Protecting biodiversity: the role of whales | Blue Economy Summit 2024

Next session also will be very interesting. Now we move from capital to biodiversity, with in specific the role of whales. About this, it's going to be with us Dinah Nyborg, co-founder of Blue Green Future, is going to moderate this session. So, thank you so much for taking the time for this session. We've had a powerhouse, first Blue Natural Capital and moving through biodiversity. So, why whales? And I want to thank Jan Potschner and One Ocean Foundation for making space for the whales. I have to say this is really close to my heart because the DNA of the work I'm doing now started with whales in Baja Peninsula, the blue whales. And perhaps many people here, you've had an experience in nature that has inspired you to come here, to do the work we do. So, this awakening of connecting and understanding the value, the beauty, the inherent incredible mystery of our living system is, I think, part of what we're all about. So, in this session, we have some wonderful scientists, conservationists, and certainly also the market. And we'll hear about how can these elements fit together to protect biodiversity, in this case, the whales. So, why whales? And we heard from Carlos Duarte that Blue Natural Capital, the living system, is not just the flora, but all the creatures. And in the case of whales, they provide incredible ecosystem services, including capturing carbon on their bodies. It's estimated that up to 33 tons of carbon dioxide is captured on an average great whale's body. And if you imagine that we've lost up to 3 million whales, and you think about the stock, that would just be on the biomass of the whales themselves that we've lost in carbon. But we're not just here about carbon, we've heard that. We're really here about how do you have all of the players of a living system working together in a harmonious system that nature has created. So, not only do whales capture carbon, but they also mix nutrients in the water column, lifting up the nutrients that are needed for fertilization in the photic zone. They also have fecal plumes. So, in nature, nothing is waste. It's a virtuous cycle of regeneration. But the whales are continuing to be in jeopardy. Can you imagine that if we really invaded their home? The ocean is their home. And we've changed their home and their living circumstances tremendously. One big threat, we've heard about this already, is ship strikes. Those ships migrate, the whales migrate. The ships are in the whales' path, where they're breeding, where they're feeding, and where they're traveling. So, ship strikes is a huge issue. Also, entanglements, entanglements in shipping, in fishing gear, and also in ghost gear, gear that's been abandoned. And a good example of that is the whales along the east coast of the U.S., the North Atlantic right whales. There are 350 whales left. And they have to navigate 800,000 vertical lines that attach to crab and lobster pots. Can you imagine what they're up against in that kind of environment? There's also seismic and sonar testing, plastic pollution, just to name a few. But there's hope, and there are solutions. And really, the take-home is, how do we design differently? How do we enter their environment and design our activities such that we're respecting their rights, their needs for living a healthy life, and then thereby, we would benefit from the ecosystem services and a healthier ocean? Okay, so that's just a context. And I'm happy to now introduce the panel, starting with Mario Labrato. It's good to meet you. We haven't met yet, if you could sit here, Mario. Let me just tell you a little bit about Mario. He is currently the station manager and chief scientist at the Bazaruto Center in Mozambique. He's a PhD in marine biology and oceanography. And he is particularly interested in large-scale ocean processes concerning the carbon cycle, environmental variability. And he's going to also talk to us about some recent whale work. Thank you so much, Mario. Okay, Ginevra Boldrocci is here. She is with One Ocean Foundation. Nice to see you, Ginevra. She's also a researcher at the University of Insubria, and she's an ecologist and an ecotoxicologist. And she is running the project of One Ocean Foundation Canyon of Caprera, which we'll hear more about. I can't wait for that. Then I've got my dear friend and colleague, Mary Takoko. Please join us up on stage. Mary is a descendant of the Ngati Porou, Panuapanui, and Rongowakata tribal nations of New Zealand. And she's also the founder of the Hinemawana Halo Project and currently leads Conservation International's focus on Maori projects and ocean solutions for New Zealand and for the Cook Islands, Tonga, Tahiti, the Pacific small island states. Wonderful. Thank you, Mary. And finally, let me invite Daniela Pico. Thank you for joining us again. You get double duty today, Daniela. He's an executive director of the MSC Foundation, an experienced executive working in many ways to help the planet and people and nature. And finally, my friend and colleague, co-founder of Blue Green Future, Ralph Shami. And you already know a lot about him, but you might know that he really, his background in fragile states and having much experience thinking about economic systems has allowed him to really innovate in the space of nature finance. So, Mario, nice to see you. I was looking for you. Okay. So, let's hear a little bit about your work in your center and what is the data platform that you have. You have one that's unique for Africa, I understand, and how does that connect to the work of Protected Whales? Right. Thank you so much for inviting us. I think from our side, we come more from a technical on the ground field side than everybody else. So, basically, I've been very careful listening to the rest of the audience and the other panelists because there were so many topics that we always hear or read about, but the reality is that we are on the ground. We're still going offshore, collecting data from whales, from other marine mammals, and from a variety of other parts in the ecosystem. Well, it's fantastic to basically see and learn where all that data ends up at some point. I mean, as you correctly say, we are working on an ocean observatory that was established seven years ago in the coast of Mozambique in the southwest Indian Ocean. And basically, we deal with several themes. We have to do with environmental variability, megafauna migration, fish migration, plastic. The baseline is time series data. So, time series data can be anything from one second time frame to one month time frame, depending on what you're looking at. If you're looking at micro-scale, obviously, water changes could be any second. If you're looking at whales, obviously, you depend on their annual migration. So, that's the project we've been working on. And to be honest, to be perfectly honest to the audience, I'm not a specialist on whales. However, we do have a story through the work we've done there, which is we started doing baseline work on whales, like many other programs around the world, contributing with tail flukes to understand population dynamics and to contribute to many platforms. Then we moved on to monitoring numbers and hotspots on how to use the habitat, because that can have so many uses for other stakeholders like government or national parks to understand calving areas and how they use and interact with the ecosystem. But let's not say funny enough, but interesting enough, there are so many links, for example, with coral reefs. It's being discussed in a previous panel about the blue carbon importance for coral reefs. I mean, we've been finding on our work in the archipelago that whales use coral reefs for nursing and calving. So, they will be basically lying in three meters of water protecting their newborn calves. And that speaks on its own for connectivity with other habitats. It's been amazing. And as probably many people know from the whales, they undertake huge migrations from giving birth in the tropics down to the poles. So, on all that migration, which, I mean, it has huge implications with the recent discussions on the High Seas Treaty, they interact with a lot of, let's say, market players that have been speaking this morning, like transport companies, shipping companies, the whales themselves will be dealing with changes in the water column, pollution, all those kinds of stressors, also including noise pollution. You presented it very well when oil companies or gas companies do explorations. So, at the end of the day, whales are in the cares of well-being in the ecosystem and the ocean. Basically, the fact that they visit the area where we are in Mozambique, obviously other parts in the world, Antarctica, California, the North Pole, indicates about the state of those places as well. They're really the ultimate indicators because they're at the top of the food chain and everything goes bottom up. So, they are a massive reflection of what's going on in the ocean. Thank you so much. And really, the baseline data is always the foundation of any project because we need to monitor what's making a difference, what's going downhill, what's going uphill, and what we can do to mitigate going uphill. Okay. So, thank you for that. Geneva, nice to see you. So, let's come from Mozambique and come into the Mediterranean and hear about the Canyon of Caprera project, the whales that you have here, the special area that it is and what you're looking to, how you're protecting the whales. What is your pathway? As you know, appropriate conservation measure needs our knowledge on species distribution, ecology, habitat use. And this is often very challenging, especially in the Mediterranean Sea. The basin is considered one of the main hotspots for marine biodiversity, but still, we have to identify critical habitat for many endangered species. So, this is why One Ocean Foundation decided five years ago to start a project in the Canyon of Caprera, which is a submarine canyon located in the Mediterranean Sea. And like other canyons, it's associated with upwelling phenomenon, the one you were telling before. Basically, cold water come up on surface, bringing nutrients. And this is why the Caprera Canyon, but also other canyons, can be considered a hotspot of marine biodiversity because they are very productive. And this is also why we normally have fisheries activities associated with it. So, five years ago, we started the Caprera Canyon project, focusing on three main activities, which are visual surveys, environmental DNA sampling, and also acoustic surveys. All three not invasive, and this is very important for us because we don't want to disturb animals in any kind of ways. So, after five years of data collection, we can now say that the canyon is very, it can be considered a real pearl in the Mediterranean Sea. We have seven of the eight cetacean species that normally stay in the Mediterranean. We found all of them in the canyon, and these include fin whale, sperm whale, Hooverback whale, common dolphin, striped dolphin, wrist dolphin, bottlenose dolphin. And because we are kind of ambitious, we decided to look also at one of the rarest pinnipeds in the world and in the Mediterranean Sea, which is the monk seal. So, we started a preliminary study. We wanted to see if the monk seal was in Sardinia, because in the past, originally Sardinia was one of the area of this pinniped, but as we know, we almost drove it to extinction. So, we started this small project and results were incredible. We found the monk seal in the canyon and we found it every time we were going out sampling. So, not only once, but every time we went there, and we found it in multiple places in the canyon. So, very, very great news. And not only it's important for marine mammals that using the canyon as a feeding ground, like right now, whale are popping up in the canyon because there is spring phytoplankton bloom, but we have also basking shark. We have devil rays, loggerhead turtle. So, the first part of the project was gathering data because we had to show that the canyon is actually a real hotspot of biodiversity. And now what we are doing is trying to make it, getting recognition, which will help us to ask for legal protection. So, we just had the hotspot recognition by Mission Blue, and now we are chasing after the IMA recognition, which stands for Important Marine Mammal Area. The idea is getting both recognition and then having solid background for asking protection and maybe an MPA. That would be great. It's an important journey you're on. You've got incredible biodiversity there, so I'm glad you're there doing the work. Okay, Maddie. March 27th was an important day and really just a moment in time to be remembered. The Maori king and other Pacific leaders declared and conferred legal personhood on the whales. So, tell us what this means to indigenous people, what this means to conservation and the vision that you have for integrating whale conservation with the Pacific natural capital system. I'm just wanting to honour my ancestor, Paikia, who was an ancient humpback whale. Another ancestor of mine, a two-legged ancestor, Kahutia Te Rangi, actually rode on and was brought to Aotearoa, New Zealand. I want to share that because, actually, from our paradigm, the whale is an ancestor. It's not a resource to be managed or a lovely marine creature in the ocean to be marvelled. It's actually part of our DNA. And that's an important distinction to make because when we interact with our whales, we see them as kin. So, Whakaputanga Moana was a regional declaration supported by our indigenous leaders, led by the Maori king, who's the patron of this declaration. It does confer whale personhood, but in a way that is imbued with the mana of the traditional kings. Actually, it was the first time in some years that we had kings, the Ariki, from so many islands come together and converge in the Cook Islands. That alone was a symbol of the power of the effort, which is an indigenous-led effort. We, as Conservation International, see ourselves as enablers of indigenous leadership in the climate space. And of course, with the whale being such an iconic species for all Polynesian people, it was a real honour to be able to fashion the declaration, to author that declaration and support the Maori king with our effort. Since the release of the declaration, its signing, two billion people worldwide have actually actively engaged with this campaign, which indicates that the time is now in terms of conferring greater legal rights for our whales. For us, it wasn't just about personhood and the rights of whales freely in the oceans, the right to have babies in healthy environments, the right to have access to sustainable sources of food, the rights to not be struck by ships as they migrate to Antarctica, many things. For us, it goes deeper than that. It actually goes back to ensuring that indigenous guardians of the ocean who have such a strong affinity with the whale, lead the charge in the space. So, next steps for us, really, is to take this holistic framework called He Whakaputanga Moana and to work with three Pacific Island states to legislate legal personhood, which will be an amazing effort. Beyond just protecting whales' legal rights, it's actually going to be looking at how do we provide greater protection for ocean ecosystems. We'll be looking at protection of the migratory corridors. And in order to do that, we're going to have to look at monitoring technology and working with wonderful companies like the Mediterranean Shipping Company to onboard anti-collision devices so that we can get eyes on the whales in the water and we can assess the number of ship strikes, we can divert unsustainable practices or harmful practices for our whale. The important thing here is we're going a step further than conservation and the things I've mentioned to also look at sustainable finance mechanisms. I'll leave Ralph to talk about potential market that could be established. Essentially, my role will be to go to London next month to work with the top law firm there to build out this legislation. And it's so important because it's going to allow us to build all these levers that are required to ensure we do the job well and that we can actually implement whakaputanga moana and more importantly ensure that our mokopuna, our grandchildren, will be able to continue to enjoy a very strong relationship with what we have with our whales. We swim with our whales. Some may be bold enough to ride those whales like my ancestor. For us, the ability to do that is actually central to our ongoing relationship with our oceans. I could talk more about this, but I'll leave it there. Thank you, Ralph. I might just add, if you're not familiar with the Rights of Nature movement, this is something that is growing across the world. Personhood has been designated to sea turtles in Panama, to bees in Costa Rica, to rivers and mountains. This is something that is a known legal strategy that can come on board to help with protecting biodiversity. We'll hear more about that in a minute. Daniela, you're part of industry. You're part of the group that has a great challenge of how to connect with the health of the ocean and also provide services that are so important to our economy. Tell us a little bit about how does your company see this challenge? What are you doing? What do you hope to be doing? Thank you very much for the invitation again. Good afternoon. Representing the foundation of the MSC group, it is the world's leader in transportation with more than 800 ships. We have the duty, the responsibility that our operation, how we run the operation of the vessel, have to be a positive impact. This is a responsibility that we have and we believe that our sector has, in a sense, to set the path how to do it. What we do very concretely, the first is the rerouting and simply change the route of the ship. It means that we were the first in 2022 that we have done rerouting. We changed the route of the ships in Sri Lanka and in Greece. For five years, we have been awarded with the Sapphire Awards for the protection of the blue whales in San Francisco Bay. Simply changing the route of the ships. This we do with research, with studies. Of course, we are not doing it alone. We work with experts. We work with four NGOs that I would like to mention them, that are the Ocean Care, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the WWF Greece and the Pelagos Cetatean Research Institute. We change the route of the ships. Second, we work of course for the noise, for the reduction of the noise. All the ships, the new ones, have these state-of-the-art technologies to reduce the noise underwater. We are doing also the retrofitting for all the ships of the fleet. This is very important. We use the technology to detect where are the whales. For example, using some thermic camera day and night and satellite. It's very, very important also the training of the crew and the people that is in the deck, in the bridge deck. We also have captain with us since many, many years and there is a lot of experience and so we can really see the whales. So this is also something that is very, very important. It's a human touch. Training the crew how is important and based and as usual, we really need to do a lot of advocacy and communication and the sensibilization related to the topic. Last, we asked six months ago a workshop in Geneva and the workshop has been done with the 70 people coming across all the world and we launched, I told you, the worshipping council whale chart. This is a chart that we will use and we want to spread the voice where are the whales, which are the period of the birth of the whales and this can allow us to change the routes accordingly. Thank you so much and I want to personally thank your company for being a leader in this area. On a personal note, I've been working on moving the shipping personally, not personally, but moving the shipping lanes south of Sri Lanka and it was an area that had lots of challenges politically. Physically, it was very possible, but politically there were stops. So the leadership that you've shown, very important and welcome more of it. Thank you. All right, so now, Ralph, what do you think? Can markets have a role in influencing behavior, behavior of the blue economy and the different players in the blue economy? Where can markets come in? Well, the markets, let me cut to the chase and I'll go back. Markets can come in by rewarding this company for doing the right thing. So, if you had a market around the whale services, what the market would have done, your insurance premium should be lower, the cost of your paper should be lower and your share prices should be trading at a premium. But that's how the market would work to reward such behavior that a company on its own decided to do the right thing. Because if you only depend on people doing the right thing, you have one company out of many doing the right thing. And we cannot afford to wait until other companies follow suit, because the whales are under threat. In fact, all nature is under threat. So the question is, what is the incentive? How do you bring the markets to provide the right discipline so that companies would want to be like your company? How would you build it? To do that, you have to understand how markets operate. So, we, each one of us here in the audience, we have health insurance. We have life insurance. Our cars are insured. Our homes are insured. Because from the market's perspective, you're either viewed as a person so that you get insurance, or your car or your house is viewed as an asset. These are two categories that allow the markets you become visible to the market, and then the markets can start to build services around you. So you want insurance, why should the insurance company offer you insurance? You have to always think from the demand and the supply side. So, in order to make this amazing behavior across the market, rather than depend on the volition of companies to do so, you have to create those incentives. So, what the Maori people realize is, if we start by conferring legal person, they did it for spiritual reasons, for the right reasons, but the impact of such a move, it starts, it endows the whale with all these legal rights. Now, the next thing is, what is the value of the services you started this conversation with the value of what the whale does? Well, each of those things, catching carbon, enhancing krill stock, by the way, when whales, there are more whales, there's more krill, not less krill, more krill, more seals, more penguins, more fish, you have also whale tourism, you can calculate the market value of the services of these that are provided by the whales. We did this back in 2009, just as an indicative value, we said maybe it's two million dollars. So, now you have the legal personhood, and you have a value for those services, which means, if a whale is hurt, you stand to lose whoever, if the whale as a person, there's a loss of two million, and therefore the markets then, basically the insurance companies, should be saying to the companies, we don't want you to hit that whale, because if you hit that whale in the Maori waters, they may come after you for two million dollars. You see? Then the insurance companies start to tell the shipping, you're doing it because you're doing the right thing. But other companies may be incentivized by the insurance company telling them, wait a minute, if you hit that whale in the water, it has legal personhood, and its value is two million dollars, worth the value of its services, so if you do hit that whale, maybe the Maori people would come after you, and if I'm insuring you, I have to pay that two million. So now here's what you're going to do, you're going to do what you guys are doing on your own, which is, you're going to slow down, you're going to change your lane, or maybe also, put a technology, by the way, technology is here, on your ship, that would avoid hitting the whale. So now what happens, this is how markets work, they create, but you have to start the conversation with the markets. And you know what's remarkable about what you're saying, Ralph, is that we often think of markets as sort of causing harm to nature. Now you're flipping it around and serving a nature-positive outcome by having these legal and the framework in place to shape different kinds of ocean-positive behavior. Thank you for that. So we just have four minutes left, and it gives each of you a chance to sort of make a pitch or make a final point about, but could you focus it on what really needs to happen? We want to think about action over the next year, the most important thing, and who do you need to partner with to make it happen, if that's the case? I would like to quickly also answer what you say on the concept of the market, because we do have a fantastic example from a developing country where we're working in Mozambique. So you brought up the perspective from the, let's call it the higher end, the issues in the market with the shipping companies, for example. And listening to you, I've just realized that in Mozambique, let me put an example in Mozambique, which is where I've spent the last seven years. The local communities, the tribal communities have arrived to the same conclusion that you just brought up, because years ago, not only with whales, with turtles, with sharks, with whales as well, they will be seeing them as a resource by killing them and removing them from the environment, because they will need them for food. And through education, through programs, obviously also through law and enforcement, they've been seeing it as economic value. And recently, and personally, I've been seeing this transition. They've arrived to identify that if those animals are kept alive, they have a massive value, because the communities nowadays have jobs that depend on that. You will hear these conversations on our boats, going on surveys, talking to anybody from the community, from high end person in the community to anybody, you know, it's amazing. So I've just realized what you explained, an island and a local community level. It's just been fantastic. So sorry I delayed. I thought it was just an example to answer that. And I don't want to take more time on the conclusions because it was like a matching example on both ends of the market. Thank you so much. Thanks, Geneva. I was thinking, and I agree with both of you, but I believe also that we need to do a lot of awareness program. We need to involve everybody because there are so many different threats, not only to whale, but biodiversity in general. So we really need people to change their habits, but if you want people to change habits, you have to give them knowledge because only when they have real knowledge of the value and the problem, they can behave differently. I really believe awareness is fundamental here. Thank you so much. Our next big action will be the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. We hope to take three first mover Pacific Island countries to adopt legal personhood legislation. That's going to be essential to ensure that the holistic settings we're hoping to set out are established and entrenched. It's also vitally important within those settings that we fundraise a bond to be able to pay for the monitoring in all aspects of the framework to do it well. And then of course, my most favourite part of this project is we are deploying the use of our traditional voyaging canoes to ensure that indigenous knowledge and culture is front and centre of this approach. Our traditional voyaging canoe will depart New Zealand in two weeks to go up to Tonga. I'm actually going to be going from here around Europe to raise another $1 million to ensure that we can undertake abundance estimates in Tongan waters. Why? Because it's the most important humpback population for us in the Pacific and no one's done an estimate of the population since 1980. Thank you. I'm not sure if I mentioned before that also reducing the speed is very, very important and maybe it takes more time to transport something but reducing the speed can have a big impact so I will conclude saying let us sail slowly. Okay, slowing down. Great. So it's a plea. Let me say it's a plea. So you have the whale. You, Diana, you presented the benefits that the whale provides but we forget that many of these species are migratory species. So they're traveling in those oceans providing the benefits for free to all the communities when they capture carbon. They're not capturing carbon for that community. They're on behalf of all of humanity. So the whales, if you really want to help, I think there should be a universal declaration conferring personhood on the whale because then the whale belongs to everybody because she is providing that service to everybody for free and all she's asking in return is the right of safe passage to continue to provide us with these wonderful benefits. The least that we can do is to say, yep, we recognize you. You have interest. We recognize you. We recognize your agency. We recognize our agency. So let's confer personhood and she is a global citizen so maybe she should be the ambassador of the ocean to the United Nations. Thank you so much and with that we're going to, I want to thank the panel for bringing all of their dedication and wisdom and maybe we will do something together. Thank you.