Ocean Alliance

The Voyage of the Odyssey was a 5-year program which collected the first baseline data set on contaminants in the world's oceans.[14] It was launched from San Diego in March 2000, and ended five and a half years later in Boston, August 2005.[15][16]

In a 1979 National Geographic magazine article Ocean Alliance founder and president Dr. Roger Payne predicted that toxic pollution would replace the harpoon as the next greatest threat to whales.[1] Recognizing the stark lack of data on the subject, Roger set his organisation Ocean Alliance the task of obtaining a global baseline data set on contaminants.[17]

After years of planning and fund-raising, the program was finally ready to launch in 2000. In the executive summary of the project, Roger stated that, ‘The Voyage of the Odyssey has proven irrefutably that ocean life is becoming polluted to unacceptable levels by metals and human-made contaminants.’

The focus of the program was on Sperm whales, a cosmopolitan species found in every major ocean.[18] As long-lived apex predators, Sperm whales represent a useful bioindicator of health in the marine ecosystem in a toxicological context, owing to the effects of three key processes: bioaccumulation, biomagnification and the generation effect.[1] Sadly, these three processes also make Sperm whales, and other apex predators, at great risk from toxic pollution. As mammalian apex predators that nurse their young with milk, they are also relatively similar to us, and thus are seen as the ‘canaries in the golf mine’ regards humanities relationship with the oceans.

The program also had a robust educational and outreach component. In every country they visited, Odyssey crew members met with government leaders, students, teachers and journalists-many of whom kept promoting ocean health after the Odyssey departed for its next research location.[15] The program was also the focus of a major online diary & educational webpage through American broadcaster PBS.[4]

Aside from collecting the first baseline data set on contaminants in the world's oceans, the program was witness to a number of other successes, innovations and firsts. These include:

• uncovering illegal shark finning operations[19]

• documenting the use of massive drift nets in the Mediterranean[20]

• helping to create a 1.2 million square-mile marine mammal sanctuary in Papua New Guinea waters[21]

• made incredibly rare sightings of a live Longman's beaked whale[22]

• recorded sightings of blue whales in equatorial waters where they were thought never to be present[12]

• the first successful satellite tag on a sperm whale (by visiting scientist Bruce Mate)[23]

• the first electrocardiogram of a sperm whale (by visiting scientist Dr. Jorge Reynolds)[24]

• the training of over 100 scientists from Latin America in the benign research techniques developed by the Ocean Alliance;[12]

• the first successful underwater sonar tracking of sperm whales throughout their dives,[12]

• technique for placing remote sensing packages on the backs of whales and for acquiring skin samples more easily.[12]

On the program, Roger Payne commented that, ‘Saving marine animals from the insidious effects of pesticides, fire retardants, plasticizers, and poisonous metals is not a selfless act. By saving the ocean for whales, we may just be able to save countless other oceanic species and leave our children and grandchildren a healthy ocean rather than one contaminated with the by-products of our progress.’ More information on the Voyage of the Odyssey can be found on Ocean Alliance's website.

The Patagonia Right Whale program is one of the longest continually running studies on great whales:[25] as of 2014 the program entered its 44th year.[26] Ocean Alliance founder Dr. Roger Payne set up the program in 1970, on realizing that he could identify individual whales based on the patterns of cyamids (whale lice) on their heads. This opened up an enormous opportunity to gain far more information on the life-history of individual whales than had previously been possible. Roger also recognized its significance as it enabled him to learn far more from a live whale than the whaling community was learning from dead whales.[27]

The program is now ran by Dr. Victoria Rowntree, in conjunction with Dr. Mariano Sironi of the Instituto Conservación de Ballenas.[26] The unique long-term nature of this program has produced a number of significant discoveries relating to the ecology, biological life cycle,[28] ethology and conservation of these species. As time has gone on, the program has been expanded to include genetics, feeding ecology and bioacoustics. The techniques that initially Roger Payne, and later on Victoria Rowntree and Instituto Conservacion de Ballenas,[9] pioneered are now well-established among cetacean science programs worldwide.

So called because they were the ‘right’ whale to kill,[29] Southern right whales were brought to the verge of extinction during the early 20th century.[30] Their enormous blubber reserves caused the animals to float after being killed, whilst their slow-moving nature made them easy targets. Whilst significant conservation threats still remain (primarily habitat loss), many populations have shown slow signs of recovery. The long-term objective of the Patagonian Right Whale Program is to promote and facilitate this recovery.[25]

In April 2010, approximately 210 million gallons of oil was released into the Gulf of Mexico marine environment following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.[31] In response, over 2 million gallons of oil dispersant was released, in unprecedented quantities and untested ways,[32] in an effort to break up and sink the oil.

In July 2010, Ocean Alliance, in partnership with the Wise Laboratory of Environmental and Genetic Toxicology, took the RV Odyssey into the area in an effort to determine the, often over-looked, long-term impacts of this environmental catastrophe.[33] After such incidents, people often look no further than the immediate impact: death tolls of particular species are logged, population declines/increases recorded, and these figures are seen as broadly representative of the environmental damage. The toxicological work being conducted by Ocean Alliance and their partners at the Wise Lab was primarily aimed at determining the chronic, long-term impact of the incident-in particular the geno-toxic impacts of oil (and compounds found in oil) and dispersants as they work their way up the trophic food chain.[34]

The long-term effects are believed by many to be far more significant than the short-term effects, a belief corroborated by on-going research in the Gulf of Mexico[35][36][37] and the fact that the impacts of the Exxon Valdez spill (which occurred in 1985 in Prince William Sound, Alaska) are still being studied over 25 years after the initial accident. In terms of total discharge of oil, this spill was approximately one tenth of the Deepwater Horizon spill. Perhaps the most significant economic impact of the Exxon Valdez disaster-the collapse of the Herring fishery, only collapsed four years after the spill, and to this day is not showing signs of recovery.[38] This makes the kind of long-term focused program Ocean Alliance conducted all the more important. Preliminary analysis has shown potentially damaging levels of genotoxic metals including chromium and nickel in Sperm whales living in the area, significantly higher than the global average.[39] Furthermore, it has shown a correlation between proximity to the spill and levels of these genotoxic metals.[39]

To achieve this aim of conducting a long-term analysis, Ocean Alliance monitored the top apex predator of the region, the Sperm whales.[40] A resident, non-migratory population of Sperm whales resides in the Northern Gulf of Mexico in close proximity to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. As apex predators, Sperm whales act as bio indicators of the health of the marine ecosystem in a toxicological context, demonstrating the effects of three key processes: bioaccumulation, biomagnification and the generation effect. These processes also make Sperm whales, and other apex predators, at greater risk from toxic pollution. Significantly, the data which was collected could be placed into the global data-set acquired during The Voyage of the Odyssey program.

Ocean Alliance conducted this study for 5 years, during each summer from 2010 to 2014. For the final two years, they were joined by activist group the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, as part of a program labelled Operation Toxic Gulf.[41] This afforded the program much more exposure than was previously possible.

SnotBot is a research program started and ran by whale and ocean health non-profit Ocean Alliance. Within this research program, Ocean Alliance use drones to collect respiratory samples (or, in essence, snot) from whales by flying the drone through the blow or spout of a whale. This spout consists of a mixture of biological and non-biological compounds from which various facets of a whale's health and ecology can be inferred.[42]

Ocean conservation group Parley for the Oceans have been the primary partners and funders of the SnotBot program.[43]

The SnotBot program was initiated in 2014, as an attempt to explore and harness the potential which drones had in whale science.[44][45] At first, Ocean Alliance developed their own drones alongside researchers and students at Olin College of Engineering,[46] before moving to consumer drones made by manufacturers such as DJI [47] and Yuneec.[48]

The initial SnotBot expeditions were funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign, which included a campaign video featuring Star Trek and X-Men actor Sir Patrick Stewart.[49] The first three expeditions took place in Patagonia, Argentina; The Sea of Cortez, Mexico; and Alaska, the United of America.[50]

Since then, four more expeditions have taken place: two more to the Sea of Cortez and two more to Alaska. The team have collected samples from five species of whale including blue whales, orca, gray whales, southern right whales and humpback whales [51]

The primary SnotBot team has consisted of Ocean Alliance CEO Dr. Iain Kerr, photographer and cameraman Christian Miller,[52] Ocean Alliance Science Manager Andy Rogan [53] and Ocean Alliance technician John Graham [54]

The program has also seen considerable attention in the press. It has been featured in two National Geographic documentaries, Earth Live and One Strange Rock;[55] has been presented at the UN,[48] the Singularity Global Summit,[56] various academic conferences, trade shows[57] and academic institutions.[58][59]