Geography Is Whales: Nature's Traveling Bards

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Whales are incredible creatures who's ability to travel long distances is surpassed by their ability to communicate over thousands of miles! In today's podcast episode, Hunter and Geoff explore the oceanic geography that underpins the way whales do everything that they do.

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
Jeff, have you ever seen awhale before? Yeah? I have,
so, I guess. I'm originallyfrom California, the LA area. There
was one time I was in areally small town called Avalon on Catalina Islands,
which is a sort of island chainoff the coast of California, and

(00:25):
I remember I was pretty young,but I remember at one point everybody sort
of like moved over to the harboror whatever because there was you know,
people could see a whale apparently likethat was the thing, and so I
rush over there. I'm a youngkid, obviously rush over there. I
was like, oh, I wantto see this whale. And the only
thing I ever got to see wasit just the slightest sort of like little

(00:46):
hump or something, and then itwas gone, no, no longer to
be seen. Apparently somebody had informedus that was the right time of year
where they were in their migratory patternfrom well, I don't know which way
they were going there. They're goingfrom you know, Mexico waters off the
coast of Messo up to Alaska orvice versas. I'm not sure we've happened
to catch them at the right time. I don't think seeing wales off the

(01:07):
coast of Cattalian Island is super common. But I guess, you know,
once in a blue moon. Yeah, that's my one and only whale watching
story. I've never seen them anywhereelse. I'm trying to think if I've
ever seen a whale in the wild. I know I went whale watching once,
but I don't think we saw anything, which was kind of a bummer.
But I have seen whales in captivity. I've seen beluga whales at an

(01:29):
aquarium where I grew up in Connecticut. And then my grandparents back in the
day used to live in Florida,so we would go to Sea World and
they would have these shows and theyinvolved killer whales or orcas as probably we
should probably call them. And somost of my experiences with whales have been
have not been in the wild.So that's something we'll talk about because today

(01:53):
our episode is entitled Geography of Wales. Geography is whales. So we we
sort of hinted at this at thelast at the end of last week's episode,
where most of what we talk aboutis land based, right, that's
right. You know, where arehumans or where is this specific thing?
What are hum where are humans doing? Various things. That's usually sort of
power where we tend to go,right, but this is this is the

(02:15):
whole other side of the planet,actually the majority. That's the planet where
whales can. You know, whalesare in the ocean and they can go
a lot of different places that wedon't ever really even think about all that
often that's right as lands and don'talways know about like even people who study
whales and don't always sure where they'reat. And we've looked at the geography
of both cats and dogs before,but this time, as you mentioned,

(02:36):
we're getting aquatic. We're going intothe larger part of the earth that we
don't talk about quite as much,and so we're dipping into a branch of
geography called biogeography, which is thespatial study of living organisms. Fascinating stuff.
Jeff, what is a whale?Do you know what a whale is?
I mean, I know you've you'veseen part of a whale, and

(02:57):
yeah, what is a whale?Yeah? I mean I can tell you
some basics here. You know,for example, I know that a whale
is a mammal, it's not ayou know, and like a fish,
which is you know, something thatbreathes. You know, breeze underwater,
right, you know this, Awhale has to come up for air,
and you know that's why they havethe blowholes. And that's sort of why
we see them so often. Imean, here is that's that's That's about

(03:20):
the amount I know about whales.I know that they're generally larger creatures,
but I'm not sure if they're alwayssuper large. And for that matter,
I'm not sure if a dolphin isa whale or not. You're about to
find out. It's the good listeners, you'll know the answer to that question.
As you mentioned, whales are mammals. They're warm blooded. They give
birth to live offspring, you know, instead of eggs like like fish and

(03:42):
birds reptiles, and they nurse theiryoung. Whales are scientifically classified as member
of the cetacean family, of whichthere are more than ninety species, and
dolphins, porpoises, and whales areall cetaceans, so they're all basically whales.
Cetaceans are what we would normally callwhales, so they're part of the
same group. There's two basic kindsof cetaceans, toothed and baleen whales.

(04:10):
Toothed whales included dolphins, porpoises,narwhals, orcas, and sperm whales nar
walls. Really quick, yes,point on narwhals. This was this was
a creature that for a long timeI thought was a mythical beat right,
the whole unicorse it. Yeah,yeah, it's it's the unicorn of the
sea, except that they actually exist. They have like a really long horn,

(04:32):
and for a long time I waslike, oh, you know,
you see it on like TV,you see it in like various things children.
It just seems so mythic. Yeah, no, you're right, and
I think it's it's sort of unlikemost other animals. And interesting thing is
that thing that we usually call ahorn of a narwhale is actually a very

(04:53):
long tooth fascinat right, Yeah,so it's one of these toothed whales.
Tooth whales employ a method of navigatingand finding food called echolocation, So they
emit sounds such as clicks, whicheffectively bounce off of objects, schools of
fish to pop, you know,bathymetry, giving the whale sort of three

(05:15):
dimensional view of what's head, what'sahead. So that's a it's a particular
skill that tooth whales have bilin whalesare generally larger than tooth whales. Bilin
whales include blue whales, bowhead whales, humpback whales, and right whales.
The blin is a fringed our fringeplates of keratin, which is what our
fingernails are made of, but inthe case of the whales, it's on

(05:36):
the upper jaws through which these whalesexpel water and filter tiny crustaceans called krill,
which is the main diet of bilinewhales. Most whales live in what's
like if you've seen a picture,they kind of look like it's almost like
almost looks like hair, that's right, sort of like sort of it's very

(05:57):
flex yes, yeah, yeah,it's very neat looking. In fact,
people used to hunt whales. We'llgo get into that, but the beileen
was used in clothing, like incollars and in corsets and stuff because it
was strong and firm yet flexible.So that was a material that humans used
in clothing for a while. Mostwhales live in saltwater. You're probably familiar

(06:21):
with this, but there's a fewthat live in fresh water, including the
yanksa river finless porpoise, and thenthere's an animal called the Baiji. I
don't know if you ever heard ofthe Baiji before. I'm not familiar.
This is a freshwater dolphin of theYangsa, which is believed to be functionally
extinct. So what does that mean. Functionally extinct? It means there might

(06:45):
be a few, laugh, butthere's probably not enough to maintain a permanent
population. And this is an animalthat's basically either extinct or on the verge
of extinction. Very sad, yeah, very sad. And I mean we'll
be talking more about this, butthe populations of whales, various whales has
declined very precipitously in the eighteenth andnineteenth and twentieth century as they were hunted,

(07:12):
many of them to near extinction.So we'll get back to that.
But what I want to get tonow is, you know, we like
the wayback machines. Let's get inthere for a little bit and talk about
how long whales have been around andhow they evolved. So if you go
back some four hundred million years ago, which is kind of a long time
ago, but you know, notthat long for the Earth, I guess

(07:34):
some aquatic animals began to adapt intoterrestrial animals. In other words, they
started to live on land. Sothe first animals are thought to have been
aquatic and eventually start moving onto land. This predates the super continent Pangaea,
which we have an episode about whichif you haven't heard it, check it
out, is super interesting, veryinteresting. We always we always try to

(07:56):
figure out what our latest timeline isfor the for the basis of our subject
of our episodes, and so Ithink Pangaea was the oldest we went the
farthest back I think for a singlesubject of an episode. Now I think
we might have just beat that withwhate that's right, because we're going back
to this sort of proto proto whale. And so, yeah, Pangaea was

(08:18):
three hundred million years ago, brokeup about one hundred and eighty million years
ago. But if we move forwardfrom that time, because we only dip
into that pre Pangaea for a momenthere, around fifty million years ago,
some of these land dwelling animals evolvedinto animals that would eventually become whales.
The archaeological record should that these animalsexisted in what is present day India and

(08:39):
Pakistan. And this is after thedinosaurs, but long before human beings.
Showed up on the scene. Sothe ancestors of whales lived on land,
something I didn't think I really knewbefore I got into this, or if
i'd known, I'd forgotten. Whalesevolved from even toad hooved wrestrial animals who

(09:01):
have the animals are also known asungulates, and present day even towed ungulates
include cow, bison, deer,elk, moose, pigs, giraffes,
and hippopotamuses. So wait, soso they have these You're saying that these
animals have a single ancestor that theyalso were direct That is correct, That
is right. Fascinating, Yeah,they didn't involve the other. But yeah,

(09:24):
if you go back for far enough, there was one creature or series
of creatures that these animals all evolvedfrom. Fascinating. I mean, I
guess that makes sense, right,At some point, you know, all
life evolved from some sort of youknow whatever primordial ooze, right, I
think is to do that it wasepisode at some point, right, But

(09:50):
I just find it interesting that atsome point whales, you know, not
going all the way back to theooze, whales and cows were actually you
know, maybe a similar creature orthe same creature right, they were,
and one decided to go in thewater and one decided to stay online.
They're technically related along with whales.All those animals I just mentioned are part
of an evolutionary branch called Rtodactyla,which is a term I'm not real familiar

(10:16):
with. The closest living relative towales today are hippopotamuses. Oh. Interesting,
I would have guessed the manatee,right. Yeah, I don't know
where the manate figures in this,and I wish i'd looked that up.
But maybe we can we can getback to that. But yeah, hippopotamuses
didn't evolve from whales or vice versa. But again, as you suggested,

(10:37):
if you go back far enough,they have a common ancestor. In common
Researchers believe the first whales evolved overfifty million years ago. There's still land
dwelling at this time. The creatureshave thought to have moved westward over a
forty two million year I'm sorry,as a forty two million years ago.
There was a fossil that was datedto this time of a four legged whale

(11:01):
like creature that was discovered in Peru. And this is a skeleton that was
found in twenty eleven, so wecan see they moved across land and started
developing in different areas. Jeff,here's my question to you, though,
how do proto whales go from landdwelling to water dwelling. Do you have
any speculation on that? I guess, like if I were to just knowing,

(11:24):
I mean, obviously this can takeplace over a long period of time.
But if you have a you know, a variation of a cow,
I guess, let's let's say it'sthis cow kind of like creature that was
constantly needing to cross water, tomigrate across large water bodies, that's constantly
within water. Eventually, those youknow cows are probably gonna have to learn

(11:46):
how to swim. And I think, just over you know, the evolutionary
cycle of cows, of those youknow cow kind of creatures breeding, the
best swimmers are going to be theones that constantly come to the top and
once I survive and then breed more. And I think that's just sort of
the evolutionary process. That's sort ofwhat I would assume. That's just a
real ballpark answer. Well, Imean, there's only theories of this because

(12:09):
nobody was around to see this goon, but and the theories are kind
of a riff off of what youwere talking about. One of the main
theories that came across is that theland dwelling ungulates began eating plants that grew
at the edge of the water,and so they started interacting with the water,
and then the shallow water started toafford them a place to escape from
predators, which was pretty handy,oh okay, And so they started hanging

(12:31):
out in the water more and more, and over many years, the descendants
spent more and more time in waterand began to evolve into swimmers. So
this is that part of the alot of sense. Yep, yeah,
I mean the fact that like escapingfrom predators and being able to see that
as a safe a safe zone wouldprobably then like, if that becomes your

(12:56):
safe zone, you're probably not goingto want to leave it. All that
on the right thing. It's likeI might go away over time, you're
going to be so involved with it, then you're going to evolve, try
to eat. But yeah, ifI know I can stay safe by hanging
out in the water, then Imight spend more time in the water.
These animals became capable of drinking saltwater. Over time, their front legs
were replaced by flippers over time,not like one day, and they developed

(13:18):
blubber, which is a thick layerof fat which keeps them warm in the
water. Their back legs became smaller, eventually disappearing, and their tails became
larger, stronger, and more adaptedto swimming. And it's interesting to think
that the tail fins of whales arehorizontal and move up and down, where
the tails of fish are vertical andthey move side to side. I've never

(13:39):
really thought about that before, butthat's the difference in the meter aquatic locomotion
between fish and whales. Interesting.I wonder I'm sure somebody, some you
know, marine biologists, has figuredthis out, but like I would wonder
which ones, which one's better overallfor for movement, And yeah, I
would. I guess I could theorizesomething maybe that because whales and dolphins need

(14:05):
to go up right and down sooften for air, that that sort of
movement moves them up faster versus thiswhere it's like maybe they're faster in water,
but they don't need to have togo up and down very often.
That's just sort of that's I haveno idea that I don't even know.
Maybe I'm sure there's some listeners whoare probably like, yeah, that's it,
or no, not quite right,But that sounds pretty good to me,

(14:26):
So let's go with that. They'renasal openings moved to the tops of
their heads and became blow holes,as you talked about, to better facilitate
breathing while swimming. And some ofthese animals developed belanes instead of teeth,
and we've talked about that distinction,and of course there are many other adaptations

(14:46):
to the bodies of these animals thatbecame whales. The transition from terrestrial under
it to the first whales is thoughtto have taken about ten million years,
which is a long time for usbecause people haven't been around anywhere near that
long, but in evolutionary terms,is not that long. It's kind of
a almost quick transition. I mean, ten million years is a long time,

(15:09):
but when we're talking about hundreds ofmillions of years, it's not that
long, right, Yeah, it'sit's kind of a drop in the bucket.
Really. Yeah, there's a reallyfun sort of graphic that it's the
entire history of like the world andlike a clock. Okay, right,
and it's like, you know,here's like the minutes, hours at which
things have occurred. It's just funbecause it really obviously it's really you know,

(15:31):
bent towards the human aspect of it. But it's like humans came into
exist as we know us today,you know, at like eleven fifty nine
exactly. It's like any price ofthat clock the people human rights. Yeah,
this would probably be like eleven fortyfive pm. I don't know for
sure, but that's probably the scaleat what we're talking about. Yeah.

(15:52):
Interesting, Yeah, that's late aroundthirty four million years ago, so still
a while ago. From a commonancestor, whales evolved into the two groups,
the tooth in the billion whales,and this is kind of roughly marks
the beginning of the modern whales ofwhat we would maybe commonly think of whales.
Of course, there's development that happens. Giant whales, the size of
the largest present day whales are thoughtto have developed about four point five million

(16:15):
years ago, so that's when theystart getting really large. Apparently this roughly
coincided with a colder climate and anew geography of plankton. So plankton previously
had been widely found in the oceans, but became concentrated in particular areas of
oceans, often thousand miles apart.So larger whales had an easier time traveling

(16:36):
and migrating these long distances, whichmay have favored some of these larger creatures
surviving in this new climate era.A few things about studying whales here.
First of all, estimating whale populationsis extremely challenging for several reasons, some
of which are probably pretty apparent.One is that whales are constantly on the

(16:59):
move over very large areas. Whalesspend a lot of time in very deep
water and remote parts of the oceanthat people don't know a lot about.
You know, it's I think we'vesaid it before. We've been to the
moon. Haven't been to the deepestparts of some of the ocean before,
apparently, right, Yeah, Becausein a lot of respects, it's easier
to get to get out. Ina lot of respects, it's easier to

(17:22):
be out in space where there's youknow, there's no pressure, right,
I mean, obviously there's no oxygeneither, but you know, when you
get deep enough into the ocean,there's there's a lot of pressure that necessitates
vehicles that are incredibly strong in alot of ways that we simply don't have
the technology for. Still, yeah, there's there's you know, that's an
ongoing thing. But that's I thinkthat sounds exactly right, and it's it's
fascinating to think about. Whales tendto live pretty long lives. Of course,

(17:47):
it depends on the species. Theybirth calves on average, depending on
the species, one to three years. So tracking population trends it requires long
term studies in the way that maybeyou know, tracking population trends of rabbits
or something, right, because thathaving several litters constantly, whales live longer,

(18:07):
they have birth less often and sothat's part of the complication as well.
And then some of the breeding groundsfor whales are completely unknown to researchers.
So these are some of the SoI'm going to give some estimates later
on in the show here in theprogram, but you know, the caveat
here is it's pretty hard to estimatethis stuff. A quick note on whale

(18:29):
call. So different whales make differentsounds. As you might guess, some
whales produce very distinctive low frequency soundsthat can be heard over hundreds, possibly
thousands of miles, allowing them tocommunicate with other whales over large distances.
And that's some fascinating geography right there. So whales has been able to do
that for much longer than people have. For example, certain whales such as

(18:51):
humpbacks, have a rhythm to theircommunication which is often referred to as whales
song, and of course these havebeen recorded. And it turns out that
the ocean noise from ships, forexample, make it much harder for whales
to communicate, and thus this isone of the challenges of whales in the
modern world, is having to dealwith all of the noise that people are

(19:14):
making in the ocean and that inhibitstheir ability to communicate. And then with
migrations, although scientists know a gooddeal about whale migrations, we'll mention a
few of those. It appears there'sa lot to learn about them too,
because they're constantly sort of finding newthings out. So, you know,
these are the limits to what wecan find out, but an amazing amount
of research has been done. Ohyeah, I bet, I'm sure,

(19:36):
you know. Going back to sortof my you know what I was talking
about earlier in the episode, talkingabout seeing the whale that was potentially going
from you know, Mexico up toAlaskar advice versa. Right, that's that's
a huge migration. That's a prettylarge metalf along several thousand miles. That's
far. Yeah, yeah, veryfar. There's a lot more to say,
but we will take a short breakand get back to Geography is Whales

(20:00):
after that, and we're back.It's the Geography is Everything podcast. We're
talking about Geography is Whales, andso in this segment, we're going to
discuss several varieties of whales, andI thought it would be interesting to start

(20:22):
with the blue whale. Perfect they'rethe biggest, the biggest whale, of
the biggest life form. I thinkthat's yes, they have the biggest life
form. No, that's right.They're not only the biggest whale, the
largest whale, but they're also believedto be the largest animal to have ever
lived on the planet, so biggerthan dinosaurs. Apparently a blue whale tongue
weighs more than an elephant. Asa way of comparison comparing things, Wow,

(20:45):
elephants are the largest heaviest land someof the I think the African elephant
is maybe the largest land dwelling animalin the world. Right now, the
blue whale can reach one hundred feetlong and weigh two hundred tons, But
it's possible to the scientific opinion onwhether the largest animal may shift. So,

(21:06):
for example, I read an articleabout an ancient reptile believed to be
about the size of a blue whale. That's a big reptile. The skeleton
an ancient whale in Peru from fortymillion years ago has some reachers thinking researchers
thinking that it was bigger than theblue whale, like not longer, but
just massive growths. Yeah, sothere's limits to what we can know.

(21:29):
But generally speaking, blue whales arethought to be the largest animals to ever
live in the world, and theirsize is in part because of their aquatic
habitat. So the size of lambanimals is limited to a certain degree by
gravity and what their skeletons can support. This isn't the same issue for whales.
The buoyancy of the oceans facilitate thelarger growth of submarine animals and probably

(21:53):
explains why we don't have any landdwelling animals as big as the blue whale.
Yeah, I've seen, like there'sobviously no proof of this, but
I've seen sort of like theories orartistics, sort of visions of sort of
space based creatures, if that couldever be a thing, and why that's
a space based creature, If itcould survive out there, it could grow

(22:15):
to an infinite amount almost because there'snot there's no limiting factors such as gravity,
rights, there's nothing that would naturallykeep something pushed down, necessitate harder
and stronger materials and prop it up. I think that's true, and certainly
it holds true. Yeah, wellwe can see that happen right with that,

(22:37):
that happens within our own ocean toa degree, right, you know,
see the mass of animals grow largerbecause there's simply less that's keeping them
down. There's less, there's lessthat sort of sort of forces them into
smaller packages. That's right, No, that's exactly right. In fact,
the makers of the Star Wars seriesof SOCA, I think, jumped on
board with that idea because there's acouple episodes spoiler if you haven't seen it

(23:00):
yet that involve I think they're calledstar whales or something like that. These
are these interstellar species of whale likethings, And yeah, so that theory
adds up at least in the StarWars world, which is good enough for
me. So blue whales, alongwith many other species, were nearly hunted
to extinction. There's an estimated tenthousand to twenty five thousand, so that's

(23:22):
a large range because of how hardit is to estimate ten thousand to twenty
five thousand blue whales today, afew estimates I came across suggest that before
commercial whaling, there may have beentwo hundred and fifty to three hundred thousand
blue whales. So that's that's avery small fraction of what existed just maybe
three hundred years ago. I thinkit also just shows that with respects to

(23:48):
a lot of other creatures, there'sjust there's not that many of them overall,
right, right, I mean threehundred thousand blue whales. That's a
lot of blue whales. And it'salso like one of those things where it's
like, no, it's not actuallythat many blue whales, even at the
height of there, even at theright and when you go down to ten
thousand or twenty thousand, I meanthere's that many bugs in my backyard probably
or something like that. Yeah,Oh, absolutely, it's got to be,

(24:08):
so the bigger animals, they're lessernumber. I suppose they can be
found in all the world's oceans,except for the Arctic Ocean, where I
tend to hang out. They undertakeyearly migrations of around four thousand miles,
so that's pretty far. They're inthe warmer parts of the ocean for birthing,
and then colder areas of the oceanfor periods of extensive feeding. Blue

(24:33):
whales also, I don't know ifyou know this, have among the loudest
calls of any animal. So atone hundred and eighty eight decibels, the
call of the blue whale is louderthan a jet engine. That's pretty loud.
That that's pretty loud. It doesn'tit doesn't surprise me just knowing how
massive they are, right, Ithink generally as something as larger, they

(24:59):
they themselves come louder. I mean, I'm thinking of like vocal cords and
sort of the vibrations that are neededto generate noise from a creature that big,
right, Like, it's just goingto create a lot more noise.
And then also being underwater right wheresound travels much more, sound travel much
more easily because more dense. Yeah, I can see that. It's amazing
to think that they can communicate overthese long distances. I read that the

(25:22):
call of the blue whale is atone hundred and eighty eight decibels, which
is pretty loud. But I alsoread that the sounds are made at low
frequencies that people can't really hear.So I don't know how those two things
square. Necessarily, Apparently, whenwe hear recordings of whales, those are
sped up in such a way wherewe can hear them. But this might
be different for different whales. SoI'm now waiting in the ocean of uncertainty

(25:48):
when we're talking about like this kindof stuff. Some scientists suggest that under
the right conditions, blue whales canhear sounds made by other whales up to
one thousand miles away, So thatmight be harder today than before. I
think that's been confirmed. But athousand miles to be able to communicate,
you know, that's sort of likeif you were in New York and you
said something and somebody in Saint Louisor something could hear it. Right.

(26:10):
That's it's impressive. I mean,it's very impressive. Yeah, somebody's just
yelling from New York to Saint Louis. I guess we can do that a
little bit with phones. Now that'sa whole difference, that's all right,
Yeah, now just to be ableto shout out and have that heard for
so so long. Jeff, doyou have any idea how people can determine
the age of a blue whale?I mean, I guess I would.

(26:33):
I would guess by the size,okay, but I don't know if that's
actually indicative. Normally I would say, well, you can probably pull out
one of their teeth and look at, you know, rings or something,
but they don't really have teeth,So I guess I have no idea.
In the case of the blue whale, it's by examining the ear wax of
the animal. Interesting, Yeah,huh, I would never have just that's

(26:56):
well, even heavier one, right, Yeah, so the ear wax thing
is is key. Let's move onto talk a little bit about sperm whales.
So sperm whales can dive to depthsof over thirty two hundred feet,
during which they can hold their breathfor over ninety minutes. So again,
these are animals, as you mentioned, that need to breathe air they can't
breathe underwater, but diving over threethousand feet and holding their breath for an

(27:19):
hour and a half, that's quitea feat. They are the largest of
the tooth whales, and the mostfamous sperm whale is a fictional character named
Moby Dick was the Great White Whaler. That's right, the Great White whale
that was based on an actual spermwhale that existed. And so I think
Melville heard about this and wove thatinto a story, and there could probably

(27:42):
be a whole episode on Moby Dickand all the symbolism that's riddled throughout that
and what the whale symbolizes. Butit's interesting that, you know, this
is one of the most famous booksand American history fiction has. The whale
has this really important sort of charactermetaphor for many different things. I definitely

(28:06):
think there was a time too,and maybe we'll talk about this a little
bit later, but there was atime when the whale was so important for
commercial activities, cultural activities. Itwas just it was a very prominent animal
in a way that it's not reallythe same today. That's true, that's
absolutely true. In fact, thereare different groups of people throughout the world

(28:30):
for thousands of years that have observed, interacted and hunted on smaller scales whales,
and that today because well we'll getto this, there's sort of an
international ban on whaling. Maybe welook at it a different way. And
even when we were growing up,Jeff, I think the emphasis was on
save the whales, right, like, this is a brand call from I

(28:52):
think the seventies when commercial whaling wasstarting to wrap up, not over yet
though. Apparently sperm whales might beeven louder than blue whales. I couldn't
find that for sure, but Iread something that suggests that's the case.
Reachers estimate researchers estimate that estimate thatin seventeen ten, the sperm whale population

(29:15):
of the world was between one andtwo million. So that's a lot of
big whales. Seems like a lot. Yeah. The estimates I've seen for
sperm whales living today are between threehundred thousand and eight hundred and fifty thousand,
again a large range because we don'treally know. Most estimates that I
came across were in the three hundredto three hundred and fifty thousand range.

(29:38):
So that's also a pretty large dropdue to the hunting of whales and the
sperm whales have the largest brains inthe animal kingdom, even larger than the
brain of a blue whale. Interesting, I don't know if that makes them
smarter. There's an intelligence behind whalesthat I think that often gets overlooked.

(30:00):
I mean, and we do thiswith with animals of all kinds, right,
we assume that we are automatically themost intelligence species and everything else is
just this dumb sort of creature thatis there for our use and disposal as
sort of needed. But it's like, no, some of these things are
actually really intelligent in maybe just differentways from the US. That's absolutely right.
And I think you know, dolphinsin particular pretty well known for their

(30:22):
intelligence as well. And we'll getinto some of the ways that humans and
whales have interacted and the next part. But let's continue a little bit more
with gray whales. So grey whales, there's two known populations of grey whales,
the eastern and the Western. They'reboth in the Pacific. So it's
the eastern part of the Pacific,which is the west coast of the United
States, which you know, fromthe perspective people in the United States might

(30:45):
be a little confusing. Grey whalesare billion whales. The Eastern grey whales
travel from Arctic waters where they feedin the summer, to Baja California,
Mexico, where they meet and givebirth, and not on land, of
course, but off the coast,and this one way trip can be over
twelve thousand miles twelve thousand miles.They generally stay in shallow coastal waters,

(31:07):
which is why people like yourself andI'm not sure what kind of whale that
it was that you saw, areable to observe whales from the land,
because sometimes they stick pretty close tothe land, depending on the whale,
not like the individual, but thespecies, or maybe some individuals are special
to A gray whale believe to bea Western gray was found to have traveled
from the North Pacific to Walvis Bay, which is off the coast of Namibia,

(31:33):
which means it may have traveled somesixteen seven hundred miles. Wow,
that's a distance. That's far,and if they're not tracking it with something
that've attached to the whale. Butsomebody saw one this kind of whale,
they distinguished it as a grey whale, and they said, where where could
this thing have possibly come? Fromand this was the first time. This

(31:56):
was pretty recently. This is thefirst time a gray whale had been sighted
in the southern hemisphere at all.So the reason for this long migration isn't
clear. It's not clear whether thisreally went on or if this is a
new phenomenon that's happening because of allthe changes that have happened in the ocean.
But nearly a hunted to extinction.There are an estimated twenty thousand gray
whales and the population seems to bein decline. So another another species of

(32:21):
large whale that it's hugely affected bywhale hunting. How about a few things
about humpback whales. So, humpbackwhales are billion whales that can grow up
to sixty feet long and weigh fortytons. A humpback whale can travel around
five thousand miles one way in amigration, so that's also pretty far.

(32:43):
One of the ways that whales aretracked is by the markings on their flukes,
which is their tails. So markingsand patterns on humpback whale flukes are
unique to individual whales, just likehuman fingerprints are unique to different people,
which means that photograph can be usedto identify and trackt the animals, particular
individuals. So there's an organization calledHappy Whale founded in twenty fifteen and it

(33:08):
collects citizens photographs so humpback whales,so they can be tracked across time in
space. So this is known ascitizens. Yeah, yeah, well citizen
science. And it's like also it'sgetting to the heart of the geography of
it, which is, you know, we have this one whale here,
somebody took a picture of it offthe coast of let's say California, and

(33:29):
somebody else in Australia takes the pictureof a whale and it's the same whale
and it's taken three months apart fromeach other. So therefore, right they
can figure something out if you startimagining the spatial journey of this whale and
how it might have you know,gone from California Australa. I have no
idea if that's an actual migration pattern, but just as I think it might
not be. But regardless, Imean, it could hit some whales might

(33:49):
decide to do that, I suppose. But yeah, it's very interesting this
way of crowdsourcing science because there's lotsof people who are on the coast.
People are looking at whales, peopleyou know, on boats in the oak,
and why not enlist their help intracking whales. They operate a website
called happy whale dot com. Youcan check it out and you can upload
photos of whales to a database whichcontributes to efforts to track individual whales.

(34:13):
So you can even potentially identify thewhale that you've taken a photo of and
see where else it's been so interesting. Between twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen,
a humpback whale was found to havemade an almost seven thousand mile migration from
the Marina Island Marianna Islands excuse me, to Mexico. So this is not

(34:34):
a typical pattern, so they knowpeople were taking notice, and Russian scientists
apparently name this whale Frodo, whoas a character from Tolkien's Middle Earth who
also took a very long trip.So I guess that's where they got that
from there and back again. Noway, that's that's Bilbo, Right's that's

(34:54):
there? Back? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, fro Dos, no reference.
Bilbo got off easy when you thinkabout although he had some quazy adventures,
but yeah, yeah, apparently notthe only humpback whale to make this
particular migration, but it's not particularlyknown to be common humpback whale populations.
There's apparently about twenty five thousand inthe North Atlantic, about twenty one thousand

(35:20):
in the North Pacific, and thensomewhere in the area of ninety six thousand
in the Southern hemisphere, so numbersmaybe not as depleted as some of the
other species we talked about, butI don't also have numbers and what the
estimates were beforehand, so that thatwould be interesting to find out as well.
And then a small riff here onright whales, which are billen whales

(35:43):
and now the rarest of the largewhales because they've been hunted so extensively.
The North Atlantic right whale is closeto extinction having been extensively hunted by whalers.
Today, the North Atlantic right whalesbelieved to have a population of about
three hundred and fifty individuals, sothat's a tiny number, and that's why
it's believe that this whale is closeto extinction. I mean that we talked

(36:08):
about the functionally extinct you know,is it the yang See dolphin? Yeah,
that's right, Biji, yep,Yeah, the Baiji. This also
feels like it might be getting prettyclose to functionally extinct. Regrowing a population
from three hundred and fifty individuals ofthat population is going to be challenged,
Yes, a huge challenge, andit's you know, there could be more,

(36:30):
but you know the estimates are therearen't that many, and yeah,
and you start talking about three hundredand fifty and you know some animals who
have less than that, and theseare animals that are probably on their way
out as a species. Very sad, very sad. There are right whale
populations in North Pacific and Southern rightwhales that live in the oceans in the

(36:52):
southern hemisphere as well, but it'sit's that North Atlantic right whale, that
particular strain of whale that is isthought to be close to extinction. We
have more to say about whales,and we also have a lot to say
about interactions between people and whales,humans and whales, but we're going to
have to do that after another shortbreak and we're back. We're talking about

(37:25):
Geography is Whales on Geography is Everythingpodcast today. And there is one more
species of whale that I thought weshould talk about, and we've mentioned before
it's the orca. Yeah, it'sit's the I would say the most famous.
I think that's the species potentially verydistinctive because if it's black and white
coloring, orcas are in fact thelargest species of dolphin. I didn't I

(37:51):
don't think I knew. Which dowe establish whether dolphins were whales. We
have no idea yet that dolphins dolphinsare whales, and we usually think of
them as different, but in factthey're part of the same group, and
so orcas are whales, dolphins arewhales, but not all whales are dolphins,
but all dolphins are essentially whales.Orcas can live between sixty and ninety

(38:14):
years. Apparently it's the female orcathat lives longer. In the wild.
The average is close to about fortysix years, so I don't know how
common it is for a whale tolive quite that long. I think with
the blue whale, I don't knowif we mentioned this, but it's like
eighty or ninety years, and someblue whales may have lived one hundred years.
That's an interesting to think about whenwe think about the lifespan of a

(38:35):
human being. Orcas are sometimes calledkiller whales, and this is a term
that was coined by ancient sailors whowitness the creatures attacking as a group and
killing larger whales. So you know, all whales kill in the sense that
they're not vegetarians and they eat things. But the sort of dramatic scene of

(38:59):
some sailors seen some orcas as they'renow called, attacking a larger animal and
coordinated attack. So the name killerwhale probably I think has given Orca a
bad rap. Probably, Yeah,Well it makes me think so like we
like to think of, you know, due to a number of you know,
movies that came out, but likethe Big Baddie of the Sea as

(39:21):
being the great white shark right right, and sharks in general being very dangerous
and you know, you know,the Killers of the Sea, everything like
that. But it was not thatlong ago that they had filmed a young
orca basically just demolishing a great whiteshark in its prime. Wow, And
just like how quickly and efficiently itsort of handled that, And I think

(39:45):
it just it does go on toprove that, you know, maybe you
know, orcas are obviously very beautifuland very smart and everything like that,
but they are very adept hunters.That's absolutely, they know what they're doing.
They are in fact considered to bethe top predators of the ocean.
Because I don't think anything the orcaas far as other than people. But
it's interesting if they had a differentname, maybe we'd feel different about them.

(40:06):
So, for example, what ifwe call them ocean pandas or something
like that. I think people wouldhave a very different sort of vibe and
feeling about this animal. Orcas tendto leave people alone in the wild as
a matter of fact, so notsupposed to be particularly threatening. In captivity.
That's a different story, however,and there have been cases of captive

(40:27):
orcas attacking and killing people because theydon't do so well in captivity because they're
giant animals and they're kept in reallysmall areas. And there's probably other things
as well. There's a twenty thirteenfilm. I didn't see this one,
Jeff, did you see Blackfish?I've heard about it. Generally, those
kinds of films. I really appreciatethat somebody is doing that kind of investigative

(40:50):
research. I generally already know thestories behind them, and I just don't
know if I can subject myself tosort of the horrors. Yeah, I
totally get that, and Blackfish isexactly that kind of documentary. It chronicles
the controversial practice of capturing young orcasand separating them from their mothers and so
that these whales can be used asentertainment and parks. The film tracked a

(41:15):
particular orca named Tillicomb that was capturednear Iceland in nineteen eighty three, and
then subsequently there were three incidents involvingTillicomb that led to the deaths of three
humans, two of them trainers,and one of them somebody hid in SeaWorld
overnight and then jumped in the tankand then was The body was found the

(41:35):
next day, so I'm not exactlysure what happened there. Let's talk about
in a few different modes the waypeople have interacted with whales, and we've
referenced hunting whales, so let's talka little bit about that. Hunting whales
has occurred for thousands of years andpredates the kind of commercial whaling that led
to the really large drop in populationsthat we've been talking about. Archaeological evidence

(41:57):
suggests that whaling goes back at leastthree thousand BCE and perhaps six thousand BCE,
and I think some of the earliermethods of whaling were thought to be
it's a number of small boats sortof trying to crowd or corral whale and
drive them onto land, at whichpoint they would be harpooned or something like

(42:17):
that. So apparently this is oneof the earlier ways that hunting of whales
happened. For example, the Inuithunted whales in the Arctic as far back
as four thousand years ago, andthe Basque hunted whales in the Atlantic have
been doing that for over a thousandyears. People of the Faroe Islands have
also hunted whales for over a thousandyears. The Macaw people the Pacific northwest

(42:39):
of the United States have a longtradition of whaling one it is highly connected
to their spiritual and cultural traditions inaddition to different economic considerations. That is
interesting, the Macaw actually have anagreement with the US government that they're allowed
to hunt whales, although as faras I can tell, in the last

(43:00):
maybe ninety years or something like that, there was a hunt in ninety nine,
nineteen ninety nine, and there's stilla lot of contention over whether the
Macaque can or should be hunting whales. So some conversation, you know,
conservationalists say that this is this isa barbaric practice that shouldn't that should be
abandoned, and then tribal leaders inthe cob you know, contend that nobody

(43:24):
else really has the right to telltheir people how or what to do or
how to engage in traditional practice,and it's not that they're killing large numbers
of animals, but that this issomething that their people have done for a
very long time. Indigenous whaling isnot believed to cause populations of wales to
collapse. You know, it's hardto I see the arguments from both sides.

(43:50):
Right, It's like, one,there's not that many whales left,
so allowing any sort of hunting ofthem feels wrong. But on the other
side of it's like, well,there's only there's there's no not that many
whales left because the commercial you know, industries surrounding whaling you know from you
know, decades ago, one hundredyears ago, basically drove them almost to
extinction. And so why is whywas that okay? But now it's you

(44:15):
know, you are people who havebeen doing We've already made everything we can
out of these animals and thus youcan't do it anymore, apparently exactly,
And I think I have this correctthat Greenpeace does not oppose whaling by the
macaw because they're not out looking forlarge numbers of animals and they're looking for
a way to keep their culture alivein a lot of ways. So people

(44:38):
probably have lots of different opinions aboutthis, but that is still an open
debate right now. The development andtechnology facilitates has facilitated an increase in whaling
from the time that steam powered shipsand harpoon cannons were created. So harpoon
cannons can be shot at high speedinto an animal actually explode inside the animal,

(45:00):
so very macabre scenario there. Duringindustrialization, the demand for whale oil
was huge because it was a fuel, and that spurned the whaling industry,
the sort of semi modern whaling industry. Populations of whales plummeted because of commercial
whaling during the starting the eighteenth butinto the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and

(45:23):
so I mean it was really Imean, whales are still hunted, as
we'll get into in a second,but the commercial whaling was still big.
And let's say the fifties or maybeeven into the nineteen sixties, so this
isn't super old. Despite this,there is far less whaling than in the
past. Several species of whales areendangered or threatened. Some populations have rebounded,

(45:47):
but the major threats to whales todaytend to be entanglement in fishnets and
being struck by large ships, sothis is a big threat to these animals
today. Marine protected areas are createdand enforced by individual countries, but those
sort of economic exclusive zones that wesort of talk about where countries sort of

(46:09):
have jurisdiction, cover less than eightpercent of the world's ocean, so most
of the oceans are international waters whereit's hard to enforce any kind of laws
or agreements. Whales migrate extensively andspend a lot of time in high seas,
where about only one percent of theocean is under some form of protection,
So whales spend most of their timemini whales and areas that don't really

(46:31):
have any kind of protection attached tothem. And part of the challenge of
protecting whales is coordinating global participation ofhumans, right, so that's part of
the geography whales is international efforts tocurtail whaling there's something called the International Whaling
Commission that was created in nineteen fortysix and in nineteen eighty six. I

(46:53):
think this was adopted a few yearsago, but put an effect in nineteen
eighty six. Again pretty recently,I'm going to say moratorium on whales that
was established as a temporary ban butis instilled in effect today. Now having
said that, there's a few countriesthat aren't really participating in the International Whaling

(47:14):
Commission, you know, moratorium,and one of them is just one that
I can say, which what areyou thinking of? It's got to be
Japan or Iceland. You've got twoof the three right there, Japan and
Iceland and normal. I mean Japanis notorious, right like. That's Japan.
I would say as a country generally, at least from a US perspective

(47:37):
or a US and Europe perspective,generally has a pretty good reputation, right
that's it's a country that people thinkof as you know, you know,
being a great place to visit,safe, everything like that. I would
say this is probably the one areathat Japan loses a little bit of that
shine. It's I think that's true. In fact, in twenty nineteen,
Japan officially withdrew from the eye wC and resumed whaling. Apparently the demand

(48:04):
for whaling for whale meat, thoughin Japan has decreased because a lot of
people are recognizing that this is theseare endangered species that maybe shouldn't be in
the menu, but that demand hasn'tdisappeared entirely. Norway and Iceland have also
resisted the moratorium, and the moratoriumon whaling applied to commercial whaling and not
subsistence whaling by indigenous or Aboriginal peoples. However, it's the laws in particular

(48:30):
countries that apply to indigenous groups.And so even if the IWC has this
this idea that you know this thisis subsistence by indigenous people, this is
okay. Different countries of course disagreedwith that. There's also a special permit
for what they call scientific whaling setup by the IWC, and so the

(48:50):
IWC identifies three types of whaling.One is the aboriginal subsistence whaling that we
talked about. This is regulated bythe IWC, which sets catch limits every
six years. Commercial whaling, whichthere's that moratorium on since nineteen eighty six,
and we've talked about the exceptions,the countries aren't really observing that.
But then this special permit or scientificwhaling was kind of a loophole I think

(49:13):
for Japan, Iceland and Norway,who I think in the past have said,
oh yeah, we've were exercising ourright to scientific whaling, but in
fact that was essentially commercial whaling thatwas ending up as food. Yeah.
I had heard something about that.You know, this must this is probably
ten years or so ago that Japanwas you know, you know whales like

(49:38):
doing all this whaling, you know, killing a bunch of whales for scientific
purposes. And I do remember justhaving this question of like, well,
how many whales do you need tolearn about these ans? Right? How
many? Right? I don't know. I'm not a scientist, I'm not
a marine biologist, but I,in my opinion, you get you know,
one or two of these, youknow, specific types of whales,

(49:59):
and maybe you can do a lotof scientific research on them. And so
I for my part, I wasalways like, this seems to be like
a loophole. It feels very loopholishto me as well. And I'm trying
to think of another species of animalthat gets caught in somewhat large quantities under
the auspices of science. Perhaps thoseexamples are out there that I'm not aware
of. Jeff, I have totake I have to sidestep tiny bit when

(50:22):
we're talking about whaling because, aswe mentioned before on the show, I'm
originally from Connecticut, and in Connecticutwe used to have a hockey team called
the Hertford Whalers. The Hertford Whalersabsolutely well, for one, we need
our Connecticut reference in the said referencein the Connecticut reference, like back to

(50:43):
back right now. One thing I'llsay about the Hertford Whalers is they have
the greatest logo in the history ofsports. So listener, if you're not
familiar with you might want to checkthat out. And growing up, it
did feel a little weird that itwasn't the whale but the Whalers, so
that this felt a little bit likerubber stamping the practice of hunting Wales.

(51:05):
This is a hockey team that originallyplayed in Boston from seventy one to seventy
four in the World Hockey Association,moved to Hartford in seventy four, and
then joined the NHL in nineteen seventynine before tragically moving to North Carolina in
ninety seven and becoming the Hurricanes.But this probably have to save a lot
of that for another episode. NorthNorth Carolina didn't want the didn't want the

(51:28):
Whalers. No, they went withsomething else destructive. They went with Hurricanes.
There is a team called the ConnecticutWhale that existed from twenty fifteen to
twenty twenty three. This was aPremier Hockey Federation women's team, and that
league collapsed and was recreated into somethingelse, and then the Hartford wolf Pack,
which is an HL team, wherethe Connecticut Whale from twenty ten to

(51:50):
twenty twelve. So I guess theillustration here is in terms of human whale
relations that since the seventies when thewhalers were first coined, or recently efforts
to reclaim the colors, and thesort of aesthetic of the whalers is calling
it the whale instead. So theanimal is lauded above above the whaler,

(52:12):
and the early wha logo had aharpoon on it, which was a little
gnarly. But then the logo thatI'm referring to is the one with the
whale tail and the w underneath formingan h in between in white and the
negative space for Hartford just brilliant.It's very very cool, very iconic,
and you can't say that about alot of defunct sports teams that they have

(52:35):
still such really good brand. Thisis this is a really good brand.
Let's move on from the whalers though, and whaling and talk a little bit
about the US Navy in whales.So in two thousand and one, the
US Navy announced that had killed atleast six whales in the Bahamas while conducting
tests for a new sonar system.They'd hope to develop the detect to detect
submarines at long distances. And theyannounced this because they were being questioned about

(53:01):
it, and there were some scientistsor some observers who in the Bahamas who
saw these whales that were beached andthey were wondering what was going on.
Current US Navy testing off the coastof Alaska, Washington, Oregon in California
may cause temporary or permanent hearing lossand several species of whales, including some

(53:22):
endangered species. The testing involves testingsonar and detonating bombs at sea. And
we've talked about the incredible hearing capabilitiesand echolocation and all this kind of thing,
and what these kinds of tests mustdo to those animals. The term
used to refer to unintended deaths ofwhales for US Navy testing is incidental takes,

(53:45):
which is a pretty generous assessment ofthe scene, it would seem to
me. And in twenty twenty,the number of incidental takes the Navy were
allowed has increased somewhat dramatically. Sothis is another point of contention that you
know, population of whales have beendecimated by people, and yet we're still

(54:05):
continuing activities that threaten them. Andthen you know, people would counter,
well, this is for national security, and so that's the debate. I
mean, isn't it always that's that'sthat's the pushback for a lot of things
that you know are a net negative. I would argue, yeah, I
mean it's I mean, I willadmit that as a geographer, I'm pretty

(54:28):
anthropocentric. I'm studying phenomenon that peopleare involved in for the most part,
even when we're talking about whales andtalking about humans are involved. Having said
that, yeah, maybe there shouldbe some consideration for species and maybe humans
don't have to be at the centerof everything. And I say this as
somebody who studies what people do,right, but totally an ongoing debate.

(54:52):
So on the flip side, however, is the story of the Iberian Orcas.
Have you have you heard anything aboutthe Iberian Orcas? I think so?
Are these the are these the fightingback whales? Yes, they're they're
taking they're taking it. They're takingus to task a little bit. Well,
that's one interpretation of what's happening.So you're referring to, I think

(55:13):
the same thing I'm thinking about,which is Since twenty twenty there have been
reports of a critically endangered subpopulation oforca's attacking and in some cases at least
three sinking boats off the coast ofSpain and Portugal. So most of the
encounters occurred there's a geography to this, of course, off the coast of
Glicia, which is the northern partof Spain and Atlantic, the southern coast

(55:36):
of Portugal and west of or inthe Strait of Gibraltar, where a lot
of these incidents have taken place.In twenty twenty three, however, there
was also a report of an orcaramming a boat off the coast of the
Shetland Islands in Scotland, so youknow, this is pretty rare behavior.
We've not seen this too much.In twenty eleven, that population of Arberian

(55:57):
orcas was reported to be thirty nineindividuals. Wow, that's not a lot
that's of this particular group. That'snot you know, there's other populations of
orcas, but this is a verysmall population. There are no reported deaths
of humans or orcas from these incidentsthat have been cropping up since twenty twenty.
The orcas tended to target boat rudders, which would sometimes snap the rudders,

(56:21):
rendering them unable to navigate. Theattacks generally lasted for less than thirty
minutes, but sometimes up to twohours, and there's speculation that some of
the individuals involved in this might beteaching this behavior to other orcas. So
the question, Jeff, you sortof were alluding to this, what's going
on here? What's happening? Whydo you think this is happening? Yeah,

(56:45):
I mean so I remember when someof this, when some of these
news articles were coming around and peoplewere talking about this, and it was
only it was not that long ago, you know, I think so this
is largely coming from some of thosesources. I think broadly, you know,
the the idea is that orcas,you know kind of you know,

(57:07):
started to fight back a little bit. You know, there's these ships that
are constantly floating around. They're youknow, they make a lot of noise
underwater, They create disruptions in fishspecies, they create a lot of you
know, chaos when they're even whenthey're being completely benign otherwise they're not actively
hunting you or you know, activelycausing gamers, they're still causing a lot

(57:30):
of you know, sort of negativeexternalities what we would call them for for
the whales, and I think youknow, we talked about how smart whales
are and dolphins, especially in orcasare just a form of dolphin that I
think they rightfully recognize that these arenot peaceful or or you know, these
aren't these aren't things that are arecompletely benign to them. They are actively

(57:52):
disrupting their life, and therefore theyneed to be destroyed. I think that's
kind of what we're seeing. There'sthere's that narrative is death out there,
and there are a lot of Internetmemes that capture that that idea. Yeah,
I mean it's sort of intuitively almostmakes sense. Hey, there's thirty
nine of us, and we're sickand tired of getting pushed around. It's

(58:13):
time to fight that. However,buying large scientists don't believe that this is
a revenge scenario. I'm not rulingit out here, but but many of
the scientists don't think that these whalesare staging any kind of uprising or revolution
or anything like that. I mean, I want, I want to be
clear that I don't necessarily even underthis sort of you know idea, I

(58:36):
don't necessarily think that there's any sortof revenge or uprising, you know,
finally, you know, taking takinghumans to task. I think it's in
my head, it would be morelike they've recognized that these these these vehicles,
these vessels are disruptive to them inthe immediate moment, so back off.
And yeah, so so let's go, let's go deal with it.

(58:57):
Let's let's let's finally figure out whatthese things are, and let's let's start
you know, taking taking them totask. Let's let's get them out of
here so that they don't have todeal with them. I don't necessarily think
it's like, well, they've beenyou know, pushing us around, for
twenty years. It's finally time forus to get back at them now change
that. I think it's more ofan in the moment kind of thing.
That's again, that's that could betrue, because I don't think anybody really

(59:20):
knows. What's interesting, though,is that orcas in other parts of the
world have encountered boats, you know, a lot, and have had interactions
with humans of similar varieties and thoseyou know, having their children taken at
a young age. But these orcashaven't really responded with in this way,

(59:42):
like no other orcas accept this onepopulation, So scientists are lottle confused about
that. One of the things thatspeculated is that maybe one of the whales
was traumatized by an incident with theboat and sort of struck back, and
that whales sometimes mimic each other's behavior, so this became something that they were,
you know, they were trying out. There is also the theory that

(01:00:06):
these are mostly juvenile whales, sothese are, you know, basically the
equivalent of punk teenagers acting out.You know, I'm paraphrasing here. I'm
not sure if that's the among us. That's right, you know, we
we you know, I think wewhen we talk about works. I forgot
to mention the we mentioned a littlebit the whole Sea World thing, right,
and that SeaWorld is no longer takinglive catches, although they are sometimes

(01:00:31):
what they call rescuing whales and bringthem into captivity. They're apparently phasing out
the sort of highly you know,the tricks and acrobatics that these whales have
been commanded to do, and tryingto turn more towards a conservation type thing.
But scientists believe that this is maybeeven a fad. So apparently among

(01:00:52):
West Coast orcas off the coast ofWashington, there was a fad of wearing
salmon on their heads for like monthsor something like. This is something behavior
that hadn't been seen before. Maybethey're just toying with us. I don't
really know, but that you know, they're very smart. They learn from
each other, so it'd be interestingto see how this goes on. But

(01:01:13):
like you said, it's probably nota revenge situation. But we're not really
sure what's going on. And ifthey really wanted to take down boats,
they could do it at will,right, That's the other thing, Like
they really wanted to just sort ofmake an impact, they would just be
taking down boats all the time,because it wouldn't be that hard for them.
Yeah, yeah, I mean,aside from a very few amount of
boats, like I imagine most boatswould be pretty easily susceptible too, yeah,

(01:01:37):
sinking, Yeah, I mean,and these are mostly sailboats that have
been attacked, which is also doesn'tadd up to the sort of noise factor
being a motivation of this kind ofthing. Interesting, there's as we wrap
up, Jeff, there's one otherthing I want to bring up here,
and that deals with the human relationswith Wales. And this is something that
just came across the news a coupleof weeks ago because there was a study

(01:02:00):
that was published about something that happenedin twenty twenty and in twenty twenty I'm
sorry, twenty twenty one, ateam of scientists in Alaskan waters apparently had
a conversation what they're calling sort ofa conversation with the humpback whale that they
named Twain. How do you well, maybe we're gonna get this. That's

(01:02:22):
fascinating. I don't know, Likea conversation to me is like, hey,
how's it going, And they're likeI'm good or I'm bad. And
then there's some ideas floated around somewherein between. Right, So in that
sense, I'm not sure you canqualify this as a conversation because there wasn't
sort of an exchange of ideas orpleasantries or conversation about the weather or anything
like that. But what happened wasthat scientists send out signals from an underwater

(01:02:45):
speaker in short bursts that the whalethen responded to. That this whale twain
responded to. And apparently this happenedthirty six times over the course of twenty
minutes. So they would send outa sound and then a few minutes later
that sound would be responded to.Again. It's not really clear what they
were talking about, not even tothe scientists, but apparently this is seen

(01:03:07):
as a pretty big moment where theywere actually able to get whales to respond
to sounds that were generated from aspeaker controlled by humans. That this could,
you know, point towards more possibilityof communicating with animals, and of
course animals canny communicate with anybody witha cat or a dog, even a

(01:03:30):
cat knows that you can sort ofcommunicate with animals, and certainly primates and
humans have been capable of interacting,and there's primates who've learned sign language,
you know, several hundred words thiskind of thing. But this is something
different, and it would be veryinteresting to see if this becomes a possible

(01:03:51):
form of communication and then we canmaybe ask them about what's going on with
the Iberian orcas. But it's fascinatingto think about what a coma with the
whale would be like. You know, I think of all species of animal,
you know, on the on theplanet, I would say that whales,
just in my uneducated sort of youknow, observance, probably have the

(01:04:14):
highest likelihood of actually having a languageof some sort right that where they're there,
because there seems to be and I'mobviously I'm not an expert here,
but you know, in listening tosort of whale calls and all this kind
of stuff, there seems to besome form of pitch and cadence and you
know, give and return that arethat's you know, different in a way.
That's almost like that's almost lingual ina certain way. And this would

(01:04:39):
be different from you know, twodogs barking at each other, where there's
communication of some sort, but it'sit's not I wouldn't say it's lingual,
and I could be completely wrong aboutthat, but it doesn't feel lingual to
me in the same way that whalesdo. Yeah, And I think that
some scientists have referred to this communicationor these sounds that whales make over space
to each other as as not onlyas communication as potentially a language, but

(01:05:02):
also that they change from place toplace, so that there might even be
dialects. In other words, ofthis form of communication among these animals.
That would be wild. And thenscience fiction has no I only speak that
right exactly which which blue whales languagedo you speak? I don't know if
you ever read Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guideto the Galaxy. This was popular a

(01:05:24):
little while back, and absolutely,you know, the intelligence of dolphins figure
pretty prominently in that book and thatseries, So I will refer listeners to
that if they want to get moreinto the science fiction of of wales.
Also Star Trek four very prominently featuredwhales, and Pinocchio was inside a whale

(01:05:44):
at one point, you know,Jonah and the whales, So whales have
figured prominently in the popular imagination fora long time as well as always there's
more we can say about these fantasticcreatures, but that's the time that we
have for today, and so sooh, I think we'll end it there.
Yeah. Absolutely. This has beenreally fun learning all about sort of

(01:06:05):
oceans and ocean creatures and sort ofhow they get around and the geography attached
to them. Hunter. Where canpeople find you? I am Hunter showby
I'm a professor of geography at PortlandState University, and if you want to
find out more about my work,I have a couple of cultural atlases that
I have co authored with David Bannis. They are Portland, It's a cultural
atlass in Upper Left Cities, acultural atlas of San Francisco, Portland,

(01:06:28):
and Seattle. And of course I'mhere co hosting with you Jeff Geographies Everything.
Yeah, my name is Jeff Gibson. You can find me over on
YouTube. That's YouTube dot com slashLittle at Signed Geography by Jeff. You
can probably just google my name atthis point with YouTube attached show and you'll
find it. If you liked whatyou heard today, you're listening on sort
of a podcast app such as ApplePodcasts or Spotify. Please rate and review

(01:06:50):
us. We really appreciate those.If you're watching on YouTube for the Geography
is Everything sort of channel. Pleaselike and subscribe. It really helps us
out over there as well well,and we just love having you all sort
of, you know, tell ushow great everything is, because people are
usually really highly complimentary. It's reallycool. You can also find us over
on substack that's Geography is Everything dotsubstack dot com. The podcast lives there.

(01:07:12):
It's just an easy way for thisto get sent directly to your email
box. It's totally free. Gocheck it out next week. We are
actually going to so a few weeksago we had to push an episode due
to I got sick, I gota little cold. With push an episode
on the US Post Service next weekor we're going to return to that and
we're going to finish up that episodebecause I just can't let it. Okay.
So that's what's coming up next.Okay, all right, Yeah,

(01:07:34):
that's what's coming up next. Yeah. It should be a really fun one.
We talked a little bit about thisalready in that you know, a
few weeks ago, but it shouldbe really fun one. Just talking about
sort of this whole wacky, crazygeography that the US Post Service has created
that we more commonly know of asthis zip code, right, I mean
that's how people identify where they're fromin certain ways, right, in certain

(01:07:54):
ways. Yeah, there's I meanthere's a there's a cultural attachment to it.
There's there's there's an actual, likeyou know, geographic aspect of it.
Why are you know some so bigand some so small? There's all
there's a bunch of stuff that goesinto it. We're going to talk more
broadly about the US Postal Service asa whole, but we're probably going to
dive pretty deep into sort of whatthe zip code is and why, why

(01:08:15):
it means so much? Why doyou need to know your zip code for
everything? Right? And then andthen more to that fact, there's a
whole part of the zip code thatmost people don't realize, which is this
additional four digit number that goes onthe ADA I wonder about, so why
does I'm totally on board with learningmore about zip codes and the US Postal
Service, So I look forward tothat. It's coming. Yeah, So

(01:08:36):
we're going to talk a lot aboutthe US post Service. I'm probably I'm
in trying and talk a little aboutsome other postal services as well. Towards
the end of the episode, youknow, give us more of an international
look, and also sort of likecompare and contrast because there's similarities and differences
between everybody, and there are placesthat do things well in some places that
do things not as well. Let'sfind out. Yeah, let's find out.

(01:08:58):
So come back next week. We'regonna do that, and I guess
until then, well, we'll seeyou next Thanks for listening, Stay tuned. H