Sign from Nature: Manuohina - Jordan Lerma (Cascadia Research Collective)

 In this episode co-hosts Ethan Leaman and Koji Sumalde meet with Jordan Lerma of Cascadia Research Collective.

This episode is jam packed. Talking about whether or not college educations should still be a thing in 15 years to boat yoga…and everything in between. This episode has it all. 

The “wild” stories part of the show will make you smile, shed a tear, and say what is this show…all in one segment. 

To support Jordan and Cascadia Research Collective please visit https://nene.org/ and https://cascadiaresearch.org/

Transcript

I do have a shitbag story, and I also have a dolphin sex story. I was just talking in a chapter about dolphin sex, so I think I'm like the leading expert in drone dolphin sex right now. You're filming dolphin porn? Yeah, I think, I think I'm the leading expert in drone dolphin porn. We've filmed rough toothed dolphins, melon headed whales, pilot whales.

I think false killer whales are going at it. With the drone. So yeah.

You know

there's always the, the classic just toss them

overboard when you're

And having lunch or you know, just anything like that. The classic, we actually were joking about setting up an only fin to come. Here's to us all swimming through the ship and making more sensitive wow, unprotected planet Earth. We can, we need this place. So please respect. Hey, everyone, welcome back to the wild and unprotected podcast on today's show.

We have Jordan Lerma. He is a field biologist for Cascadia Research Collective and the founder of Nene. org Jordan. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me guys. Yeah, thanks for taking the time Jordan. We're excited to have you. It's, it's, it's been a while. We've been talking about this for a minute. So you've had a lot going on lately.

So I'm excited. We were able to finally lock this down and get it going. Let's, let's just dive right in and kick it off. Why don't you give a little bit of a introduction about yourself and what you're doing with your current organizations. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you guys for having me again. I know I've been been really busy, but glad we're able to sit down and talk about a lot of cool stuff.

My name is Jordan Lerma. I'm a biologist at Cascadia Research. I really got started all this because I started flying drones and really led me on this path that I'm on getting to see a lot of really cool stuff and getting a lot more connection with the community through all of it. I'm really passionate about studying really difficult to study animals like dwarf sperm whales and pygmy sperm whales and how we can use technology to kind of bridge the gaps and make research a lot easier and conservation a lot better.

Yeah, that's, that's awesome. I know innovative technology is something that really drives a lot of the organizations that we work with. We've discussed, you know, things with SNOPBOT with Dr. Ian Kerr and Ocean Alliance and seeing the connection that modern day technology has. With modern conservation is absolutely amazing.

And some of the stuff that you're doing is awesome. And we're, we're so happy to have you aboard. Let's, let's talk a little bit about your work with the Nene. First off, what is a Nene for everyone that does not know? So Nene the Hawaiian goose is actually the most endangered goose in the world.

They're still state listed in Hawaii as endangered. They're federally listed in the United States as threatened. In the 1950s, there was only about 15 N. A. R. left in the wild, and through a lot of community action, government participation, and even some private entities getting involved the population is kind of stable around 3, 500 now.

You know, there's still a lot of work to be done. And we kind of started this organization because we wanted to get the community involved. There's a lot of Nene around Hawaii with bands, and there was no centralized database keeping track of where people see these bands. So people would take pictures of Nene, and then kind of stop there.

My whole philosophy about conservation is that there's, everyone can contribute a little bit, but how do you capture that across everybody that's kind of doing this? And we wanted to create the central database so that people could submit their sightings, submit their photos of Nene, and they can say, hey, I saw this one in this place at this time, and how do these things contribute to conservation as a whole?

So we, we kind of created technology to make that happen. And now we're working with a bunch of government partners and a lot of folks in the community, a lot of educators, a lot of students to kind of build this data set so that policymakers and you know, these managers Managers can really use the community and, and contribute back to conservation as a whole.

So it's really cool. It's a really cool side project. And we started really at the beginning of this year. You know, we have contributions from over 800 people now. We have over 7, 000 sightings of over 900 birds just this year of unique birds. So I think we, we've captured about half of the banded population just from the community getting involved and, you know, we're, we're growing every day.

You know, it's all word of mouth right now and trying to learn about how we can, we can, better reach more people in the community to get, to get more involved. So it's been really fun. It's been a fun project. Yeah, that's incredible. It's, it's wild to just hear such small numbers of an entire species.

Koji, I don't know what you think about that, but that's, that's pretty mind blowing. Yeah. But what's even more wild is the fact that you've captured almost half of the population. In photos and images, so that just kind of shows you how much hard work has gone into, you know, bringing the community in and then making actionable things for them to do.

And, and, you know, capture that data. So, yeah, I, I, I apologize, man. That's huge. Oh, thank you. I mean, it's, it's, it's part of my motivation kind of tying this back to Cascadia research is we work with a lot of people on the water trying to get photos of false killer whales. And it's really, really difficult to get people to care enough to take photos of animals they never see.

So my philosophy was maybe let's pick a species that people can regularly see. We can go to the park on the big island and go and see a nene. It's easier to get kids interested in species that they can see and interact with. And hopefully we can transition them to care about other species. That are more difficult to study, you know, let's just start at the easiest species that I think we can study that's, you know, going to make an impact in conservation and then go from there.

There's a lot of really difficult to talk about conservation actions that are going to happen in Hawaii soon to deal with things like forest bird decline, population decline, like introducing Wolbachia with mosquitoes. And honestly, I think the community is scared of, of, of science when it's, when it's presented in a way that's really, really complex and difficult to understand.

But if we can bring them up from talking about, you know, contributing photos to nanoscience and conservation, to understanding how populations are estimated, you know, I think it's a little bit easier for people to swallow science conservation action where they otherwise would kind of just be scared.

So, you know, it's a multifaceted plan for how we are approaching working with the community, and I think that's a really important thing to do. Yeah, I agree. And I think it's funny that you, you said it in a way, you know, easy to swallow for a lot of the community out there. One of our kind of focal points as an organization here at Wildscape is really being able to make digestible content.

I mean, I'm sure our team is probably sick of hearing me say that I say digestible, digestible, digestible all the time because let's, let's face it. Academia has really kind of seeped into a lot of conservation content now. And a lot of those topics are challenging and difficult to grasp because they're rooted so much into difficult science that's difficult for the, you know, everyday person understands.

So being able to be relatable and the content be digestible is really where we're going to try and backtrack that a little bit and capture the common day person, I'll quote. Dr Kerr here again, you know, our goal was to capture the hearts and minds of, you know, the next generation and the people that we're speaking to now.

So digestible content. 100 percent agree. That's, that's key. But to tie this back into Cascadia, let's talk about Cascadia a little bit some more. What exactly does Cascadia Research Collective do? And what is your part in it? Yeah, so Cascadia Research Collective started in 1979 as a club at a local college in Washington Evergreen State College and you know, they were kind of split between the West Coast so I work for the Hawaii office led by Dr.

Robin Baird, and I kind of want to go back to how I, how I met Robin In, in 2015, I quit my job in San Francisco working in finance and moved to Kauai with my now wife and started flying drones. The, our landlord was a 70 year old drone pilot boat operator, but was terrified of flying his drone off a boat.

It was like, okay, you know what? I'll, I'll do it. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll fly for you. And it was humpback season, so we started flying over humpback whales. And then kind of get the bug, like, Oh man, I caught a whale coming to the surface and breathing. What else can I do? Can we do breaching? Can we do like tail slapping?

Can we do like mom and calf stuff? And we've kind of just like, all right, we're just nailing off all these, like we're going out every day, just hunting down these really cool encounters. So I got to the point where I had a pretty good reel of, of, of stuff. And I went to a humpback conference on Maui and Robin was a keynote speaker.

And I went up to Robin and I was like, Hey, you know, I was at these cool stuff at Humpbacks do you want to take a look? And maybe there's an opportunity that I can come and you know, film some stuff with you guys. And not knowing at the time, but Robin, you know, doesn't, doesn't study Humpback Whales at all.

You know, his, his perspective is always studying the stuff that no one else is doing. So I kind of felt dumb trying to, trying to, you know, brag about, Hey, look at all these Humpback stuff. And Robin really just didn't care at all. But... It was, it was like, he, it was perfect timing. He just added drone stuff to his permit and he was looking for a drone pilot.

He knew nothing about drones at the time. There's some other researchers just starting to, to break the surface on drone stuff in, in marine mammal science. So he invited me on project to just volunteer. And that lasted about a year. I did five different projects on three different islands, just not even flying the drone, doing everything else, doing data sheets, doing the observing, doing the.

Cleaning cameras, cleaning the boat, literally doing everything else except what I was kind of good at at the time, which was flying drones. And then off of off of Lanai when he invited me, he said, you know what, today let's bring the drone out. And we had this encounter with 650 melonhead whales.

And I think that really solidified the importance of having the drone. Like we were able to estimate the group size. We were able to see all these subgroups with little social groups like mating and some were just playing and seeing that from a different perspective that he'd never seen before really like solidified my role.

It's like, okay. We're going to fly the drone now for, for all sorts of things. And it's really built from there. Robin's been working in Hawaii for, for over 20 years now. And much of what we know about the whales and dolphins, some whales and dolphin species like rough toothed dolphins and pig and killer whales all come from what we've learned through Robin's project on, in Hawaii.

You know, a lot of these species don't, aren't found commonly anywhere else in the world. For example, the Big Island of Hawaii has the most resident species of whales and dolphins of any island archipelago in the world. And it goes back to the Pacific Ocean at our latitude and longitude being just an oceanic desert.

And these are kind of like an oasis in the middle of this desert. All of the rainfall washes nutrients into the water. And it creates this growth of life which attracts a lot of these species. So we're fortunate to be able to work with, you know, 17 different toothed whales and dolphins. I think our total counts as like 26 different species of whales and dolphins total.

Something crazy. So, you know, much of what we know comes from, from Robin. And our target species on the Hawaii project is false killer whales, the endangered insular population of false killer whales. There's about 150 of them that roam throughout the Hawaiian Islands, the main Hawaiian Islands, and it's really our highest priority species.

They're listed as endangered really, really difficult to work with but it's important. They eat the same kinds of fish that we do ahi, mahi ulua, and they often interact, overlap with fishermen. So, from a conservation perspective. We're trying to understand how we can mitigate those interactions with negative interactions.

You know, they're so smart that if a fisherman has an ahi on the line, they'll go and pick that ahi off the line, leave just the head and the hook on the line, and take everything else and eat it and share with their family. So it's, it's pretty impressive. But sometimes they get in trouble and get, get cooked and tangled.

And we're trying to better understand how we can mitigate those types of interactions. Sorry. That was really long. Cascade kind of does a lot. That's good. We, we love hearing stuff like that. Koji, have you ever heard of a whale or a species like that being able to leave a fish head on a hook like that?

No. No, usually, like, the head's the most, like, delectable part, so I think it's for them that they're taking what they can get. Yeah, that's, that's wild, but that also seems like it presents quite an opportunity for citizen science. And I know that's something that we had talked about in our first call getting ready for this was how important that was for the new generation of conservation.

Let's, let's talk about some citizen science stuff. Yeah, so, I mean, this, this, when we think about false killer whales, we have to look at what, who are seeing, what, what parties are seeing them on the water. And, you know, the majority are fishermen. And fishermen are in competition with these animals. And the question is, how do we, how do we approach fishermen?

From a, from a fisherman's perspective, any science intervention? Any word of conservation means they're going to catch less fish, and they don't want to have that conversation, right? They're out there, a lot of them, a lot of them are, like, my grandpa was a commercial fisherman. I totally get it, right? You need to catch fish to feed your family.

And if you're competing with animals and scientists want to protect those species, to prohibit you from catching fish where you've been catching fish your entire life, they're not going to want to talk to you. They're not going to want to share anything. So the way that we approach this problem is how can we separate the fault killer whales and fishing effort?

How can we use technology? How can we use satellite tag data to define critical habitats for these animals so that fishermen know where they are, are going to interact with them more and avoid those areas? So that really bridged the gap and to say, Hey, maybe, maybe from a fisherman's perspective, maybe we should talk to these scientists and learn and have an open mind because maybe we can catch more fish by listening to them.

So that was kind of our path to, to working with a difficult to approach group that's really, really protective of, of what they know about the ocean. And rightfully so. I mean, they've been doing it for, for generations and we've been able to transform some relationships into, Hey, do you want to carry a camera and take photos of the false killer whales that you interact with?

And, you know, to our surprise, it's taken a long time, but, but there's some fishermen that are taking lots of great photos now in areas that we would have never surveyed, really rough areas on the, on the windward side of islands. And it's really contributed a lot to what we know about these animals and what habitats they use.

You know, we also work with tour operators and tourists and locals that spend time on the water. And it's all about usually it's a lot easier after they see an animal that they've never seen before to have that conversation. Because if I'm trying to explain a false killer whale to you and you're never going to go and be able to see one, you're really not going to care that much.

But after you see one for the first time, it's like, what is that thing? I've never seen anything jump backwards out of the water. Like, Hitting a mahi mahi with their belly like what was that and once you get that once you get that like interaction They're kind of a lot easier to like, okay Next time you see it take a photo of its dorsal fin and send it to us and we can tell you exactly where you Know where we've seen it before who's seen it before how old it is male or female if they've had calves before all that stuff so, you know, we, we know a lot of those 150 individuals we have pretty good life histories for all of them, and it's really a matter of being able to reach those people that are going to be able to see them and then connect them with the information to get them hooked.

So, you know, we're, we're grateful that we have a lot of citizen scientists out there that contribute to our research. But we're always trying to, bridge the gap to reach more people. Now that, you know, more people are spending time on the water than ever. And hopefully populations of false killas are increasing to the point where more people will get to see them.

That is if we, we do our job. So it's a crucial thing for us to be able to connect with the community and, and utilize the other effort that goes on on the water, because if not we can't, we can't do it by ourselves. Yeah. Yeah, I agree a hundred percent with that. It's crazy to see, you know, what collaboration with different stakeholders in a situation like that does it's, you're 100 percent right.

It's difficult to talk with people and tell them, hey, you know, you, you probably shouldn't fish here when that affects their livelihood. I mean, that's, that's a difficult ass conversation and I can understand how they're turned away from that. You know, you're, you're telling me, don't provide for my family.

This, you know, some of that is all they know, you know, like you said, they've done it for generations, you know, their parents, their, their fathers, parents did it, their grandparents did it. That's what they know. And, you know, also part of kind of that lifestyle as well. So being able to see them get involved and collaborate in those small ways is, is huge.

And I also think that that's really impactful for getting younger people. Involved and interested once they see, you know, their parents as citizen scientists get involved, then they're more likely to want to get involved. So now you have your program with the names of, Hey, let's, let's get in our backyard and do what we can.

And then on top of that, you have this level of collaboration that was not there in previous generations, all impacting conservation for the positive. So that's that's bad ass and props to you for that. Yeah, I mean, it's just very small part, but I think you know, it's something that scales really easily with, with talking to kids kids are going to be the people that solve all of our problems because we, we can't agree on certain things.

And, and getting as many people as many educators to talk about conservation issues, to talk about science, to talk about methods now, I think solidifies hopefully a bright future. For humanity. Yeah, I 100 percent agree. That's an interesting point. I think we covered that one in our our last podcast with the man to trust as well.

The youth is so important at this point in in the world of conservation. And I think another thing too, I'm going to backtrack a little bit and go off track. I think right now conservation is cool. You know, like it, it really is like people want to be caught doing good stuff and helping the planet and preserve preserving wildscapes is one way that people can hop on that train and me, I'm all for it.

And I think another thing that really, you know. Helps lift that tide is the the advancements in technology where we are now, especially when it comes to the the use of cameras and video cameras and drones. Like, like you said, you started out with with drones and now you're heavily into the space, you know, like, think about the drone that you had when you first started.

Versus the drone that you have now, you know, just the leaps and bounds that have made it easier for you to, you know, get this data. And then, you know, as the average consumer, they're like, you know, all I need is a DSLR and I can hop on a boat and get some awesome photos of whales and dolphins and, you know, sea turtles.

And then, you know, you got the average Joe that's out there. That's a hobbyist. And he's, he's sending you guys some of the best pictures you've probably ever seen because he's super passionate about it and he's got, you know, the eye for it, whereas You know, it's not as serious as everyone thinks that you don't need to go get all of this fancy stuff.

You should be at the right place at the right time with something that can take a photo, you know, and I think that's why it's become so popular now for people to take this into consideration, especially with iPhones, you know, like with smartphones and having a massive computer in your pocket is so beneficial for the conservation space, because now we can capture the good and the bad.

Yeah, we can see the right practices and the wrong practices at the same time, you know, and, and kind of nudge people in the right way in terms of conservation and conservation practice. So, I think where we are now is such a pivotal point into onboarding and on ramping the youth. With our generation and generations before and saying, Hey, you know, like if you guys want to continue to enjoy this, we might probably should start, you know, having these conversations now.

So, yeah, I just think it's a really interesting time for conservation and, you know, it sparks that it sparks that creativity and a lot of people to be able to, you know, capture animals and and habitats and things that. Like you said, they have never seen before and if they get to experience it, they can share that experience with others and in my opinion, I think that goes so much further than sitting in a classroom, you know, looking through textbooks, which don't get me wrong, there's a place for that, but it's that experience, it's the, it's the, the visceral experience that you get behind, you know, behind these technologies that help us capture.

So, you know, That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have a couple things, I mean, to say in response to that, I mean, you're exactly right. I mean, no other point in history have we ever had the entire wealth of information the world knows in our pocket. And at the same time, we all have 48 megapixel cameras in our pocket now, right?

It's crazy. At no other point in history have we ever been able to document the real world, like we are now. Everyone, everyone has a smartphone, for the most part. I mean, my three year old has a smartphone, and she knows how to run the camera. And she knows how to find videos on YouTube. She's three, she's not even three, she's almost three.

It's crazy that we've been able to evolve. Humanity to this point. And, you know, I, I love, I had this debate with my dad a few weeks ago about my daughter going to college at some point in her life. And I said, do you think college will even exist then like in 15 years? Do you think college will exist and the way we think about it now?

And, you know, I think in the past, we would always flock to where the information was. And I think for, for education 50 years ago, for sure. Right. That's where you go to learn. And now we can just pull up a video on YouTube. My dad's fixing his truck. He pulls up a video on YouTube before going to the Ford manual.

Right. It's like go to where the information is. And you know, it's not, we're definitely saving for potentially her going to college, but I think it's going to be a lot different now in 15 years. And what we think about how we, how we pursue knowledge and become educated. You know, 100 percent agree.

I have a, I follow this Facebook group for folks trying to get into marine science. And a lot of them a lot of the posts I see says, Hey, I have my undergraduate degree in marine biology. I have a graduate degree in marine biology. Can anyone help me find, help me, help me find a job? And you know, on Sunday, a group of four of us went offshore to take pologic false killer whales.

And I asked them, you know, how many, how many of us on board have a marine biology degree? And it's zero, none of us had a marine biology degree. And a lot of the responses I have to these people on this Facebook page is get really, really good at problem solving. Like everything else, all the intricate things you need to know about biology, you can learn by Googling really quickly if you need to know it.

But the ability to solve a problem quickly. In a, in a methodical way is something that I think more, more needs to be taught more in school you know, need to be problem based learning instead of, hey, recite this information that you read out of this book, which really does nothing to anyone. You know, if anything, we can have my boss who has a PhD in marine biology on the boat.

We can just ask him. It's like, Hey, what do you think about this? And really, all we do is solve, solve, solve problems every day, solve problems. And if anything, I want my three year old to be able to be able to learn how, learning how to learn and learning how to solve problems are the two things I hope that she.

It's really good at because if you can do those things, I think she'll be set regardless of whatever her degree ends up being. Yeah, 1000 percent agree. And to kind of go back to 1 of your further comments. Personally, I hope that college isn't the same even in 15 years as it is now. I graduated with my master's degree.

4 years ago now, yeah, 4 years ago now, and that might be the worst list most piece of shit paper I've ever gotten in my life. And it was just a waste of money. I, I didn't really learn anything that I hadn't already been learning being out in the field, you know, working in. The, the industry that I wanted to be in at the time, and I make this comment a lot when talking about YouTube, it really shouldn't be called YouTube anymore.

It should be just called YouTube University. It's a free education, you know, which is one how education really should be, you know, at that level in the first place. You know, that's a, that's another conversation for another day, but you can really learn anything that you want on YouTube because there are creators out there who are taking things from everyday life and recording it and throwing it up on YouTube and now there's a video for it.

Like you, like you, you said about your dad, you know, why go to the Ford manual and read some boring ass book when you can just go to YouTube and essentially be able to learn in real time, hands on how someone's doing it with more vivid imagery than a manual or book could ever give you. So I'm really hoping a lot of colleges and a lot of educators in public schooling and other sources of education are kind of taking note that this is the next way to learn.

Why do you think TikTok is so damn popular? Because it's everyday life, little snippets that people are learning and taking information in real time. You know, so let's let's let's take a step back. Let's reassess our processes that we do have, especially when it comes to education and see how we can implement that, you know, podcasts.

I know there's a bunch of people. I mean, shit. There's a insurance commercial about it where that guy is sitting in the meeting and he's listening to a podcast on multitasking multitasking. There's podcasts that teach you how to do shit now. So taking education and moving moving it forward that way, you know, is is.

Incredible. And you know, like both you guys said, we have supercomputers in our pocket. Now there's more, there's more technology in everyone's pocket that pretty much walks the earth right now than was on some of the moon landers like that's crazy to fucking think about, like less technology took us to the moon than we have in our pocket right now to access real time data and combine that with better practice on critical thinking.

You know, we're going to continue to evolve and help, you know, maybe we will save more species because of that. So we're in an amazing time right now. And it's, it's incredibly exciting, you know, that you can go on Tik TOK and groups like I fall have followings of, you know, 180, 000 people who watch their stuff every day that are that engaged and interested in what they're doing because of technology is such a amazing time.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think they went to the moon. Saturn five had like 32 megabytes of onboard memory. Just amazing how much, I mean, that was a long time ago, but still's crazy and here we're crazy upset when I, the iPhone starts with a base capacity of 128 gigs. Yeah. like, damn it, I can't record it.

ProRes because of this. Yeah. . Yes. I, I, I have, I just experienced that I had to like recapture space on that ProRes setting. Yep. And here they are on the moon, unable to play Pong. Yeah. Yeah. The important technology, I mean, is, is definitely Something that we, we think about all the time. I mean, I think you spoke to Ian Kerr about drone stuff.

You know, we, we collaborate a little bit with Ocean Alliance and, and you know, after they started doing the SNOPBOT stuff with large whales we kind of adapted similar methodology to smaller whales. We breath sampled false killer whales, pilot whales, killer whales. Blainesville are Cuvier's beaked whales, and we tried breath sampling a dwarf sperm whale.

But it's, it's always about, you know, how, how can we collaborate with, with these trendsetters and build upon what they, and build upon the technology they invented build upon the methods and, and share back. You know, and we can all grow together. You know, they're starting to do I don't know if you talked about this dropping tags on, on large whales.

That's something we're investigating too, especially with species like dwarf sperm whales that are just very notoriously difficult to approach. You know, the closest I think we've been to a dwarf sperm whale is maybe about... 30 meters, which is too far for a traditional, the traditional way. We, we tag a whaler dolphin.

You can't put that big ass stick out there. Yeah, we can't even get close. But we've gotten close with the drone. You know, we, when we tried breast sampling, we were within six feet. So you know, building upon what they're doing with, with snot bots and dropping, dropping tags on large whales. We're looking at using a similar method on a smaller drone to tag dwarf sperm whales and beaked whales.

So it's, it's exciting to see that even as technology improves, that one, one select group isn't gatekeeping that technology. It's very open. Even before they they published their methods there, we're always in constant communication saying, Hey, this work, this doesn't work. Hey, try this silicone instead of this silicone you know, uses these suction cups to compose of these suction cups.

And it's really open and we love that. I love that about, some parts of science, I know some other parts of science aren't quite like that and we can talk about that too. But for the most part, my experience in renewable science has been so awesome that people are just hyper focused on solving the problems using technology to solve these problems and openly share and collaborate and evolve faster than I think in any point in history before to, to try and understand what kind of conservation actions are required for a lot of these difficult to study species.

So it's awesome. I'm very privileged to work in this field and have a lot of great collaborators and colleagues. What are maybe some other ways you think we can continue to collaborate with other organizations and, and grow our, our base understanding? Yeah so I think if, if anyone's getting federal funds NSF funds or, or stuff like that, I think creating an open repository for data you know, is, is better being able to openly share information through groups in a, in a centralized environment, kind of like what we're doing at nana.

org I mean, there's pros and cons to that approach, but I think it's better than Okay. It's better than sending large CSV files back and forth and versioning back and forth and you know, decreasing the complexity in which we can share information with each other is, is the way forward. And you know.

My, my dream for this, this work is that I don't have to be on a boat anymore. You know, fully autonomous boats autonomous fleet of planes that I do surveying and, and then utilizing those sightings throughout different organizations, not just government, not just private nonprofits. But having everyone having access to a, a unified data set to be able to make decisions in real time about whether or not, should we go out and tag pelagic false killer whales today, or maybe not.

And if we had more information from, from all these parties, I think that those decisions would be made a lot easier. So I think that's what the future looks like, at least to me just more open, more transparent, more collaboration. Yeah, that's amazing. Hey, Koji, could you think if, if we ever wanted to film kind of in the future with drone style boats and planes, like you, you would have, you know, the boat doing the survey, but you would still have to have the camera crew just sitting there by themselves.

Yeah. Be like a video game. No, I, I think there's a, you know, like having. Like we talked about earlier, this, this like pivotal time of technology is so crucial to to this, the stage of conservation. I think, you know, another thing behind. The technology are the passionate people behind it because without people like yourself or our previous 16 podcast guests and I know you've, you've probably worked with a handful of those organizations without, without those types of organizations and those types of like big hearted people and openness and willing to collaborate I think we'd be much further back.

There we'd be much, many, many steps back and. And where we are with conservation and don't get me wrong. I still think there's a very, very long way to go, but it's you know, that running theme of trying to connect, you know, the masses to these problems and not only. Connect the masses to these problems, but showcase that, hey, these problems are difficult, but they're also not impossible to solve.

So using technology in that way, I think we're in such a good place. And of course, I can hear the passion behind why you do this, Jordan. And, you know, it's an inspiring conversation we're having, having, and I hope that some in the audience can take some of this and say, hey, well, Actually, I'm not going to college, I'm going to go buy a drone and that sparks, you know, a whole new organization in five years that, you know, maybe they'll reach out and say, Hey, remember that podcast that you did?

I think I think that for us is why this is so exciting. It's because it's opening doors for other people. And we're just saying, Hey, here's the microphone and you can have this, this moment of, of clarity and, and. Share this information and not gate keep it. I think that's so important. It's not gatekeeping these valuable, you know, knowledgeable things that you've experienced and what you hope for in the future.

But I want to tie it in into you, Jordan, let's talk a little bit about you know, your background and your ancestry. I know that you're a native Hawaiian. Correct? Yeah. Can we go into a little bit about you know, just. How you really got all started into this before, you know, the titles that we talked about earlier.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's, it's, it's, it's embarrassing on my part. You know, I'm born and raised in Hawaii and before working with, with Robin at Cascadia Research, I had no idea all these whales and dolphins lived just offshore. You know, when I saw, you know, free Willy and killer whales, like, Oh, maybe we have to go to Alaska to see those things.

Not knowing that, you know, there's sometimes pass rate pie. Right by the harbor, by my house. And it's like, as, as a native Hawaiian growing up in Hawaii, I think we, I don't want to speak for native Hawaiians in general, but just for myself, I think I took it for granted. You know, going to the beach is like, ah, I guess we can go to the beach where people fly from all over the world to appreciate the beauty in Hawaii.

And it wasn't until I started working in conservation that I really got that appreciation. At the same time you know, it's, it kind of makes me sad that there's not a lot of Native Hawaiians working in marine mental science and I can't think of another 1 that's working with whales and dolphins in Hawaii.

I'm hoping there's another, but I can't think of 1 off the top of my head. And, you know, when I, when I have those conversations with with kids, I went to commitment schools, which is a Hawaiian only high school. You know, when I give talks to these kids, I think about that a lot, that in 15, 20 years, I hope to see more Native Hawaiians.

So yeah you know, as a Native Hawaiian, it really, it really makes me sad not seeing more Native Hawaiians in marine mammal science. And I think in Hawaii, I think I might be the only one working with, directly with whales and dolphins. So when I go to talk to schools and I talk to Hawaiian kids you know, I'm hopeful that in 15, 20 years, there'll be more of us.

Actively engaged in studying the species that we live with that we coexist with that were here before Hawaiians inhabited Hawaii. And I think to our specific demographic, it's more meaningful in native Hawaiian culture. Whales and dolphins are actually a manifestation of a Hawaiian God. So, to me, when I joined cascading research, doing Hawaii work, the 1st thing that we, you know, I brought up to Robin is like.

You know. It would feel better to me that on the 1st, day of a project, can I can I just can't and only just so that, you know, as we enter their, their realm, their space, their, their home, we announced that. Hey, we're, we're coming into your home. You know, we're, we're here to study. We have good intentions.

This is what we're here for. And at the end of every project, we go out and say, you know, thank you. Thank you for letting us come and study you. And that was something that Robin was like, please, please do. And, and to my surprise, they actually learned the chant that I was doing. So now we all do it in the beginning of the project.

We'll all, we'll drive three miles offshore and stop, turn off the boat and just sit there. And, you know, I have them embody the reason why we're out there and we'll do this chant together. And then we'll, we'll start doing our thing. So it's really like. We do that before we do any other science is that we're, we're acknowledging that this is something that's important to me as a native Hawaiian, but we're also in Hawaii studying Hawaiian species.

So this is something that's important to them. And Robin was so open to that, and it's awesome that everyone else learned in the 1st, 2, 3 projects. It was just me doing it. And now everyone, everyone knows the words and it's, it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's awesome. And I think it's important that we acknowledge that.

So, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's kind of crazy being a native Hawaiian, being able to study in Hawaii. And I think that's a privilege that a lot of people don't get for a number of reasons. One, we don't make, if I was to just live on my salary as a as a biologist, I wouldn't be able to live and afford to live in Hawaii.

And even at this rate, I'll be hopeful to buy a house someday. So very grateful to have support from my family and my partner going through all of this. And I think everyone in our immediate family understands the importance of the work that we do. My wife is doing her masters at University of Hawaii, and she's a pathologist, so she's doing terrestrial stuff and I do marine stuff.

So, I think our families understand. The reasons why we're doing this so hopefully that my 3 year old can can see the same species of animals that we get to work with now, you know, when she's older, that's always the goal. But, yeah, not not not a lot of native Hawaiians get to actively participate in in research and conservation.

So it's very privileged. It's a privilege that we have and and hold highly and hope to change in 1520 years. Yeah, that, oh, man, there is so much to unpack from that, and, and so much good, too, because, you know, the, the, I feel like We're in a time where accepting your personal culture is something that's becoming, you know, more near and dear whether it's a culture that directly impacted you, you know, in your everyday life by, you know, family members or, you know, ancestry and being able to look back because we have that technology and see, oh my gosh, you know, that's part of my lineage, you know, that's, that's something, you know, that I can hold near and dear.

So, having something, you know, Like that, you know, wanting to make an impact on, you know, the, the Hawaiian culture, like you are one is amazing. And to being able to uphold that culture in your studies, in those research missions, I can't even tell you like that. I was. I don't know if you were able to see, I was smiling ear to ear.

That's so cool because that's something that you can take to those schools. You know, you can catch that on film doing that chant and there might be native Hawaiians, you know, around the island that would have never thought that someone named Robin. Who works in marine biology and research is going to end up doing that same chant with you That's badass and that's so encouraging, you know for the future and I would you know I'd I'd bet a fair sum of money that you know that will encourage, you know, the next generation You know, there's going to be someone who's grown up on the islands and that's all they know is that culture and your culture and it's their culture and they're going to feel like, wow, I can actually belong here.

You know, this isn't some white lab coat, you know, white person industry. It's something that I can be involved with. It's something that I can look back and, you know, essentially honor, you know, their ancestors with, you know, with, with how deep it runs into the culture. Like you said, so I really hope that once at some point that gets, you know, organically captured and you're able to share that with a lot of the students that you're with and to kudos, you know, to your team that's with you for doing that, because I know at first, let's, let's just be honest, that had to be uncomfortable as shit, you know, let's just be real, you know, for them.

So kudos for them to be able to, you know, give you that space to work and, you know, honor your culture on your ancestors and then. Be able to be comfortable enough to jump in and then on top of that, be knowledgeable enough to learn and and be able to join in. So that is absolutely phenomenal. And then to top it all off, you can really connect with, you know, the Hawaiian people because of your unusual journey.

You know, you, you didn't have that straight through journey of, you know, that you, you've seen in most cases, you know, people move their way through school, become, you know academically focused and then they become, you know, research focused and that's the normal, you know, cookie cutter fucking way to get into conservation.

Yeah, you know, that's, that's just the norm, you know, you talked about it earlier, your ass went to San Francisco and finance and then came back. So, you know, there's an additional way of connection you know, to the Hawaiian people, they can see, Oh, wow. I don't have to go to school for this to be able to do this.

So there's a welcoming, you know conservation based culture now that's out there that I can get involved. And, you know, it definitely seems like if you're the only, you know, native Hawaiian really doing it, you're building a bridge for that future. And I can't, I can't even begin to tell you how impressive that is.

But I do think that's a good point. Go ahead. I can't, I can't stress enough how much Robin's impact had on my ability to be open about these things. You know, even before I started at Cascadia, Robin was very adamant with. These journals that we publish in about using Hawaiian spelling with the, the diuretical marks with the Kakos and Okinas.

And for the longest time, many of these journals wouldn't, wouldn't publish with those marks. He also uses the traditional Hawaiian place names instead of the Western names for a lot of these landmarks on the island. Like Honu for sea turtle or things like that? Yeah, yep. So, you know, he was, he was already moving in that direction before I started.

And I, I told many people, I wouldn't be working with working for Robin. If he didn't do those things, we had a Marine mammal commission meeting in Kona back a few years ago. And at these meetings, they have public testimony, and we had two Hawaiian cultural practitioners go and, you know, a lot of people just blow them off.

They don't take the time to listen to their concerns because, you know, some of them are talking about Native Navy sonar. They talk about things that are kind of out there. And after, after the lunch break, I, I walked out after the after we went to lunch break, I walked out. to the restaurant just outside the auditorium where the meeting was going on.

And I see those two Hawaiian cultural practitioners and Robin. At lunch, talking about stuff talking about the whales and dolphins and the research and, and all of their concerns, and that really, like, that was the moment where I'm like, okay, this, this, this guy really, really cares about the local community connection, even to people that others deem as crazy.

Or out there he's sitting down there, eating lunch with them and listening to them. And if it wasn't like that, I wouldn't be working for Robin. And even to this day he does stuff like that. That really hits me at home when I'm like, questioning my identity as a native Hawaiian studying whales and dolphins.

And, and I would not be here if it wasn't for him. So very, very grateful to have a boss and a P. I. and a scientist in Hawaii that appreciate as a non Hawaiian studying Hawaiian species. He's, he's, I think, setting a good example for what others in that kind of position should do. That's amazing.

Robin. I hope you're listening. Just, just hearing this is awesome. Appreciate, you know, all that you do, you know, not only for Cascadia but for Jordan as well. That's, that's amazing. Man, we unpacked a lot. That's for sure. Thank you for sharing. You know, I know it's, it's always really deep.

That's okay. We there's, there's no rails on this show. Which brings us into our next favorite part of the show. Our favorite segment. Let's dive into some wild stuff. Let's dive into the wild stories. Anything that you have that comes to mind that maybe, you know, could be censored in the future, or that could be held against you that you want to talk about, that's a way to put it.

So I have, I think I have two stories, one that's wild to me personally. And one that I think is just, is, is could be called wild. You know, I think to this point we've tagged maybe. I've been on board for maybe 80 or so satellite tag taggings and you know, they're all different in their own ways. But this 1, I think it's not something that we held against me.

It's just 1 that 1 that I will never forget. And I, and yeah, so it happened, I mean, a month ago, a September 4th Colin, Colin, Cornforth, Captain Zodiac, my colleague at Cascadia Research. Called me up the night before and say, hey, what are you doing tomorrow? Do you want to go on the boat? Weather looks good.

Let's just go offshore. And you know, we drive, I drive over from Hilo. It's a 2 hour drive. I'll leave at 3 am. Get there at 5. We're on the water before sunrise. Blasting offshore as fast as we can and you know, we're like 80 miles offshore at that point in a 24 foot rigid hull and inflatable boat, and there's not even fishing boats out there.

I mean, these people with 70 foot boats aren't even out yet. Here we are trudging along. And I don't know what happened, but Colin spotted something. Colin always see stuff before anyone else. And it's just like a little shimmer on the water. We drive over for another, like, kilometer or so, and lo and behold, it's pelagic false killer whales.

And this is a group that Cascadia had previously seen in 2006, and hasn't been seen since. Which is just crazy to me, that these animals just exist out there in between, I mean, it's not like we weren't looking for them. We've spent so many ti so much time on the water out there looking for those animals.

And we found them and we approached these group of false killer whales and Colin turned, I mean, there's four of us in the boat. Colin turns to me and said, what do you think we should do? I'm like fucking tagging rifle out. Let's get the heck off as quickly as possible. And I don't know what he did, like some boat yoga cartwheels gunning back to the gun.

Gets to the gun and back in like less than a minute. And I'm like trying to get all the data down. I look up, he's already like targeting an animal the animal services, like three meters from the boat, he shoots, gets the tag out and we're just like good. They're staring at each other for maybe a minute.

Just like, what the fuck just happened? It's never, it's never gone like that. And we just started screaming, like, literally just started yelling and screaming at each other, like, what the f k, literally at the top of our lungs, and we just hugged, we hugged for like, I don't know, 30 seconds, just in disbelief of what we just accomplished, given that this, I mean, 2013 was the last time we tagged those animals offshore, and we've spent hundreds of hours looking for that, for that opportunity, and we literally hugged, I mean, I'm glad no one took a photo of us hugging, it was just like, We were just there in an embrace for an uncomfortable amount of time.

And then he said, what do you think we should do now? I'm like, let's get another fucking tag out. He does boat yoga, gets back, reload the gun and we get another tag out. And it's really, I cannot think of another moment in 80 plus taggings I've been a part of where I felt that, that like, I need to hug this man because we just did something no one thought we could ever do.

And it happened so fast, and yeah, I mean, it is just an amazing, I don't think it'll happen like that again, type of feeling. I am... I'm, I'm stunned because one, that's phenomenal. And two, I'm picturing Colin doing boat yoga. Yeah. I mean, we went out and found those tags and we did another put another two tags out and he did the same thing.

And this time we had a camera on him, so there will be, I'll try, I'll try to see if I can get you a video of him maneuvering around this boat in high seas with a big swell, holding a loaded rifle, trying to get to the back of the boat tagging animals. It's really impressive. But you know, it goes back to what we talked about.

It's just like, how do you problem solve? How do you get stuff done? And you can't learn that in school. Yeah. Yeah. That's the stuff they don't tell you about. Yeah. Yeah. I have a question. How were you able to decipher that that was a group of whales that you hadn't seen previously, like just from sight? So a lot of, a lot of folks in our line of work use artificial intelligence machine learning image models to, to.

You know, they upload a photo of a fin, it searches through all the photos we've ever taken, and it spits back out who the, who the animal is. At Cascadia, we have a catalog manager named Sabra. And within a minute or two, she can tell us exactly who the animals are. She's our in house AI. She's very good at it.

But we just text her a photo of, literally take a photo of my photo on the camera, text her, and within a minute, we'll, she returns back who exactly it is. We're sitting on that technology part the whole damn time. We went through all this technology talk and you got damn AI identification in your pocket and we just waited.

Yeah, that's crazy. My story and it's wild to me. And it's more personal. In, in 2020 my partner and I were expecting a child and. We fought back and forth about what Hawaiian name to give her. And in Hawaiian culture, typically Hawaiian names are given by a family member or ancestor. And our families, both, both of us have Hawaiian blood, and both of our families couldn't agree on a Hawaiian name.

So 2020 December, we were working off of Lanai, and we were about 15 miles south of Lanai in absolute shit. Robin wasn't on the boat that day, Colm was driving, and Colm just likes to find rough water. And he just finds the roughest fucking patch of water that exists within a hundred miles of shore. He finds it.

This fucking, like, big rain cloud. He's like, we're gonna go over there, where it's pouring ass rain. He's gonna hate us. We get there, everyone's putting on their, like, their rain stuff, everyone's putting cameras away. We're getting absolutely drenched. I have my own camera, so I usually keep it out. It's 5D, it'll survive water.

And I'm standing on the front of the boat just watching, waiting for everyone to put their rain stuff on. And there's this small little gray bird that flies past the boat on the, on the port side. Flies past the port side and flies exactly, flies directly to the rain cloud. And I'm like, ah, it looks unusual.

And I take photos of it. And I had no idea what it was until I got back to land and then we looked through the seabird book. And ended up being the first record of a blue grey nadi in Maui County. So we named my daughter after that encounter. So the Hawaiian name for blue grey nadi is Manu Ohina.

So she has that name. And one of the other ways that Hawaiians can name their kids is this sign from nature. So that was my sign from nature. That is blue grey nadi, the first time it's ever been seen off that island. Flew past the boat was this like sign from nature that my daughter's name should be Manohina.

It's wild to me. I know it's not something that can be held against me, but I, I, I love that. I love that about that bird. I've only seen it one other time. It brought me to tears. And I, I hope, I hope at some point I'll be able to see one again. What wild stories are not just, times that we talk about shit or times that we talk about dolphin sex wild stories can be stories that are incredibly impactful because those are the type of things that, you know, can draw people in and I'm, I'm honestly kind of speechless.

That is. That's, that's amazing. That is such a beautiful story. I do have a shitbag story, and I also have a dolphin sex story. I was just talking about dolphin sex, so I think I'm like the leading expert in drone dolphin sex right now. You're filming dolphin porn? Yeah, I think, I think I'm the leading expert in drone dolphin porn.

We've filmed rough toothed dolphins, melon headed whales, pilot whales. I think false killer whales are going at it with the drone, so yeah, if you have questions about... We've even had, I think we've had bottlenose dolphins trying to do with pilot whales too on drone video. So... Whoa. Inner species?

Inner species going at it. Yeah, I mean they're... I mean, it's a big ocean. There's not much stuff going on. Nothing else to do, right? My my shipwreck story is we had this one guy on the boat who would always stop to pick up plastic and stuff. Which is, which is admirable, right? Like, we should do that. But he pulls up to this, like, Safeway bag, and my, Colin's like, Don't, don't touch that.

Please don't touch that. And he goes over anyway, picks it up out of the water with his bare hands, and just, like, shit running down his hand. And he puts it on the back transom. Colin's pissed because it's his boat. Colin's absolutely pissed that there's shit on the boat. So we get back to the dock.

The guy, of course, doesn't take the shitbag out and throw it away. Colin takes the shitbag, puts it on his car. And this, this might be held against you because I didn't think I don't think you knew that part. But yeah, there's a shit bag on this guy's car. Just like, but we do have shit stories. We do have dolphin sex stories.

I just love the story of how I named my daughter that the, I, I love the, the dolphin sex stories, but. Damn, that, that one with your daughter was good, but I was not expecting interspecies snacks. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think we have bottlenose and humpbacks. I mean, they don't, they don't discriminate with size either, man.

Bottlenose dolphins are very, very aggressive. Frisky, man. How does that work? I mean, there's actual stories of bottlenose dolphins trying to rape humans off of Kona during, like, manta dives. I mean, bottlenose dolphins are a bit a bit touchy.

Watch out, watch out, watch out! You might get probed! Yeah, they don't have that on the waiver. Yeah, we had a podcast guest that was explaining his fear of dolphins and I, he didn't want to go too much into detail of it, but I think it has to go along the lines of a dolphin raping you. So yeah, guys, that's been a.

Crazy show

on that note,



yeah, we're going to need to see this, this this drone footage of this interspecies. It might not make it in the show, but we need, we need to see it. I think I think someone made a domain website called only fins. Maybe we'll just put it on there. Okay. You're going to laugh. That's one of our episode titles.

His only fins. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Oh, we're gonna have to tell Dr. Claire Lacey about this because she was she was considering starting that domain. Oh yeah, I think that's their group. I think it was MMRP that made that only fins. Oh, perfect. That's where it came from. Flair, if you're listening, which I know you are, we might have some footage for you.

There's additional funding now coming your way. Oh man. Oh my goodness. Gotta pay for the research somehow.

Oh.

How else can we get there? Oh, you know, just click the link below. Link in bio.

Oh, and this is why we have the wild segment. Love it. I love it. Oh, Koji, you want to get us back on track? Yeah, yeah. That was eventful. Thank you for sharing those. Those stories. Usually we only probably get like one or two, but you came through and you're the MVP of wild stories. No, no, you are the I'm dubbing you Jordan Lerner as the MVP of wild stories.

That was incredible. And you know, it's very touching. You know, the story about naming your daughter. I think that is a, that's a first for us to get something as impactful as that. So thank you for sharing that. I'm sure that that's something you hold very near and dear to you, but maybe we can do a whole expose on you and, and, and your family and.

Kind of dive into that further. Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's incredible. This is a good part of the section part of the show where we start to wind things down and, and, and kind of get towards the end. So for the audience out there that are interested in, you know, connecting with you and. Nene and Cascadia how, how would they do so?

Absolutely. I, I use Instagram a lot and I'm trying to get Cascadia to use Instagram a lot more. My personal handle is at uheu, U H E H E U. It's Hawaiian to fly as if on wings. Thought it was fitting for, for flying drones back when I started a few years ago. I tried to share a lot more personal encounters with, with the animals.

A lot of the stuff we post on Cascadia is the glorified stuff that really gets attention. I tried to raise awareness that marine biology isn't always as glamorous as it seems. A lot of getting your ass kicked on a boat is a lot of uncooperative animals, a lot of technology breaking. And sometimes a lot of sad stuff, like the entangled whale shark that we encountered last June.

That, that video is unbelievable. A lot of stuff the cut. But yeah you can follow Cascadia Research on Instagram, just add Cascadia Research. And if you have photos of Bandit Nene we'd love them. You can upload them to nene. org. That's awesome. Well, hopefully hopefully there'll be an uptick in submissions for you because I know they're all, they're all helpful and hopefully we can convince Cascadia to really dive into social media.

We know it's important and we know how impactful it could be because it's just another way of connecting just like the damn Tiki Talks. We need to hire younger people to understand these things. It's crazy how fast you go from in the know and young to old, like so fucking fast. Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. I mean, the slang nowadays, I don't even, I don't even know.

It's like I stopped using social media for like four months and now it's like entirely different language online. I don't know. Hopefully my daughter will teach me one day. I always thought that I was gonna have a chance to like, be a cool dad one day. And now that, you know, I'm hitting the end of my 20s, and I'm starting to see, you know, some of the, the slang switch, and what's going on, I'm like, there's no fucking chance.

I'm gonna be that dude with... You know, high socks and new balances and Jean shorts, and I'm just going to have to accept it. Yep. Yep. That's all right. Well, I think I think we found a good place to close. We are so excited that we're. Finally, we're able to have you on this has been this has been amazing.

You, you, in that wild story segment, you almost made me cry in two different ways. And I would say that's a first for the show. So that's awesome. So thank you so much for being on the show, Jordan. No, thank you for having me. It's awesome. Being able to share my story and our story with all of you guys.

So appreciate you guys and what you do so important to bring the, this is a type of awareness to our work. Awesome. Thank you, Jordan. We'll talk to you soon. All right.