But in 1983, that all changed. So there was this big El Nino at the time. Water warmed up and the dolphins were able to make it as far north as Monterey Bay in one year, and after the water cooled, went back to normal.

00;15;56;17 - 00;16;37;27
Speaker 3
The Dolphins had already learned to navigate and find food in the Monterey Bay area, so they stayed. And then over the years, they crept further and further north towards San Francisco. We first saw them really coming in in 2007, but they didn't. They weren't here steadily until 2010. And that's when our study really started in 2010. And what's nice about bottlenose dolphins is that you can identify all the adults, because you've got this dorsal fin and the trailing edge of the dorsal fin has unique nicks and notches that are different for every animal with a different silhouette.

00;16;38;00 - 00;17;23;09
Speaker 3
And these animals are often you're sure they're called coastal dolphins for a reason. They just tend to stay within a kilometer of shore, even much less just right outside the surf break. So you can take pictures from shore, as you know, and if you can get decent photographs of them, we were able to not only start a photo ID catalog of the individuals that are coming into the San Francisco and Marin (County) area, but then we were able to compare that catalog with the researchers from Southern California and northern Mexico and realize, my gosh, half of the animals that we're seeing are from Southern California, where they started decades ago.

00;17;23;15 - 00;18;06;03
Speaker 3
Bottlenose dolphins live a long time, and almost as long as people, so you can follow them since like the 80s, some of these were born in the San Diego area and now are now living off the Marin Sonoma coast. And at the same time, there was this blob, this marine heatwave that happened, but around 20 1516. And that's when the incident that you mentioned, Scott, happened, where a couple of the photo identified, known adult females ended up in the Puget Sound, which stunned all of us because, well, for one thing, nobody from the entire state of Oregon ever saw them go by.

00;18;06;05 - 00;18;26;28
Speaker 3
So, they just ended up in Puget Sound. Now, we have not heard from them really since. So they were there for about a year and we really don't know what happened. They have not shown back up here in our area, so we don't know. They just kept going north or what happened or the water got too cold and it was just too tough on them.

00;18;27;03 - 00;18;49;16
Speaker 3
They couldn't make it back down. We really don't know. That’s a bit of a mystery for us. But meanwhile the other thing that's happened is that point Blue Conservation called us one day because they're researchers out on the Farallone Islands saw a few bottlenose dolphins go by, and they were stunned because they don't see bottlenose dolphins. So they took a few pictures.

00;18;49;18 - 00;19;13;29
Speaker 3
They sent them to us. Sure enough, a match from the coastal dolphins that we've been seeing regularly on shore, they somehow got instead of going off one kilometer, they were 40km offshore out at the Farallones. So these guys will explore like they were exploring all the way the coast to Puget Sound and explore it out to the Farallones.

00;19;14;02 - 00;19;36;12
Speaker 3
So we're still learning about what these bottlenose dolphins are capable of. When you think about it, they get a very, very thin habitat. It's just really close to the coast and it's very variable here in California with La Nina's, El Nino's and food resources are scarce for them sometimes, so they have to move around to really find good food.

00;19;36;15 - 00;20;00;11
Speaker 3
But we know that they're giving birth here. We see little neonates in our area now. They're doing well as far as we can tell, however, because there's so few of them. I mean, when you think about, say, 700 of them across the whole state, that's so that's what a 250 adult females that can breed. That's not a lot of animals.

00;20;00;13 - 00;20;14;05
Speaker 3
And so we're concerned that, you know, things could happen. Like, I mean, anything from an oil spill to, disease, virus could move to that population. So that's one of the reasons we really want to study them and continue our studies.

00;20;14;08 - 00;20;39;22
Speaker 1
(Host Leigh Anne) Bill, could you describe for our radio and podcast audiences the differences between the porpoises? The dolphins kind of describe what they look like and also how they differ in their feeding and what they feed upon and how temperatures affect where they exist. Again, because you just brought that up to I want to clarify that a little bit.

00;20;39;24 - 00;21;01;24
Speaker 3
(Guest Bill) Yeah, sure. So I imagine, Scott, you're used to seeing harbor porpoises because they're cool water animals. They're relatively small. They're about, you know, five feet long, 150 pounds, and they've got a very small dorsal fin that doesn't get a lot of nicks and notches on them. So they're very hard to tell apart. They're mostly like sort of Model T's.

00;21;01;24 - 00;21;26;00
Speaker 3
They're mostly black from a distance, and it's just hard to tell them apart. So they're cool water animals and they are from about Point Conception or Morro Bay north all the way to Alaska. They get stretch all the way to Japan. They're also in the northern Atlantic in the United States, Canada, in Europe as well. So they eat very small fish.

00;21;26;03 - 00;22;03;03
Speaker 3
They have tiny little teeth. They don't even break them apart or chew them. They just swallow them whole. So they're catching sardine and anchovy and herring, basically. And bottlenose dolphins are much bigger and heavier. They're like instead of five feet, they're ten feet, 11ft long, and they weigh hundreds of pounds. The males are bigger than females, and you can tell the adults apart, they're sort of the familiar Flipper dolphin that you've seen on TV or seen it at aquaria doing tricks and stuff, and they can eat much bigger fish.

00;22;03;03 - 00;22;28;09
Speaker 3
In fact, we've seen them eating fish they can't even get in Southern California like king salmon. They can take pretty much any fish and rip them apart till they're bite sized chunks. They have a much broader diet along our coast. Like I said, they were mostly down in Southern California in warm water, you know. So I think they're March North has been facilitated by climate change.

00;22;28;16 - 00;22;55;26
Speaker 3
So we don't know where they're going to end up, but they tend to like warmer water, whereas the porpoises like cooler water. And one of the things we've seen is that as the bigger bottlenose dolphins come north, they're running into already existing populations of these smaller harbor porpoises. And every year, the Marine Mammal Center will find dead on a beach some porpoises that are killed by bottlenose dolphins.

00;22;55;29 - 00;23;19;28
Speaker 3
We call them porpoise-cide victims. And the bottlenose dolphins seem to be doing this, but not huge numbers. Small numbers. Not enough, we think, to affect the population of the thousands of harbor porpoises that we have along our coast. You know, you don't think about these unintended consequences of there's climate change. It's going to force animals together that haven't been.

00;23;20;03 - 00;23;43;26
Speaker 3
And there's going to be some outcomes from that. And we're seeing that. Scott, I want to bring up one little thing that you mentioned early on, which is that you have a long history here in the Bay area, going back to the, what, 60s and early 70s. And one of the things that I don't know if people realize is that that was an era of whaling in the Bay area.

00;23;43;28 - 00;24;09;28
Speaker 3
So the San Francisco Bay is the location of the very last whaling station in America, and it lasted all the way until 1972. So they were going offshore and little boats out of Richmond, which is where the whaling station was out the gate. They would harpoon large whales like, sperm whales or minke whales or fin whales or even a blue whale.

00;24;09;28 - 00;24;31;17
Speaker 3
They would drag them back through the gates. I mean, I was here and I had no idea that whaling was going on all the way until the early 1970s, and they were melting them down for fat and oil, and then the meat was used for pet food. This is going on in our lifetime. What a change in the way people think about whaling, especially in this country.

00;24;31;20 - 00;24;44;00
Speaker 1
It's really hard to believe, you know, we're older and it's not that long ago. The 70s is not that long ago, and now we know so much more. Scott, what was it that you wanted to respond to that?

00;24;44;02 - 00;25;11;03
Speaker 4
(Co-Host Scott) Oh, yeah. Al Molina used to tell us about that in class. I'm a veteran of the old Bolinas Marine Station, and I'm sure you've been there and we'd meet there at all these ungodly hours for classes ending on the tide, and that Al and Gordie Chan both used to talk about whaling that had gone on in the bay, and I had arrived in the Bay area just as that had come to an end, having arrived in Mill Valley in 72.

00;25;11;05 - 00;25;31;01
Speaker 4
But that was still on people's minds. There was a direct action that took place up here in Mendocino at that time. It was called the Mendocino Whale Wars, where people went out to confront whalers off the coast of the town of Mendocino, not just the coast, but off the town of Mendocino. I remember that time. Yes, I'm glad you brought that up.

00;25;31;04 - 00;25;54;26
Speaker 3
(Guest Bill) Yeah. It's so interesting to see how people, you know, think about these things and the change over, over the years. Yeah. So that was a time I think, about 1972. That's when the Marine Mammal Protection Act was passed to stop whaling in the United States. More than stopping whaling to actually try to protect these animals. And at the same time, the Endangered Species Act was like the next year.

00;25;55;03 - 00;26;02;20
Speaker 3
And then there was a clean water Act that came out about the same time. So all these things were moving in a positive direction for, for some of our marine life.

00;26;02;27 - 00;26;06;27
Speaker 1
(Host Leigh Anne) And the Marine Mammal Center was established in 1975.

00;26;07;04 - 00;26;29;15
Speaker 3
(Guest BIll) That's right. 1975 and Lloyd Smalley wanted a place where he could rescue and rehabilitate seals and sea lions. And that's where it started off in Fort Baker, out in the marine headlands. Exactly. I was there fairly early in the days of the Marine Mammal Center, and I was interested in cetaceans that had gone offshore. I was a whale watch naturalist for the Oceanic Society.

00;26;29;15 - 00;26;59;25
Speaker 3
I was doing some research on harbor porpoises offshore, and I was always interested in cetaceans as part of our marine mammal biodiversity in Northern California. So in 2019 is when I rejoined the marine mammals and we basically folded our golden Gate Cetacean research organization that had been working on these animals into the Marine Mammal Center. And now it's got staff and it's supporting a great program to look at whales.

00;26;59;25 - 00;27;04;22
Speaker 3
And we haven't even started talking about some of the other big whales and what's happening with them.

00;27;04;25 - 00;27;20;11
Speaker 1
(Co-host Tree “Theresa”) Yeah, Bill, I'd love to hear about how the gray whales are long. They're especially their northern migrations seem to be stopping in to the bay, perhaps for rest, perhaps to look for food. Can you please tell us what you've observed about the gray whales?

00;27;20;18 - 00;27;58;02
Speaker 3
(Guest Bill) Yeah, sure. So we know that gray whales have always migrated along our coast, but they're population seems to be subject to what are called booms and busts. That is, there's good times and bad times for them, depending on the food that's available to them. And we know that there was a time in 1999 and 2000 where there was a lot of dead gray whales washing up along our coast, and that was the NOAA, who administers the Marine Mammal Protection Act, calls that an unusual mortality event, meaning there's a lot of animals dying.

00;27;58;02 - 00;28;18;17
Speaker 3
We should investigate this. So money is released for them to do that and work with scientists for the Marine Mammal Center to try to figure this out. Well, in 1999, 2000, they never really figured it out. They don't know really what happened. But we do know at that time a bunch of gray whales, would come into San Francisco Bay.

00;28;18;24 - 00;28;41;17
Speaker 3
And whether they were resting or feeding, it was unclear. All went back to normal. And normal is gray whales don't really come into the bay much. You might see 2 or 3 a year. And I spent a lot of time looking for cetaceans in San Francisco Bay. A lot. And I would count, you know, maybe 2 or 3 a year on average.

00;28;41;19 - 00;29;10;08
Speaker 3
And they wouldn't stay long. They'd come in, poke around a little bit, go out, maybe towards Angel Island, turn around, go back and continue on their northbound migration in the spring. But around 2018, we started seeing something different. We started seeing more whales coming to the bay. We didn't know what was going on, but by 2019 we did know because that's when many whales are washed up, dead along our coasts, all the way from Mexico, all the way to Alaska.

00;29;10;11 - 00;29;36;08
Speaker 3
And hundreds were dying and their population from, say, around 25,000 was really knocked down a lot, probably down to 15,000 that range. So it was a huge loss for the whole population of this eastern Pacific gray whale population, which is the main gray whale population. So we're working with scientists in our own team to try to figure out what was causing the death.

00;29;36;16 - 00;30;01;14
Speaker 3
So we would do necropsies with California Academy of Science team and our team trying to look at what was the cause of death. And we were finding two things. The first was malnutrition. So some of these were starving animals and you could see their skin. You could see when they come in, you take pictures of them. You could see their ribs were showing through on some of these ones that were so skinny.

00;30;01;16 - 00;30;25;15
Speaker 3
Another cause of death was ship strike, that they were being hit by boats. And one of the things we've not been able to tell us whether gray whales may get a little not as reactive, not as active, not as alert if they're starving and they just don't get out of the way of boats like they might normally. We don't really know that, but we suspect that made it possible.

00;30;25;17 - 00;30;50;06
Speaker 3
But we had a loss. We had some days when there would be more than one dead gray whale washing up in San Francisco Bay at the same time, which is something I had never imagined or seen. 2019 was a pretty down year for the whales, and lots of whales were coming into the bay. We think to rest, and the next year it continue to remember that the spring of 2020, we couldn't really get out on the Bay.

00;30;50;06 - 00;31;12;27
Speaker 3
That was the Covid lockdown. So we lost a year of data there, really. And in fact, I couldn't even go out on to the hills in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area to look count whales because the park was closed (Host Tree chimed in “Right” and then Guest Bill continued) So this was probably in 2020. By 2021, still saw lots of animals coming in 2022-2023.

00;31;12;27 - 00;31;38;24
Speaker 3
Same thing. Even though the UME, unusual mortality event, was declared over by NOAA because the population appeared from their counts had gone back not all the way to what it was, but it was definitely trending on the upswing. We still kept seeing gray whales come into the bay every season, winter, spring, and they'd be here from February to early June, say.

00;31;38;27 - 00;32;03;13
Speaker 3
And then last year, well, 2020 for this year, earlier in the year, there were less whales and you saw less whales where you are in Point Arena, we're not quite sure what is going on, whether they just sort of bypassed some areas or not. So we'll just have to see what the future brings. However, we have done a couple of very interesting things.

00;32;03;15 - 00;32;24;23
Speaker 3
The first is that we took some of the whales that were staying at for extended periods of time in the Bay. We had a record of 75 days for a single whale in the Bay. That's months. Yeah, stay in San Francisco Bay, where I'm used to seeing them stay for hours or a day at the most. We figured they might be trying to find food in the Bay.

00;32;24;25 - 00;33;00;18
Speaker 3
There's not a lot of food for them, but there's some. And so, what we've done is partnered with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, they've got an office located in Marin County, and we're looking at the stomach contents. So we took stomach contents during a necropsy, and we're looking to see what animals are in there. And it looks like from preliminary results that, yes, indeed, these whales were not just feeding and had a little food in them, but it's the exact kind of food that is estuarine and not marine.

00;33;00;20 - 00;33;20;18
Speaker 3
So they were actually feeding in San Francisco Bay. We're working on a paper, and we want to announce that that's pretty amazing to be able to confirm that, which it looks like we will. And then at the same time, I was very interested with the scientists who are working to figure out why this was happening, why are these animals starving?

00;33;20;21 - 00;33;31;00
Speaker 3
And those are people who are working in the Arctic on the food resources. And it looks like changes in the Arctic are having some negative effects on the food of the gray whale.

00;33;31;03 - 00;33;51;04
Speaker 1
(Host Leigh Anne) Bill. Let's put a pin and that for just a moment. Hold that thought about the Arctic. I just want to let our audience know that you're listening to Bill keener. He's a senior research biologist at the Marine Mammal Center. I've got with me two of the biggest whale watchers here on our coast, the Sonoma and Mendocino coast, and that Scott and Tree (Theresa) Mercer.

00;33;51;04 - 00;34;24;27
Speaker 1
This is what they do every single day, collecting data over the years. And you had brought up the mortality event, and both Scott and Tree were in a documentary produced by UC Berkeley students called “Washed Ashore” that came out a couple of years back. Now, since I heard that the data has even changed. Tree if you wanted to talk a little bit about that and some of what you see here along our coast, because it's interesting to have Bill keener down in Marin, San Francisco, and watching the traffic there and what you see here.

00;34;24;29 - 00;34;53;25
Speaker 1
I wanted to get your input. (Co-host Tree Mercer) Certainly we had seen at one point in 2020, 2021, maybe a little bit in 2022, that gray whales were feeding here off of our coast. We'd see them in the kelp at Saunders Reef. They were feeding by the peninsula at the lighthouse, and they'd stay for extended periods of time. Bill and his lovely wife Nance came up and they saw this with us that one summer day.

00;34;53;25 - 00;35;17;26
Speaker 1
And it was quite astonishing to see them stay for this extended period of time feeding here. But then that all changed in 22 and 23, and this summer we did not have them up here feeding at all. We haven't had a gray well sighting since we saw mothers and calves in the end of May. No gray whales along our coast now.

00;35;18;03 - 00;35;44;26
Speaker 1
So again, I'm not sure the implications of that. Are they not hungry enough to stay here, or are they just continuing on their northbound migration to find a source of food, the amphipods upon which they feed, like you said, Bill, like we need to keep studying them and collecting more data. (Host Leigh Anne) And you're talking about right now being towards the end of October, middle to end of October 2024.

00;35;44;26 - 00;36;11;14
Speaker 1
And also you were talking earlier this year about the higher traffic that you had seen along our coast. (Co-host Tree) Not for Grays. (Host Leigh Anne) Not for Grays (Co-Host Tree) Not for greys. Humpbacks have been here feeding, which they do in this time of the year if they have a food source. I hope Bill talk more about the humpbacks too. They feed usually on anchovies, small fish and yeah, we have had a few of them.

00;36;11;16 - 00;36;23;25
Speaker 1
But the gray whales we have not seen, you know, so far. (Host Leigh Anne) And the gray whales are feeding on what versus what the humpbacks are feeding on. (Co-Host Tree) I think Bill's about to tell us about them eating fish now.

00;36;23;27 - 00;36;55;18
Speaker 3
(Guest Bill) Yeah, I can certainly that's worth talking about. So grey whales are kind of unusual whales. They tend not to feed on fish in the water column like humpback whales will. But they're not true krill eaters, like, say, blue whales or fin whales. What they are is bottom feeders. They'll go down to the bottom, turn on their side and suck up a bunch of mud, and in the mud is little creatures, worms and little crustaceans.

00;36;55;18 - 00;37;33;09
Speaker 3
And that protein is what they're after. So they suck up all this mud and sieve it out through their baleen plates. The muddy water goes out, but it traps all the little creatures, and they swallow that. And that's the way they basically make a living in just the shallow waters of the Bering Straits off Alaska and Russia. In our area, one of the things we've noticed is that the gray whales, when they come into San Francisco Bay, they tend to like to go pretty far in because that's the flat, shallow shelf near the East Bay that perhaps reminds them of the same kind of habitat that they're used to finding for food.

00;37;33;12 - 00;38;00;13
Speaker 3
They don't tend not to stay right into the Golden Gate Bridge. Humpbacks like the Golden Gate Bridge because it concentrates a huge amount of water and there's anchovies in there. Now, the funny thing that you were reminding me about, tree, is that in June of 2022, all of a sudden in Pacifica in the San Mateo coast, we saw gray whales lunge feeding on anchovy, which we'd never seen before.

00;38;00;16 - 00;38;20;23
Speaker 3
It had been reported very, very occasionally, historically, but we were the first to photograph it, and we put out a paper about it. And what's interesting is that we were able to identify a half a dozen gray whales that were doing this. It's hard to identify them yet to look at their gray and white splotches on their body to match them up.

00;38;20;25 - 00;38;49;28
Speaker 3
They don't have a dorsal fin, but we were able to identify one that had been at the Farallones the year before in the summer, the summer of 2022, in Pacifica and the summer of 23 in San Francisco Bay. Another one had been matched all the way up to Washington and was what's called a Pacific Coast feeding group whale, which is a whales that don't bother to go all the way up to the Arctic to feed.

00;38;50;00 - 00;39;12;02
Speaker 3
They'll stop somewhere halfway feed there. It sort of gives them a advance on their migration. They don't have to go quite as far. And if they can find enough food for a small number of them, they can do well. I think what this shows really, is that we don't have a real handle on how our local population is working.

00;39;12;09 - 00;39;40;27
Speaker 3
I mean, there's some at the Farallones in the summer, there's some like off San Mateo, there's some in the bay. So it's a little confusing right now. So one of the things that's happening is we've got a brand new grad students who's at Sonoma State. Her name is Josie Slathaugen, and she is going to be spending the next two years trying to dig into this and trying to match our catalog of 70 gray whales that we've seen in San Francisco Bay with the ones up north.

00;39;41;00 - 00;40;01;21
Speaker 3
And we want to work with you folks, too. On what you're seeing. So I think this is just the start of some much needed focus on the gray whales down here, as opposed to there's been a lot of focus on Puget Sound. And certainly in Alaska, we need to figure out what's going on with these animals that may be feeding here in the summer and have learned to navigate our area.

00;40;01;24 - 00;40;06;09
Speaker 1
(Host Leigh Anne) And explain to the audience to, why is this data so important?

00;40;06;11 - 00;40;13;18
Speaker 3
(Guest BIll) Why don't you start that tree or Scott? Because you guys have been working on this for many, many years longer than I have.

00;40;13;20 - 00;40;38;02
Speaker 1
(Host Tree) We'll be starting our 12th season... it's just important to monitor the population to see how well they are doing in the ocean that is changing so rapidly, and how are they adjusting to these changes? What I'm seeing is I think the gray whales are, and this is probably to their advantage that they are not specialists in what they eat or even how they eat.

00;40;38;02 - 00;41;03;04
Speaker 1
They have these different methods of obtaining food. And this is all very exciting and getting more observation, more data is needed, but they're more generalist. If they could find fish and lunge feed at fish, they have the ability to do that, which is amazing. It truly is. But I do think it speaks to their adaptability in this changing ocean environment.

00;41;03;10 - 00;41;29;02
Speaker 1
(Host Leigh Anne) So the data also is giving us a picture of what to expect going forward to or where we've been, and how that affects possibly policy changes or how we as humans make changes ourselves. Talk about the big picture. Why is this so important? Why do we keep focusing on this? We're talking about climate and we're talking about our ability to continue living on this earth.

00;41;29;05 - 00;41;33;08
Speaker 1
And there are important things that we need to do based on what you all observe.

00;41;33;12 - 00;41;54;21
Speaker 3
(Guest Bill) Well, I can sort of add to that, because one of the things that I mentioned before was when we did the necropsies on the gray whales, the cause of death was twofold. So we had starvation, but we also had ship strike. So one of the things that happens when gray whales stay for an extended period of time in San Francisco Bay, the bay is a busy place.

00;41;54;21 - 00;42;21;19
Speaker 3
It's a working port, and there's lots of ships and even passenger ferries, you know, moving around on the bay every single day. And so it's not a shock that some animals are going to, you know, get hit by boats. So one of the things the Marine Mammal Center is doing is on a policy perspective, is work with the San Francisco Port Harbor Safety Committee and trying to get ships to slow down.

00;42;21;21 - 00;42;40;22
Speaker 3
The idea is that if they can slow to say ten knots, there's more time for a whale to get out of the way of a ship that's approaching. And more time for if it's certainly in daytime, when you can see for the skipper or pilot to try to avoid a whale if it sees a spout ahead of it.

00;42;40;25 - 00;43;14;00
Speaker 3
Right now, the speed limit in San Francisco Bay is 15 knots. So one of the things we're talking about is trying to get the shipping industry to slow down a little bit outside the bay and into San Francisco Bay. Outside, there's a National Marine Sanctuary, and they have a voluntary speed reduction program that these shipping companies often adhere to, but 60% of them, by calculation, adhere to these rules to slow down as they're approaching San Francisco, because that's where a lot of whales are feeding offshore.

00;43;14;03 - 00;43;42;28
Speaker 1
(Host Leigh Anne) Yes. I was just listening to and editing the interview that we recorded with Maria Brown, who's a superintendent of the Greater Farallones and Cordell Bank for NOAA, and she describes how a number of ships are slowing down voluntarily. And we heard from Ted Cheeseman of Happy Whale how he also thought it was going to be kind of a big task and might get blowback about asking them, but they acquiesced.

00;43;43;00 - 00;43;59;01
Speaker 1
They slowed the ships down. So we hear from a variety of people around the world who are saying that when they're asking the ships to slow down and showing the data, they're actually complying without much pushback. And it seems to be making a difference.

00;43;59;01 - 00;44;04;13
Speaker 3
(Guest Bill) Well, unfortunately, the sanctuary doesn't reach into San Francisco Bay.

00;44;04;13 - 00;44;05;02
Speaker 1
No. Right.

00;44;05;04 - 00;44;22;09
Speaker 3
Yes. The Bay is not marine. It's estuarine. And so we've got different rules applying. And so that's why we're working with the Coast Guard and shipping industry just for the last few miles in the Bay to try to get the ships to slow down there as.

00;44;22;09 - 00;44;28;16
Speaker 1
Well. (Host Leigh Anne) Like the Los Angeles harbor, too. And Scott, I remember you talking about this too, on the Atlantic seaboard.

00;44;28;18 - 00;44;49;21
Speaker 4
Oh yeah, you were talkung about complying. The first time I went into a shipping office was in the south of Jacksonville, when I was working with North Atlantic right whales down in the southeast coast in the late 80s for 5 or 6 winters. And they were not at all pleased when we came through the door with our idea that we told them why we were there.

00;44;49;23 - 00;45;22;01
Speaker 4
Myself and Amy Knowlton, who still works in the New England Aquariums right whale project and, they just about threw us out. You know, they're laughing. And this is the most ridiculous thing they'd heard and saw ships down is quite a history of trying to slow ships down. This is for right whales, North Atlantic right whales. Now, if you go back just for a second about gray whales feeding on other species, wondering just if this was something that they had learned or sit back in their memory somewhere of switching to other species, like like wondering one of these long, silvery things?

00;45;22;01 - 00;45;37;07
Speaker 4
And how did they taste? Or if it's a matter of desperation, that's not a bill. Has any ideas on that because it's hard to picture it. It's just wondering how they came about that. So it wasn't desperation or something they already knew about generations back. May have tried it.

00;45;37;09 - 00;45;49;13
Speaker 1
(Host Leigh Anne) Yeah. And Bill, let's try to address both of those because I still wanted to finish the conversation on the traffic of ship speed. And then also sure what the feeding habits are.

00;45;49;15 - 00;46;12;04
Speaker 3
To finish up on the ship speeds. So Scott, you mentioned right whales. Now tell me if I'm wrong, but I think the rules about slowing ships down for, right whales say off the massive nuisance coast and stuff. They're mandatory rules. Whereas out here on the West Coast, they're voluntary rules. Is that right, Scott? They're mandatory back there.

00;46;12;07 - 00;46;15;20
Speaker 4
Yeah, I believe so. Especially guys going into Boston Harbor.

00;46;15;23 - 00;46;16;12
Speaker 3
Right.

00;46;16;14 - 00;46;23;14
Speaker 4
Shipping lanes run right, right through the out of Nantucket toward Boston and so forth. And right now straight in from the east.

00;46;23;21 - 00;46;44;13
Speaker 3
So one of the things they have back there that they've got a pretty good system of hydrophones in the water to detect where these whales are. And that's something we do have a hydrophone now as part of the Whale Safe campaign. And Maria Brown, hopefully maybe talk to you about that. But they have one a hydrophone off San Francisco.

00;46;44;13 - 00;47;06;27
Speaker 3
But it's not a it's not a net of hydrophones to really figure out where all these whales are. So the thing I spent a lot of time thinking about and worrying about in San Francisco Bay is the ships shipping industry, and the ferries will say, hey, we're happy to avoid whales. We don't want to hit whales, right? But we need real time data and know where these whales are.

00;47;06;27 - 00;47;26;09
Speaker 3
So you can tell us. So that's what I spend my, you know, the wee hours of the mornings, like, how are we going to get that real time information. We don't have tags on all these whales. You know, we don't know where they're going. They're moving around all the time. So that's one of the things that really needs to be addressed is how do we have observers.

00;47;26;09 - 00;47;43;08
Speaker 3
How do we, you know, find out where the whales are, where they're moving, where are they going to be at any one time so that we can alert the Mariners and then they can, you know, react to that. And, Scott, as far as the I mean, have you seen the pictures of the lunch feeding gray whales? Pacifica.

00;47;43;10 - 00;48;05;17
Speaker 3
Well, I will send you some right after this show. Please do get up and you can make of it what you will. But the anchovies were flying out of their their mouths as they were chomping down on them. So they were doing a very typical humpback kind of thing. But you're right, they don't have the expansive throat that can get large volumes of water.

00;48;05;19 - 00;48;26;12
Speaker 3
So I think it was a matter of when the anchovies were dense enough. It makes it efficient for them. And that may be a very rarely seen thing for them. And they were right up next to the shore at the sometimes just right out past the, the surf break. So I think it's a very uncommon thing. But a tree said it exactly right on.

00;48;26;14 - 00;48;59;17
Speaker 3
This is proof that these animals are at least somewhat, flexible. They can be generalists. And look, they had to survive, what, million years of ice ages coming and going, rising and falling, sea levels. The food's changing where it is. They're survivors. They're here because they've been able to adapt and readapt. And maybe you're right. Maybe there is some old memories of them feeding on fish and and, they were able to resurrect, when the conditions were just right for all these dense anchovies to be eaten.

00;48;59;19 - 00;49;11;17
Speaker 1
Well, Bill, we have a couple of minutes before the end of the show. Why don't you tell the audience again a bit about what your area of research is and a little bit about the Marine Mammal Center?

00;49;11;19 - 00;49;33;20
Speaker 3
Sure. So my team, the Cetacean Conservation Biology team at the Marine Mammal Center, is really interested in monitoring the population, the wild, the healthy ones, as well as the ones that are unhealthy in our area. So we're talking about harbor porpoises, bottlenose dolphins, gray whales and humpback whales in particular, the ones that come into the bay there's offshore.

00;49;33;20 - 00;49;55;06
Speaker 3
There's other there's blue whales, fin whales offshore. But I'm talking about the ones that we can see really from shore. We can stand there and watch these animals, come in. And the area that we're trying to cover here is Northern California. The San Francisco Bay is huge. We can't do it ourselves with our handful of researchers. So that's why it's really important.

00;49;55;08 - 00;50;13;12
Speaker 3
And it's really great for the public to be able to participate. One way they can do that is they can download on their phone the whale alert app, and they can just put in when they see whales, they can go to Happy Whale if they get pictures of, say, the underside of the flukes of a humpback whale and match where it's been seen before.

00;50;13;18 - 00;50;37;06
Speaker 3
I'm always interested in learning about bottlenose dolphins and where they've been, and there's people in your area, sea ranch areas and Mendocino area that are sending me pictures, and we've been able to find and there have been this summer, there have been bottlenose dolphins in crash that we've seen. So they're still around and you will eventually see them pass by you, Scott.

00;50;37;06 - 00;50;41;26
Speaker 1
And we will, we will. We're on the lookout for them. We better get our cameras ready.

00;50;41;29 - 00;50;42;11
Speaker 3
Right.

00;50;42;11 - 00;51;06;15
Speaker 1
For sure. And that is going to do it for our our here. And we've been talking with Bill keener, who's a senior research biologist with the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, Marin County. I'm Liane, Lyndsey Scott and Tre Mercer. The mid Panama Whale and Seals study are here and they follow this traffic and information all the time. Thank you both for bringing Bill here to our show today.

00;51;06;15 - 00;51;11;14
Speaker 1
This has been resilient. Earth radio. Thank you so much Bill. I always learn a lot.

00;51;11;17 - 00;51;13;06
Speaker 4
Very much appreciated.

00;51;13;08 - 00;51;19;15
Speaker 3
You bet. Thanks guys.

00;51;19;18 - 00;51;52;15
Speaker 1
And thanks for listening to Resilient Earth Radio, where we talk about critical issues facing our planet and the positive actions people are taking. I'm Leann Lindsey, producer and host, along with my co producers and co-hosts, Scott and Tre Mercer of The Minda Whale and Seals study, produced in association with Planet Centric Media, C, Storm Studios and KGO 88.3 FM, a public radio station on the Northern California coast.

00;51;52;18 - 00;52;00;08
Speaker 1
You can find us on Facebook and Instagram and wherever you get your podcasts.

00;52;00;11 - 00;52;23;06
Speaker 1
The music for the show is Castle by the sea, from international composer Eric Allman of the Sea Ranch in Sonoma County, California.

00;52;23;09 - 00;52;30;16
Speaker 5
From the Bureau of Economic Geology. This is Earth data.

00;52;30;18 - 00;52;56;26
Speaker 5
Three times in Earth's long history. A process called endosymbiosis has occurred, and it has totally changed life on Earth. 2 billion years ago. All life was single celled organisms in an oxygen free environment. Some of these bacteria like creatures engulfed others into their cell walls and began a symbiotic relationship called endosymbiosis. The smaller organisms became organelles within the larger cell.

00;52;56;28 - 00;53;28;10
Speaker 5
Most importantly, the mitochondria, providing energy to the cell in exchange for protection and nourishment as oxygen levels rose. These more sophisticated single cell creatures thrived and would eventually develop, and a multicellular life forms 600 million years ago. Another very important merging occurred. This time, cells absorbed a bacterium that could perform photosynthesis. It became another organelle, the chloroplast. And with those, the larger organisms evolved into plants.

00;53;28;13 - 00;53;53;12
Speaker 5
Today, scientists have discovered a third important endosymbiosis underway. Some algae have engulfed nitrogen fixing bacteria, which have become a new kind of organelle a nitrous blast. This allows the algae to secure their own nitrogen, vital for plant function directly from air, and it could have huge potential in fertilizer research for human agriculture, too. The mitochondria enabled multicellular life.

00;53;53;14 - 00;54;00;24
Speaker 5
The chloroplast gave rise to plants. What changes could the nitrogen last spring? I'm Scott Tinker.

00;54;00;26 - 00;54;17;18
Speaker 2
Earth day is produced by the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin, with the generous support of Kay and Scott Sheffield and the Hildebrand Foundation. To hear hundreds more Earth Day episodes or to support this program, visit Earth day.org.

00;54;17;20 - 00;54;26;12
Speaker 6
Could China now become a green superpower? That story and more on H2O Radio's weekly news report. I'm Jamie Sadler.

00;54;26;13 - 00;54;29;22
Speaker 2
I'm Frannie Halperin, and it's this Week in Water.

00;54;29;24 - 00;54;38;21
Speaker 6
After the US election, one country is now situated to become the world's leader in renewable energy and maybe move away from fossil fuels.

00;54;38;21 - 00;55;00;23
Speaker 2
China China produces most of the world's solar and wind capacity and leads in electric vehicle sales. However, it's also the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter and has been reluctant to set climate targets for reducing emissions despite recent pressure from the US. Low lying island nations and other Western countries.

00;55;00;24 - 00;55;17;04
Speaker 6
With the election, China will have the opportunity to fill a leadership vacuum left by the US as the second Trump administration has vowed to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement and drill, baby drill. Trump also wants to cut electric vehicle subsidies.

00;55;17;05 - 00;55;33;21
Speaker 2
Attract a Moonie of the Financial Times told WBur that China could now become the world's green superpower. And as Bloomberg reports, Chinese companies have already been investing in renewable energy factories in the Global South.

00;55;33;22 - 00;55;51;14
Speaker 6
In addition to China, the European Union could help lead the world's efforts to sustainability. In the last five years, wind and solar capacity has grown in Europe by 65% and greenhouse gas emissions have dropped.

00;55;51;16 - 00;56;05;06
Speaker 2
Following the election, what could happen to water regulations? We can look both to Trump's first term as well as the project 2025 report, the Conservatives roadmap for a Republican president.

00;56;05;08 - 00;56;18;14
Speaker 6
As Bloomberg Law reports. In Trump's first term, the administration moved to reduce regulations based on the Clean Water Act and made it difficult to oppose construction projects that affected wetlands and waterways.

00;56;18;15 - 00;56;30;24
Speaker 2
It seems likely that Trump would seek to undo water protections finalized last month by the Biden administration to mandate that all lead drinking water pipes be removed by 2027.

00;56;30;24 - 00;56;42;01
Speaker 6
Biden's EPA set the country's first drinking water standards for six types of PFAs compounds last April, after determining that almost no level of exposure is safe.

00;56;42;02 - 00;57;00;12
Speaker 2
Project 2025 calls to revisit the designation of pathos compounds as hazardous substances, and says chemicals should be regulated only after they cause harm, versus a policy of allowing just the chemicals that have been proven safe to be in use.

00;57;00;14 - 00;57;13;17
Speaker 6
Rivers and watersheds could be at risk from spills, leaks and accidents, according to the organization American Rivers. As project 2025 suggests lifting the ban on fossil fuel extraction on federal lands.

00;57;13;17 - 00;57;31;22
Speaker 2
Project 2025 calls for the dismantling of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which shapes international ocean fisheries, climate and weather policies, and that could leave the country vulnerable and unprepared for future hurricanes, storms, floods or drought.

00;57;31;26 - 00;57;41;27
Speaker 6
And speaking of drought, from the last week of October and into early November, almost all of the US faced drought conditions with the exception of Alaska and Kentucky.

00;57;41;29 - 00;57;53;17
Speaker 2
Remarkably, the southeast was in drought even after Hurricane Helene inundated the region because there's been more evaporation with warmer temperatures and not much rain.

00;57;53;21 - 00;58;12;05
Speaker 6
Evaporation plays a major role in drought, particularly in the US West, according to a new study from UCLA. During the exceptional drought from 2020 to 2022, scientists found that reduced precipitation caused only one third of the severity, and evaporation could be blamed for the rest.

00;58;12;06 - 00;58;33;07
Speaker 2
The evaporation is a result of high temperatures caused by climate change, the authors say. Historically, Western droughts have been caused by a lack of rain and snow, and evaporation play this small role now. Climate change means more water is evaporating not only from lakes and reservoirs, but also from soils and plants.

00;58;33;07 - 00;58;49;10
Speaker 6
The lead researcher said that even if precipitation were normal, there's not enough water to keep up with evaporation. And building bigger reservoirs won't help because more moisture will be sucked up.

00;58;49;12 - 00;59;07;23
Speaker 6
That's it for this week in water. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.