Photos of South Africa from Bill McWeeny
SA
Tab
Dec. 2, 2007
Dear Students,
Greetings from South Africa. What a beautiful country it is and I
have seen only a small part of it. If you have been reading my
blog on the school website you will know that I have been busy at the
17th Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals. It is hosted by
the Society for Marine Mammalogy. Scott Kraus, Roz Rolland, Amy
Knowlton, Yan Guilbault and I are holding up the New England Aquarium
end of the meetings. It is a very exciting time and almost like
being back in college for me.
I hope you are doing good work with Mrs. Daly. The 5th and 6th
grades had some information filled tabs and I hope you are taking your
time and doing a great job with them as you learn the concepts.
I?m sure that those who do a good job and finish in good time will be
allowed to decorate the room and school. I can?t wait to see all
that you have done!
I have to let the seventh grade know that I saw Dr. Yez Ahahh here in
South Africa. The good doctor was pleased to hear I gave the
letter to you and that you are working on a report. Yez is very
appreciative of it!
The 8th graders should know that their Never Cry Wolf essay will be a
very important exercise for them. This conference is all about
using good science, and using your own experiences, opinions and
emotions is a must for solving problems in the world. Every major
speaker has said so and you are learning the message at a young
age. Keep editing your essay until it is filled with great
details and examples showing your knowledge of Advanced Ecology and
what it could do for the world.
Yesterday we rented a car and drove a hundred kilometers down the coast
to watch southern right whales from a park bench! Yep! Just
read the blog.
The conference ends on Monday night and we are off to Kruger National
Park and a safari with all sorts of African animals. Just the
different types of birds alone number in the hundreds.
I miss you all and cannot wait to see you in a week or so,
Mr. Mc
PS Mr. Nelson and Mrs. Daly should print this letter out so you
can paste it into your science journal and tab it. SA
If the two pages are reduced to 65% they will fit sideways onto a
single sheet of paper.
Entry # 3.0 SA
Bill McWeeny, Amy Knowlton
December 1, 2007
Cape Town, South Africa
Yesterday was a great day all around. It started with a plenary
session by Bernd Wursig who talked about Marine Mammals Without
Boarders; Issues for the 21st Century. Bernd suggested that the current
approaches to solving marine mammal sustainability problems (ivory
tower approach, argumentative approach and consensus approach) do not
work. These approaches have just stalled and failed policy that
would help marine mammals survive and recover. He said that an
approach that he calls Bounded Conflict is the way to go.
He used two examples to illustrate the Bounded Conflict model: The
endangered western gray whale in the Pacific and the Dusky Dolphin in
New Zealand. The western gray whales living around Japan and
China (not the plentiful eastern gray whale in California) has a
birthing habitat that industry wants to build oil-drilling platforms
in. Years of arguing and consensus building lead to little
progress. Finally the opposing sides were brought together to
really communicate with each other. The discussion lead to the
admission by environmentalists that stopping industry was unrealistic
and by industry that the situation was a complex problem and that it
could find some ways to avoid the whales. Now supply ships go
around the whales and drilling effects are diligently kept to a minimum.
The second example is about a very healthy population of dusky dolphins
that are not endangered as a group but individuals face habitat
depletion because of mussel farms in the coves and bays they
inhabit. A number of parties involved including the Maui were
brought together in sharing sessions. The group developed their
own moratorium on mussel farm expansion and therefore the protection of
habitat for the dolphins. The local mussel farmers were very much
a part of the solution.
Bernd noted that when opposing groups are brought together in Bounded
Conflict each member has the same result in mind, protection of the
environment (for different reasons). In such a setting ?pressure
to do the right thing? overcomes many arguments and leads to
solutions. Having heard this talk I could not help but
think how much the Bounded Conflict approach might help our lobster
fisheries and the entanglement controversy. I hope the Calvineers
get a chance to work on this!
During the day we attended a number of talks. Each talk was
interesting in its own way. Scientists, however, like any group
of human beings have individuals who are good at communicating and not
so good. Luckily, most speakers were entertaining as well as
serious. Here is the list of talks attended:
? Ecological risk to cetaceans from anthropogenic
ocean sound: characterization analysis using a professional judgment
approach to uncertainty. Amanda Truett
? Flight or Fight: antipreditor strategies in baleen
whales. John Ford
? A foraging model for predicting the risk of vessel
strike to North Atlantic right whales. Charles Stormy Mayo
(Consortium Member)
? A systematic approach to cumulative effects
analysis on bowhead whales. Anne Southam
? Metadata: a precautionary tale from the Bering
Sea. Guy Oliver
? Estimating generation length and percent mature for
Red List assessment of Cetaceans. Barbara Taylor
? Detection of beaked whales using near surface towed
hydrophones: prospects for survey and mitigation. Douglas Gillespie
(Longtime NEAq friend from UK)
? Marine mammal noise exposure: data review,
science-based criteria, and research needs. Brandon Southall
? Health Assessment of North Atlantic right whales
using fecal samples. Roz Rolland (NEAq team member)
? Daily movement of a frontal zone and its influence
on cetaceans off Cape Hatteras, NC. Erin LaBrecque (worked with
NEAq and is now a doctoral student at Duke)
? Habitat characterization of Blue whales
(Balaenoptera musculus) off California. Ladd Irvine
? Zoonotic disease surveillance and antibiotic
resistance patterns in marine mammals and seabirds on the northeast
United States coast. Andrea Bogomolni (works with Michael
Moore at WHOI, Woods Hole)
? Gas emboli in seals and dolphins entangled in
gillnets. Michael Moore (RW Consortium Chairperson)
? Enhancement of tropical marine activity through
large whale migrations: humpback whales on the Hawaiian wintering
grounds. George Antonelis
? Reproduction impacts the survival of female
humpback whales. Jooke Robbins (Provincetown Center for
Coastal Studies)
Whew! What an information filled day! I will admit that I
was challenged many times with the science and statistics, but the
overall effect left me thinking that we know an awful lot about marine
mammals. We also have many unanswered questions.
One thing was becoming clearer to me. The science of marine
mammals is extensive and even though there are many unanswered
questions, there is plenty of data to base sound decisions on.
Why is it that there is so much data about the increased survival of
right whales at slow speeds with large vessels, but six years after the
data was available the rule is still not passed, being held up with
white house politics? And it is not just the speed rule.
There is a preponderance of evidence for other policy changes that just
seems to be ignored. I felt the frustration of many scientists
today. Of course the scientists are realizing they have to become
better communicators and also that education is a key to changing
policy. Calvineers rule! Education is an important tool.
We again attended the hour-long poster session from 5:30 to 6:30.
Just picture a large hall filled with a thousand scientists and
hundreds of provocative posters about research being done on marine
mammals. I can?t begin to tell you the depth and scope of the
conversations. Nor did I try to take notes. Everywhere
people were engaged in discussing marine mammals and the ocean
environment. Truly overwhelming.
Cape Town is a very modern city. It is hard to think
otherwise. The people of all skin shades, are beautiful and
friendly. Down town feels very much like Boston or Baltimore with
large buildings, plenty of traffic and a busy waterfront. I feel
very much at home here yet the poverty just outside the city, in the
shantytowns is striking. For every sophisticated city dweller
there must be scores of poor people. The social attitude is
strong, stronger than in the states. People maintain their city
well. It is clean and comfortable. I would go so far to say
they are proud of their way of life and I envy them in their comfort
with such a life style.
We had another wonderful dinner at a local restaurant and discussed
many of the day?s happenings. This is the way life should be, at
least occasionally, for each person on the planet. Everyone
should have the luxury of being challenged and stimulated with new
ideas and then given even more time to apply those ideas in
conversation with colleagues and friends. Our dinner lasted a
good two hours. It was luxurious.
It seems to me that we, as teachers, ought to be trying to do the same
for our students?.challenge and then provide time and space for
?conversation?. Could we do anything better?
Bill McWeeny
(Not so random thoughts in the middle of the night in South Africa)
Pictures attached: Downtown Street Parade, More poster
session talk, close up Beluga poster, shantytown outside of Cape Town
proper, Conference Center logos
Entry # 2.0 SA
Bill McWeeny, Amy Knowlton
November 30, 2007
Cape Town, South Africa
International E-mail is a blessing and a frustration! Suffice to
report that blogs will be intermittent.
Wednesday evening there was an Ice-Breaker reception at The Castle, a
pentagon shaped stone structure built in the 1600?s and reported to be
the oldest surviving building in South Africa. This was a perfect
setting for a thousand scientists to mingle. The fort was
charming with foyers and windows everywhere opening onto a fountain and
pooled lighted courtyard. Two bands played, the first a
traditional African one (tell Babba Kevin) and the second more modern
but playing lots of African beat music. Wine and food were
plentiful.
At the Ice-Breaker I talked to many participants I had just seen at the
North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium in New Bedford just three weeks
ago. I also met new people who worked with right whales and
beyond. Joy is from Mt. Sinai School of medicine and
interested in sound production in the nasal cavities of large whales
(as opposed to larynx noise). Erin from North Carolina and is
applying oceanography to the biology of whales for her doctoral thesis
at Duke. We all found her work inspiring because she was using a new
lens to look at old questions. Surprisingly she discovered that
oceanographers knew many things that biologists ought to know and visa
versa. She is indeed on a path of consilience (see E.O. Wilson?s
book Consilience). Quite frankly, the conversations were
overwhelming and never ending?very stimulating. How wonderful the
amount and diversity of research being done with marine mammals.
I should mention to the Calvineers that they are internationally famous
and being talked about in South Africa! Numerous people commented
to me about their presentation at the Consortium. They used words
like professional, inspiring and moving to describe the
presentation. Vicki Cornish from Washington DC is in the process
of getting funding for the Calvineers to go to Washington and lobby for
right whale rules. Tell Meredith Olivari that Regina
Cambell-Malone had high praise for all the Calvineers and would like to
hear about her interest in modeling!
The next day was the opening session of the
Conference. The keynote speaker was Toshio Kasuya who
has been working in Japan for 46 years researching whale hunting and
its effect on their populations. Interestingly, he is one
scientist who also speaks out against killing whales and has been
successful at getting quotas on certain species based on his meticulous
science over the years. His message was for all scientists to use
their knowledge and to speak out as individuals in favor of
conservation measures that make sense while at the same time helping
people understand the science behind the proposed measures. He
was awarded the Kenneth S, Norris Lifetime Achievement Award for all
this. I was inspired by his work and activism and it confirmed
the mission of the Calvineers: Endangered Species Recovery Through
Education.
The rest of the day we attended numerous lectures by scientists all
over the world. These talks included:
? Ice and shine: How ice movements and day-length
influence the dive and haulout patterns of Weddell seals. Martin
Biuw
? Global patterns in marine mammal distributions:
hotspots, coldspots and the implementation for conservation.
Sandra Pompa-Mansilla
? New techniques in cultured fibroblasts from
Mediterranean cetaceans as a new ?in vitro? tool to investigate effects
of environmental contaminants. Letizia Marsili
? Right whales in deep time: the systematics,
biogeography, and paleoecology of the Balaenidae. Morgan Churchill
? The influence of body condition on buoyancy in
North Atlantic right whales. Anna McGregor
? Seasonal movements and spring migration of South
African right whales to summer feeding grounds off South Africa, in the
Antarctic and on historical sub-tropical whaling areas. Bruce
Mate Seasonal distribution patterns of North Atlantic right
whales (Eubalaena glacialis) in the Gulf of Maine. Timothy Cole
? Lonely males- gregarious females? Social
organization and association patterns of North Atlantic right whales in
Cape Cod Bay. Nathalie Jaquet
Obviously a number of talks centered on our friends the North Atlantic
right whales all in one concurrent session. There are three
concurrent sessions going on at a time and sometimes running back and
forth gets busy. There are about 60 talks given per day for four
and one half days.
Needless to say I filled my journal with many pages of notes and
thoughts. The sessions ended at 5:30 and then we attended a
poster session. There are hundreds of poster presentations by
scientists and students about their marine mammal work. Some of
the general subjects are acoustics, marine mammal bycatch, anatomy,
behavior, behavior ecology, biologging and new technology, climate
change, communication, conservation, disease/medicine, ecologygenetics,
habitat & distribution, human interactions, evolution, physiology,
polar biology, population biology, etc., etc.
We went to the waterfront for dinner. The walk to the waterfront
and the area itself is striking. Clock Tower Square is the center
of the activity with shops and restaurants all around a large basin
marina. We ate at the Greek Fisherman?.marvelous food! The
dinner lasted for a couple of hours while Amy, Yan, Annie and I
analyzed the day?s activities. Our most interesting observation
was that there seemed to be a lot of emphasis about scientists being
more active in policy making?showing their own bias toward conservation
solutions as long as they grounded in sound science. From Toshio
Kasuya to Bruce Mate, many speakers strongly suggested we look at the
big picture and speak out, not just for the endangered species but also
for the whole ecosystem!
Amy has noticed this approach seems to be ?new? this year compared to
other conferences. It has been acknowledged that the old approach
really is not working with many examples like the Baiji dolphin going
extinct when it could have been saved. Perhaps on our first day
of the conference Amy and I have found the theme, the paradigm shift
about to take place that will change the way scientists deal with the
world. As one scientist said today, ?The ivory tower approach to
solving problems (simply) does not work!? It is time to move the
process on.
Pictures attached: African Band, View from Veranda, The Castle
Courtyard at IceBreaker, Yan, Annie and Erin discussing oceanography,
clock Tower Square, Greek Fisherman Resturant.
Bill McWeeny
Entry # 1.0 SA
Bill McWeeny, Amy Knowlton
November 28, 2007
Cape Town, South Africa
Before the conference begins there are a number of workshops taking
place. This morning I am at a workshop about DIGITS being run by
Amy Knowlton and Yan Guilbault from the New England Aquarium.
DIGITS is the software program developed to help scientists keep track
of and catalogue all the images of right whales from field studies.
There are about a dozen people present at this workshop and there are
two others going on at the same time. I heard the conference will
host just under 1000 people which is a good number of people to
interact with and not too many to overwhelm.
While Amy and Yan are explaining the possible other uses for DIGITS,
like tracking groups of dolphin worldwide, I will ramble on a bit about
our journey here and my first impressions of South Africa.
Let me say that flying for 24 hours is not fun after the first couple
of hours. We left Logan at 2:00PM on Monday and arrived in Cape
Town 3:00 PM Boston time (10:00PM local time). The hardest part
of the trip was a fourteen hour flight from Washington DC to
Johannesburg. It is impossible to sleep for more than an hour or
so even though the Airbus 340-600 is a wonderful plane and quite
comfortable when not trying to sleep.
The flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town was interesting. First
off I did not realize that South Africa is so large. On our
two-hour flight across half the country we saw mostly cultivated land,
it looked kind of like the mid west in the US. One area was being
burned after harvest. The smoke covered an area I estimate at about 10
square miles, maybe more. Burning is also done in the parks
because burning is a natural thing for the landscape and necessary to
maintain the ecosystems.
We are being compensated for the long trip with a beautiful little
apartment that six of us rented for the week. De Waterkant
Village is a small section of Cape Town that is on a hillside
overlooking a very busy harbor. Our apartment is quite modern and
comfortable. Long and skinny with two floors, bedrooms on the first and
kitchen/dining/living and veranda on the second. Scott Kraus, Roz
Rolland and Yan & Annie Guilbault are our roommates. We
talked for about an hour before bed and continued in the morning over
coffee on the veranda. We all were trying to switch gears from
the travel and vacation mode into Conference mode, but it has not been
easy.
Amy and Scott know everybody. We cannot go a block in the city
without running into fellow marine mammologists with warm greetings for
them. The conversations start personal but soon morph to animals
and science. Quite stimulating. And for a right whale crazy
like me, hearing about beaked dolphins, bottlenose porpoise and belugas
gives me perspective. The common ground in all conversations is
the tremendous respect for the animals and for the people studying
them.
Yan and Amy have stimulated a bunch of people to look into DIGITS for
their own research, which is what it is all about. I can tell the
audience is impressed and can see how DIGITS could help them.
Because it was developed with National Science Foundation money it is
in the public domain and anyone can get the software.
After this workshop we can register for the conference. Looks
like we will take a ride up to the top of Table Top Mountain, which is
a landmark in town. The coast is quite rugged with mountains
going right into the ocean. I have to learn more about the
geology of the area but I know the center of the continent is active
and the mountains around here are jagged and probably recently
formed.
Entry # 00 Pre-Blog
Bill McWeeny, Amy Knowlton
November 26, 2007
Cambridge, MA
17th BIENNIAL CONFERENCE ON THE
BIOLOGY OF MARINE MAMMALS
NOVEMBER 28-DECEMBER 3, 2007
CAPETOWN, SOUTH AFRICA
INTRODUCTION
We are traveling diagonally half way around the globe where Brownian
motion will jostle a bunch of sapiens every which way trying to
discover, yet again, an approach. How ought we humans relate to
marine mammals? Indeed, how ought humans relate to the cosmos?
The vessel harboring a diversity of mental projections and eventually
reflections is in the form of an international conference center
nestled into Cape Town, South Africa. The sapiens converge at the
southern end of Africa powered by external propulsion, but once there
an internal energy will take over and all hell will break loose.
Brownian motion will, at times, approach plasma state.
Science, politics, ethics, economics and humanities will be melded into
a cacophonic symphony sounding all the values sapiens know and perhaps
some they do not. We will throw ourselves into this microcosmic
mix of beings and let our individual motions and emotions be bombarded
by macrocosmic idea. Such is the process of being alive.
LOOKING AHEAD
The time is fast approaching for departure. A cab ride to Logan,
short flight to Dulles and a 13-hour flight to Johannesburg followed by
another short flight to Cape Town. The trip will give us time and
“space” to reflect on our mission. Right now I am thinking of the
classes I left behind and the assignments left for them:
The Lost World of Farley Mowat, An Environmental Impact Statement of a
study site and the relation of Life in Ecosystems to the rest of the
world. Oh yes!, and Ratatouille (?), what will the students make
of this film??? Many e-tabs I trust.
I share my goals briefly with the students and will elaborate on them
as the journey proceeds:
8th To discover how sapiens think of and/or use the lost world
7th To report on the value of EIS statements
5th & 6th To bring new examples of Ecosystems home for study
As for Amy, she has prepared her talk on the relationship of cordage
manufacture to the severity of right whale entanglements. She is
looking forward to a healthy discussion of her work.
Most importantly, we are looking at the big picture…. zeroing in on the
theme of how to approach the future so that the natural world continues
to express itself in many awesome ways.
The Journey Begins!