Whaling and Sailing

The week leading up to last night’s ‘supermoon’ was a whale filled delight. I’m not sure how many car accidents happen along the beach road that I often find myself on, or whether the majority of people driving in that area at this time of year have learned to slow down and enjoy the view, but I too was one of the thousands of motorists who chewed up the grass on the verge around Lennox Head to take my eyes off the road for a moment and watch the northward migration of humpback whales as they cruised past my front yard.

The air is crisp and the ocean is smooth as silk on this early winter morning. I’m on my way to my boat which is on the hard in a soggy paddock being refitted for my research. The drive over there is always fraught with the frustration that, as the crow flies, Tracker One-One is less than 500m from my home. It’s just that it’s on the other side of the river and there is no bridge which forces me to drive a massive loop to get there. The only saving grace is that the loop takes me along one of the most picturesque coastlines in Australia, often touted as ‘one of the reasons I live here’. The road hugs the coastline around rocky headlands and long stretches of white beach, home to some of the best surfing spots in the world. If you take the time to stop you’ll see raptors like brahminy kites and ospreys as well as pied cormorants, terns and gulls cruising the shoreline. Pied and sooty oystercatchers stand proud on rock-tops in the water and flocks of gannets dive-bomb schools of fish out to sea. Pods of dolphins patrol the area and at this time of the year, the whales are taking centre stage. 

The village at the base of Australia’s most easterly point, Byron Bay, has a dynamic history intertwined with the magnificent marine mammals. Only 50 odd years ago a pier stretching out into the bay serviced whaling abattoirs dotted along beaches processing meat and oil. Much like the tragic history of the hawksbill turtle, humans really made their mark on the depletion of the species. Now we are excited to announce small increases bulking this year’s expected tally of around 15,000, where once there were 30,000 or more.

Tracker One-One (formerly Pumpkin III) is a 33ft Seawind catamaran I hope to be doing a lot of research on in the Northern Rivers over the next few years, not necessarily about whales but that is one example of the opportunities here. We found this catamaran on a riverbank looking very sad, but a survey report showed she was structurally sound so we tracked down the owner and made an offer. It was some months before we 'got the keys' but with two other investors graciously indulging my specific modifications for research, we are currently giving her a spruce up and preparing her for a launch before Christmas. Among the long list of jobs you would expect when you plan to spend the next ten years avoiding taking the boat out of the water again, we’re also taking the opportunity to raise the mast to give us walking space on the bridge deck, fit cabins with all the gadgets a technologically savvy crew needs, and most importantly, putting in the new dunny.

Davits are being fitted to the stern which is where the tender will hang, but when I'm sampling I hope to be using them to tow video imaging equipment, much like the Deep Along Track Reef Imaging System (Deep ATRIS). Deep ATRIS is an auto-adjusting, towed, digital imaging system. In this set-up a camera is tied on to a long rope and pulled along behind the boat along transect lines across "areas of interest". There are all kinds of other bits on the system to help the camera stay upright but essentially as you tow the camera along it takes photos of the sea floor. Here is an excellent animation to show you how it works. As part of my research I'll look at a random sample of the images and make some observations about what I see, like the types of plants on the sea floor and how much of it there appears to be. 

The "areas of interest" are being determined by a growing number of variables being considered to narrow down my study region. In this project I am specifically interested in habitat that would be suitable as a marine turtle feeding area. For example, hawksbill turtles spend most of their days between 0-27m depth and looking for some very particular types of food. Satellite tracking a few individual turtles will also reveal any patterns in their movement, or where they like to eat. With any luck the images I collect in those locations will show a turtle or two feeding, and if all the stars are aligned they'll be hawksbills. There is also huge value in the imagery as a baseline tool for comparative studies later, and in the availability of a vessel to do all of this on. I best keep working on that.

Happy wildlife watching!

A Slick Response To An Oily Issue

Earlier this month the state's third largest oil spill disaster unfolded in outback Queensland. Tina Hunter dishes the dirt on the Santos spill where somewhere around 250,000 litres flowed into the Channel Country, upstream from Lake Eyre. Yes, Lake Eyre, where all our pelicans have been hiding out. As promised, here is a follow up to my earlier blog “There’s Oil Dripping Through The Cracks” where I raised my concerns over our (lack of) preparedness to respond to marine chemical and oil spills on the coastline of NSW.

As the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was washing up along the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico, members of Australian Seabird Rescue began asking "What would we do if that happened in New South Wales?". The easy answer was that the likelihood of an oil spill event of that scale happening in NSW is pretty slim. Our state is not known for the plethora of off-shore oil rigs that are likely to spring an unpluggable leak at any time. However, between the ports of Newcastle, Kembla and Sydney the risk of an oil spill (anything more than a cup) is worth doing a little more than just noting. Each shipping movement arriving, departing and within the port holds the inherent risks of an accident, not to mention the shipping traffic along the entire coastline. Therefore we have an obligation to local communities, both human and wildlife, to minimise the impacts of a disaster of any scale.

I began dig, dig, digging deeper into the NSW Government policies and procedures to learn where and how the wildlife response component fits in. Phone calls and emails ensued and you’ve never seen two departments play hot potato more enthusiastically, but the music was about to stop. Along comes a ship called the Magdalene, who, in the process of pumping out bilge water overnight, woke to find they had a fuel leak into the holding tanks and had inadvertently pumped it straight into the harbour. There's not too may oyster farmers operating in there anymore. The State Disaster Plan swung into action and my phone rang to see how many skilled bird catchers and handlers we could supply overnight. Ultimately we sent in about a dozen personnel and the debriefing some months later led to some massive changes in our policies on training and bird-care infrastructure and sparked a six-month-long workshop program along the NSW coastline talking to all kinds of people about it.

Amateurs and professionals stand side-by-side at oil spill drill training.

Inside the custom-built oiled-bird-cleaning shipping container.

During my investigations into our position as a supporting agency to the State Disaster Plan (and the possibility of funding to support training and infrastructure development) I discovered we held a seat on an agriculture and animal services committee that dealt with exactly this issue. Funny, I’d never heard of this committee before and once we started squealing in the media about our lack of preparedness a meeting was called out of the blue. How about that! On the agenda, curiously, oil spills. Before I knew it I was off to Sydney to sit around a table of suits and discuss our position.

I sat and I listened to a whole lot of blah-blahs as I doodled seethingly on my notepad. When they were done championing their efforts I pitched them a scenario to make my point and my motives clear, “Please, tell me, if there is a shipping accident resulting in an oil spill affecting Montague Island, what is the plan to deal with the 16,000 penguins there?”.

There were one or two gasps at the scale of the problem my scenario suggested, but the overwhelming experience in the room was the silence.

It seemed that the opportunity to make sure we were prepared was open for the taking. As luck would have it, the NSW Government began debating a review of the Marine Pollution Act and somewhere along the way I got wind that the intention of the review to implement a fine applying to marine polluters, like those pesky oil spillers. I heard funding, didn’t you? Having already knocked on a few doors in Macquarie Street about the oil spill issue, one knight in shining armor stood up and seized the opportunity for an amendment ensuring the establishment of an Oiled Wildlife Care Network. And so it will be. To end I bring you some of my most memorable quotes from that NSW Parliamentary debate. 

MARINE POLLUTION BILL 2011 Second Reading. Debate resumed from 14 February 2012. 

The Hon. LUKE FOLEY (Leader of the Opposition) [3.28 p.m.]: In my role as the shadow Minister for the Environment I have a particular interest in the legislation and I foreshadow that, on behalf of the Labor Opposition, I will move one amendment in the Committee stage that will seek to improve the State's readiness and preparedness for a major oil spill in New South Wales waters.

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Yesterday I referred to Australian Seabird Rescue which is a non-government organisation. At a recent meeting of the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries agriculture and animal services functional area subcommittee, which is a mouthful, the organisation highlighted some disparate and uncoordinated efforts in which multiple government agencies engaged to prepare for a spill. Australian Seaboard Rescue made the case to politicians across the board and not simply to Opposition members that we have a fair bit of work to do to put those disparate and uncoordinated efforts together in preparation for an oil spill. 

The Hon. DUNCAN GAY: When I saw the Opposition's amendment I thought it was an April Fool's joke. This horrendous amendment will take us way out of sync with other legislation and will not enable us to deal professionally with oil spills and major shipping into and out of our country.

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The amendment, which has not been properly investigated, proposes to place control in the hands of a group of well-meaning amateurs and to remove it from the hands of the State's professionals. That is probably the nicest thing I can say about the Opposition's foreshadowed amendment which I will address in greater detail in Committee.---The amendment continues:(b) to test the major spill contingency plan at least once a year by the conduct of a drill, That is fine; it is already happening. (NOT TRUE MR GAY!!)

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Once again I emphasise that the Government amendment was to pick up the good part—to allow people such as the Byron group, who do terrific work, to come in and advise.

The Hon. ROBERT BROWN: The Shooters and Fishers Party supports the amendment moved by the Labor Party and the amendment to the amendment moved by the Minister for Roads and Ports appears to provide a reasonable outcome. We applaud the Government and the Opposition for getting their heads together to arrive at a good outcome. 

The Hon. CATE FAEHRMANN:  The Greens look forward to the establishment of the network and we urge the Government to ensure that it has influence.

The Hon. JAN BARHAM: we need to do more to support volunteer organisations… This is what we need to clarify: that that training is going to continue and that we have got the right people, because we cannot just pluck them out of nowhere. Training needs to be coordinated a long time in advance and the personnel—both volunteer and professional—need to be properly trained in the event of oil spills.

One Of A Kind - Demi's Tale

One of many things that inspire me about wildlife is the effort some humans seem compelled to invest in treating the injured, ill and orphaned. That's humans, not governments. This week's blog is about one individual.

Marine turtles are a common sight in Byron Bay, the most easterly point on the Australian continent and a haven for wildlife and left-wing hippies like me. Greens, Loggerheads and Hawksbills are regularly seen at nearby 'Julian Rocks' by divers and snorkelers alike. They are also reported feeding on the nearby inshore reefs by the parading stream of cross-bay swimmers every morning. Historical records show Green and Loggerhead nesting activity in the area and even Leatherbacks around 20 years ago. The local indigenous word for turtle is "Binging", suggesting marine turtles have been using this area for a fair while.

On November 29th, 2012, a Byron Bay local was paddle-boarding across the bay when he noticed a large turtle floating listlessly nearby. Not only did the paddle boarder recognise that floating around listlessly and covered in barnacles was not normal behaviour for a marine turtle, he felt compelled to do something about it. The thought-process behind that decision is something I spend far too much time thinking about. What makes one person walk straight past injured wildlife and another person stop to help? I make the point of including wildlife in that scenario because if the animal needing assistance was a dog or a cat then the whole ballgame changes, and that makes me really sad. Be that as it may, on this occasion the paddle-boarder stopped and floated by the side of this helpless creature for 20 minutes before taking action and towing her into shore. This action saved the life of a critically endangered species. In the state this turtle was found, it may have been days before she washed ashore for us to find her, if ever, and be even closer to death's door. We named her "Demi".

"Demi" on entry at the rehabilitation centre.

"Demi" three days into care.

Demi's size was the first thing that struck me about this case, well second thing if you count my obsession with Hawksbill turtles. Hawksbill turtles with a Curved Carapace Length (CCL) greater that 60cm rarely wash up on the shores of NSW, less than ten in the last 15 years. Demi's CCL is 75cm. Visually, she was clearly in all kinds of distress. Her barnacle load was about 99.99%, including coverage of the eyes and in the nostrils which was really painful to look at. Added to her woes, encrustation around the limb joints were limiting mobility and she was severely underweight for her size. Three days into care you can see the results of the admission process. Almost completely barnacle free and still alive. As a general rule, if they make it past the first three days in rehabilitation they stand a pretty good chance of making a full recovery, so it was happy days for Demi. We were all surprised that she survived, but with care and veterinary advice the volunteers managed to pull her back from the edge. 

I'm happy to report that Demi is still recovering well. Regaining weight is a slow process for a big girl like this, and six months down the track she's fit for release. There is something extra special about releasing a critically endangered breeding-age adult female and the contribution that could be making. There is so much more to learn, though. 

All the turtles released from the rehabilitation centre receive two titanium self-locking tags, one on the inside trailing edge of the front flippers, that means big silver earrings in the armpits to you and me. Each tag is inscribed with a unique alphanumeric code and recorded with that case's rehabilitation file. The unique code on the tags we use have the format "NS1234" and the hope is that one day someone will see the turtle again and make a sighting report so we can learn some things about each individual.

However, as I hover over my computer today I wait with anticipation for the results of James Cook University's animal ethics committee last Friday and the outcome of my application to fix a satellite tracker onto Demi's carapace. That will mean that rather than waiting years or even decades for some data to come back about each turtle's movements from sightings of the titanium tags, a satellite tracking device will give me near real-time coordinates of her location for as long as the device remains fixed and operating. Marine turtles shed their scales, so sooner or later the device will naturally slough off.

Where will she go? I have a hunch, but I'm willing to be proven wrong. I just hope she stays around my area for a little while and shows me where her food resources are so I know where to point the boat for the next phase of my research.

Tick, tock...

How Many Bills Can A Hawksbill Bill?

Here I am! I slipped off the radar there for a bit, evidently, since my last blog was so long ago that I needed to send out a forensic team to locate and carbon-date my password. In the midst of the leaf litter piling up into a fire hazard around my desk I have found myself back on track on a day I can signpost as ‘the first day of the rest of my life’. Why so important? Well, there’s the story.

A few days after my last blog back in late 2011 (which I really do need to write a follow-up for), while I was managing a marine turtle rehabilitation centre on the far north coast of New South Wales Australia, my curiosity about these animals was propelled into a new dimension. On an average year the Australian Seabird Rescue North Coast Branch (don't let the name confuse you) responds to around 50 or so turtle strandings along the 250km of coastline they patrol. However, in November 2011 I observed a massive and sudden increase in the stranding rates of one particular species, Eretmochelys imbricata, commonly known as the Hawksbill turtle. Internationally regarded as critically endangered, this is one of those species that we humans nearly wiped off the planet to jewel our lives with their beautiful shell in our ignorance of population dynamics and sustainable harvesting. It wasn't just the number of individuals that ‘crash landed’ in my region that was alarming, but the fact that they were all the same age and starving to death sent up more red flags than lifesavers during a big swell and I wanted answers.

Lance Ferris (1946-2007), Her Excellency Professor Marie Bashir Governor of NSW,  the Honorable Don Page MP and a Hawksbill Turtle at the opening of Australian Seabird Rescue's first marine turtle rehabilitation centre in Ballina circa 1996. Photo APN.

Being the not-for-profit, mostly volunteer-run operation that we were, responding to this sudden increase from five Hawksbills in a year to transporting up to seven every day was a big shock to the system for everyone involved. Capacity to house the turtles was limited, policies were reconsidered, veterinarians advice was sought. members were begged to help and many conference calls ensued. It soon became apparent that there was no other turtle rehabilitation centre in the country observing anything similar. It didn't take long before our team started looking and feeling war-weary, fatigued and distraught. Of the 72 Hawksbill turtles that stranded in two months, 69 of them heartbreakingly died within 24 hours. In terms of being a rehabilitator trying to make a difference for each individual, there was not a thing we could do about it. There were tears. We froze as many carcasses as we could in the hope that somewhere down the track we could do some tests and get some answers, and that’s when the reality of the bills started to set in.

There is no shortage of tests you can do on a dead animal, or its habitat for that matter, to determine the cause of death. It would be interesting to see how much money would get poured into a study of 72 dolphins that washed up dying, but that is a matter for another blog. Suffice to say that paying around $750 per sample to test for pollutants was prohibitive for our charity, and when I say per sample I don’t mean per individual. Ideally you want a piece of every major organ and some muscle tissue to get tested as well so we’re talking around eight to ten samples per animal which makes the term ‘prohibitive’ a bit of an understatement. Some months after the 'turtle tsunami' we invited all of our marine wildlife veterinary friends to come to the facility and spend a day looking at the carcasses and discuss their ideas. That doesn't sound as inspiring as it really was.

Meanwhile, in a town far, far, away, I was delivering a conference presentation on the topic to a group of turtle health experts in the hopes we could collectively figure out the root cause. Much debate followed around trays of canapés and beer when one researcher approached me and said “You know you have enough information there for a PhD.” My first reaction was as if someone had just offered me the chance to clean someone else's toilet. No one I have ever spoken to with a PhD has ever said to me "...and I can't wait to do it again!". Nevertheless, the lure of making a timeless contribution to the conservation of our oceans won me over and I began to rearrange my life to accommodate the mission. I don’t think he was expecting me to nail him down as my academic or research supervisor as a result of that statement but somehow along the way Dr Hamann and James Cook University generously found room to squeeze me into a research program and this brings me to today, the official start date of my Master of Philosophy (Science) by research degree. 

Sadly, I may never be able to give you a definitive answer as to why all of those teenage Hawksbill turtles starved to death in this location at that time. It is apparent that during the year that followed Cyclone Yasi, and a series of other extreme weather events that occurred in short period of time, seagrass beds on the east coast were decimated by wave action, turbidity and pollutants and the subsequent deficiency in food resources resulted in an increase in stranding rates of marine turtles and dugongs right across the coastline. However, Hawksbill turtles are not big fans of seagrass and compared to turtle species that are there is a general paucity of information on the Hawksbill life history in Australian waters.

What I need to do is start with what I know and what I have and go and have a look at the habitat for Hawksbill turtles in my region to see what is going on. Where is it? How much of it is there? What condition is it in? Are turtles likely to increase in this temperate region as a result of climate change? Just like following a lion or a bird to observe its habitat, I need to follow some turtles. Right, so I need some turtles, a boat, an underwater camera or three and some satellite telemetry gear. That last sentence right there has an immeasurable educational value, but a financial value of over $100,000, easy. I balked at writing $200,000 but it wouldn't surprise me if it does top that and if you factor in the capital investment being made into customizing a research vessel then the whole thing blows out like a souffle. Then there’s the paperwork for research and ethics approvals. You can’t just go gluing stuff onto animals willy-nilly you know, and at around AUD$5,000 per tracking device you really don’t want those buggers falling off too soon.

Next week I’ll introduce you to Demi, a beautiful adult Hawksbill turtle who is likely to be my first victim... er... I mean research subject. Oh, and I promise to give you a juicy update on the oil spill blog where a NSW MP calls me a 'senseless amateur' in a parliamentary debate he then lost.

Happy wildlife watching!