[boat hums]
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[water splashes]
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[diver breathes]
[whale calls]
[soft dramatic music]
- [Charles] The right whale is an extraordinary creature.
It's really one of the wonders of the living world.
But if something in our management doesn't change,
the direction of the population points to zero,
and that's extinction.
[slow tense music] [water sprays]
- [Amy] The North Atlantic right whale was considered one
of the most endangered species on the planet.
- This'll be the first large whale
in modern history that would go extinct.
[dramatic music]
[boat hums]
- 85% percent of the right whale population now bears scars
that indicate entanglement injury.
This is a big problem, and it's an urgent problem.
- It's a tragedy that we're losing the right whale.
It's emblematic of large-scale changes
that are happening on the planet.
- Human beings can't exist without biodiversity,
and this is maybe a harbinger of where we're going.
- We need to put as much pressure as we can
on the agency to step up and take action right now.
- I don't think the urgency can be overstated.
- Human action is killing these whales,
and human action has the ability to save them.
- Lobstermen are stewards of the sea,
and they don't wanna untangle anything.
- I sat here and listen to environmentalist
after environmentalist tell me
what a murderous individual I am.
- My opinion about the whales is fuck 'em.
What more can we do? Eventually, they're gonna die off.
It's gonna happen no matter what.
[crowd cheers and applauds]
- As your governor, I will do everything I can
to defend the lobster industry in the face
of this absurd federal overreach.
- The challenge is to find ways for the fishing industry
and the right whales to coexist in the same waters.
- NOAA is the fox guarding the chicken poop.
You are gonna be fired for being a liar
and a person who works to kill off the right whale.
- One of the problems is that fisheries are one
of the main factors that are endangering these species.
You end up with one organization deeply conflicted
with its mission.
[slow dramatic music] [waves crash]
[soft ethereal music]
[gavel bangs]
- Good morning, everyone.
Welcome to this hearing
of the Subcommittee on Water, Oceans, and Wildlife.
We'll now examine the many threats facing one
of the most endangered marine mammals in the world.
- The stock is now declining rapidly
with only about 400 left.
- As fewer right whales in existence
than members of Congress, and there are fewer
than 100 breeding females in the population.
- In 2017 and '18, 20 right whales were found dead,
representing nearly 5% of the population.
Of the 12 whales that were examined carefully,
all had died from human causes.
- In order to maintain a sustainable right whale population,
no more than one right whale per year
can be killed by human causes.
That number has been exceeded every single year
for the last 20 years.
The science shows that climate change
may be shifting the food source northward,
which means the whales will be moving further
into areas with shipping lines and lobster traps.
No wonder these whales are in such dire straits.
If more is not done to save this iconic species,
scientists predict it will go extinct
in the next few decades.
[waves crash]
[slow tense music] [boat hums]
- It's two miles at 010.
It's back to the east corner of yesterday.
We're in Cape Cod Bay, and so we're headed over to a patch
where we saw a lot of whales yesterday.
What I do for a living is I worry about the relationship
between the humans and marine mammals.
We have to figure out why the animals are not recovering
and what we can do about it to try
and secure the longevity of the species.
- They're over here.
- [Michael] We just don't give these guys a chance
to live a full life.
There's a whale right here.
[water sprays]
What we're hoping to learn from these animals today
is who they are and how they are.
The who is largely done by a photograph of the head.
[camera clicks]
- I was computing there. Okay.
[water splashes]
I'm here to collect images to assess evidence
of entanglement scarring or vessel strikes
and look at their health.
- The right whales have been in the bay
for a couple of months now, and they've been feeding deep,
but they're beginning to come up
to the surface to feed more.
Well, that's it. That's all that's there.
Often you'll see a tail going down.
Occasionally you'll see a back as they surface.
It's a matter of getting into the head
of the whale as to what it's gonna do next.
[soft ethereal music] [water splashes]
- We keep track of individual whales
through these callosity patterns on top of their head.
Each whale has its own unique pattern,
very different from each other.
We also have whales that have been entangled
that we know are carrying gear in here.
This is pretty bad entanglement scars
'cause deep raw tissue there.
We wanna keep track of those individuals in particular,
especially with the drone footage.
- [Man] All right, go right, go right. Go right, go right.
- Got a couple of drones on the boat.
We use them for examining the body condition
of these animals and the length.
And if you do that year by year,
you can get at the growth rates
and also the changing and the condition of the animals
with the various impacts that they're suffering from.
[water splashes]
When a whale gets entangled in rope,
they can take six months to die.
There is an industry there
that causes a fairly significant animal welfare problem.
[drone whirs]
- [Man] There.
- Cape Cod Bay is one of the richest feeding grounds
for this population.
Once the plankton here has run its course,
then they'll shift to other habitats further north.
[water splashes]
- [Michael] Despite all of the efforts that have gone on,
entanglement has got worse.
In the last 16 years, we've killed 70 right whales,
and entanglement was the primary problem.
[soft dramatic music]
- If we don't stop the level of mortality,
we could just be driving the nail into the coffin
of this species, and it could happen fast.
[boat rumbles] [slow tense music]
- My name's Rob Martin.
I'm a commercial fishermen,
and I've probably been fishing too long
since I was a kid fishing out of a skiff.
My grandfather used to fish back in the 30s,
and my great grandparents, they fished out of dories,
and I always been infatuated by the sea,
and that's what I always wanted to do was to go lobstering.
When it's in your blood, it's in your blood.
[birds caw] [water trickles]
Five years ago, when we got one of the closures,
it was a lot bigger than what we thought it was gonna be.
When I found out it did happen, I was very, very upset.
[boat hums]
I had three months not getting paid.
It hit that first year. It hit hard.
College tuition payments to make. I got mortgage payments.
It seemed to get tougher and tougher every year.
I don't wanna see any more closures.
I wanna see fishermen
and scientists actually work together,
and I'm very concerned
'cause nobody knows what's gonna happen.
It's anybody's guess.
[sighs]
Peace and quiet.
I am preparing right now for the upcoming season
to get as much stuff done as I can.
Basically, if I'm not working on the boat,
I've been working on gear on a nice day.
Doing it, pushing 40 years now on my own doing it,
so that's a long time.
[soft gentle music]
And these are all my 800 traps.
The reason why they're all here in the yard
is because right now, I'm not allowed to fish
for three months and just waiting for May 1st
so I can start setting gear again.
The bulk of my gear's already ready here.
Checking there's no holes in the heads,
the trap tag in, gonna the next one.
This is all whale-safe rope.
The bulk of my vertical lines, if I can get it,
is orange because in the water, the eyeball of a whale,
even though they see in black and white,
they can pick up red and orange the best.
That probably breaks at probably 4,000 pounds.
There's a lot of rope here.
Whatever needs to touch up with paint,
I'll paint a bunch of buoys.
I'll replaced those are any of the rope on those
and go order some bait for a week
and a half from now and start setting gear.
This is Lori Caron,
my better half who is a lot better than me.
- It was somewhat shocking to us
when the final rule came out and the magnitude that,
the fact that it encompassed 3,000 square nautical miles.
Five years later, we're being told that it's not enough.
- [Reporter] Happening now, Atlantic right whales are
at the center of a protest along the New England coastline.
- Of course these lobstermen know
that they're up against an endangered species,
but they think what isn't fair is the restriction
that federal lawmakers are putting on them.
- [Lori] In reality, the closure that took place put a cork
in three harbors.
- Thank you all for being here today
to show your support for the local commercial lobstermen,
their families, crew, and shore-side businesses
who cannot go to work today.
The mass-restricted area has devastating economic impacts
on the fleet.
We are here in Plymouth, America's hometown,
where this country was built on commercial fishing,
and this historic way of life is being threatened everyday.
Conservation groups continually sue the federal government
to add more and more restrictive regulations
on the commercial lobster industry as a whole.
Enough is enough.
Where will the financial help come from
to help these families?
Thank you for being here today.
[tense brooding music] [crowd applauds]
- The guys all around here are waiting to set gear.
The boats are loaded and waiting to go.
My message to the government is work with us.
We've done the right thing.
[muffled chatter]
- [Lori] Rob's income is the one
that's always paid the mortgage and then some.
So for us to lose up to 1/3 of his earning income potential,
it was quite devastating for us.
- What's the point of fishing anymore
if you can't even go fishing to make a paycheck?
It's gonna be a hobby soon.
It's just next to impossible wanna do it anymore.
[truck rumbles]
- This is economically devastating, yes,
because it's not just affecting their businesses.
It affects everyone that depends upon the lobster industry.
We have bait dealers here today. We have fuel suppliers.
Shore-side marine businesses depend on it.
Local restaurants depend upon the lobster industries.
- This makes no sense 'cause
is this the only place where there's whales?
I don't think so.
I'm on the brink of going out of business.
Just stinks being the fallout of a global issue.
- There is a lot of focus on the right whales
due to the fact that they're endangered,
but there's also gonna be an endangered lobster fisherman.
We don't want that to happen. We wanna try and coexist.
- Here are some letters that we've written
from the Social Lobster Fishermen's Association.
I would suggest we've had 75 to 100 meetings at this point.
Articles on gear modification.
This is the lawsuit filed by the environmentalists.
There was another lawsuit in 2011,
another separate lawsuit in 2018
in the Massachusetts Federal Court,
Division of Marine Fishery responses.
These would be some advisories
from NOAA conservation groups,
letters that have been written.
It just goes on and on and on.
As I started looking into it
and attending meetings with Rob,
there was a bit of an injustice,
and it's been really, really important to us
that we educate ourselves through this process.
So as you can see,
we've killed a lot of trees, [laughs] unfortunately.
[slow tense music] [boat rumbles]
We didn't battle the regulations.
We stepped forward graciously to see
how we could exist within them, and we continue with that.
I do believe that the whales deserve protection,
but fishermen remain on the sidelines closed.
There are casualties, and those need to be considered.
- We wanna welcome you to this TRT meeting.
We know that we are at a juncture.
We need to make changes.
We want whales and fisheries to coexist.
You are the group of people, the experts,
who know the whales, know the fisheries,
and can come up with a consensus approach
to solving these very intractable challenges.
- We're at the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team,
which is the national marine fishery service approach
to reducing the consequences of human activities
on right whales.
- It's fishermen, conservationists, researchers,
state and federal managers all getting together
to try to hammer out the solutions to this problem.
- Those of you who have been at this
for decades know what we're asking you to do.
We have to achieve 60 to 80% reduction
in serious injuries and mortalities to right whales.
- The situation for right whales continues to worsen,
so now's the time to act.
- The discussions that I've had with a lot
of people around this table, there are very divergent views.
- Well, fundamentally,
we have a nearly billion-dollar industry
and a urgent need to protect these whales
from entanglement in fisheries so that the fishermen
can maintain their livelihoods
and that we can preserve from dangerous species.
- You'll note that in nine of the last 10 years,
at least one right whale died due to entanglement.
It actually increased from 21% between 1970
and 2002 to 51% in the last 16 years.
So now more than 75% of the anthropogenic deaths
are due to entanglement.
But it does just underline again
that the entanglement problem is the most pressing issue
for right whales right now.
- Entanglements in fixed gear fisheries,
including things like lobster trap pots,
basically, it's the line that connects the buoy
at the surface of the ocean to the trap at the bottom
that's collecting the lobster, is an entanglement hazard.
And we know that right whales
in particular are highly susceptible.
- [Sarah] These animals clearly
are suffering quite a bit before they die.
Imagine panicking, being stuck underwater,
and not being able to get to the surface.
[whale moans]
- We're looking at between 50 and 100 right whales
getting entangled every year.
The idea that you can just push that under the rug
is not gonna end well for the lobster fisheries
that wants to continue that denial.
The data doesn't support it.
- Yes, so you're- - I'm struggling
with the conversation that we're having.
We're being very specific about how that happens
in a timeframe that I can understand
with the decision that we're supposed to make.
- Yep, so you think that the smaller spacial closures
are really not probably gonna be as effective.
Right whales' movements are really hard to predict.
- Serious injury and mortalities that are reported
in the stock assessment report are just what's observed,
and we know that there are many that are unobserved.
- It is simple arithmetic.
The number of calves being born is too low,
and the number of deaths is too high,
and the data are unequivocal.
The North Atlantic right whale is going down.
The arrow points to zero.
- If we are moving forward with regulations
that are gonna require fishermen to make more sacrifices,
I would urge you not to put them in a situation
where the solution you come up with is too modest
because, at the end of the day,
we'll be back at this table again.
- [Sarah] We don't have the time to have these battles.
These whales will go extinct if we don't make these changes.
- We are motivated to act by our conscience, by the law,
so that the fishermen can maintain their livelihoods
and that we can preserve endangered species.
[muffled chatter]
♪ It is advertised in Boston, New York, and Buffalo ♪
♪ Haul away your running gear and blow, ye winds, blow ♪
♪ They'll send you to New Bedford, a famous whaling port ♪
♪ Haul away your running gear and blow, ye winds, blow ♪
[waves crash] [soft dramatic music]
- My family made a considerable amount
of money hunting whales for hundreds of years in all oceans.
The legacy of whaling is something
that the entire city deals with.
- The business of whaling had a great cultural influence
on the ports that it touched, especially,
of course, New Bedford.
- New Bedford was one of the most important whaling ports
in the world.
It was the wealthiest city
per capita twice in its existence.
- As Herman Melville said, "All the brave houses
and flowery gardens were each harpooned
and dragged up hither from the bottom of the sea."
The killing of whales is part of our history.
- It looks like a hard, tough business.
- Well, everything aboard a whaler is hard.
- [Christina] You go out to sea, you'd see a whale.
You'd drop the whale boats into the water.
The men would go off and catch the wave.
[dramatic music]
- [Man On Program] They haul up onto the whale
so that they mate can lance it,
and they have this Nantucket sleigh ride.
It's like having a bib of a tail.
You either let go and get out of the way or kill it.
[muffled chatter]
- We are so lucky tonight - Hello, everybody.
- to have Christina come out - Oh, thanks.
- with us, and she's our curator.
She's gonna give us a little tour.
- And if you guys wanna bring any white wine is fine.
We can go behind the scenes with those,
and just don't tell Jordan,
[laughs] our collections director.
See if we can head down to storage.
- [Woman] Oh God, we are really behind the scenes.
- [Man] Oh, I've never been here.
- I just wanna show you some
of the whaling instruments back here.
All of these were bent by the animal.
- Amazing. - What?
- You'd shoot this into the whale, and there's a pivot.
So it's tragic and horrible to look at,
but it also shows how powerful these fights were.
And these ones here are exploding harpoons.
These would be shot out of those guns
and explode in the animal.
So you imagine shooting this off your shoulder.
- [Woman In Pink Top] Oh, wow.
That would give you a big bruise.
- It would break mine.
- Yeah, these are whale oils. - Oh, whale oils?
- Some of them are incredibly smelly.
If I open it, it'll really- - No, don't open it.
[group laughs]
- Smelly area. - Wow, look at these.
- [Woman] What is this? These are weapons.
- [Man] That's amazing.
- The North Atlantic white whales had good blubber.
They had good baleen, and they floated,
and they live within a very close proximity
to other kinds of human activities.
So the legend is that the North Atlantic right whales
were called right whales because they
were the right whales to kill.
[sweeping instrumental music]
- [Man On Program] No matter what size they were,
you took 'em as fast as you could
because you didn't know whether you
would go a week, two weeks, or sometimes a month
without seeing a whale.
- We decimated whale populations in the creation
of the first energy business in the United States.
It was outlawed with the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
[muffled chatter]
- She was hit by a ship, and she was pregnant.
So we lost two possible reproductive females
in that one ship strike.
We're still whaling, just with different intention.
So we're still killing them but not on purpose.
[slow dramatic music] [tool hacks into blubber]
[ship whines and hums]
Some of the biology and ecology of whales
that made them vulnerable to Yankee whale men
are the same kinds of behaviors and biology
that make them susceptible to modern human activity impacts
like ship strikes, entanglements, and noise pollution.
- New Bedford is still a sea port.
For the last 20 years, it's been the number one fishing port
in the country by a mile.
- If nothing happens, in 20 years,
there will be no more reproducing females.
That's the projection. It's pretty gruesome.
- If we let this species go extinct on our watch,
we all have to live with that.
♪ She's a right whale living in the wrong time ♪
♪ One of the last survivors in a long line ♪
- This is a festival to fire up these young people
to help save this animal.
♪ Between shipping lanes and fishing nets ♪
♪ Can they beat the odds
- The work of the students and other visual artists
really helps connect the public
to why this issue is so important like nothing else.
[muffled singing]
♪ Come on, Calvin
♪ You can make it through, make it through ♪
♪ Come on Calvin, we're counting on you ♪
- [Unison] She's counting on us, and she's counting on you!
[audience cheers and applauds]
- It is so great to be at the New England Aquarium today
to celebrate these amazing animals.
[soft bright music] [light clicks on]
What we're trying to do here today is raise awareness.
- We're stimulating right whale entanglement
which is the leading cause of mortality for the species,
so it's the major reason why they're
on the road to extinction.
- We have postcards that we have made up
of the students' arts,
and the postcards will go to elected representatives
asking them to support the Save the Right Whale Act.
[muffled chatter and laughter]
- I came here because I wanted to save the whales
because people accidentally get it in their nets.
- It's that proximity to extinction that brings some urgency
to those of us that still have an opportunity
to make a difference to try to make a difference.
[wheel clicks]
- I learned about how many deaths there were just
off the shores of the Cape, which is where I'm from,
and I learned about how serious it is.
- We really appreciate artwork.
Rather than just seeing numbers
and reading words, you see an image.
- We can remember a powerful image for the rest of our lives
and that can be a very, very powerful tool
in terms of moving that needle in favor of conservation.
Among the greatest things I've ever had the privilege
of doing was being in the presence of a right whale.
I was diving alone.
I was in the sub-Antarctic of New Zealand,
and I had this giant right whale,
like a submarine, coming down.
I remember bending over backwards in like a yoga pose.
My tank was scraping the sand.
[soft poignant music] [whale moans]
He was a sand whale with a softball-sized eye turning
to look at me, probably trying to figure out what I was.
It is breathtaking in a way that I can't explain.
Will we let this species slip through our hands
and watch it go extinct, or will we protect what we love?
- [Man] Okay, you ready?
- Thank you again for coming out,
for honoring the North Atlantic right whale.
[crowd applauds and cheers]
- We wouldn't like it if we were sick,
so why make other animals so sick?
[muffled chatter]
[device beeps and trills]
- [Woman Over Intercom] Your exercise has been started.
[beeps echo over speaker] [ship horn blares]
- We use the simulator extensively
to practice navigational skills, ship handling skills,
and collision avoidance, not only with other ships
but with marine life.
[thunder rumbles] [rain pours]
Operating a ship in heavy weather
can be particularly challenging, especially when it comes
to being able to detect a right whale.
They don't show up on radar,
they are not visible at a great distance,
and at night it can be virtually impossible
to detect their presence.
[slow dramatic music] [whale moans lightly]
Unfortunately, with right whales, a lot of the technology
that we have isn't particularly helpful.
Our best asset to detect and avoid a right whale
is our own eyes looking out the windows.
[waves crash] [thunder booms]
[ship horn blares] [beeps echo]
[soft dramatic music]
[water sprays]
- My name is Christopher W. Clark.
I study the sounds of life on the planet,
particularly the voices of the whales.
So these are the sounds
of two right whales greeting each other.
[whales moan]
So when I've been doing recordings of whales,
there times I was literally in the boat.
I had the hydrophones in the water,
I had headphones on, and I can't hear anything.
I'm going, "What's wrong?"
And then I realize, "Oh, I'm in the shipping lane."
The sound on the ship is coming from tens
and tens of miles away, but I can't hear the whales,
and I can't see it on my displays.
They can't hear each other, and they can't communicate.
[water splashes and sprays]
When you're living in the ocean,
you are highly dependent upon sound
as your primary mechanism for survival.
These animals navigating the ocean using sound,
when that noise gets up to a certain point,
you see their whole communication system just collapse.
The noise increases their stress levels,
and their stress level makes them more susceptible
to injury and to disease.
It's just this rising tide of noise,
and then the whales are suffering
in their ability to communicate
and maintain their normal behavior.
[waves crash in distance] [whale moans]
- Park and brake. - All set.
- Status, all up here is normal.
- [Tim] Our primary job is to monitor right whales.
- The challenge with flying over right whales can be unique.
- [Man Over Radio] Clear for takeoff.
- For these surveys, we start off flying straight lines
at 1,000 feet over the water.
- We have two observers monitoring the ocean surface
and looking for indications that right whales are present.
- [Man] We got a right whale, 7-4 Tango Whiskey.
- [Brad] Once a whale is spotted,
we'll then maneuver the aircraft over the whale
in order for them to be able to take pictures.
We use photo identification to tell
how many whales are there.
We are also checking the whales to see
if there's any entanglement.
With monitoring, we can pinpoint the key areas
that are important to either have ships slow down
or to modify fishing gear to reduce the risk
that whales can become entangled.
Right whales are highly migratory.
They range from Florida up through into Canadian waters.
In 2015, we started doing some surveys
up in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
We found a large number of whales there coincident
with a major mortality event.
Total of 12 right whales were found
in the Gulf of St. Lawrence dead.
[dramatic music] [ship horn blares in distance]
When we do fly over a carcass, it is a little disheartening.
We spent a lot of our time helping the Canadian government
relocate carcasses so they could tow them back to shore
to examine them to find out exactly
what the cause of death was.
[airplane roars]
[mid-tempo bongo drum music] [people sing in unison]
- I'm here to do a ceremony to honor the spirit
of an animal that's very magnificent.
It's important that we let the creator
and the spirits know that we've heard the message
and about the hard times that are coming
when the whales come ashore.
[soft dramatic music] [muffled singing]
- We're in northeastern New Brunswick on Miscou Island.
We're here to necropsy the right whale
that's behind us here.
[plane buzzes overhead] [slow dramatic music]
[waves crash]
The pathologists, along with many vet techs and their team,
are performing a necropsy on the right whale
to hopefully identify what
could possibly be the cause of death.
[excavator starts up]
- The one thing we're gonna do try
to get the complete history from the previous sightings
'cause we know that he's been entangled before.
He wasn't disentangled. He just shed the gear on his own.
It's a very difficult thing to do
as we look at this beautiful animal
and then have to open it up and look inside.
- [Stephanie] Does anyone need a new knife or anything?
- No, we're good for now. - Okay.
- [Tonya] It was extremely fresh,
and the fresh of the animal is the more we can learn.
We have various samples from all the major organs,
and then we have a variety of bones
and baleen going for genetics.
[machinery whines and whirs]
Fisheries and Oceans Canada are in charge of the management,
so the information is provided to them.
It is then in their hands to figure out
what the next steps are and to decide what to do.
[water splashes] [slow tense music]
- In 2017, when North Atlantic right whales showed up
in the Gulf of St. Lawrence for the first time
in significant numbers,
we didn't have a mitigation measures in place specific
to that like we did in other parts of Atlantic Canada
where North Atlantic right whales were present.
And we started to see the impacts of that
in terms of some whale mortalities.
- [Tonya] We had 17 animals that had died,
five in the US, 12 in Canada.
That was a major light turning on for a lot of people.
- We ultimately closed the golf fishery in 48 hours.
- The Department of Fisheries and Oceans
announced the closure of 10 zones to lobster fishing
in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, this following the sighting
of five endangered North Atlantic right whales.
[water sprays and splashes]
- In 2017, it was a news for everybody, but for us, too.
- Bottom line, it was an inconvenience
that cost us financially.
- Not one person in the fishing industry
would agree with what was going on.
They know anything can happen,
and they can do nothing about it.
That's why there was a protest.
- [Female Reporter] Hundreds of traps
were discarded on the front steps
of liberal MP Serge Cormier's Caraquet office.
- The lobster and crab fishery in Atlantic Canada
is a huge contributor to the economy in those provinces,
representing over $2 billion in economic value.
- Compared to like 10, 15 years ago,
volume has doubled if not tripled.
It's possible that the climate change
has something to do with it.
Lobster seems to be migrating to colder temperatures.
- These measures have had a huge impact on profit margins.
- [Female Reporter] The union has been asking DFO
to reconsider the complete closure.
- [Tonya] Immediately following 2017,
Canada has been lacking in its implementation
of our Species at Risk Act.
- We did put in place a variety of measures,
and those measures have evolved over the last three years.
- There's been some changes made this year from last year
that allows us to continue to fish in these shallower waters
where the whales don't seem to pass.
- [Female Reporter] Research done in Canada
and the US suggests that's where the whales
and their calves spend a considerable amount of time.
- [Tonya] We went through a lot in 2017.
We were very fortunate last year in Canada not
to deal with any dead right whales.
We are hoping for that to continue,
but obviously, there were other things at play.
[bulldozer hums] [dramatic music]
- The causes are still being assessed,
and the final necropsy reports will be coming out.
- Right now, those whales are stressing us.
They accuracy of those go very fast.
It make the job for us very hard.
- Let's see what caused the death of this whale
before put the dark cloud on fishermen's head.
- It's a sad situation, but it's hard to take one and say,
"We have to change the world
to save one particular species."
The whales are just another story in a big book
of changes that we've already seen and will continue to see.
[bulldozer rumbles]
- Scientists continue to study what
is driving the distribution of North Atlantic right whales.
It certainly does include climate change.
[bulldozer beeps and whirs]
- [Tonya] It's actually very hard to turn around
and look at it because we've done this way too much,
and the thing is its ability to survive almost solely rests
in our hands,
[remains squelch] [bulldozer hums and beeps]
[soft dramatic music] [boat hums]
- [Man] Bring on board!
- I've been measuring this cross section
for the last seven years.
We sampled these different organisms from the algae,
the bacteria, and the viruses all the way up
to the zooplankton, the food for right whales.
Okay, so if we lower this thing,
we're coring the ocean, and everything you catch
in your zooplankton net is everything that's out there
that's gonna become massive, right?
The swordfish, the lobster larvae.
And since we're talking about the base of the food chain,
it's what drives the productivity of everything else.
[water splashes]
There are live animals in here,
and we're gonna move these things into a small jar,
and then we're gonna pour alcohol on 'em,
and it'll be preserved for a good week.
So if you look in here, you see all those darting animals?
- Yeah! - Those are all copepods.
Copepods are the most abundant animal on the planet, period.
If you crushed 'em all up,
it's the equivalent of about a trillion humans.
- Wow. - Whoa.
- How does a 40-ton animal live
on a animal that is this big?
It's only because all of the copepods go down
at the same time and they aggregate
into a compact layer of just fat animals.
From here across the Atlantic to Norway,
it forms of density that makes it worthwhile
for an animal to dive to feed on 'em.
[boat hums]
Some of these copepods have been around
for 200 million years.
They've adapted and fine tuned their life cycle
to live in a particular environmental setting,
and now that environmental setting
is changing faster than they're able to adapt.
As the temperature has been increasing,
the populations of these Calanus have been decreasing,
and the organisms that depend on them,
such as right whales, are not gonna find sufficient food.
It's that disconnect that's beginning to cause the problem.
[waves crash against boat] [slow tense music]
That's a Calanus. Looks like one.
Looks like she's swimming like that.
- [Woman] So these are...
- They're tiny little organisms
that have this really complex behavior pattern.
[contemplative music]
Well, this is actually a really good image
of how much fat they have.
This is what right whales eat.
They eat Calanus finmarchicus.
- Right whales need to find any thousands
and thousands of pounds of Calanus per day
when they're feeding in the Gulf of Maine.
So even small declines can have a huge difference.
The waters in the Gulf of Maine have been warming faster
than 99.9% of the rest of the world's oceans.
There's a strong inverse relationship
between temperature and Calanus.
When waters get warm, we see a big decline
in Calanus and especially the energy-rich Calanus
that right whales need.
Depending on where you look in the time of year,
you can see anywhere from the 30
to a 90% decline in Calanus.
Then the right whales have
to start looking elsewhere for their food.
They started showing up in places
where we didn't have management
and conservation programs in place.
So they were more vulnerable to things
like ship strikes or gear entanglements.
[machine whirs]
We've built our management strategy
around this idea that the right whales
are gonna do roughly the same thing every year,
and as the climate has changed,
it's really altered the predictability in that pattern.
The mortalities have gone up so sharply because,
all of a sudden,
those management strategies don't work anymore.
[dramatic music]
- I believe that the team here can put something forward
that's in the ballpark of what is needed for the species.
- I'd probably say it has to go back to the team,
we have a discussion about it.
- People took the situation seriously this time.
It has gone a direction that we have not seen
in nearly a quarter of a century of doing this.
- This is the least squishy discussion we
have had in 25 years.
- Now as a Maine lobster fisherman,
I am responsible for three different families directly,
and my ability to come home today and to be able
to tell them that I might not be able
to support them in the future was something I
have had a really, really hard time thinking about.
In my boat alone, I am gonna remove 10.78 miles
of vertical line.
It's scary for me, but I know that's something,
and I can go back to my fishery and have that conversation.
- I'm here basically trying to get myself out of a job.
Am I so certain on this consensus that I
will disband my disentanglement team?
I'm no fool, but this is the best step
that I have seen taken since I've been on the team.
- If you can live with moving this package forward,
please raise your hand.
In 20 years of meeting and convening this team,
it has never put forward measures as strong
as what has been accomplished today.
[soft uplifting music]
[contemplative music] [group applauds]
- [Michael Asaro] Who cannot live with this package?
Sharon. - While this has a lot
of attraction for me and I think there's a lot here
that can be useful, my concern is I don't see
what else is gonna be considered by the agency besides this,
and I don't consider the sufficient.
- So I don't think it's the solution to the problem,
but I think we came very close.
- In my opinion, probably lead us to a situation
where the unsustainable kills of right whales
in the fishing industry will stop.
- There's absolutely a need for expedited implementation
of what can be done as quickly as it can be done.
- When we look at such deep cuts to the fisheries,
we do have to look at [chuckles] the possibility
of unintended consequences.
- If the measures necessary to reduce risk
can't be implemented right away,
then we urge NMFS to take emergency action.
- It's gonna be devastating to some communities,
so nobody's one here except maybe
and hopefully the right whale.
- I feel like this is a really huge step
to have a 50% vertical line reduction in some areas.
The industry has really stepped up to do their part.
- Measures developed here today a very likely
to have potential severe economic impacts
to the state of Maine's lobster fishery.
Recommendations put forward here today are a big ask.
- We did not hammer out all the details,
and the devil is in the details and how something as large
as a 50% reduction in vertical line impacts the fishery,
we need to maintain our rights to disagree
if something isn't panning out in the way
that can be implemented appropriately for the state.
[dramatic music] [traffic whooshes past]
[light bright music]
- I'm just finishing up the last week of the closure.
Starting to set gear.
Load the traps in the boat.
I gotta load the traps in the dock.
I have to bring two loads of the trailer with ropes,
try to get as much gear as I can
in the water right now to start making money.
[birds caw] [door closes]
We just got done
with the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team a week
and a half ago.
A lot got done.
There's been no more added closures,
and Maine has to reduce their vertical lines by 50%.
In the long run, if you're able to go fishing still
and that's all you gotta do, I wouldn't be complaining
'cause it's a lot harsher measures that coulda happened.
There's probably over 10,000 feet of rope here
on these four trawls, including the vertical line.
I fish 800 traps total
with only 80 vertical lines altogether,
so fishing 800 singles to be 800 vertical lines.
When everything's tied down, ready to go,
I'll throw a rope over the top of those high flyers.
Boom, boom, boom. We're ready to go.
[truck hums]
- Maine is taking a stand against a strict new federal plan
to stop right whales from dying.
[dramatic music]
- Maine congressional delegation
is reaching out to President Trump tonight,
asking him to help the lobster industry.
- [Female Reporter] Maine's representatives
say new federal regulations designed
to protect whales are instead a grave threat
to thousands of people who rely on the lobster fishery.
[static hisses]
- Coastal fishermen from east and west,
I wanna welcome you to the Maine lobstermen's rally.
We all know why we're here.
- This is gonna destroy our coastline,
our small communities, our lobster industry.
It's the only industry we have left.
- We all care about the right whale,
but we all believe there's a right way to going
about doing this, and this proposal isn't the way.
- Maine's entire congressional delegation
and Governor Mills stand with you in this fight.
- My administration will not allow the bureaucrats
of Washington, DC to undermine our lobster industry
or our economy with foolish, unsupported,
and ill-advised regulations.
- We truly believe from the bottom of our hearts
that Maine lobstermen are not part of the problem.
When a species of oil is at risk of extinction,
who has a seat at the table to ensure
that the process behind set decisions is fair and equitable?
- NOAA has chosen to persecute Maine's lobster industry,
not to diminish the threat to the right whale
but as an expedient means to get the environmentalists
off their back.
- I'm more than willing to stand with you
and fight like hell to make sure that no more
of not having the government listening to me.
- we've been fighting these burdensome rules
that we've had to go through and the nonsense.
Enough is enough.
- There's thousands and thousands of jobs
and people who depend on those.
Once we lose a fishery, it's gone forever.
- I can't think of one thing
that the National Marine Fishery Service
has ever done to help a fishery
besides regulate it to extinction.
[crowd cheers and applauds]
[door rattles open]
- Today, we're at the IFAW Marine Mammal Rescue warehouse.
This is our rescue operations centers.
And so we keep a lot of our rescue equipment here
so that we can run out the door
anytime marine mammals need rescuing.
My name is Dr. Sarah Sharp,
and I'm the animal rescue veterinarian
with International Fund for Animal Welfare.
We do all of the marine mammal stranding response
from the Rhode Island border all the way through Cape Cod.
It's one of the busiest stranding areas in all of the world.
[water sprays]
- We just got back from our [indistinct] necropsy.
We wanna still consider an acute process,
either human interaction, but we didn't see any other signs,
or an acute disease process.
- I would keep entanglement on the differential list
for this animal just because we just simply
couldn't examine her for evidence of entanglement
'cause the sharks had already eaten away those parts.
It's extremely rare at this point to not have a whale
that has some evidence of entanglement.
These whales get entangled in line. They start thrashing.
They can't get to the surface to breathe.
It's a quick death,
but it's actually a fairly traumatic event.
When we see whales that are entangled
for a really long period of time,
they can have a number of different wounds associated
with the entangling gear.
The line can embed over the blow hole.
That's not only gonna be painful,
but it's also going to significantly
impact the animal's ability to breathe.
This line over time essentially works deeper and deeper,
and it not only cuts through the skin
and the blubber and the muscle,
but it actually starts cutting into the bone,
essentially acts as a very slow guillotine, almost,
cutting through that whale tissue.
Even if it's not lethal to them immediately,
these are things that can decrease their ability
to carry calves to term and then reproduce that population.
The slight little sliver of hope that I have
is that these deaths are actually preventable
because we're causing them.
[boat hums] [water sprays]
It's extremely frustrating that, unfortunately,
some of the parties are reneging on their promises
to be able to get the line out of the water.
[soft melancholy music] [boat hums]
So I'm absolutely worried
about extinction for these animals.
And I'm not only worried about extinction in the future,
but I'm worried about extinction in the next few decades.
I don't want these whales, [voice breaks] sorry.
[exhales] Sorry.
I don't want these whales to go extinct on our watch.
[waves crash] [bulldozer beeps in distance]
- We're here tonight to review Maine's draft plan.
So back in June, we were looking at proposals
that included a recommendation of 50% reduction
in vertical lines or end lines.
Maine members of the TRT, along with everybody else
on the TRT, voted in favor of this 60% reduction.
But the Maine member of the TRT also read into the record,
"We reserve our right to change our mind
because we don't know what this means on the water."
I think everybody was under a lot
of pressure to come up with a solution.
You had one of the heads of NOAA Fishery there pushing
to say, "If you don't do this, we will."
So first piece of the main plan is a 25% reduction
in end lines based on our calculations.
So it is not a 50% reduction as proposed
through the Take Reduction Team.
If you take all of the vertical lines month by month,
that's over five million vertical lines.
We're looking at impacting only 1.4 million vertical lines.
We've totally changed the denominator here.
Also, a biological opinion is gonna be written.
We're expecting that to find that the right whales
are in what's called jeopardy,
a legal term under the Endangered Species Act.
We want our management scenarios to be accepted.
I wanna quickly talk about the wild card here,
which is the federal court cases that are ongoing.
About a month ago, a case was filed
in bringing the Maine lobster fishery directly
into a lawsuit.
And I wanna highlight a couple quotes from the same judge
as it pertains to those whale lawsuits.
"Any lag between the courts issuance of an injunction
is precious time for the North Atlantic right whale,
which has been suffering unprecedented fatalities
in the last three years, particularly from entanglements."
This is very concerning to our attorneys.
It should be very concerning to you as an industry.
This remains the wild card, having a court step in
and putting injunction on this fishery.
So with that, I'll be happy to open it up to questions.
- Say they pull the plug on us
and we don't gain their support on this.
Where do we go then?
- I can tell you this. This is our line in the sand.
So if they don't accept this,
sure we're gonna be in a federal court, fighting this up.
[tense dramatic music]
[traffic hums] [ambulance siren wails]
- I'm Erica Fuller, a senior attorney
at the Conservation Law Foundation
and the lead attorney on our right whale effort.
We have participated in lawsuits
over the last 20 years to try to protect right whales
from entanglements in fishing gear.
Our goal is to put enough pressure
on the agency to take immediate action.
- We cannot allow this right whale
to go extinct on our watch.
- One of the things CLF does is bring the pressure
that needs to be brought on government to do its job.
- We just don't have time to study them to death.
We really need to start getting a long-term solution
on the water.
- I expect to force the federal government,
to force Canada, to force the fishing industry
to step up and make the necessary changes
to make sure that we don't lose this right whale.
- Obviously our work's not done.
We have a way to go - We do.
- and not much time to get there.
[slow tense music]
- This is where the rubber meets the road.
Welcome to the real world of democracy.
My name is Richard Maximus Strahan,
and I'm a conservation scientist and revolutionary.
We're trying to get a law on the election ballot
to protect whales from being caught
in fishing gear right here in our state waters.
We're in the middle of global mass extinction.
You ever hear of the right whale?
- Yes. - So I file lawsuits,
petition the government to protect the endangered wildlife.
You have to fight extinction from the ground up.
- Today, we are here to build
and celebrate a 100-foot-long right whale
and calf composed from over 1,000 tiles created
by involved young citizens and their supporters.
We're using the right whale as a symbol
for the larger humanitarian effort
that we need to address climate change.
This whale is swimming right
in the front door of the state house.
When we sit down with legislators, we can say,
"We did this right on your doorstep
because we need you to care about these issues."
Let's give it up for the right whale. All right.
Here are the state house, our resolution
is directing Congress to pass the Save Whales Act
to protect and preserve this right whale
for future generations.
- Do you have any questions? - No, just save the whale.
- Good attitude! - We need to.
- So if we forced to state
to force the Endangered Species Act on the fishing industry,
it'll be the shot heard round the world.
- From 2003 to last year in 2018,
the primary cause of death was entanglement.
There are a lot of things that are hard in the world.
Figuring out how to solve this particular problem is not.
We can't give up now.
[audience applauds]
- It's like if you saved the right whale,
you save the ocean.
So I need 10 signatures. I have 11.
And if you could certify these right now,
I think the gods are on my side.
Decision 2020.
The people for the first time in history get to vote.
Whales or fishing, bad fishing. You take a pick.
And if the people sell out the whale,
then they get the extinction that they've asked for.
If society is not going to stop a whale from going extinct,
I don't think you're gonna stop much of anything else.
[crickets chirp] [slow dramatic music]
[truck starts]
- Last time I saw a right whale was middle of April.
To me, it looks like a freight train on the surface
with a mouth looking down a tunnel.
- Hey, almost 3:30. I'll see you in a little bit.
[grunts]
[door shuts] [boat starts up]
And I am off.
My mermaid, I rub her backside everyday
before I leave the harbor for good luck.
I don't wanna see nothing get harmed.
I'm doing all I can do now to protect the whale.
I'm doing my part, I know that.
I remember sitting at the TRT, and one of the head guys
from the National Fishery Service got up and said,
"If you don't come up with a consensus,
we will come up with a plan."
You might wanna come up with a plan of your own
that might sting a little than being put out of business.
But we are almost to the gear. So we gotta get ready.
[slow dramatic music] [boat rumbles]
We're seeing lobsters here.
If somebody's saying, "Fuck this, fuck the whale,
let it die," to me, I don't wanna hear it.
If somebody's trying to shut you down,
that's just good ammunition for 'em,
and they're the first ones to come crying to me afterwards.
But that's just human nature. A lot of people are scared.
They don't know the facts on a lot of stuff.
Takes time, but if you're not at the table,
be prepared to be served.
There's a lot of fishermen working hard with the scientists
to try to solve a problem, to try to do something about it.
We'll see what happens what the feds decide to do.
[soft ethereal music]
[ropes click and slide]
- This is a special place.
Cape Cod and this body of water
are part of my family's heritage.
It's been the backyard of now 11 generations of us,
and into it come these exceptionally rare animals,
these last of the right whales.
So this is the place to study them where the last battle
to save them will take place.
We started doing our disentanglement work in 1984,
and it was the first real effort
to slow down free swimming entangled whales
that otherwise would die,
and it has followed on to this day
as we've attempted to develop methods
to free animals from lethal entanglement.
- [Man] Keep going, keep going.
[muffled speaking]
- This is an effort to disentangle a whale we call Ruffian.
- [Man] Get ready, [indistinct]. Woo!
- Who had towed gear all the way
from the Gulf of St. Lawrence into Georgia-Florida waters,
a distance of 1,700 miles.
- [Man] Here we go. Oh, easy, easy, before it goes.
- [Charles] The first part of the effort,
get a grapple across the gear.
- [Man] I got him. He's in, he's in, he's in.
Back up, back up, back up, back up.
Get the boat buoy ready to go over.
Okay, buoy over, buoy over.
- And then we're attached to the whale.
The flukes of a right whale are up to 18 feet across
and weigh the weight of a small car.
There are a couple of memorable occasions
where they were very close, and if they'd hit,
we undoubtedly would not have lived.
Once the whale is on the surface,
the effort is to use a hole to get a hook knife
into the entangling ropes,
and there they' just succeeded in getting it,
and that hook knife will eventually cut the gear.
[hook knife slices line] [dramatic music]
- [Man] One, two, three. Okay, that's it.
- It's a way of remotely cutting the gear
to be more safe than we used to be.
[soft poignant music]
- Joe Howlett was trained here at the center in 2017.
Joe was dispatched to attempt a disentanglement.
[whale blows]
Whoa, just keep some pressure on it.
Near the end of that disentanglement, he lost his life.
[water crashes]
Joe was an exceptionally dedicated guy
who died in the effort.
There is on the part of all of us
who work with right whales a passionate desire to help them,
not just because they're whales we know
but because they're on the brink of extinction.
There has to be further development
and rapid development of new methods to fish,
methods that do not involve entanglement.
[whale moans] [hook knife slices line]
[rope slides]
The answer's really simple.
It's been there all along, and it goes far
beyond anything that Take Reduction Team
has recently decided, and that is no rope in the water.
That will solve the problem.
[door rattles open] [contemplative music]
- Typically in this garage, we repair boats.
It has been transformed into a research
and development laboratory for ropeless fishing.
- My name is Richard Riels.
I'm the executive director and founder
to SMELTS, Sea Mammal Education Learning Technology Society.
I spent some years studying the entanglement problem
in large whales and saw a lot of animals suffering.
When you walk up to a dead animal
and you see it entangled in gear,
we probably wanna try to figure out
how to prevent that from happening.
- He came to me with an idea
about building a ropeless fishing system,
and I told him he was crazy.
- A ropeless system that could reduce entanglement
in large whales and give the fishermen a potential
to work in closed areas.
Just trying to figure out with fishermen, can we do this?
This is how ropeless fishing could work.
The lobsterman shows up to his fishing grounds,
deploys the gear, and sets a signal to report his position.
We have no vertical line buoy.
The marine life that's swimming throughout the ocean
in the fishing grounds have no chance of being entangled.
Fisherman returns to the fishing ground,
activates his recovery system,
brings a lobster out the surface,
leaves the fishing grounds.
[water splashes]
The technology is there. If we can afford it, we don't know.
Can we get enough of it built
that actually impacts global fishing?
It's a big challenge.
There's so many animals being entangled.
Prevention is really the only hope we have
to end the needless suffering of these large whales.
In the Gulf of Maine alone,
there are about 3.5 million lobster traps,
and at any one time, hundreds of thousands
of buoy lines are in the water.
That has to change.
Ropeless is coming, [laughs] whether it's now,
five years or 20 years.
You either adapt or you get left behind.
[bugs chitter]
[air hisses] [muffled chatter]
- Thank you so much for coming, everyone.
North Atlantic right whales neath is now more than ever.
We're losing right whales at a shocking rate.
So we've lost at least almost 30 animals since 2017 alone,
and those are known deaths.
We know that we're losing a lot more that we never discover.
A scientific study recently showed
they're all dying because of impacts from humans.
- We all have the opportunity tonight here
at NOAA Headquarters to have the federal government hear
from us about what we think should be done.
We can't afford more delay. NOAA needs to act now.
They need to act quickly.
- If strong conservation measures
and protective regulations and not put in place now,
they will continue to decline before extinction.
So this may be their last chance
to get them on the road to recovery.
- Good afternoon, everyone.
Tonight is our a scoping meeting on developing modifications
to the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan.
This is the first of many opportunities for public comment,
and that is a critical part of the process.
It helps you all inform the steps that NOAA takes
as we move towards a proposed rule.
[slow dramatic music]
- If the goal is to get
below potential biological removal level,
so that's less than one per year,
and get the risk reduction at the least economic impact,
what the TRT came up with was pretty smart.
- You are only talking about a theoretical,
unscientific, unproven methodology proposed
by the very people who are killing the whales to reduce it
so you, therefore, expect more dead right whales
from entanglement over the next 10 years.
Reduced does not equal eliminate.
- [Speaker] The Marine Mammal Protection Act requires us to-
- Maybe you should listen to the Endangered Species Act,
which makes every entanglement a violation of law.
[people murmur and clap] [dramatic music]
The goal is to wipe out the right whale.
- So tonight, again,
we would like to get input from you now.
- It's sad watching what's going on here.
Here we are taking the brunt of the punishment again.
It's not right.
I don't know how long we're gonna be able to take it,
but something has to change.
[audience members clap and cheer]
- I'm sorry you feel like we're blaming you.
I just wanna tell you we're really frustrated.
We feel helpless. We feel powerless.
We just wanted to keep these whales alive,
and we don't think we can do it.
- We're not out there trying to kill whales.
It's pretty easy to go up there and say,
"Invoke this rule, this, and this,"
'cause it doesn't affect you.
It affects us.
- To put it bluntly,
human actions are putting these beautiful gentle giants
on a direct path towards extinction.
That is why we are here today, to correct these human errors
and actions in a meaningful way.
I urge NOAA to do right by the right whale
and implement stricter regulations.
[people clap]
- [Richard Strahan] That's what we're saying!
- Both sides of this issue are being played.
There may be no human action or inaction
that can save a population of 400 right whales,
but there are actions that could be taken
to devastate the local economies entwined
within lobstering and fishing communities.
- NOAA is the fox guarding the chicken coop.
It's owned by fishermen,
it's run by fishermen under statute,
and this beautiful, - Three minutes!
- beautiful opposition that they demonstrate here
is just part of the scam.
You're all gonna be replaced by green fishermen
will not use vertical buoy ropes
and will actually care - Max, Max.
- about the environment. - Max, it's time.
It's time to go, Max.
- No, I don't want to go. - It's time to go, all right?
It's time to go.
- No, it's time for you to go, sir,
- Max, [indistinct]. - 'cause you're gonna be fired
for being a liar and a person
who works to kill off the right whale.
[soft ethereal music] [waves crash]
[soft dramatic music] [boat hums]
- We're about 10 miles from the Georgia-Florida line.
We're smack dab in the middle
of the North Atlantic right whale camping grounds.
It's a big area, so we really depend
on aerial survey to find the whales.
- This is the only place that right whales are known
to go to give birth to their live young.
[camera clicks]
Being that they are so endangered,
we're trying to protect them as much as we can.
- Going back to the 2000s, we were seeing
about two dozen calves per year on average.
Since 2010, that number's dropped in half,
and two years ago, in fact,
we didn't even see a single calf.
That's the first time that it had ever happened.
- [Woman On Radio] The Coast Guard reported an alpha.
- We can't make more calves,
but we could certainly stop killing whales.
That's just gotta happen,
or this species might not stand a chance.
- It's a monumental challenge that we are currently facing,
and it requires everybody, our state partners,
the fishing industry, environmental groups.
We need to all come to the table
and play a part in the recovery of this iconic species.
- [Woman On Radio] [indistinct] this is NOAA 48, go ahead.
- I just wanna give you a heads up.
We got a mother-calf pair.
- [Woman On Radio] Good copy. NOAA 48.
- The National Marine Fishery Service has
to balance these two objectives that it has
of sustaining fisheries and protecting species.
At the moment, that balance has just gone away.
- [Man On Radio] Three, two, one. Perfect.
- It's always a challenge to look to dual mandates
of conserving protected species
and ensuring thriving, sustainable fisheries.
We look for solutions that make meaningful progress
towards recovering right whales while also ensuring
that our fisheries remain very profitable.
[slow somber music] [waves crash]
- We're still looking at least in a couple of years
before something really starts changing on the water,
and that's really slow the way these animals
are disappearing at the moment.
- I would reject the idea that we're too slow.
We are working within the process,
and in order to have affective, meaningful,
long-lasting measures that are in place,
we need the collaboration among all of the stakeholders.
- If the agency is gonna be serious
about saving North Atlantic right whales,
then the action that they're gonna have to take
is gonna be more draconian than
what's being considered so far,
and that's hard, but that's where we are now.
North Atlantic right whales are paying a price for this.
At some point, we have to turn this around.
[water sprays]
[soft ethereal music]
[people sing in foreign language]
[bell chimes]
[waves crash in distance]