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When Whale Food Moves: Climate Change, Crab Traps, and Pop-Up Gear
2026-10-08 | 10 min.
In 2014, a patch of unusually warm water nicknamed "the blob" settled off the west coast of North America. The cold, food-rich water that normally stretches far offshore shrank into a narrow strip along the coast, and hungry humpback whales followed their food straight into the waters where Dungeness crabbers had set thousands of traps, each tied to a vertical rope. Entanglements jumped from about 10 a year to 53 in 2015 and 55 in 2016.
In this episode, Andrew traces the line from warmer water to a specific whale in a specific rope. You'll learn why lunge-feeding whales depend on dense patches of krill and anchovy, what scientists mean by habitat compression, and how a toxic algae bloom delayed the crab season right into the humpbacks' spring arrival. Then the story turns to California, where crabbers, scientists, managers, and conservation groups built a fix together: pop-up gear, a ropeless trap that keeps its line and buoy on the seafloor until the fisher sends a signal.
After a 2025 trial that landed more than 217,000 pounds of crab during a closure, California approved pop-up gear for spring fishing. Entanglements are still a risk, and Andrew closes with what you can do if you ever see a whale caught in rope. This episode wraps up our week on how whales feed, dive, and move through a changing ocean.
Takeaways
Lunge-feeding whales need dense prey patches, and those patches move with ocean temperature and circulation.
The 2014 to 2016 marine heatwave compressed cold upwelling habitat into a thin coastal band, pulling humpbacks inshore.
A toxic algae bloom delayed the 2016 crab season, putting peak fishing on top of peak whale arrival.
Confirmed humpback entanglements rose from about 10 a year to 53 in 2015 and 55 in 2016.
Pop-up gear removes vertical rope from the water between hauls.
In spring 2025, 12 crabbers hauled 25,721 pop-up traps with 98% reliability and 0.2% gear loss.
California approved pop-up gear for spring closures (April 1 to July 15) in December 2025.
If you see an entangled whale, report it, keep your distance, and never try to free it yourself.
Entanglement hotlines
United States (NOAA): 1-877-SOS-WHALE (1-877-767-9425)
Canada, Pacific (DFO): 1-800-465-4336
Canada, Maritimes (Marine Animal Response Society): 1-866-567-6277
Canada, Quebec (Urgences Mammifères Marins): 1-877-722-5346
Canada, Newfoundland and Labrador (Whale Release and Strandings): 1-888-895-3003
Elsewhere: search for your local marine mammal stranding network and save the number before you head out.
Support Independent Podcasts: https://www.speakupforblue.com/patreon
Need help with your ocean non-profit, company, or project? Get the help you need with Pisces Oceans Inc.: https://www.piscesoceans.ca

Connect with Speak Up For Blue
Website: https://bit.ly/3fOF3Wf
Instagram: https://bit.ly/3rIaJSG
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@speakupforblue
Twitter: https://bit.ly/3rHZxpc
YouTube: www.speakupforblue.com/youtube
The Whale Heart That Beats Twice a Minute
2026-10-07 | 9 min.
Fill your hands with cold water, hold your breath, and press your face in. Your heart slows within seconds. That reflex lives in every whale in the ocean too, and in a blue whale it is pushed so far that the largest heart on Earth can drop to two beats a minute on a deep dive.
In this episode, Andrew walks through the first heart rate recording from a wild blue whale, led by Jeremy Goldbogen's team at Stanford, and a study by Terrie Williams of UC Santa Cruz that tracked narwhals fleeing after release from nets in East Greenland. The narwhals swam as hard as they could while their hearts fell to three or four beats a minute, burning through nearly all their stored oxygen. Andrew also shares what offshore helicopter escape training taught him about holding his breath in cold water.
The episode closes with the good news. Countries around the world already protect whales with distance rules, from 100 yards in the United States to 1,000 metres for endangered Southern Resident orcas in Canada. You will learn the simple steps to take the next time you are on the water with whales, so their dive stays a calm one.
Takeaways
Every mammal has a dive reflex; in some marine mammals it slows the heart by about 90 percent.
A tagged blue whale's heart dropped as low as 2 beats a minute on dives and rose to 25 to 37 at the surface.
Frightened narwhals sprint while their hearts fall to 3 or 4 beats a minute, using 97 percent of their oxygen stores.
Ship traffic, engine noise, and seismic surveys can trigger this costly escape response.
Keep at least 100 metres (about 100 yards) from whales, check local rules, and put your engine in neutral if one surfaces close.
Support Independent Podcasts: https://www.speakupforblue.com/patreon
Need help with your ocean non-profit, company, or project? Get the help you need with Pisces Oceans Inc.: https://www.piscesoceans.ca

Connect with Speak Up For Blue
Website: https://bit.ly/3fOF3Wf
Instagram: https://bit.ly/3rIaJSG
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@speakupforblue
Twitter: https://bit.ly/3rHZxpc
YouTube: www.speakupforblue.com/youtube
The Biggest Mouthful: How Blue Whales Eat and Why Krill Matters
2026-10-06 | 10 min.
A blue whale can swallow a volume of water bigger than its own body in a single gulp. That move, called lunge feeding, is one of the most extreme feats in the animal kingdom, and it only pays off when krill is packed into thick, dense swarms. In a thin patch, a blue whale gets back about six times the energy it spent. In a dense swarm, it gets back more than 200 times.
In this first episode of the Age of Giants series, Andrew breaks down how rorqual whales feed, then follows the krill. In 2025, the Antarctic krill fishery hit its 620,000 tonne precautionary limit for the first time and closed months early, with catches concentrated in the same Antarctic Peninsula waters where whales feed. Andrew also explains the "krill paradox": scientists now know whales eat about three times more than older estimates, and their iron-rich poop fertilizes the plankton that krill depend on. Whales help grow the very swarms they eat.
The episode closes on South Georgia, where whalers killed 42,698 blue whales and surveys recorded one sighting in twenty years. In 2020, researchers counted 58 blue whale sightings in three weeks. Andrew shares one simple action you can take today to keep more krill in the ocean for whales.
Takeaways
Rorqual whales (blue, fin, humpback) feed by lunging, expanding pleated throats to engulf huge volumes of water and prey.
A single blue whale lunge costs roughly 3,000 to 8,000 kilojoules, so lunge feeding only works on dense krill swarms.
A feeding blue whale in the eastern North Pacific can eat about 16 tonnes of krill a day.
The Antarctic krill fishery reached its 620,000 tonne trigger level for the first time in 2025 and closed early.
Whales recycle iron that fuels plankton growth; Southern Ocean whales recycle about one tenth of the iron they did before whaling.
Blue whales are returning to South Georgia after being hunted out locally, about 50 years after whaling ended there.
Action: skip krill oil and choose an algae-based omega-3 supplement.
Support Independent Podcasts: https://www.speakupforblue.com/patreon
Need help with your ocean non-profit, company, or project? Get the help you need with Pisces Oceans Inc.: https://www.piscesoceans.ca

Connect with Speak Up For Blue
Website: https://bit.ly/3fOF3Wf
Instagram: https://bit.ly/3rIaJSG
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@speakupforblue
Twitter: https://bit.ly/3rHZxpc
YouTube: www.speakupforblue.com/youtube
Whales Are Sprinters: What a Blue Whale's Heart Does When It Lunge Feeds
2026-10-05 | 50 min.
What happens to the heart of the largest animal on Earth when it charges into a swarm of krill? Dr. Ashley Blawas, a postdoctoral scholar in Jeremy Goldbogen's lab at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station, joins Andrew to unpack new research published in PNAS that measured the heart rates of lunge-feeding blue whales and humpback whales using suction-cup ECG tags.
Ashley explains the three phases of lunge feeding (accelerate, engulf, filter) and why these giants behave a lot like human sprinters. Their heart rates stay high after each lunge, then gradually recover while they glide and filter, refuelling muscles for the next burst. She also shares how body size gives big whales a heart rate range of roughly sevenfold, compared with about threefold in humans, which may be one of the keys to life at the largest scale.
Along the way, Ashley tells the story of how beach vacations in North Carolina and a biomedical engineering degree at Duke led her to whale physiology, how COVID pushed her PhD into molecular research, and where this work is heading next. Think minke whales, North Atlantic right whales, and one day a "smartwatch" that could help track whale health over time.
Takeaways
Lunge feeding has three phases: acceleration (about 4 m/s), engulfment (a few seconds), and filtering (up to 1 to 1.5 minutes in the largest blue whales).
Blue and humpback whale heart rates mimic human sprinters, staying elevated after a lunge and recovering gradually.
That elevated heart rate likely helps oxygenated blood restore energy stores between lunges.
Big whales access a heart rate scope of roughly 5 to 35 bpm, about sevenfold, versus about threefold in humans.
Data came from nine tag records on blue and humpback whales across multiple field seasons.
Tags attach with suction cups from a roughly 6 m carbon fibre pole and record for about 12 to 36 hours.
Lunge feeding only pays off when prey patches are dense, which makes finding those patches a survival issue.
Future work targets minke whales, ram-feeding right whales, and long-term health indicators like heart rate variability.
Links for Ashley's Work:
The PNAS paper discussed in the episode: Sprint-like cardiac dynamics support repeated acrobatic lunges in foraging rorqual whales
Ashley's website: ashleyblawas.com
Goldbogen Lab: goldbogen.stanford.edu and whales.stanford.edu
Support Independent Podcasts: https://www.speakupforblue.com/patreon
Need help with your ocean non-profit, company, or project? Get the help you need with Pisces Oceans Inc.: https://www.piscesoceans.ca

Connect with Speak Up For Blue
Website: https://bit.ly/3fOF3Wf
Instagram: https://bit.ly/3rIaJSG
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@speakupforblue
Twitter: https://bit.ly/3rHZxpc
YouTube: www.speakupforblue.com/youtube
The Pollution That Breeds: How the Great Lakes Stopped Invaders
2026-10-02 | 19 min.
In 1988, someone found a striped mussel the size of a fingernail in Lake St. Clair. Within a few years, zebra mussels coated pipes, boats, and the bottom of the Great Lakes, and they became the poster child for "it's too late." Andrew closes Marine Pollution week with the pollutant that breaks every rule: a living one that reproduces instead of diluting.
He follows two invaders. Zebra mussels rode in on ship ballast water, clogged power plant intakes, and stripped plankton from the base of the food web. Lionfish, likely released from home aquariums, spread from Florida across the Caribbean and cut the number of young native fish settling on reefs by about 79% in one experiment.
Then comes the fight back. Ballast water rules tightened between 1993 and 2008, and new invasions in the Great Lakes fell 85%, to the lowest rate in two centuries. In the Bahamas, keeping lionfish low on small patches of reef let native fish rebound by 50 to 70%. Andrew wraps with the role every boater and paddler plays: clean, drain, and dry, every time.
Takeaways:
Invasive species are biological pollution, and they multiply over time.
Zebra mussels arrived in ballast water and were found in Lake St. Clair in 1988.
Densities at one Michigan power plant topped 700,000 mussels per square metre within a year.
Lionfish likely reached the Atlantic through aquarium releases and now range from North Carolina to the Caribbean.
Lionfish cut the number of young native fish settling on test reefs by about 79% in five weeks.
Stricter ballast rules dropped new Great Lakes invasions from 26 to 4 per 13-year period.
Keeping lionfish numbers low on targeted reefs let native prey fish rebound by 50 to 70%.
Florida divers removed 31,773 lionfish in the 2024 Lionfish Challenge.
Ontario has required boaters to drain water and remove plants and animals before moving a boat overland since 2022.
Clean, drain, and dry every boat, canoe, kayak, or paddleboard between waterways.
Support Independent Podcasts: https://www.speakupforblue.com/patreon
Need help with your ocean non-profit, company, or project? Get the help you need with Pisces Oceans Inc.: https://www.piscesoceans.ca

Connect with Speak Up For Blue
Website: https://bit.ly/3fOF3Wf
Instagram: https://bit.ly/3rIaJSG
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@speakupforblue
Twitter: https://bit.ly/3rHZxpc
YouTube: www.speakupforblue.com/youtube

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Dive into the Depths: Join Andrew Lewin on 'How to Protect the Ocean' – Your Gateway to Exclusive Ocean Insights! Explore the latest, uncharted realms of ocean science and conservation that you won't find anywhere else. Andrew takes you on an inspiring journey to uncover the hidden gems of oceanic discovery and initiatives. Tune in to discover how you can transform your life for a better ocean, one episode at a time. The How To Protect The Ocean is your resource to keep you informed on the latest ocean news; teach you how to speak up for the ocean; and, how you can take action to live for a better ocean. There is so much information on the ocean and the issues that are affecting it that it can be difficult to find optimism in the future of the ocean. Climate change, overfishing, plastic pollution, water pollution, and coastal development have altered the ocean in ways that have negatively changed the way we use it. The repercussions of climate change, including the ominous specter of rising sea levels, the relentless march of warming ocean temperatures, and the ominous shadow of ocean acidification, have not only altered the very fabric of our coastlines but have also conjured fiercer storms and summoned floods with growing frequency. The fossil fuel industry may whisper in your ear that the situation is insurmountable, an inescapable fate. However, this podcast is here to unveil a different narrative, one that empowers you to take action. It illuminates the path to change by casting your vote for leaders committed to implementing climate-rescuing policies and by offering invaluable insights into how each of us can shrink our individual carbon footprint. The grim reality of overfishing casts a long shadow, fueled by governmental shortcomings in the stewardship of both commercial and recreational fisheries. Within the delicate balance of our oceans, every fish population possesses a threshold - a point at which the relentless harvest of fishermen begins to erode their numbers. The management of these aquatic resources is a formidable task, as the elusive currents of the sea often defy easy tracking. Furthermore, the menace of illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing looms large in many nations, adding to the crisis. Yet, a glimmer of hope shines through the depths. A beacon for responsible consumption emerges in the form of seafood programs, guiding conscientious individuals toward choices that safeguard our oceans. By heeding these programs, you not only savor the delights of sustainable seafood but also become an informed guardian of marine ecosystems. The relentless scourge of plastic pollution has unleashed an epidemic of death upon the denizens of our oceans. It's a ruthless killer, claiming the lives of hundreds of thousands of marine mammals, majestic sharks, grandiose fish, gentle sea turtles, and the graceful sea birds that soar above. The malevolence of this crisis knows no bounds, with microplastics infiltrating even the remotest depths of the ocean and etching their presence along every coastline. To mount a defense against this ecological cataclysm, the clarion call for action echoes on the international and national stages. It beckons governments far and wide to adopt resolute policies, wielding the power to outlaw the menace of single-use plastics and demanding the meticulous detoxification of our supply chains. In this grand battle to safeguard our seas, the fight against plastic pollution knows no borders. The ominous specter of water pollution looms large, a consequence of our thoughtless disposal into the arteries of our planet – our streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans. This callous act reverberates, sending shockwaves through the intricate ecosystems of our coastal havens, where the likes of coral reefs, resilient mangroves, and swaying seagrasses thrive. But alas, this intrusion is not benign; it bears the capacity to corrode and dismantle these vital sanctuaries, the very lifeblood of countless fish and the steadfast guardians of our vulnerable shorelines. Yet, amidst the unsettling tide of pollution, there emerges a ray of hope. Through individual resolve and visionary government policies harnessed with cutting-edge technology, we can stem this toxic deluge. Water treatment systems stand as stalwart guardians, armed with the ability to sift out the insidious nutrients that fuel destructive algal blooms. The power to heal our waters and preserve the sanctity of our coastal treasures lies within our grasp. Coastal development, driven by human desires to construct homes or fortify the shoreline against erosion, represents a significant intervention in the natural order. Yet, these changes, while initially confined to the coastal zone, often send ripple effects that extend far beyond their original boundaries, casting a shadow of unintended consequences. The repercussions of altering coastlines resonate through interconnected ecosystems, occasionally triggering a cascade of events that can inflict profound harm on distant areas. In doing so, this well-intentioned transformation can unwittingly imperil the lives and livelihoods of communities residing in the wake of its impact. It is a stark reminder that our actions along the coast carry a profound responsibility, not just to the immediate environment but to the greater web of life and society that depends upon it.

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