In this episode of the 'Water We Doing' podcast by the Aquatic Biosphere Project, host David Evans explores the incredible biodiversity of coastlines around the world and how humans can coexist with endangered species. Starting from Canada’s extensive coastlines, David discusses how these areas are biodiversity hotspots, essential for both nature and human activities. The episode takes listeners on a global tour, covering sea otters in Vancouver Island, little blue penguins in New Zealand, coastline dynamics in the Sundarbans of India and Bangladesh, and the impact of tourism on sea turtles in Greece. Lastly, David returns to Canada's east coast to discuss the resurgence of great white sharks.
Throughout the episode, experts like Linda Nichol, Elvisa Van der leden, Dinyar Minocher, Dr. Liam Dixon, and Dr. Chris Harvey Clark provide insights into how humans and these marine species navigate the challenges of sharing coastal spaces. Sponsored by the Canadian Ocean Literacy Coalition and Grant MacEwan University's Environmental Studies Institute, this episode is a deep dive into ocean conservation and the importance of sustainable interaction with marine life.
In this episode of the 'Water We Doing' podcast by the Aquatic Biosphere Project, host David Evans explores the incredible biodiversity of coastlines around the world and how humans can coexist with endangered species. Starting from Canada’s extensive coastlines, David discusses how these areas are biodiversity hotspots, essential for both nature and human activities. The episode takes listeners on a global tour, covering sea otters in Vancouver Island, little blue penguins in New Zealand, coastline dynamics in the Sundarbans of India and Bangladesh, and the impact of tourism on sea turtles in Greece. Lastly, David returns to Canada's east coast to discuss the resurgence of great white sharks.
Throughout the episode, experts like Linda Nichol, Elvisa Van der leden, Dinyar Minocher, Dr. Liam Dixon, and Dr. Chris Harvey Clark provide insights into how humans and these marine species navigate the challenges of sharing coastal spaces. Sponsored by the Canadian Ocean Literacy Coalition and Grant MacEwan University's Environmental Studies Institute, this episode is a deep dive into ocean conservation and the importance of sustainable interaction with marine life.
MacEwan University Thanks to the Environmental Studies Institute of MacEwan U for supporting creating the Podcast!
Canadian Ocean Literacy Coalition Empowering Canadians to better understand, value, and care for the ocean! Thank you for your support
The Aquatic Bisophere Project The ABP is establishing a conservation Aquarium in the Prairies to help tell the Story of Water.
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The What Are We Doing podcast and the Aquatic Biosphere Project acknowledges that we are located on Treaty 6 territory and respects the histories, languages, and cultures of First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and all First Peoples of Canada, whose presence continues to enrich our vibrant community.
Dave Evans:
When was the last time you planned a vacation? Let's see. Vacation. Where do I want to go? Well, usually it's somewhere near water. You want to go somewhere where there's a nice coastline, you can go relax on the beach, or something like that. Well, turns out, actually, Canada has the longest coastline in the entire world, of any country. But it may not be the beaches that you're normally attracted to. Coastlines are these incredible places. They're these biodiversity hotspots. It's where all of the land meets the water, and you have that intermingling of species. It's where you have access for fishing, where you have ports, where we do a lot of our shipping and commercial pursuits. It's this conglomeration of all of these competing interests. And it turns out to be the home of so many amazing, amazing species and endangered species. So how do we mix these things? How many times have you thought when you're going on vacation, Oh, I wonder how this is going to affect the sea turtles, or I wonder how this is going to affect. Today, we're going to dive into some of these endangered species, and we're going to explore how they interact with humans along the coastlines, and how we can coexist in the future. Today we're going on an all around the world adventure exploring our coastlines, from the west coast of Vancouver Island to New Zealand's coastlines, up to India and Bangladesh, then across to Greece, and finally back to the east coast of Canada, just off of Halifax Harbour in Nova Scotia. So get ready to learn a little bit more about coexisting along coastlines. Buser Bunny, GN boom, two B, a low two. Mary. Water. Water we doing? And how can we do better? Your one stop shop for everything water related. From discussing water, its use, and the organisms that depend on it. For all the global issues that you really never knew all had to do with water. I'm your host David Evans from the Aquatic Biosphere Project. And I just want to ask you something. What are we doing? And how can we do better? Hey, did you know this episode is also available as a video on YouTube? Be sure to check it out on our new at water. We doing podcast, YouTube channel. So what is a coastline? So a coastline is anywhere where you have a continent or an island where it meets the ocean or the sea or a large water body. Anywhere where we have those interactions between marine environments and terrestrial environments. And it seems to be that this is where many, many of our largest cities and urban populations seem to congregate 40 percent of the entire world's population is within 100 kilometers of a coastline and 5 of the world's biggest cities. Are located right along coasts. All the other cities are located along rivers or other water bodies. And that's because water plays such an important role in our transportation, in our commercial pursuits, in our ability to procure food that we want to be around it. And that means on vacation to we want to be around it as well. Coastlines are these dynamic environments. They're always changing because there's so much force from storms and waves crashing up on the land that they're eventually eroding, or they're being changed by humans over time, because That's where we want to be. We're putting in ports. We're putting in boardwalks. We're putting in anything to get people out onto the water, and that's changing how the ocean and how the coastline and species interact with each other out there. So coastlines actually can play a really important natural buffering effect to safeguard extra erosion from happening. Take mangrove forests for instance. They're these amazing places where they're able to basically dampen a storm as it's coming in. Coral reefs off of the coast are able to dampen storms as they come in, so there's less erosive force. But we also want to have access to these places. So sometimes they get removed and that's where we can have lots and lots of change very quickly on our coastline. Another reason we love to be near coastlines is because of the bountiful, plentiful species that are there, at least initially. A lot of the times we are attracted to these areas because they can support so many people with fish, with other natural resources that are very plentiful. And that was the case on Vancouver Island, for thousands of years, we've had this amazing coastal experience on Vancouver Island with sea otters and abalone and everything in perfect balance. Sea otters are one of the most playful animals in the ocean. They spend their time diving down to the bottom, grabbing invertebrates, bringing them up, cracking them on their chest with rocks they're so, so fascinating. And it makes the tale even more tragic when they disappeared for hundred years.
Linda Nichol:
They stay in the ocean throughout their lives. They never come ashore. But they don't have a blubber layer. So all other marine mammals, nice thick blubber layer, which keeps them warm like a wetsuit. They've evolved this incredibly dense fur that has waterproofing outer hairs, and then this very dense under fur where air is captured. And that air layer keeps them warm but that's the luxurious fur that got them in trouble in the first place
Dave Evans:
That was Linda Nichol. She's a research biologist for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada. She studies sea otters, other marine mammals like whales and dolphins as well. the fur trade completely wiped out the sea otter population in Canada. So sea otters were these apex predators. They were controlling the population of all of these invertebrates, clams and sea urchins that were all along the bottom of the ocean. So Linda, can you tell us what happened when the sea otters left?
Linda Nichol:
So the sea urchins and the abalone and all these species were released from their main predator. And these animals are herbivores, like grazers, like a cow, right? They graze on kilt, they were grazing and grazing and they were keeping the kelp from growing. So the kelp, forests, disappeared. You'd have these areas that were carpeted with invertebrates. We often talk about sea urchin barrens. This is the classic story of sea otter effects in rocky habitats.
Dave Evans:
Okay, so we lost the kelp forest when we lost the otters. What really is a kelp forest anyways? Kelp forests are often referred to as the rainforests of the sea. Seaweed, which grows extremely fast, is able to make this 3D structure in the ocean. It allows for carbon sequestration. It provides buffering for waves and storms when they come ashore, but also provides habitat for so many. important species, including many commercially viable fish, and the area for young fish to be able to grow. Imagine you're in a forest now, if you remove all of the trees, Suddenly, there's no habitat for species that need to be up high or need to be down low, and everyone's visible to everyone. You're not having those visual barriers. It's the same thing as a kelp forest down in the water. Now, a reintroduction event happened in the 1970s. 89 sea otters were brought from Alaska down to the B. C. coastline and reintroduced. And they've done insanely well. They've now ballooned up to 8, 000 sea otters and growing. And they've had tremendous effects on the kelp forest.
Linda Nichol:
So the sea otter is reintroduced, and as the population recovers in an area, And they start eating these invertebrates. They begin to reduce their numbers. This allows the kelp forest to grow. So that's one of the effects we see increasing sizes of kelp forests these kelp beds can be really big. In fact, 19 times bigger than in areas where sea otters don't occur and they can be four times deeper, so much, much bigger kelp forests.
Dave Evans:
Now you might be thinking, well, isn't this great? We have the sea otters back, the kelp forests are back. What's wrong? It's hard to say it's a win always, because there's always competing interests. Now we have a boom of tourism. So people are coming to BC to see the otters, there's more species of fish that were coming back to these waters, and the commercial fisheries are doing well, but there's always a push and pull. Local indigenous communities weren't consulted when the initial reintroduction happened. They weren't asked if that would be of interest and other fisheries were also really impacted. There was really important crab, sea urchin and clam harvest, which now are not as plentiful. And so We've had an economic push and pull where not everyone is seeing all of the benefits from having the sea otters there. And that's often what happens in these coastal spaces where we have so many interests that are competing. We often don't even know that we might be having that impact.
Elvisa Ven Der Leden:
I was doing a bit of a pub crawl in Wellington city, I heard this noise. I was like, what the hell is that weird noise? Something like this, it goes. So we're on the coastal walkway down there and I went down on the rocks and I found these two little blue penguins and I was like, Oh my gosh, guys, there's penguins here. Right on the city's fringe It was my first interaction with the penguins and then a few years later I was catching them for science and respecting their boundaries, their and now I go into schools and when we have funding for Finding Little Blue. I work with local schools and educate them about why it's important to give them space if you do find them
Dave Evans:
That is Elvisa van der Leeden. She lives in New Zealand in Taranaki, and is elected to the Taranaki regional council, and while she's not busy with councillor duties, she's volunteering in many different areas in the environmental sphere, especially with little blues. The little blue penguin, or Korora in Maori, is one of the three penguin species that's found in New Zealand. And it's actually the smallest species of penguin in the world. Another fun fact about penguins, there's actually only seven species of penguins that ever actually go down to Antarctica. There's actually more species of penguins if you add up all of the species that live in Australia, New Zealand, the continent of Africa, and South America. Wild. The little blue penguin lives along New Zealand's coastlines in rocky boroughs. And often nests really close to human settlements, even under porches. Because they really like rocky crevices, and it just so happens that underneath your porch is a perfect spot for penguin nesting. The problem is, people don't really like having them there, because they're loud, and they don't smell that great. But who doesn't want a penguin living under their porch. Come on. The Finding Little Blue program which, when it's funded, goes into schools, provides community outreach and education about the plight of little blue penguins, and what we can do to help protect them, give them space, and help them thrive and live alongside each other in peace. Because, to be quite frank, I would be just as surprised walking home from the bar, seeing a penguin, and I would want to go and say hi to it as well. But it's really important to give them space, and it's their home too. So we have these penguins living right beside humans along the coastlines in New Zealand. So what are the main threats? Well, there's crossing roads, there's busy beaches, there's people all around and birds being skittish, but there's also environmental risks as well.
Elvisa Ven Der Leden:
they've found that fledglings in the last few years have been dying off in mass numbers because of the turbulence of the water as a side effect of climate change. The turbulence affects the visibility so they can't see the food source as they're trying to hunt it. With the warming waters, even just a couple of degrees difference can actually shift food sources further out to sea. Say a species thrives in a certain temperature range with the warming waters, they have been seen to be moving further out. And even just a kilometer can make a huge impact on fledgling little blues burning more energy to try and find their food than they are actually catching it.
Dave Evans:
So there's so many different ways that wildlife can be impacted by sharing these spaces along coastlines, whether it's through environmental or, human causes. But our next stop, we're going to be looking at what happens when the humans are also really impacted by the wildlife that they're sharing the space with. But first, we have a quick word from our sponsor. Ow. I'm so excited to thank today's sponsor, the Canadian Ocean Literacy Coalition, as we were awarded the Blue Creators Grant. We're so thankful to the Canadian Ocean Literacy Coalition for helping to continue this podcast. The Canadian Ocean Literacy Coalition is empowering Canadians to better understand, value, and care for the ocean. They launched in 2018 and is a nationally and internationally recognized catalyst and center for ocean literacy, collaboration, research, and innovation. They convene and lead collaborative action across regions, sectors, and scales, and their work focuses on education and engagement, research and impact, leadership, and advocacy. We're so excited to be part of that group. We're so excited to be releasing this as part of Ocean Week Canada, a public celebration of the ocean from coast to coast to coast. Ocean Week Canada is an annual national celebration of ocean events, learning, and engagement held during the week of World Ocean Day, June 8th. Through these events and learning activities, we recognize the important role the ocean plays in our everyday lives. And how local waterways connect us all with the ocean, help us raise public awareness and celebrate this connection to coastal areas, the ocean and watersheds in Canada. Together, we can inspire action to ensure a healthy ocean for future generations. Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for any events happening in your vicinity. We're so grateful for your generous support. Now, back to our episode. Ow. Our next stop, we're going to the Sundarbans in India and Bangladesh. It's where the Bay of Bengal, the saltwater meets the freshwater from the Ganga, the Brahmaputra and the Magna rivers. It's the largest mangrove forest in the world. A huge biodiversity hotspot too. It's where there's so many different species. You have sharks, saltwater crocodiles. You have so many species of birds, mammals. You also have the largest population of Bengal tigers in the world. The area has been very heavily protected. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it's also a national park in India, as well as many countless biosphere reserves. All of this protection has put extra pressure on the population of people living there. Let alone the pressures from the natural world. Dinyar Minocherr did his master's research looking at marine protected areas and ecotourism in these remote regions, and what can be done to make sure that local populations are involved with that process.
Dinyar Minocher:
One of the things that's a reality in a place like this is every single year, there's about people taken by tigers and crocodiles alone. The men are typically taken by tigers because of honey collection and fishing and the women are typically taken by crocodiles in that they're doing prawn seed collection, where they weighed waste deep in water and do collections. And often they're taken in that way. And I think that's something that we need to realize when we have these protected areas. And then we're starting to later on introduce things like tourism, you're having this juxtaposition of the new world and the old world coming together. And how can that coexist? On top of trying to preserve the natural processes that exist there, which is the mandate of a national park,
Dave Evans:
It's really difficult to find this balance between having these protected areas where people are interested to go and invest money to protect species, but also making sure that it's beneficial for the people who live there, who call that place home, who need to rely off of the natural world to be able to sustain their lives, sustain their families. It makes it very difficult because oftentimes in places like the Sundarbans, There may not actually be that many direct benefits to the people who live there, although it might appear so on paper. Dinyar goes into much more of this in his talk, but I think he made a really important point when he talked about what we often think of as poaching.
Dinyar Minocher:
I think we as a Western society have this tendency to place responsibility on the lowest rung of a ladder. When we declare someone a poacher. We're pointing at someone who's the poorest and most desperate and doing the actual killing, but they wouldn't kill if there wasn't a market for it and that market is being fed from many outside sources. And then ultimately the person who we place responsibility on is the most desperate and just trying to survive. And trying to feed their families. If we go back to who these people are, these village populations, completely uneducated, They have no money to build. There's no infrastructure that already exists there. The money is coming from major cities. And then it leaves. And this whole conception of at least the fishermen would be making money from the resorts buying their fish. All of a sudden that means that every single person who lives there is no longer able to afford. The top quality of food at all, I think one of the interesting ways to look at this is to not look at tourism as a broker and a tourist interaction, but instead look at it as a triangle of the broker, local and tourist. When you bring in that local component, then you say, okay, who's benefiting? And you don't measure that by the one, two or three people who benefit you look at. Across the average of the local populations and then you ask yourself. How can these people actually be involved and then? It only gets sadder because the reality is yeah sure some of them can clean maybe if there's some English or Bengali Hindi capacity. They could work at a little bit of a higher level. The long and short of that is no, I don't believe it's a win. It is one of the things that's most plaguing to the local populations in this room protected area. And it's one of the things that we need to consider as the Western world, when we think that all the money percolates down to everyone in society. If anything, it further marginalizes the groups, even at the bottom,
Dave Evans:
Ecotourism sounds like this amazing concept, and it works really well in some situations. But that's not always the case, as we see in the cinderbonds. A lot of times we're drawn to these coastlines because we have the marine ecosystems meeting the terrestrial ecosystems. We have these biodiversity hotspots and the opportunities to see such amazing creatures. And that's the case in our next story, where we're stopping in Greece, where we're looking at some creatures and how, what we like to do on the coastlines really impacts their ability to survive.
Liam Dickson:
My name is Liam Dixon. I did my PhD on the spatial ecology of sea turtles nesting beaches in Greece. They've been around for millions of years, and they're extremely threatened by coastal development. We're talking about the interactions of humans and animals along the coastlines. This is a big one for sea turtles, they come back to the same beaches to nest and breed. And if those beaches are gone because we've built up a seawall, or there's a new hotel there, then there's not really anywhere for them to go back to. There's that classic image where the sea turtle comes out from its nest and it's crawling towards the water, and the seagulls are coming down and trying to eat it. But that image Is removed from any sort of human influence, and we don't think about the turtle coming out of the Nest and then there's a beach chair in front of it blocking its way or there's a ton of people there taking photos of it Or there's a street light behind it. That's disorienting So the reality and I think something that gets minimized is The actual effect that we are having on the beaches
Dave Evans:
So again, we're looking at a national park preserving the habitat for endangered species, but there's a lot of other different factors. It's in Greece. There's a very different society there, and the poverty level is just not even comparable to the area in the Cinderbonds. So we have this juxtaposition, though, of. A very popular tourism area and these endangered species. So when William was doing his PhD, he got to observe a pretty unique time period in human history, as he was studying the spatial ecology of where these sea turtles go every day and what areas they actually use.
Liam Dickson:
The research that you're referring to is focused around the, nesting beach on Zakynthos in Greece, this is one of the biggest sea turtle nesting beaches in all of the Mediterranean. And it's also an extremely touristed area. There is this big high street with massive beach clubs. And you get a ton of people from all over the place. And just partying and drinking and getting really raucous. You've got all this big club, sending Fireworks out basically every night on this sea turtle nesting beach, so there's huge amounts of activity there. Sea turtles were coming in quite close to shore, where the water was a bit warmer later on in the season, as the water warmed up, they were moving offshore into the deeper waters. And we thought, okay, maybe they're moving offshore because the water's getting too hot. We didn't really know if there are other influences there's been tourism there since before we were monitoring the sea turtles on the beaches, so COVID provided extremely unheard of opportunity. As kind of a proxy baseline for what the turtles would do if there was no tourism, And when we were monitoring the sea turtles during that period, we saw that they actually Stayed in those shallow, warmer waters for much longer. So we were able to conclude that it's actually a large part of their moving offshore is the influence of tourists arriving as the season warms up. When the beaches are perfect for lying out and going swimming and stuff, that's driving these sea turtles offshore.
Dave Evans:
Driving these sea turtles offshore may not sound like that big of a deal, especially when you look at how that impacts them as a population might change your mind One of the interesting things with sea turtles is that water temperature actually affects egg development within the females, if they're in warmer water, their eggs can develop a lot quicker, and they're able to have more nesting events every year. So they actually are able to make way more babies or potential new sea turtles every year, there's also another number of effects that are happening here too as sea levels continue to rise, there's potentially less and less available area for the sea turtles to nest on the beaches. The beaches aren't increasing in size the same level as the water is rising. If anything, the tourists and the sea turtles are being put into more conflict of sharing this dwindling space on these beaches. As well, there's also an impact to the temperature of the sand. So as sea turtles lay their eggs the sand temperature actually affects the female to male ratio of the hatchlings. As the sand temperature increases, you're more and more likely to get more females than males hatching out. And while you don't need as many males in a population you're going to start to see bottlenecks. As well, As the sand temperature increases if you get to a certain threshold, those eggs are just going to be cooked and they're not going to be able to be successfully hatched so there's many different pressures facing these sea turtles, which are a huge draw to people to come to these beaches to see these areas. What's the answer? What can we do about it?
Liam Dickson:
There is management in place already. I mean, it's a national park There's still motorboats driving around. There's still these massive tourism boats that are going and looking at the turtles. And, We can't say that the solution is to stop all tourism, really, because people of that island also depend on this for their livelihood. It's not really a sustainable option or a realistic option to just say, okay, we need to close all the clubs and all of these people who live on the island are now going to be out of work. And they're going to basically not have an income. It's really more to highlight that we need to find. A better way for humans and sea turtles to coexist, whether that be closing off certain parts of the beaches completely to tourism during certain parts of the year, or having some sort active management, where, if we are seeing on one day, the sea turtles are in one area of the beach, then closing that area of the beach off and tourism on the other side, and then shifting that as they move back. And. We're hoping that drones can allow that to happen.
Dave Evans:
Yeah, you heard that correctly. He said drones. That's exactly what Liam has been doing for his PhD, is using drones to be able to map out where sea turtles are and how they're using the ocean habitats while we don't even see them out there. It's amazing to see from a drone's perspective what the ocean looks like because you can track things that we have no idea about if you're just sitting on the beach. Before we continue, we have a quick word from today's sponsor. Thank you so much to the Environmental Studies Institute of Grant McEwen University, based in Edmonton, Alberta. We're so grateful for the sponsorship and the support from this program. The Institute is designed to foster the development of a human population that is aware and concerned about the environment. This is achieved by developing knowledge and increasing the capacity of individuals and groups to find solutions that contribute to a healthy and sustainable environment. And we're so excited to be a part of that as part of this podcast. We're so grateful for your generous support. Now, back to our episode. So there's definitely ways that we can work to coexist along these coastal areas. We just have to know what's out there. And drones provide that other perspective, being able to monitor what's out there and how our current impact is impacting those species. and this takes us to our final stop today, where we're going back to Canada, around the world, to the east coast this time. Where we get to learn a little bit more about some endangered species that are coming back to our waters and a lot of species that maybe you didn't even know we already had.
Chris Harvey-Clark:
We've had tiger sharks caught here. In fact I helped to teach, a class we call shark school in the summer. And the students get to go to sea and catch blue sharks and tag them and release them, In fact, we even have our sort of resident blue shark stock off Halifax. It's here all year round. Most of the species we see are cold adapted. Which are the white shark Mako shark, poor beagle shark. Then we have all the deep sea sharks, Greenland shark. They're right up into the Arctic and right around, till they run into their Pacific cousin, the Pacific sleeper shark. They're also in very deep water, up to 10, 000 feet and deeper.
Dave Evans:
That's Dr. Chris Harvey Clark from Dalhousie University. He is one of Canada's foremost shark experts and has the privilege of being one of the very few people to have dove in Canada and had a very close encounter with a great white shark, just outside of Halifax Harbor. Now I think a lot of people are wondering, have we always had sharks in Canada? Are we having more sharks in Canada? And there's a lot of fear when it comes to talking about sharks because they do seem to be these terrible predators. But the reality is with shark attacks that they happen very infrequently. Maybe we're seeing more of this in Canada? Chris, do you mind taking it from here?
Chris Harvey-Clark:
When Champlain came over in 1534. He stopped at the beta chiller. Which is, just before you go around the tip of Brunswick, and one of his men was swimming off the boat and had his legs taken by a shark. Undoubtedly a white. That's the only thing around that could do that. And, bled to death on the deck. So, there have been shark attacks here. The first nations certainly knew there were white sharks around. The shark is in their legends and white shark remains are found in their middens. Some of them stained with red ochre, which means they were some kind of a holy or ritual object. And, most of these encounters until recent years, until sort of social media and the cell phone and stuff like that happened, they'd be local lore, but you'd never hear about them. Unless you were in the local community the guys might talk, but it wasn't ever anything that was reported in the media. Probably the first real shark bite encounter that likely involved a white happened on Friday the 13th of 2021, a young woman, was swimming off a boat up near Marguerite, which is on the other side of Cape Breton. And the shark bit her across the legs and then released her and, pretty severe injuries, like 120 stitches or something like that. And she was hospitalized. She declined to talk about it. And I fully understand that because I can tell you having had a white shark encounter myself, it's traumatic. And replaying it doesn't help. And then this last summer was weird. We've had a number of white shark strand. I believe we had the first diver open water encounter since then. We've had seven more in the last two years. No one's been injured, but there've been a lot of close Passes. We also had a hunter was duck hunting and put his dog in the water to go get the duck and the shark took it out. Another shark was observed taking a deer that was swimming between two islands these are unprecedented things that are going on, Dave. This has never happened before, and it's a sign that things have changed in a pretty serious way. And I think the story with white sharks coming into our waters is a really interesting one. I think two things really come together. First of all, We have an unprecedented seal population in the Maritimes right now. Not a lot of sealing goes on anymore, the estimate for the whole sort of maritime region is somewhere probably north of 500,000 animals, and they produce about 87,000 pups a year, That's what a white shark wants. So we got a lot of food. The banquets open. And the other thing that's happened is north and south of the border, we protected the white shark., in 97, prior to that, there was a very active, aggressive headboat fishery targeting big white sharks. The idea was to catch the biggest one you could and take it back to the dock and get your picture with it. The females don't really mature until they're about 15 or 16 feet long, at which point they're about 25, 26, 27 years old and they don't have huge litters. So very easy to wipe out, the other interesting thing. Is doubling time for white sharks, it's a number of years that it takes a single individual to completely replace itself as a reproductively mature active adult. So how many sharks does it take to make another? It's about 26 years. What is 1997 plus 26? Yeah. I think we're seeing the end results of that. Protection measure now that we got white sharks up here.
Dave Evans:
There's been a number of different factors that have led to the recovery of the Great White Sharks on the east coast of Canada. So there's been a huge recovery of these great white shark species. And while that's amazing. We've grown accustomed to not having great white sharks in our waters. So how do we coexist with them now? And that's where we're at. We're trying to figure this out as we get used to seeing great white sharks and they're being attracted to the waters with all of the seals, there's all these different coexistences that we're still trying to figure out. All across the world, all along our coastlines. And that's what makes this topic so fascinating. Whether it's sea otters, Bengal tigers, little blue penguins sea turtles, or great white sharks. There's so many different stories, and we're so excited to dive way deeper into all of these with all of the full length episodes coming out soon. Thank you so much for joining today as we explored around the world. What is happening along our coastlines? How we share spaces with endangered species and how they affect us. And then we affect them if you liked any of these topics and want to learn more, we'll leave links in the show notes so that you can actually go and learn more about these species and the organizations that are helping them out. Thank you so much to all of the guests who spoke to us for this episode. Linda Nickel from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Elvisa Vanderleiden from the Taranaki Regional Council, Dinyar Minocher, Dr. Liam Dixon, and Dr. Chris Harvey Clark from Dalhousie University. Thank you so much and be sure to come back and check out the full interviews with each of these experts as we dig way more into their specific issue, when you see coexistence along coastlines. I'm the host and the producer of the podcast, David Evans, and also the director of conservation for the aquatic biosphere project. Thanks to Lianna Bresson for podcast editing and storyboarding support. I'd Also like to thank the rest of the aquatic biosphere project team, Paula Polman, Ari DeJong, Lee Burton, and Dr. Ross Shaw. Thank you so much for all of your continued support in developing this podcast if you'd like to learn more about the aquatic biosphere project and how we're telling the story of water in Alberta, please go to aquaticbiosphere. ca. You have any questions or comments about the show, please send us a message. We'd love to hear from you. You can email us at conservation at aquatic biosphere. org or leave a comment please don't forget to like share and subscribe. It really helps us out. Thanks. And it's been a splash.
