Carl Safina

Don Pachico Mayoral, the first man to make physical contact and develop friendly relationships with some of the gray whales of Baja, Mexico, is gone.

 A stroke took him on Tuesday, October 22, 2013. He was 72.

 I met Don Pachico on the shore of San Ignacio Lagoon a couple of years ago while filming the “Destination Baja” episode of our PBS series, Saving the Ocean. We had a memorable conversation that, in his honor, I’d like to share with you.

 Gray whales give birth in the lagoons of Mexico’s Pacific Baja coastline, and migrate to feeding grounds off Alaska. During the whaling era of the 19^th and early 20^th Centuries, they got a reputation as being very fierce. When they were harpooned they would turn on the whale boats and

smash them to bits. Whalers thought them unusually aggressive.

After commercial whaling was finally banned here in 1947, the species began to bounce back.  There are now more than 20,000 Gray whales, a healthy population.  But their fierce reputation lived on among the fisherman. Mexican fishermen, in their small skiffs, greatly feared them.

 “Every fisherman used a piece of wood to bang on the boats and scare the whales away,” Don Pachico told me. “Nobody had anything nice to say about them.  They were known as the Devil’s fish.”

 All that changed one magical day in 1972.  Pachico was out fishing with a friend when a large whale startled them by surfacing just inches away from the boat.

 “My partner and I were both afraid,” Don Pachico recalled. “The surprise was so intense that our legs were shaking.”

 But instead of threatening the boat, the whale just cozied up to it, and hung out.

 And that’s when Pachico decided to bridge the gap. “I touched the whale very gently and the whale remained calm.” He was remembering the event from four decades earlier, but it was obvious that the memory remained vivid. “Minutes passed, and I kept petting her, until my fear went away.”

 “When you reached out and you touched that first whale,” I asked, trying to imagine his astonishment, “how did it make you feel?” 

 “It was sublime for me,” Don Pachico said, “because when I saw the size of the whale and I was so small by comparison, I gave thanks to God.”

 Eager to share the gift with others, Pachico began taking tourists out to see the whales, and the lagoon’s now-famous whale-based tourism business was born.

 “That day,” I said, “you and the whale, you made peace.  Peace between people and whales. And I think that you changed the world a little that day.” 

 “Whales were heavily hunted by humans,” Don Pachico acknowledged, “yet they are very friendly towards us, and they forgive all the damage we did. That’s why I have a lot of love and respect for them.”

 And that’s why I and thousands of others have a lot of love and respect for Don Pachico Mayoral. He brought a great gift to the world. He has left that gift with us, in our keeping.

 Watch Don Pachico on the “Destination Baja” episode of our PBS series Saving the Ocean at: http://video.pbs.org/program/saving-the-ocean/

The following audio was recorded in March 2013 at Yellowstone National Park.  It was early morning and there were about 9 wild wolves howling from the Lamar Valley pack.  Wolves often howl for no apparent reason, but you can hear that they all sound different – there’s not one stereotypical howl.

Some find it eerie and a bit unpleasant.  I find it eerie and pleasant, but I think for everyone the sound of wolves howling, strikes us as haunting.

For a visual of these spooky sounds, view my photo album here.

The following audio was recorded in early October in Haro Straight off San Juan Island in Washington.  There were about 20 whales or so – if you close your eyes, you can picture the backdrop of a jungle just as easily as the ocean.

A hydrophone was used to capture the sounds, and although it may sound like birds, the recording is only of whale calls.

For more sea sounds, please visit the Salish Sea Hydrophone Network at orcasound.net.

For the book I am working on, last March I visited Yellowstone National Park to observe wild wolves. These photos are all from that trip. All these wolves are wild-living descendants of wild-caught Canadian wolves introduced to Yellowstone after the Park Service exterminated the Park’s wolves in the 1920s. The restoration succeeded, but the story never ends.

I am deeply indebted to Rick McIntyre for sharing his incomporable knowledge. I greatly thank Doug McLaughlin, Sian Jones, and Laurie Lyman for expert guidance and teaching. To keep up with happenings, see YellowstoneReports.com.

To view the album, click here.

With Saving the Ocean, our focus is on people who have solutions.   It is also beautiful, bringing viewers into the majesty and magic of the sea while showcasing practical innovation.

Saving the Ocean is a new kind of TV nature series.   By showing solutions, we give you a glimpse of what’s possible—a vision of hope.  Scaled up, the efforts we’re focusing on could really change things.  So feel energized by some examples of things going right for the ocean and for coastal people.

A positive emphasis on problem-solving is the heart of our series, making it unique among TV shows about nature and the environment.

Saving the Ocean’s 10 half-hour episodes are available for FREE at PBS.org!

Watch instantly here.

 

For episode details and more, visit chedd-angier.com/savingtheocean.

We were just chatting in Ken Balcomb’s kitchen when out of the computer speakers’ white-noise static came a single whistle that stopped all conversation. They were coming!

Moments later the kitchen was full of squeals, squeaks, whoops, buzzes—. At the windows with our binoculars, we confirmed that a familiar group of “resident” or fish-eating killer whales was now in view.

We got into the Center for Whale Research boat and headed out for a closer look, pausing off Pack Point as several killer whales were looking unusually active, arching their backs, diving steeply, seeming in a hurry about whatever had their attention below.

It’s one of the whales’ favorite local salmon-hunting spots. But all the real action was out of view below.

These are “residents,” the fish-eating kind.  Different from the other day’s mammal-eating “transients” and probably they’re different species. There are probably at least 5 species, maybe even 8 species, of killer whales in the world. Here off Washington State there are residents and transients, and in the North Pacific there are also “offshores” who seem to specialize on sharks and are also different genetically.

It’s amazing that we don’t even know how many species there are of such huge and recognizable creatures. But we do know how to threaten them.

Salmon depletion has really hurt the resident killer whales’ infant survival, and the 80 whales of the 3 fish-eating resident pods in this region are designated endangered. My host Ken Balcomb worries that the population may be doomed. After 40 years of work, he carries the burden of that worry. He has twice said to me that he wants to be positive but that the one thing that would help—which would be letting the salmon recover—isn’t being done and doesn’t look likely; the fishermen are too committed to squeezing what they can out of the fish and the agency people are too locked into process and relationships. There’s also too much logging, too many dams, pollutants—and Navy war games involving loud sonar and live bombs whose blasts have killed killer whales.

I saw photos of a 3-year-old female killer whale, L-112, a.k.a. Victoria—a “sweet little whale,” said Ken—who’d been a favorite of whale-watchers here, very playful and acrobatic. She was found dead, hemorrhages all over her head, earbones blown off their attachments, blood in her ear canals and eyes. The near-certain cause of death was a Navy bomb dropped—as part of a training exercise—right into the whales’ living room.

But I, too, want to be positive. Just across the strait, in Canada, the resident whales’ numbers are increasing a bit. That means there’s hope. But they do need abundant fish. Food is key. We have to leave enough. We can’t take it all. We need to let salmon recover. Then the whales can recover,  too. After all, when this place teemed with salmon, it also teemed with whales.

So from California right up through Alaska, where salmon-dependent killer whales roam, do what you can to ensure the future of abundant salmon. Oppose the salmon-snuffing Pebble Mine proposal in Alaska. And help fight back on Navy war games. Search for the keywords: fight pebble mine. And also search for: fight navy sonar.

You can also get informed by reading the government’s recovery plan < http://www.nwr.noaa.gov/publications/protected_species/marine_mammals/cetaceans/killer_whales/esa_status/srkw-recov-plan.pdf>, for the “resident” whales I was seeing.

I was just standing on researcher Ken Balcomb’s kitchen porch looking out at Haro Strait, from Washington toward Vancouver Island, Canada, watching killer whales going by.

Cool enough, but these were not the usual “residents” who hunt salmon. They were “transients;” mammal eaters. One way we knew: We’d been listening to the nearby hydrophones set up by orcasound.net (you can eavesdrop too, on the Web) but we heard nothing when we noticed the whales coming around the corner. The fish-eaters are chatterboxes, very vocal. The transients are silent stalkers, hunting with their sonar but being quiet about it, so they don’t give their location away to mammals they hunt.

Ken saw a seal pop its head up and go down. Ken said the seal wasn’t reacting evasively, adding, “reaction right now is crucial.”

Suddenly several male killer whales were surging through a spreading slick under and a couple of dipping gulls.

Then I saw one of the whales surface momentarily with a piece of the seal.

The 3 males that were in on that kill are about 27 feet long and weigh about 17,000 pounds. The seal they ate weighed about 250 pounds and was gone in under a minute.

The so-called transient, mammal-eating killer whales have been showing up increasingly in recent years. They continue to benefit from the increasing seal numbers following the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972. In such slow growing, long-lived creatures as killer whales, their recovery, following the lengthy recovery of the seals they hunt for food, is a decades-long proposition.

That’s the good news. The situation is more difficult for the fish-eating killer whales, whose food—salmon—have been severely depleted. The whales’ fate follows the fate of their food.

This weekend I got the opportunity to experience a wildlife phenomenon that’s rather far removed from the ocean and wildlife I usually study and write about. Turns out that my friend Andy bought 14 acres of land around the largest hibernation site for Timber Rattlesnakes that exists anywhere.

He did that quite on purpose. Why would anyone want a few green acres with about a thousand snakes whose Latin name is horridus? Three reasons: Because they belong there, they’re threatened in much of their range, and they need protection.

So where is this den, you’re asking? Well, I was asked not to say, for three reasons: because they’re threatened, they need protection, and there are too many people who would like to come and illegally take or kill the snakes.

The den is among some rocks, and at this time of year the snakes migrate—yes, migrate—to the den site, converging on it from some distance around. That means that if you are around the site, there’s a snake every few steps.

And that was a bit hairy. There were several of us, and only two of us (including me) wore any leg protection. It would have been pretty easy to step on one of these hard-to-see creatures. So we were very careful.

We watched some of them moving slowly through dry leaves, their flickering tongue picking up the scents of other snakes who’d preceded them.

And they were beautiful. Most were about three feet long. One was maybe four feet. A five foot Timber Rattler would be a monster-big one. They come in a yellowish and black forms, but even the yellowish ones have dark tails.

The snakes were mostly very docile. A couple decided to slowly move away. Most just stayed where they were. Confidence. None tried to bluff us or do anything aggressive. And in the main den opening I saw several snakes and human ashes. One man loved these snakes that much.

As you can imagine, though, most people are not kind to rattlesnakes. And while rattlesnakes are not particularly kind to people, people are by far the more aggressive of the two species. For a while, anyone killing a rattlesnake could get paid a “bounty.” Roads, habitat destruction, sheer hatred, and heavy pressure from collectors all take their toll. Their range has shrunk and many observers believe numbers at dens are down 50 to 80 percent in the last 40 years or so.

Until recently, nothing people did helped the snakes’ cause (which, like ours, is to stay alive as long as they can). Now they benefit from legal protection, from people like my friend, and from people who know how to keep a secret.

Further reading on the status of Timber Rattlers: http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/64318/0

 

 

By Carl Safina

Originally posted on Huffington Post 8/4/2013:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-safina/gas-fracking-no-time-for-_b_3705005.html

My friend Andrew Revkin, whom I greatly respect, has lately been pointing out certain problems with critiques of gas fracking, and pointing out how it could be greatly improved, e.g.: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/01/two-climate-analysts-fault-gas-leaks-but-not-as-a-big-warming-threat/?src=recg

They want more gas until something better can come along. This is the “bridge” argument. Those proponents viewing fracking from the sidelines see that gas is cleaner than coal—well, what isn’t?—and thus a “bridge” between coal and the next big thing. (The ones in it for the money couldn’t care less about “bridges;” they’d burn theirs if someone paid them enough.) The “bridge” proponents see gas as the best thing to use while we’re building our new energy future by scaling up clean renewables like sunlight and wind and geothermal which come perpetually for free once you build the structures to harness them.

Revkin and others whom he cites want improvements in the fracking process and offer nuanced arguments for how that could be accomplished. But my observation is that people in the energy business aren’t into nuance; they’re into fast, heavy moneymaking. And they are exquisitely good at it.

Anyway, what I want to ask here is, could any nuance alter the conclusion that fracking is bad and should be stopped, since the following two things are true:
Water supplies can get contaminated, and when fracking moves into an area, property values can sink to zero.

Is there anything else in which we deem it OK to ruin peoples’ homes and communities so some people can make more money? Didn’t we decide a long time ago that we need to protect things; what kind of country exempts one practice—fracking for gas—from its Clean Water Act, since the process contaminates water? The America I want and have loved doesn’t sell its core values. And yet we’ve done just that for fracking.

Aren’t some downsides big enough to be deal-breakers? Isn’t this all it boils to? There are two sides to the story but they are the usual: some want it for the short-term money, and some don’t because they’re long-term harmed.

And if economics incentivizes export of the gas, followed by price hikes, doesn’t this become another “too cheap to meter” pipedream? Aren’t we all set up to be totally duped, accepting fracking with the dangle of cheap prices only to be force-fed high prices as soon as enough people switch onto it that world gas prices can be hiked?

America could become “the Saudi Arabia of gas,” but I’d rather it just be America the beautiful. (Why doesn’t Saudi Arabia aspire to become the America of the Middle East?) Call me conservative in that sense. I’d rather we hold a white light at the end of a tunnel rather than a blue flame amidst poisoned water and divided communities.

What might seem idealistic daydreaming by those opposed is also visionary resistance to a major foreseeable disaster that’s well underway. Idealism always calls to mind Thoreau’s line of practical advice, “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

I think a lot is at stake, and when facts are arrayed about the benefits of gas, one needs to be realistic about the how of this playing-out (the politics, economics, and mainly the usual human psychology), followed by and a yes/no decision about whether fracking is OK or wrong.

I don’t think it’s OK.

I wish I did, because gas would be better than oil or coal. As if it was that simple; oil and coal will still be very much used. And though it may be simplistic to conclude the following, this simple conclusion is as valid and fact-based as any conclusion that argues that we need global fracking: we should elevate self-renewing sources in an Apollo-mission way, with Manhattan Project urgency—because it’s the right thing to do and the need is urgent. Isn’t either one of those two reasons always reason enough? Isn’t that the best reason?

Forget bridges, let’s get to the other side with all due haste and urgency, massively build up our renewable infrastructure, and stop nuancing more of the same drill-baby-drill catastrophe.

Originally posted on National Geographic 6/15/2013: http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/06/15/gyre-expeditio…nesday-june-12/ ‎

A mile down the beach and a mile out on the flat more-or-less, another mother trails three cubs from clam-hole to clam-hole. When she spots a big dark male headed her way from half a mile away, she moves off, in a hurry and a worry, frequently glancing over her shoulder and occasionally breaking into a slow-bounding run that her cubs work hard to match.

Males sometimes kill cubs. For about 45 minutes she continues moving while he, frequently sniffing their trail, follows, closing the gap. He looks huge, the hump on his shoulder thick and high as a buffalo’s. I’d be scared to see him trailing me. And she shares that sentiment.

She goes pretty far down the beach and he gives up his idle pursuit and comes up the beach and over the berm and into the meadow, where we lose track.

She immediately relaxes, and starts digging clams with what’s left of the low tide; rising water is swallowing her shellfish buffet. In binoculars and camera, I admire the blond shine of her head and the dark burnished back of her neck to the deep fur of her dark shoulders.

All the activity has tired out her little cubs. They take little naps, resting their chins on their paws, as their mother digs. As she moves, they rouse and trail her closely, then as she digs again, they plop again. They’re exhausted.

Kip Evans, J. J. Kelly, and I walk down the beach toward her, duck over the berm so as not to bother her, and re-emerge at the point where she is straight out from us on the flat 100 yards away. She seemed so hopelessly distant when we first saw her, and now here she is, coming toward the beach as the tide eats up her dinner table.

The cubs nap more, and then she, too, lies down and closes her eyes. Every few minutes she checks her world. You know she worries about males; males are all she has to worry about right now.

The tide wets her cubs and wakes them. Then rouses her.

The whole GYRE shore-party plus rangers has now caught up with us, and we’re all assembled in one group.

The mother bear walks directly towards us. A grizzly and three cubs, walking directly towards us. A ranger tells us to bunch closer.

She comes right over the berm with her babes, immediately alongside the logs we’re sitting on, just a few feet from us all, looking enormous and gorgeous, her cubs perfect and adorable and curious. She move a little past and stops to graze less than 60 feet away.

She is stuffing her jaws with salad as her babies look over at us, standing for a better look in the tall grass. One of them, seeking a height advantage, climbs its mother’s back for a better look at us.

The mama bear is completely relaxed, and I have an idea why. I think she came to our group for the same reason we’re grouped: safety in numbers. In our presence, she can let down her guard. Any male would think twice about coming over here with all of us around. Calmly she munches, again moving a little closer.

And of our group, I am closest to her. I feel not the slightest fear. She is completely mellowed out. A little bit of a meeting of minds, perhaps? Perhaps not. But the proximity is her choice, and it’s my preference, so yes, perhaps.

She is now very close. I can clearly see the flies she’s scaring up, that’s how close. And the deep pile of her fur, and the scruffy light hairs on the cubs’ capes.

After eating a while, she decides to go from us, walking along a deep bear trail across the meadow, her cubs in a trailing train. She tops a rise, and when she gets over, it’s over.

I turn. Andy is streaming tears. I give him a hug. He puts on his sunglasses, turns away, and wipes his eyes. J.J.’s eyes are wet too. At least half our people are wiping their faces, breaking into nervous laughs. The chatter of humans returns.

What a gift, in this national park, where people come to bear-witness and no person hunts or seeks to harm them and they understand they are safe from us and they respond accordingly. Soon the salmon will come running and summer will turn fat enough to grow the biggest Brown Bears on Earth, in some of the densest numbers. These bears have hit the lottery. They are rich and privileged bears. And lucky ones.

Our relationship with nature is so distorted and often so full of harm and hazard. I did not mind an unnatural encounter so full—for a change—of peace and appreciation. If that could be all that was unnatural, I’d be all for it. I was grateful that our mother bear did not seem to hold against us the tons of trash we’d sent to her babies’ beach. Nor did she thank us for removing it. Nor should she.

That’s the way it should be.