How Antarctic whales are helping us understand more about climate change | BBC News

[Music] delving into the lives of Antarctica Giants there's two animals yep that is pretty amazing to be able to see them under the water hello beautiful humpback whales come 8 and half km here to feed the Antarctic Peninsula a brutal and fragile place is a hot spot for marine Wildlife perfect it kind of looks like play just wild but this place is changing the climate is Shifting in the Antarctic Peninsula faster than anywhere else in Antarctica we're with a team of wildlife scientists who are trying to find out how some of the biggest animals in these waters are responding some populations around the world are getting skinny because they're not getting enough to eat uh because of climate change in cucks J's coming up on the left Mom's pooping we'll discover secrets that are hidden in the bodies of these huge marine mammals liquid gold and why scientists need to be here to protect this vast icy wilderness today the archive footage looks shocking it shows our brutal history with Antarctica's whales the small Whalers bring their catches to the Mother Ship some were driven to the brink of Extinction by commercial whaling during the 20th century that was banned 40 years ago but research is now uncovering new threats to the future of these animals that's why scientists make the long journey across the the notoriously rough Southern Ocean to Antarctica woke up to my nightstand crashing um across the room because we've hit apparently a 12 meter wave I've never been in waves like that before Sarah is one of the wildlife biologists that we're traveling with to reduce the impact and the expense of their research trip she and the team are hitching a lift on a tourist ship the science and the tourists want to go to the same places where there are these hot swats of biodiversity of animals and so we're going to the same places and get to do sence at the same time we can see our first iceberg that means Antarctica is getting very close now when we reach the peninsula the waterers calm and Antarctica reveals [Music] itself the coldest continents on earth hundreds of species depend on these cold Rich Seas the researchers we're following have special permits to study Antarctic whales up close but first they have to find them I hurt son of them but Natalia bero aosta has spent more than a decade studying humpback whales I think his sign swimming it was like lifting a peack her work stretches from the tropical waters of Colombia where the whales breed to the end of their 8,000 km migration Antarctica how is working in Antarctica for somebody from the Tropics it's fascinating but I do get a cold a lot when we spot a whale Natalia reaches for a surprising piece of scientific equipment tell me about the crossbow is that is that a weapon no it's not a weapon by any means it's uh tool it's a scientific tool we use them to collect uh you know blubber and skin samples uh it goes with this bolts modified too uh at the very end of this we screw a tip maybe 3 cm tip and then inside is like three barbs that hold the tissue but this this barrier sort of like prevents the the bolt from going inside further and then bounces back into the water and this is how you get a tissue biopsy from a wild humpback whale the tube on the end of The Arrow takes just a tiny Nick out of the animal's body the sample wi is is you know 3 cm something like that for an animal obviously you know 16 M long so it's essentially a mosquito bite I clearly didn't bother them very much cuz they're they're hanging around the boat not just got a sample from Mom is that right we got a sample from Mom yeah she's still distur thing she's right here that's what we came for one of the things the researchers can tell with this small nugget of tissue is if a female humpback is pregnant in years that we have low CIS then the following year you have lower pregnancy rates and that's as good as it gets in like you know getting to know the environment and getting to know the effects of all these conservation threats on the animals working from a tourist boat means the team can reach and work in several sites around the Antarctic Peninsula but it also means they have to improvise this is a a tourist vessel so it's not necessarily kitted out for scientific experiments this isn't a lab and it's a store room there's lots of stuff in here k bags and there's costumes even for some of the staff but it has become a laboratory for processing of these very precious samples of whale tissue blubber the like pinky whitish tissue hormones accumulate there and then the skin which is like the black tissue oh that's a good one that's a beautiful one why is that a beautiful one I it looks great is a a good chunk of blubber and that's very valuable like that means that you can probably do the hormone analysis maybe even a couple of times I get a couple extractions analyzing this blubber will reveal chemical clues about the health of the animal the tiny piece of skin provides a genetic profile of each whale that the team studies whatever isn't needed for analysis will be cryopreserved kept in very cold storage indefinitely for now the researchers have reserved space for their samples in an old [Music] freezer good morning folks it's around 6:15 a.m. 173 it's 4° C or 39° F now it with very low winds everyday working here is precious an opportunity to gather data in one of the richest most productive parts of the Southern Ocean everybody good and during this research trip the team will have just 4 days in the peninsula so we are going to go that way Chris Johnson is from the World Wildlife Fund we were going to go this way now we're going to go that way he's the Charity's Global lead on whale conservation as we search the weather closes in one of the best ways that we can find humpback whales in these conditions when it's foggy and snowy is actually listening so we'll turn off the Zodiac engine we close our eyes and just listen for the blows we'll hear big blows of humpback whales and you can hear them for quite a far distance so even though you'll hear them it may take a while to find them ready there's another piece of Kit to help in the search we're looking using the Drone it's kind of our eyes in the sky to help us look for whales using drones has transformed scientists ability to observe these marine mammals we have these ocean Giants all around us their pectoral fins are so white it's really easy to follow them in this water this is much more than a beautiful aerial view the team uses the Drone to work out the hump backs weight from the length and width of their bodies we're measuring how fat it's becoming over the season and that's really important because they're storing enough energy to make the long Mig migration back to their breeding ground in the Eastern tropical Pacific and that's over 8 and half th000 km so they've got a bulk up some populations around the world are getting skinny because they're not getting enough to eat uh because of climate change impacts one recent 20-year study of humpbacks in the North Pacific showed the population had declined because of a shortage of food that was linked to Rising temperatures it's why scientists monitor the whales here what's happening to these hungry marine mammals is a signal of what's happening in the whole ocean ecosystem climate change uh from Fisheries by catch to uh vessel strikes and underwater noise pollution it's all adding up long term in terms of poor health and that's what we're really concerned about this is why the whales come here to feed Antarctic Krill each just a few centimeters long collectively there's an estimated 400 million tons of these crustaceans in the Southern Ocean that's similar to the combined weight of every human on earth well we think they're feeding on about uh 1 to 1 and 1/2 tons per day of Antarctic Krill a day per day and we've been underestimating that until the past few years uh when we've done this research there is a Krill fishery here krill oil is used in some animal feed and supplements there are strict catch to protect Antarctic Wildlife but conservationists are concerned about the extra pressure that fishing puts on the environment this work is helping us to find where Welles feed uh and why they're feeding and what are the most critical habitats for them on the Antarctic Peninsula so we can make those uh no fishing zones these creatures are much more than whale food they help keep the ocean healthy and our planet cool krill eat microscopic plants that grow in sea ice plants that suck carbon out of the atmosphere so these tiny animals just by growing eating and excreting send Planet warming carbon to the bottom of this cold ocean but climate change is warming the ocean and since 2017 there's been a worrying decline in sea ice here that's why scientists need to come here to figure out what impact that's having on some of the biggest animals in these oceans one way to do that is to examine what's coming out of the animals that depend on C J's coming up on the left Mom's pooping Liquid Gold is that is that what I think it is it is exactly what you think it is and it smells exactly like you think it would it's whale poo whale poo yeah back aboard the ship that precious specimen can be stored safely is ripe it's very ripe um but you can actually see little chunks floating in it which was a surprise to be I mean I've never held whale poo before you could also do all sorts of cool things like get hormones from poo you can look at DNA wow and and I'm it's difficult it's really difficult to find right because you have to be next to whale right and it went in the water and it usually can just disperse really quickly this one was a little bit harder and stayed clumped together in a way I wasn't ex how you describe this I isn't it magical and I was able to just take handfuls and smush it into the jar well done thank [Music] you this continent is unique there's never been a war here it's a land DED dedicated to science we can look at the data in colia compare it with the Antarctic Peninsula and be able to monitor the population the whole way the Antarctic treaty is a global agreement drawn up more than 60 years ago that now has 56 signatories it states that Antarctica will be used for peaceful purposes and scientific cooperation one of those permitted peaceful purposes is tourism and that's growing before the 1980s just a few hundred people came here each year in the summer season between 2022 and 23 more than 100,000 people visited and the kind of little boat shed on the shore there that's now staff quarters Stephy is an expedition leader for a tour operator it's her job to plan an Antarctic itinerary for the 200 people on board the ship that we're traveling on weather ice changing Dynamics and the industry was designed when 100 passenger vessels were the were the larger ships okay and now 100 passenger vessels are the smaller ships the International Association of Antarctic tour operators sets out guidelines for the industry including restrictions on the numbers of people that can go ashore and keeping a safe distance from Wildlife the plan was that we'd land here today but it's not possible because there are too many penguins um the rules for the tourism are that everybody has to keep 5 m away from the wildlife and as you can see here it's not not actually possible to get out of a boat and be 5 m away from a penguin even with all the rules tourism can leave its Mark anyone visiting could unwittingly bring in seeds or microbes that don't belong here on their boots and clothes there's even evidence of soot left on Snow from ship exhaust but according to the international Union for the conservation of nature when people experience Antarctica in person it can Inspire them to protect it and while the scientists are here to gather data they're also sharing their findings and conservation messages with the passengers and we're going to talk a lot about good news this is not going to be a bad news talk you're going to be inspired by the end of it is it strange in some ways to be on a tourist ship what's that like for you because tourism is a pressure on this place too isn't it it is tourism is something that we need to regulate closely so uh we tend to work with operators where we can talk about conservation messages to the public and one of the new things we're discovering at that whales are critical to Ocean health and so that type of partnership is really special um and it really helps us try to protect this incredible place that we have coming here repeatedly means scientists can monitor this environment it also means they capture some fascinating Wildlife Behavior up close in krill hotpots these social intelligent animals work together to Gorge themselves oh this is f fantastic trapping their prey inside a net of bubbles they're blowing bubbles in a circle and they're coming up right through the center of the bubble net to feed it's absolutely spectacular wow look at that that's such a cool Hello waving with a pectoral fin this animal is using its fins to feed it kind of looks like play yeah it does but it's using its pectoral fin as a tool s to Sweet the C in just [Music] wild these playful Giants seem to be engaged in an interspecies dance with a seal the researchers want to identify and do what they can to protect Wildlife hotspots around the peninsula that is pretty amazing to be able to see them under the water hello beautiful my new favorite color is the blue of a humpback whale under the water it's a very specific color oh watch out sorry that's right going to ask Crayola to make that color for [Music] me we can even see evidence of of close family bonds there's two animals humpbacks need their moms to care for them you know and uh and navigate this kind of wild place while the researchers are curious about the whales the whales seem curious about us too they raise their heads above the water oh my God Spy Hopping to see what's going on mom he beautiful mom looks like she's going to come under us she's right under us she's going to come up just uh hold on to the boat in case she touches the boat wa she's huge oh my weird I never seen my well that close before in my life I'm a little bit scared I've got gigantic how did you feel when it went under the boat I'm a little bit apprehensive so beautiful this is so be this is so beautiful this might be the most beautiful thing I've ever seen the team makes the most of every minute they have here so so far we have 67 samples between this trap in the previous one an amazing amazing success um last year in the same situation two trips uh we got 40 today is their last day the more samples they can get the more detailed picture they'll have of what's happening in this environment you got to be patient you got to give the animals some space and understand their behavior and you know every now and then you you actually get a result is that a female it's hard to say it didn't react it didn't make a big deal so maybe fale yeah that's Natalia's test yeah the males are like you know we're we're a little bit more more anxious you know it's all right the end of an Antarctic expedition is a time for reflection just grateful for the opportunity to like just do what we do in a place like this um and just connecting data that is so important and so critical for hbags and for the ecosystem this trip was a chance to gather clues about this remote Wilderness Clues the researchers will use to build a picture of the health of this fragile place I'm at peace in this environment I feel more connected to Nature we're getting this important data um to bring to policy makers uh to make really important changes uh in uh International policy and protect this area for Antarctic Krill for humpbacks for Penguins you know this place is not only important for nature but it's also important to us just as Marine Wildlife depends on this place so do we this icy ocean cools our planet so scientists will keep a check on its largest inhabitants the Wales whose bodies hold clues about the effect we have on this precious environment I can't believe it's over it seems like yesterday we met Ina what an epic place I mean we have got perfect weather amazing whales around us and I think it's time to go home so let's hit the road yeah there we go let's do it let's do it okay let's go oh so awesome no tears on the boat no it's been awesome have you a beautiful place

Channel: BBC News

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Keywords: bbc, bbc news, news, world news, breaking news, us news, world, america, usa, usa news, india news

Id: zy1wVcm2RV8

Length: 20min 41sec (1241 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 08 2024