ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Peter Tyack - Behavioral ecologist
Peter Tyack studies the social behavior and acoustic communication in whales and dolphins, learning how these animals use sound to perform critical activities, such as mating and locating food.

Why you should listen

Peter Tyack, a senior scientist in biology at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has always been intrigued by animal behavior. A class at Woods Hole while still in college led Peter down his current path of research on acoustic communication and social behavior in marine mammals. 

He has studied the songs of humpback whales, the signature whistles of dolphins and the echolocation pulses of sperm whales and dolphins. Tyack has pioneered several new methods to sample the behavior of these mammals, including the development of sound-and-orientation recording tags.

As a result of his work recording the sounds of whales, Tyack is concerned that the ubiquitous noises from human activity in the ocean -- sonar, oil rigs, motorboats, shipping traffic -- are disturbing marine mammals.

More profile about the speaker
Peter Tyack | Speaker | TED.com
Mission Blue Voyage

Peter Tyack: The intriguing sound of marine mammals

Filmed:
520,094 views

Peter Tyack of Woods Hole talks about a hidden wonder of the sea: underwater sound. Onstage at Mission Blue, he explains the amazing ways whales use sound and song to communicate across hundreds of miles of ocean.
- Behavioral ecologist
Peter Tyack studies the social behavior and acoustic communication in whales and dolphins, learning how these animals use sound to perform critical activities, such as mating and locating food. Full bio

Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.

00:15
Thank you so much. I'm going to try to take you
0
0
3000
00:18
on a journey of the underwater acoustic world
1
3000
3000
00:21
of whales and dolphins.
2
6000
2000
00:23
Since we are such a visual species,
3
8000
2000
00:25
it's hard for us to really understand this,
4
10000
2000
00:27
so I'll use a mixture of figures and sounds
5
12000
2000
00:29
and hope this can communicate it.
6
14000
2000
00:31
But let's also think, as a visual species,
7
16000
3000
00:34
what it's like when we go snorkeling or diving
8
19000
2000
00:36
and try to look underwater.
9
21000
2000
00:38
We really can't see very far.
10
23000
2000
00:40
Our vision, which works so well in air,
11
25000
2000
00:42
all of a sudden is very restricted and claustrophobic.
12
27000
3000
00:45
And what marine mammals have evolved
13
30000
2000
00:47
over the last tens of millions of years
14
32000
3000
00:50
is ways to depend on sound
15
35000
2000
00:52
to both explore their world
16
37000
2000
00:54
and also to stay in touch with one another.
17
39000
2000
00:56
Dolphins and toothed whales use echolocation.
18
41000
2000
00:58
They can produce loud clicks
19
43000
2000
01:00
and listen for echoes from the sea floor in order to orient.
20
45000
3000
01:03
They can listen for echoes from prey
21
48000
2000
01:05
in order to decide where food is
22
50000
2000
01:07
and to decide which one they want to eat.
23
52000
3000
01:10
All marine mammals use sound for communication to stay in touch.
24
55000
2000
01:12
So the large baleen whales
25
57000
2000
01:14
will produce long, beautiful songs,
26
59000
3000
01:17
which are used in reproductive advertisement
27
62000
2000
01:19
for male and females, both to find one another
28
64000
2000
01:21
and to select a mate.
29
66000
2000
01:23
And mother and young and closely bonded animals
30
68000
2000
01:25
use calls to stay in touch with one another,
31
70000
3000
01:28
so sound is really critical for their lives.
32
73000
2000
01:30
The first thing that got me interested in the sounds
33
75000
2000
01:32
of these underwater animals,
34
77000
2000
01:34
whose world was so foreign to me,
35
79000
2000
01:36
was evidence from captive dolphins
36
81000
2000
01:38
that captive dolphins could imitate human sounds.
37
83000
3000
01:41
And I mentioned I'll use
38
86000
2000
01:43
some visual representations of sounds.
39
88000
2000
01:45
Here's the first example.
40
90000
2000
01:47
This is a plot of frequency against time --
41
92000
2000
01:49
sort of like musical notation,
42
94000
2000
01:51
where the higher notes are up higher and the lower notes are lower,
43
96000
3000
01:54
and time goes this way.
44
99000
2000
01:56
This is a picture of a trainer's whistle,
45
101000
2000
01:58
a whistle a trainer will blow to tell a dolphin
46
103000
2000
02:00
it's done the right thing and can come get a fish.
47
105000
2000
02:02
It sounds sort of like "tweeeeeet." Like that.
48
107000
3000
02:05
This is a calf in captivity
49
110000
2000
02:07
making an imitation
50
112000
2000
02:09
of that trainer's whistle.
51
114000
2000
02:11
If you hummed this tune to your dog or cat
52
116000
2000
02:13
and it hummed it back to you,
53
118000
2000
02:15
you ought to be pretty surprised.
54
120000
2000
02:17
Very few nonhuman mammals
55
122000
2000
02:19
can imitate sounds.
56
124000
2000
02:21
It's really important for our music and our language.
57
126000
2000
02:23
So it's a puzzle: The few other mammal groups that do this,
58
128000
3000
02:26
why do they do it?
59
131000
2000
02:28
A lot of my career has been devoted
60
133000
2000
02:30
to trying to understand
61
135000
2000
02:32
how these animals use their learning,
62
137000
2000
02:34
use the ability to change what you say
63
139000
2000
02:36
based on what you hear
64
141000
2000
02:38
in their own communication systems.
65
143000
2000
02:40
So let's start with calls of a nonhuman primate.
66
145000
3000
02:43
Many mammals have to produce contact calls
67
148000
2000
02:45
when, say, a mother and calf are apart.
68
150000
3000
02:48
This is an example of a call produced by squirrel monkeys
69
153000
3000
02:51
when they're isolated from another one.
70
156000
2000
02:53
And you can see, there's not much
71
158000
2000
02:55
variability in these calls.
72
160000
2000
02:57
By contrast, the signature whistle
73
162000
2000
02:59
which dolphins use to stay in touch,
74
164000
2000
03:01
each individual here has a radically different call.
75
166000
3000
03:04
They can use this ability to learn calls
76
169000
3000
03:07
in order to develop more complicated and more distinctive calls
77
172000
3000
03:10
to identify individuals.
78
175000
2000
03:13
How about the setting in which animals need to use this call?
79
178000
3000
03:16
Well let's look at mothers and calves.
80
181000
2000
03:18
In normal life for mother and calf dolphin,
81
183000
2000
03:20
they'll often drift apart or swim apart if Mom is chasing a fish,
82
185000
3000
03:23
and when they separate
83
188000
2000
03:25
they have to get back together again.
84
190000
2000
03:27
What this figure shows is the percentage of the separations
85
192000
3000
03:30
in which dolphins whistle,
86
195000
2000
03:32
against the maximum distance.
87
197000
2000
03:34
So when dolphins are separating by less than 20 meters,
88
199000
2000
03:36
less than half the time they need to use whistles.
89
201000
2000
03:38
Most of the time they can just find each other
90
203000
2000
03:40
just by swimming around.
91
205000
2000
03:42
But all of the time when they separate by more than 100 meters,
92
207000
3000
03:45
they need to use these individually distinctive whistles
93
210000
3000
03:48
to come back together again.
94
213000
3000
03:51
Most of these distinctive signature whistles
95
216000
2000
03:53
are quite stereotyped and stable
96
218000
2000
03:55
through the life of a dolphin.
97
220000
2000
03:57
But there are some exceptions.
98
222000
2000
03:59
When a male dolphin leaves Mom,
99
224000
2000
04:01
it will often join up with another male
100
226000
2000
04:03
and form an alliance, which may last for decades.
101
228000
3000
04:06
As these two animals form a social bond,
102
231000
3000
04:09
their distinctive whistles actually converge
103
234000
2000
04:11
and become very similar.
104
236000
2000
04:13
This plot shows two members of a pair.
105
238000
3000
04:16
As you can see at the top here,
106
241000
2000
04:18
they share an up-sweep, like "woop, woop, woop."
107
243000
2000
04:20
They both have that kind of up-sweep.
108
245000
2000
04:22
Whereas these members of a pair go "wo-ot, wo-ot, wo-ot."
109
247000
3000
04:25
And what's happened is
110
250000
2000
04:27
they've used this learning process
111
252000
2000
04:29
to develop a new sign that identifies this new social group.
112
254000
3000
04:32
It's a very interesting way that they can
113
257000
2000
04:34
form a new identifier
114
259000
2000
04:36
for the new social group that they've had.
115
261000
2000
04:38
Let's now take a step back
116
263000
2000
04:40
and see what this message can tell us
117
265000
2000
04:42
about protecting dolphins
118
267000
2000
04:44
from human disturbance.
119
269000
2000
04:46
Anybody looking at this picture
120
271000
2000
04:48
will know this dolphin is surrounded,
121
273000
2000
04:50
and clearly his behavior is being disrupted.
122
275000
3000
04:53
This is a bad situation.
123
278000
2000
04:55
But it turns out that when just a single boat
124
280000
2000
04:57
is approaching a group of dolphins
125
282000
2000
04:59
at a couple hundred meters away,
126
284000
2000
05:01
the dolphins will start whistling,
127
286000
2000
05:03
they'll change what they're doing, they'll have a more cohesive group,
128
288000
2000
05:05
wait for the boat to go by,
129
290000
2000
05:07
and then they'll get back to normal business.
130
292000
2000
05:09
Well, in a place like Sarasota, Florida,
131
294000
2000
05:11
the average interval between times
132
296000
2000
05:13
that a boat is passing within a hundred meters of a dolphin group
133
298000
3000
05:16
is six minutes.
134
301000
2000
05:18
So even in the situation that doesn't look as bad as this,
135
303000
3000
05:21
it's still affecting the amount of time these animals have
136
306000
2000
05:23
to do their normal work.
137
308000
2000
05:25
And if we look at a very pristine environment like western Australia,
138
310000
3000
05:28
Lars Bider has done work
139
313000
2000
05:30
comparing dolphin behavior and distribution
140
315000
3000
05:33
before there were dolphin-watching boats.
141
318000
3000
05:36
When there was one boat, not much of an impact.
142
321000
3000
05:39
And two boats: When the second boat was added,
143
324000
3000
05:42
what happened was that some of the dolphins
144
327000
2000
05:44
left the area completely.
145
329000
2000
05:46
Of the ones that stayed, their reproductive rate declined.
146
331000
3000
05:49
So it could have a negative impact on the whole population.
147
334000
3000
05:52
When we think of marine-protected areas for animals like dolphins,
148
337000
3000
05:55
this means that we have to be
149
340000
2000
05:57
quite conscious about activities that we thought were benign.
150
342000
3000
06:00
We may need to regulate the intensity
151
345000
2000
06:02
of recreational boating and actual whale watching
152
347000
3000
06:05
in order to prevent these kinds of problems.
153
350000
3000
06:08
I'd also like to point out that sound
154
353000
2000
06:10
doesn't obey boundaries.
155
355000
2000
06:12
So you can draw a line to try to protect an area,
156
357000
3000
06:15
but chemical pollution and noise pollution
157
360000
2000
06:17
will continue to move through the area.
158
362000
2000
06:19
And I'd like to switch now from this local,
159
364000
2000
06:21
familiar, coastal environment
160
366000
3000
06:24
to a much broader world of the baleen whales and the open ocean.
161
369000
3000
06:27
This is a kind of map we've all been looking at.
162
372000
3000
06:30
The world is mostly blue.
163
375000
2000
06:32
But I'd also like to point out that the oceans
164
377000
2000
06:34
are much more connected than we think.
165
379000
2000
06:36
Notice how few barriers there are to movement
166
381000
3000
06:39
across all of the oceans compared to land.
167
384000
2000
06:41
To me, the most mind-bending example
168
386000
2000
06:43
of the interconnectedness of the ocean
169
388000
2000
06:45
comes from an acoustic experiment
170
390000
2000
06:47
where oceanographers
171
392000
2000
06:49
took a ship to the southern Indian Ocean,
172
394000
3000
06:52
deployed an underwater loudspeaker
173
397000
2000
06:54
and played back a sound.
174
399000
2000
06:56
That same sound
175
401000
2000
06:58
traveled to the west, and could be heard in Bermuda,
176
403000
3000
07:01
and traveled to the east, and could be heard in Monterey --
177
406000
3000
07:04
the same sound.
178
409000
2000
07:06
So we live in a world of satellite communication,
179
411000
2000
07:08
are used to global communication,
180
413000
2000
07:10
but it's still amazing to me.
181
415000
2000
07:12
The ocean has properties
182
417000
2000
07:14
that allow low-frequency sound
183
419000
2000
07:16
to basically move globally.
184
421000
2000
07:18
The acoustic transit time for each of these paths is about three hours.
185
423000
3000
07:21
It's nearly halfway around the globe.
186
426000
3000
07:24
In the early '70s,
187
429000
2000
07:26
Roger Payne and an ocean acoustician
188
431000
2000
07:28
published a theoretical paper
189
433000
2000
07:30
pointing out that it was possible
190
435000
2000
07:32
that sound could transmit over these large areas,
191
437000
3000
07:35
but very few biologists believed it.
192
440000
3000
07:38
It actually turns out, though,
193
443000
2000
07:40
even though we've only known of long-range propagation for a few decades,
194
445000
3000
07:43
the whales clearly have evolved,
195
448000
3000
07:46
over tens of millions of years,
196
451000
2000
07:48
a way to exploit this amazing property of the ocean.
197
453000
3000
07:51
So blue whales and fin whales
198
456000
2000
07:53
produce very low-frequency sounds
199
458000
2000
07:55
that can travel over very long ranges.
200
460000
2000
07:57
The top plot here shows
201
462000
2000
07:59
a complicated series of calls
202
464000
2000
08:01
that are repeated by males.
203
466000
2000
08:03
They form songs, and they appear to play a role in reproduction,
204
468000
3000
08:06
sort of like that of song birds.
205
471000
2000
08:08
Down below here, we see calls made by both males and females
206
473000
3000
08:11
that also carry over very long ranges.
207
476000
3000
08:15
The biologists continued to be skeptical
208
480000
2000
08:17
of the long-range communication issue
209
482000
2000
08:19
well past the '70s,
210
484000
2000
08:21
until the end of the Cold War.
211
486000
2000
08:23
What happened was, during the Cold War,
212
488000
2000
08:25
the U.S. Navy had a system that was secret at the time,
213
490000
3000
08:28
that they used to track Russian submarines.
214
493000
3000
08:31
It had deep underwater microphones, or hydrophones,
215
496000
2000
08:33
cabled to shore,
216
498000
2000
08:35
all wired back to a central place that could listen
217
500000
2000
08:37
to sounds over the whole North Atlantic.
218
502000
2000
08:39
And after the Berlin Wall fell, the Navy made these systems available
219
504000
3000
08:42
to whale bio-acousticians
220
507000
2000
08:44
to see what they could hear.
221
509000
2000
08:46
This is a plot from Christopher Clark
222
511000
2000
08:48
who tracked one individual blue whale
223
513000
3000
08:51
as it passed by Bermuda,
224
516000
2000
08:53
went down to the latitude of Miami and came back again.
225
518000
3000
08:56
It was tracked for 43 days,
226
521000
2000
08:58
swimming 1,700 kilometers,
227
523000
2000
09:00
or more than 1,000 miles.
228
525000
2000
09:02
This shows us both that the calls
229
527000
2000
09:04
are detectable over hundreds of miles
230
529000
2000
09:06
and that whales routinely swim hundreds of miles.
231
531000
2000
09:08
They're ocean-based and scale animals
232
533000
2000
09:10
who are communicating over much longer ranges
233
535000
2000
09:12
than we had anticipated.
234
537000
2000
09:14
Unlike fins and blues, which
235
539000
2000
09:16
disperse into the temperate and tropical oceans,
236
541000
2000
09:18
the humpbacked whales congregate
237
543000
2000
09:20
in local traditional breeding grounds,
238
545000
3000
09:23
so they can make a sound that's a little higher in frequency,
239
548000
3000
09:26
broader-band and more complicated.
240
551000
2000
09:28
So you're listening to the complicated song
241
553000
2000
09:30
produced by humpbacks here.
242
555000
2000
09:32
Humpbacks, when they develop
243
557000
2000
09:34
the ability to sing this song,
244
559000
2000
09:36
they're listening to other whales
245
561000
2000
09:38
and modifying what they sing based on what they're hearing,
246
563000
3000
09:41
just like song birds or the dolphin whistles I described.
247
566000
3000
09:44
This means that humpback song
248
569000
2000
09:46
is a form of animal culture,
249
571000
2000
09:48
just like music for humans would be.
250
573000
2000
09:50
I think one of the most interesting examples of this
251
575000
3000
09:53
comes from Australia.
252
578000
2000
09:55
Biologists on the east coast of Australia
253
580000
2000
09:57
were recording the songs of humpbacks in that area.
254
582000
3000
10:00
And this orange line here marks the typical songs
255
585000
3000
10:03
of east coast humpbacks.
256
588000
2000
10:05
In '95 they all sang the normal song.
257
590000
2000
10:07
But in '96 they heard a few weird songs,
258
592000
2000
10:09
and it turned out that these strange songs
259
594000
3000
10:12
were typical of west coast whales.
260
597000
2000
10:14
The west coast calls became more and more popular,
261
599000
3000
10:17
until by 1998,
262
602000
2000
10:19
none of the whales sang the east coast song; it was completely gone.
263
604000
3000
10:22
They just sang the cool new west coast song.
264
607000
2000
10:24
It's as if some new hit style
265
609000
2000
10:26
had completely wiped out
266
611000
2000
10:28
the old-fashioned style before,
267
613000
2000
10:30
and with no golden oldies stations.
268
615000
2000
10:32
Nobody sang the old ones.
269
617000
3000
10:35
I'd like to briefly just show what the ocean does to these calls.
270
620000
3000
10:38
Now you are listening to a recording made by Chris Clark,
271
623000
3000
10:41
0.2 miles away from a humpback.
272
626000
3000
10:44
You can hear the full frequency range. It's quite loud.
273
629000
3000
10:47
You sound very nearby.
274
632000
2000
10:49
The next recording you're going to hear
275
634000
2000
10:51
was made of the same humpback song
276
636000
2000
10:53
50 miles away.
277
638000
2000
10:55
That's shown down here.
278
640000
2000
10:57
You only hear the low frequencies.
279
642000
2000
10:59
You hear the reverberation
280
644000
2000
11:01
as the sound travels over long-range in the ocean
281
646000
2000
11:03
and is not quite as loud.
282
648000
3000
11:06
Now after I play back these humpback calls,
283
651000
3000
11:09
I'll play blue whale calls, but they have to be sped up
284
654000
3000
11:12
because they're so low in frequency
285
657000
2000
11:14
that you wouldn't be able to hear it otherwise.
286
659000
2000
11:16
Here's a blue whale call at 50 miles,
287
661000
2000
11:18
which was distant for the humpback.
288
663000
2000
11:20
It's loud, clear -- you can hear it very clearly.
289
665000
3000
11:23
Here's the same call recorded from a hydrophone
290
668000
3000
11:26
500 miles away.
291
671000
2000
11:28
There's a lot of noise, which is mostly other whales.
292
673000
3000
11:31
But you can still hear that faint call.
293
676000
3000
11:34
Let's now switch and think about
294
679000
2000
11:36
a potential for human impacts.
295
681000
2000
11:38
The most dominant sound that humans put into the ocean
296
683000
3000
11:41
comes from shipping.
297
686000
2000
11:43
This is the sound of a ship,
298
688000
2000
11:45
and I'm having to talk a little louder to talk over it.
299
690000
2000
11:47
Imagine that whale listening from 500 miles.
300
692000
3000
11:50
There's a potential problem that maybe
301
695000
2000
11:52
this kind of shipping noise would prevent whales
302
697000
2000
11:54
from being able to hear each other.
303
699000
2000
11:56
Now this is something that's been known for quite a while.
304
701000
2000
11:58
This is a figure from a textbook on underwater sound.
305
703000
3000
12:01
And on the y-axis
306
706000
2000
12:03
is the loudness of average ambient noise in the deep ocean
307
708000
3000
12:06
by frequency.
308
711000
2000
12:08
In the low frequencies, this line indicates
309
713000
3000
12:11
sound that comes from seismic activity of the earth.
310
716000
3000
12:14
Up high, these variable lines
311
719000
2000
12:16
indicate increasing noise in this frequency range
312
721000
3000
12:19
from higher wind and wave.
313
724000
2000
12:21
But right in the middle here where there's a sweet spot,
314
726000
3000
12:24
the noise is dominated by human ships.
315
729000
2000
12:26
Now think about it. This is an amazing thing:
316
731000
2000
12:28
That in this frequency range where whales communicate,
317
733000
3000
12:31
the main source globally, on our planet, for the noise
318
736000
3000
12:34
comes from human ships,
319
739000
2000
12:36
thousands of human ships, distant, far away,
320
741000
3000
12:39
just all aggregating.
321
744000
2000
12:41
The next slide will show what the impact this may have
322
746000
3000
12:44
on the range at which whales can communicate.
323
749000
2000
12:46
So here we have the loudness of a call at the whale.
324
751000
3000
12:49
And as we get farther away,
325
754000
2000
12:51
the sound gets fainter and fainter.
326
756000
2000
12:53
Now in the pre-industrial ocean, as we were mentioning,
327
758000
3000
12:56
this whale call could be easily detected.
328
761000
2000
12:58
It's louder than noise
329
763000
2000
13:00
at a range of a thousand kilometers.
330
765000
2000
13:02
Let's now take that additional increase in noise
331
767000
3000
13:05
that we saw comes from shipping.
332
770000
2000
13:07
All of a sudden, the effective range of communication
333
772000
2000
13:09
goes from a thousand kilometers to 10 kilometers.
334
774000
3000
13:12
Now if this signal is used for males and females
335
777000
2000
13:14
to find each other for mating and they're dispersed,
336
779000
3000
13:17
imagine the impact this could have
337
782000
2000
13:19
on the recovery of endangered populations.
338
784000
3000
13:22
Whales also have contact calls
339
787000
2000
13:24
like I described for the dolphins.
340
789000
3000
13:27
I'll play the sound of a contact call used
341
792000
2000
13:29
by right whales to stay in touch.
342
794000
2000
13:31
And this is the kind of call that is used by,
343
796000
2000
13:33
say, right whale mothers and calves
344
798000
2000
13:35
as they separate to come back again.
345
800000
2000
13:37
Now imagine -- let's put the ship noise in the picture.
346
802000
2000
13:39
What's a mother to do
347
804000
2000
13:41
if the ship comes by and her calf isn't there?
348
806000
2000
13:43
I'll describe a couple strategies.
349
808000
3000
13:46
One strategy is if your call's down here,
350
811000
2000
13:48
and the noise is in this band,
351
813000
2000
13:50
you could shift the frequency of your call out of the noise band
352
815000
3000
13:53
and communicate better.
353
818000
2000
13:55
Susan Parks of Penn State has actually studied this.
354
820000
3000
13:58
She's looked in the Atlantic. Here's data from the South Atlantic.
355
823000
3000
14:01
Here's a typical South Atlantic contact call from the '70s.
356
826000
3000
14:04
Look what happened by 2000 to the average call.
357
829000
3000
14:07
Same thing in the North Atlantic,
358
832000
2000
14:09
in the '50s versus 2000.
359
834000
2000
14:11
Over the last 50 years,
360
836000
2000
14:13
as we've put more noise into the oceans,
361
838000
2000
14:15
these whales have had to shift.
362
840000
2000
14:17
It's as if the whole population had to shift
363
842000
2000
14:19
from being basses to singing as a tenor.
364
844000
3000
14:22
It's an amazing shift, induced by humans
365
847000
2000
14:24
over this large scale,
366
849000
2000
14:26
in both time and space.
367
851000
2000
14:28
And we now know that whales can compensate for noise
368
853000
2000
14:30
by calling louder, like I did when that ship was playing,
369
855000
3000
14:33
by waiting for silence
370
858000
2000
14:35
and by shifting their call out of the noise band.
371
860000
3000
14:38
Now there's probably costs to calling louder
372
863000
2000
14:40
or shifting the frequency away from where you want to be,
373
865000
2000
14:42
and there's probably lost opportunities.
374
867000
2000
14:44
If we also have to wait for silence,
375
869000
2000
14:46
they may miss a critical opportunity to communicate.
376
871000
3000
14:49
So we have to be very concerned
377
874000
2000
14:51
about when the noise in habitats
378
876000
2000
14:53
degrades the habitat enough
379
878000
2000
14:55
that the animals either have to pay too much to be able to communicate,
380
880000
3000
14:58
or are not able to perform critical functions.
381
883000
2000
15:00
It's a really important problem.
382
885000
3000
15:03
And I'm happy to say that there are several
383
888000
2000
15:05
very promising developments in this area,
384
890000
3000
15:08
looking at the impact of shipping on whales.
385
893000
3000
15:11
In terms of the shipping noise,
386
896000
2000
15:13
the International Maritime Organization of the United Nations
387
898000
3000
15:16
has formed a group whose job is to establish
388
901000
3000
15:19
guidelines for quieting ships,
389
904000
2000
15:21
to tell the industry how you could quiet ships.
390
906000
2000
15:23
And they've already found
391
908000
2000
15:25
that by being more intelligent about better propeller design,
392
910000
3000
15:28
you can reduce that noise by 90 percent.
393
913000
3000
15:31
If you actually insulate and isolate
394
916000
3000
15:34
the machinery of the ship from the hull,
395
919000
2000
15:36
you can reduce that noise by 99 percent.
396
921000
3000
15:39
So at this point, it's primarily an issue of cost and standards.
397
924000
3000
15:42
If this group can establish standards,
398
927000
2000
15:44
and if the shipbuilding industry adopts them for building new ships,
399
929000
3000
15:47
we can now see a gradual decline
400
932000
2000
15:49
in this potential problem.
401
934000
2000
15:51
But there's also another problem from ships that I'm illustrating here,
402
936000
3000
15:54
and that's the problem of collision.
403
939000
2000
15:56
This is a whale that just squeaked by
404
941000
3000
15:59
a rapidly moving container ship and avoided collision.
405
944000
3000
16:02
But collision is a serious problem.
406
947000
2000
16:04
Endangered whales are killed every year by ship collision,
407
949000
3000
16:07
and it's very important to try to reduce this.
408
952000
3000
16:10
I'll discuss two very promising approaches.
409
955000
3000
16:13
The first case comes from the Bay of Fundy.
410
958000
2000
16:15
These black lines mark shipping lanes
411
960000
2000
16:17
in and out of the Bay of Fundy.
412
962000
2000
16:19
The colorized area
413
964000
2000
16:21
shows the risk of collision for endangered right whales
414
966000
3000
16:24
because of the ships moving in this lane.
415
969000
2000
16:26
It turns out that this lane here
416
971000
3000
16:29
goes right through a major feeding area of right whales in the summer time,
417
974000
3000
16:32
and it makes an area of a significant risk of collision.
418
977000
3000
16:35
Well, biologists
419
980000
2000
16:37
who couldn't take no for an answer
420
982000
2000
16:39
went to the International Maritime Organization
421
984000
2000
16:41
and petitioned them to say,
422
986000
2000
16:43
"Can't you move that lane? Those are just lines on the ground.
423
988000
2000
16:45
Can't you move them over to a place
424
990000
2000
16:47
where there's less of a risk?"
425
992000
2000
16:49
And the International Maritime Organization responded very strongly,
426
994000
2000
16:51
"These are the new lanes."
427
996000
2000
16:53
The shipping lanes have been moved.
428
998000
2000
16:55
And as you can see, the risk of collision is much lower.
429
1000000
3000
16:58
So it's very promising, actually.
430
1003000
2000
17:00
We can be very creative about thinking
431
1005000
2000
17:02
of different ways to reduce these risks.
432
1007000
2000
17:04
Another action which was just taken independently
433
1009000
2000
17:06
by a shipping company itself
434
1011000
3000
17:09
was initiated because of concerns the shipping company had
435
1014000
3000
17:12
about greenhouse gas emissions with global warming.
436
1017000
3000
17:15
The Maersk Line looked at their competition
437
1020000
3000
17:18
and saw that everybody who is in shipping thinks time is money.
438
1023000
3000
17:21
They rush as fast as they can to get to their port.
439
1026000
2000
17:23
But then they often wait there.
440
1028000
2000
17:25
What Maersk did is they worked ways to slow down.
441
1030000
2000
17:27
They could slow down by about 50 percent.
442
1032000
3000
17:30
This reduced their fuel consumption by about 30 percent,
443
1035000
3000
17:33
which saved them money,
444
1038000
2000
17:35
and at the same time, it had a significant benefit for whales.
445
1040000
3000
17:38
It you slow down, you reduce the amount of noise you make
446
1043000
3000
17:41
and you reduce the risk of collision.
447
1046000
2000
17:43
So to conclude, I'd just like to point out,
448
1048000
2000
17:45
you know, the whales live in
449
1050000
2000
17:47
an amazing acoustic environment.
450
1052000
2000
17:49
They've evolved over tens of millions of years
451
1054000
2000
17:51
to take advantage of this.
452
1056000
2000
17:53
And we need to be very attentive and vigilant
453
1058000
3000
17:56
to thinking about where things that we do
454
1061000
2000
17:58
may unintentionally prevent them
455
1063000
2000
18:00
from being able to achieve their important activities.
456
1065000
3000
18:03
At the same time, we need to be really creative
457
1068000
2000
18:05
in thinking of solutions to be able to help reduce these problems.
458
1070000
3000
18:08
I hope these examples have shown
459
1073000
2000
18:10
some of the different directions we can take
460
1075000
2000
18:12
in addition to protected areas
461
1077000
2000
18:14
to be able to keep the ocean safe for whales to be able to continue to communicate.
462
1079000
3000
18:17
Thank you very much.
463
1082000
2000
18:19
(Applause)
464
1084000
2000

▲Back to top

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Peter Tyack - Behavioral ecologist
Peter Tyack studies the social behavior and acoustic communication in whales and dolphins, learning how these animals use sound to perform critical activities, such as mating and locating food.

Why you should listen

Peter Tyack, a senior scientist in biology at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has always been intrigued by animal behavior. A class at Woods Hole while still in college led Peter down his current path of research on acoustic communication and social behavior in marine mammals. 

He has studied the songs of humpback whales, the signature whistles of dolphins and the echolocation pulses of sperm whales and dolphins. Tyack has pioneered several new methods to sample the behavior of these mammals, including the development of sound-and-orientation recording tags.

As a result of his work recording the sounds of whales, Tyack is concerned that the ubiquitous noises from human activity in the ocean -- sonar, oil rigs, motorboats, shipping traffic -- are disturbing marine mammals.

More profile about the speaker
Peter Tyack | Speaker | TED.com