Barbara Block: Tagging tuna in the deep ocean

24,725 views ・ 2010-10-06

TED


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00:15
I've been fascinated for a lifetime
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by the beauty, form and function
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of giant bluefin tuna.
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Bluefin are warmblooded like us.
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They're the largest of the tunas,
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the second-largest fish in the sea -- bony fish.
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They actually are a fish
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that is endothermic --
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powers through the ocean with warm muscles like a mammal.
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That's one of our bluefin at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
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You can see in its shape and its streamlined design
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it's powered for ocean swimming.
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It flies through the ocean on its pectoral fins, gets lift,
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powers its movements
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with a lunate tail.
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It's actually got a naked skin for most of its body,
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so it reduces friction with the water.
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This is what one of nature's finest machines.
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Now, bluefin
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were revered by Man
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for all of human history.
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For 4,000 years, we fished sustainably for this animal,
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and it's evidenced
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in the art that we see
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from thousands of years ago.
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Bluefin are in cave paintings in France.
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They're on coins
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that date back 3,000 years.
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This fish was revered by humankind.
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It was fished sustainably
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till all of time,
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except for our generation.
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Bluefin are pursued wherever they go --
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there is a gold rush on Earth,
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and this is a gold rush for bluefin.
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There are traps that fish sustainably
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up until recently.
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And yet, the type of fishing going on today,
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with pens, with enormous stakes,
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is really wiping bluefin
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ecologically off the planet.
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Now bluefin, in general,
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goes to one place: Japan.
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Some of you may be guilty
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of having contributed to the demise of bluefin.
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They're delectable muscle,
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rich in fat --
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absolutely taste delicious.
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And that's their problem; we're eating them to death.
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Now in the Atlantic, the story is pretty simple.
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Bluefin have two populations: one large, one small.
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The North American population
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is fished at about 2,000 ton.
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The European population and North African -- the Eastern bluefin tuna --
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is fished at tremendous levels:
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50,000 tons over the last decade almost every year.
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The result is whether you're looking
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at the West or the Eastern bluefin population,
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there's been tremendous decline on both sides,
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as much as 90 percent
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if you go back with your baseline
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to 1950.
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For that, bluefin have been given a status
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equivalent to tigers, to lions,
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to certain African elephants
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and to pandas.
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These fish have been proposed
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for an endangered species listing in the past two months.
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They were voted on and rejected
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just two weeks ago,
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despite outstanding science
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that shows from two committees
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this fish meets the criteria of CITES I.
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And if it's tunas you don't care about,
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perhaps you might be interested
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that international long lines and pursing
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chase down tunas and bycatch animals
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such as leatherbacks, sharks,
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marlin, albatross.
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These animals and their demise
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occurs in the tuna fisheries.
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The challenge we face
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is that we know very little about tuna,
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and everyone in the room knows what it looks like
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when an African lion
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takes down its prey.
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I doubt anyone has seen a giant bluefin feed.
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This tuna symbolizes
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what's the problem for all of us in the room.
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It's the 21st century, but we really have only just begun
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to really study our oceans in a deep way.
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Technology has come of age
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that's allowing us to see the Earth from space
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and go deep into the seas remotely.
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And we've got to use these technologies immediately
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to get a better understanding
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of how our ocean realm works.
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Most of us from the ship -- even I --
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look out at the ocean and see this homogeneous sea.
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We don't know where the structure is.
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We can't tell where are the watering holes
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like we can on an African plain.
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We can't see the corridors,
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and we can't see what it is
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that brings together a tuna,
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a leatherback and an albatross.
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We're only just beginning to understand
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how the physical oceanography
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and the biological oceanography
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come together
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to create a seasonal force
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that actually causes the upwelling
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that might make a hot spot a hope spot.
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The reasons these challenges are great
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is that technically it's difficult to go to sea.
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It's hard to study a bluefin on its turf,
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the entire Pacific realm.
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It's really tough to get up close and personal with a mako shark
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and try to put a tag on it.
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And then imagine being Bruce Mate's team from OSU,
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getting up close to a blue whale
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and fixing a tag on the blue whale that stays,
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an engineering challenge
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we've yet to really overcome.
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So the story of our team, a dedicated team,
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is fish and chips.
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We basically are taking
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the same satellite phone parts,
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or the same parts that are in your computer, chips.
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We're putting them together in unusual ways,
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and this is taking us into the ocean realm
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like never before.
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And for the first time,
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we're able to watch the journey of a tuna beneath the ocean
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using light and photons
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to measure sunrise and sunset.
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Now, I've been working with tunas for over 15 years.
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I have the privilege of being a partner
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with the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
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We've actually taken a sliver of the ocean,
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put it behind glass,
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and we together
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have put bluefin tuna and yellowfin tuna on display.
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When the veil of bubbles lifts every morning,
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we can actually see a community from the Pelagic ocean,
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one of the only places on Earth
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you can see giant bluefin swim by.
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We can see in their beauty of form and function,
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their ceaseless activity.
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They're flying through their space, ocean space.
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And we can bring two million people a year
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into contact with this fish
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and show them its beauty.
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Behind the scenes is a working lab at Stanford University
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partnered with the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
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Here, for over 14 or 15 years,
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we've actually brought in
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both bluefin and yellowfin in captivity.
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We'd been studying these fish,
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but first we had to learn how to husbandry them.
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What do they like to eat?
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What is it that they're happy with?
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We go in the tanks with the tuna -- we touch their naked skin --
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it's pretty amazing. It feels wonderful.
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And then, better yet,
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we've got our own version of tuna whisperers,
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our own Chuck Farwell, Alex Norton,
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who can take a big tuna
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and in one motion,
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put it into an envelope of water,
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so that we can actually work with the tuna
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and learn the techniques it takes
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to not injure this fish
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who never sees a boundary in the open sea.
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Jeff and Jason there, are scientists
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who are going to take a tuna
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and put it in the equivalent of a treadmill, a flume.
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And that tuna thinks it's going to Japan, but it's staying in place.
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We're actually measuring its oxygen consumption,
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its energy consumption.
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We're taking this data and building better models.
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And when I see that tuna -- this is my favorite view --
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I begin to wonder:
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how did this fish solve the longitude problem before we did?
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So take a look at that animal.
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That's the closest you'll probably ever get.
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Now, the activities from the lab
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have taught us now how to go out in the open ocean.
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So in a program called Tag-A-Giant
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we've actually gone from Ireland to Canada,
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from Corsica to Spain.
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We've fished with many nations around the world
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in an effort to basically
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put electronic computers
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inside giant tunas.
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We've actually tagged 1,100 tunas.
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And I'm going to show you three clips,
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because I tagged 1,100 tunas.
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It's a very hard process, but it's a ballet.
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We bring the tuna out, we measure it.
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A team of fishers, captains, scientists and technicians
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work together to keep this animal out of the ocean
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for about four to five minutes.
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We put water over its gills, give it oxygen.
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And then with a lot of effort, after tagging,
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putting in the computer,
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making sure the stalk is sticking out so it senses the environment,
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we send this fish back into the sea.
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And when it goes, we're always happy.
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We see a flick of the tail.
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And from our data that gets collected,
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when that tag comes back,
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because a fisher returns it
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for a thousand-dollar reward,
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we can get tracks beneath the sea
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for up to five years now,
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on a backboned animal.
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Now sometimes the tunas are really large,
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such as this fish off Nantucket.
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But that's about half the size
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of the biggest tuna we've ever tagged.
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It takes a human effort,
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a team effort, to bring the fish in.
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In this case, what we're going to do
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is put a pop-up satellite archival tag on the tuna.
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This tag rides on the tuna,
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senses the environment around the tuna
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and actually will come off the fish,
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detach, float to the surface
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and send back to Earth-orbiting satellites
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position data estimated by math on the tag,
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pressure data and temperature data.
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And so what we get then from the pop-up satellite tag
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is we get away from having to have a human interaction
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to recapture the tag.
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Both the electronic tags I'm talking about are expensive.
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These tags have been engineered
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by a variety of teams in North America.
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They are some of our finest instruments,
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our new technology in the ocean today.
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One community in general
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has given more to help us than any other community.
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And that's the fisheries off the state of North Carolina.
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There are two villages, Harris and Morehead City,
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every winter for over a decade,
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held a party called Tag-A-Giant,
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and together, fishers worked with us
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to tag 800 to 900 fish.
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In this case, we're actually going to measure the fish.
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We're going to do something that in recent years we've started:
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take a mucus sample.
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Watch how shiny the skin is; you can see my reflection there.
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And from that mucus, we can get gene profiles,
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we can get information on gender,
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checking the pop-up tag one more time,
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and then it's out in the ocean.
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And this is my favorite.
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With the help of my former postdoc, Gareth Lawson,
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this is a gorgeous picture of a single tuna.
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This tuna is actually moving on a numerical ocean.
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The warm is the Gulf Stream,
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the cold up there in the Gulf of Maine.
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That's where the tuna wants to go -- it wants to forage on schools of herring --
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but it can't get there. It's too cold.
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But then it warms up, and the tuna pops in, gets some fish,
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maybe comes back to home base,
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goes in again
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and then comes back to winter down there in North Carolina
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and then on to the Bahamas.
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And my favorite scene, three tunas going into the Gulf of Mexico.
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Three tunas tagged.
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Astronomically, we're calculating positions.
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They're coming together. That could be tuna sex --
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and there it is.
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That is where the tuna spawn.
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So from data like this,
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we're able now to put the map up,
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and in this map
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you see thousands of positions
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generated by this decade and a half of tagging.
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And now we're showing that tunas on the western side
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go to the eastern side.
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So two populations of tunas --
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that is, we have a Gulf population, one that we can tag --
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they go to the Gulf of Mexico, I showed you that --
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and a second population.
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Living amongst our tunas -- our North American tunas --
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are European tunas that go back to the Med.
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On the hot spots -- the hope spots --
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they're mixed populations.
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And so what we've done with the science
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is we're showing the International Commission,
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building new models,
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showing them that a two-stock no-mixing model --
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to this day, used to reject
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the CITES treaty --
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that model isn't the right model.
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This model, a model of overlap,
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is the way to move forward.
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So we can then predict
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where management places should be.
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Places like the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean
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are places where the single species,
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the single population, can be captured.
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These become forthright in places we need to protect.
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The center of the Atlantic where the mixing is,
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I could imagine a policy that lets Canada and America fish,
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because they manage their fisheries well,
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they're doing a good job.
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But in the international realm,
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where fishing and overfishing has really gone wild,
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these are the places that we have to make hope spots in.
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That's the size they have to be to protect the bluefin tuna.
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Now in a second project
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called Tagging of Pacific Pelagics,
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we took on the planet as a team,
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those of us in the Census of Marine Life.
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And, funded primarily through Sloan Foundation and others,
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we were able to actually go in, in our project --
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we're one of 17 field programs
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and begin to take on tagging large numbers of predators,
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not just tunas.
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So what we've done
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is actually gone up to tag salmon shark in Alaska,
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met salmon shark on their home territory,
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followed them catching salmon
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and then went in and figured out
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that, if we take a salmon and put it on a line,
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we can actually take up a salmon shark --
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This is the cousin of the white shark --
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and very carefully --
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note, I say "very carefully," --
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we can actually keep it calm,
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put a hose in its mouth, keep it off the deck
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and then tag it with a satellite tag.
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That satellite tag will now have your shark phone home
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and send in a message.
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And that shark leaping there, if you look carefully, has an antenna.
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It's a free swimming shark with a satellite tag
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jumping after salmon,
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sending home its data.
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Salmon sharks aren't the only sharks we tag.
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But there goes salmon sharks with this meter-level resolution
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on an ocean of temperature -- warm colors are warmer.
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Salmon sharks go down
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to the tropics to pup
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and come into Monterey.
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Now right next door in Monterey and up at the Farallones
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are a white shark team led by Scott Anderson -- there --
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and Sal Jorgensen.
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They can throw out a target --
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it's a carpet shaped like a seal --
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and in will come a white shark, a curious critter
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that will come right up to our 16-ft. boat.
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It's a several thousand-pound animal.
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And we'll wind in the target.
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And we'll place an acoustic tag
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that says, "OMSHARK 10165,"
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or something like that, acoustically with a ping.
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And then we'll put on a satellite tag
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that will give us the long-distance journeys
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with the light-based geolocation algorithms
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solved on the computer that's on the fish.
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So in this case, Sal's looking at two tags there,
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and there they are: the white sharks of California
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going off to the white shark cafe and coming back.
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We also tag makos with our NOAA colleagues,
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blue sharks.
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And now, together, what we can see
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on this ocean of color that's temperature,
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we can see ten-day worms of makos and salmon sharks.
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We have white sharks and blue sharks.
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For the first time,
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an ecoscape as large as ocean-scale,
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showing where the sharks go.
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The tuna team from TOPP has done the unthinkable:
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three teams tagged 1,700 tunas,
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bluefin, yellowfin and albacore
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all at the same time --
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carefully rehearsed tagging programs
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in which we go out, pick up juvenile tunas,
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put in the tags that actually have the sensors,
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stick out the tuna
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and then let them go.
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They get returned, and when they get returned,
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here on a NASA numerical ocean
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you can see bluefin in blue
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go across their corridor,
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returning to the Western Pacific.
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Our team from UCSC has tagged elephant seals
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with tags that are glued on their heads, that come off when they slough.
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These elephant seals cover half an ocean,
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take data down to 1,800 feet --
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amazing data.
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And then there's Scott Shaffer and our shearwaters
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wearing tuna tags, light-based tags,
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that now are going to take you from New Zealand to Monterey and back,
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journeys of 35,000 nautical miles
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we had never seen before.
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But now with light-based geolocation tags that are very small,
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we can actually see these journeys.
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Same thing with Laysan albatross
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who travel an entire ocean
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on a trip sometimes,
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up to the same zone the tunas use.
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You can see why they might be caught.
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Then there's George Schillinger and our leatherback team out of Playa Grande
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tagging leatherbacks
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that go right past where we are.
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And Scott Benson's team
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that showed that leatherbacks go from Indonesia
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all the way to Monterey.
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So what we can see on this moving ocean
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is we can finally see where the predators are.
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We can actually see how they're using ecospaces
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as large as an ocean.
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And from this information,
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we can begin to map the hope spots.
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So this is just three years of data right here --
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and there's a decade of this data.
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We see the pulse and the seasonal activities
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that these animals are going on.
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So what we're able to do with this information
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is boil it down to hot spots,
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4,000 deployments,
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a huge herculean task,
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2,000 tags
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in an area, shown here for the first time,
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off the California coast,
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that appears to be a gathering place.
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And then for sort of an encore from these animals,
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they're helping us.
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They're carrying instruments
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that are actually taking data down to 2,000 meters.
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They're taking information from our planet
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at very critical places like Antarctica and the Poles.
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Those are seals from many countries
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being released
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who are sampling underneath the ice sheets
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and giving us temperature data of oceanographic quality
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on both poles.
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This data, when visualized, is captivating to watch.
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We still haven't figured out best how to visualize the data.
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And then, as these animals swim
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and give us the information
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that's important to climate issues,
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we also think it's critical
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to get this information to the public,
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to engage the public with this kind of data.
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We did this with the Great Turtle Race --
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tagged turtles, brought in four million hits.
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And now with Google's Oceans,
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we can actually put a white shark in that ocean.
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And when we do and it swims,
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we see this magnificent bathymetry
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that the shark knows is there on its path
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as it goes from California to Hawaii.
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But maybe Mission Blue
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can fill in that ocean that we can't see.
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We've got the capacity, NASA has the ocean.
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We just need to put it together.
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So in conclusion,
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we know where Yellowstone is for North America;
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it's off our coast.
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We have the technology that's shown us where it is.
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What we need to think about perhaps for Mission Blue
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is increasing the biologging capacity.
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How is it that we can actually
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take this type of activity elsewhere?
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And then finally -- to basically get the message home --
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maybe use live links
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from animals such as blue whales and white sharks.
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Make killer apps, if you will.
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A lot of people are excited
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when sharks actually went under the Golden Gate Bridge.
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Let's connect the public to this activity right on their iPhone.
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That way we do away with a few internet myths.
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So we can save the bluefin tuna.
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We can save the white shark.
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We have the science and technology.
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Hope is here. Yes we can.
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We need just to apply this capacity
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further in the oceans.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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About this website

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