Recent Articles from BRMC Newsletters

21st-Century Moby-Dick

For more than 300 years, sperm whales were hunted for the spermaceti wax in their heads, thick blubber that was used to make oil, and ambergris, a waxy substance in their guts that was originally used in the perfume industry. Now, these whales may provide a global standard to compare pollution from region to region.

When most people think of a whale, it is the sperm whale that comes to mind. Sperm whales eat fish and giant squid and are truly cosmopolitan, making them ideal for the first global survey of toxic contaminants in marine mammals. Scientists and educators circumnavigated the globe on board the Odyssey, a 28-meter-long research vessel. During their five-year journey, researchers shot 424 sperm whales with an arrow that removed a small core of skin and blubber without harming the whale. Toxicologists then analyzed the samples for pollutants. The Odysseywas funded by Ocean Alliance and led by Roger Payne, best known for revealing that humpback whales vocalizations are structured like songs and that blue and fin whales' sounds carry across oceans.

Unlike the real-life Essex whose story inspired Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, the Odyssey's crew used tissue-sampling crossbows and an onboard toxicology lab instead of harpoons and a blubber-boiling works. Even the fictional Ahab would be proud of the Odysseycrew's five years of chasing sperm whales.

However, the initial results of the study are sobering: Sperm whales from all over the planet showed significant accumulation of pollutants with fish and squid the believed source. Tests performed by the BioDiversity Research Institute in Graham, Maine, for example, showed significant mercury in all samples, with the highest readings found in whales sampled near the Galapagos and in the Sea of Cortez. After further analysis, sperm whales may provide a global standard to compare mercury pollution in different regions (Ferber, 2005).

A second team, led by toxicologist Celine Godard at Woods Hole, Mass., and who directed Odyssey's pollution research, focused on persistent organic pollutants (POPs) that include DDT and polychlorinated biphenyls. Preliminary results showed that these man-made contaminants were found in all the samples—even across the Pacific in midocean areas thought to be pristine. It is not yet known how dangerous lowlevel concentrations of these pollutants are for the whales or humans (Bohannon, 2004).

In addition, Godard's team recognized that just measuring the pollutants in whale blubber does not account for the toxicants that undergo some metabolism. To measure lifetime exposure the team fine-tuned a molecular test that measured the amount of an antitoxicant protein called CYP1A1 that accumulates in response to contamination. The CYP1A1 data should provide a means for estimating total exposure. The whales from near the Galapagos and in the Sea of Cortez—the ones with the highest mercury levels—had the highest CYP1A1 levels. To make sure regional variations are real, the team is measuring contamination in tissue samples from prey species that never leave the region. If successful, this information could turn sperm whales into pollution detectors measuring region-toregion differences in contamination (Bohannon, 2004).

Another part of the Odyssey's mission was to stop and educate. The ship passed remote island nations where the people and ecosytems are under constant threat from the western world desperate to fish, whale, and develop luxury resorts. Most of the island communities do not know what they will lose by granting these rights to the developed world. The most successful result from their education effort occurred after a workshop presented by Godard to the environmental minister of Papua New Guinea in 2001. Following the meeting, the government designating its entire exclusive economic zone—2.8 million square kilometers—as a marine sanctuary (Bohannon, 2004).

Back in the Bull Run Mountains, our youth outdoors program gets children outdoors, introduces them to the reality that the outdoors is fun and exciting, and teaches that we all have a responsibility to protect and enhance our public lands and nature preserves. One of our most anticipated events of the year, Halloween Safari, is upon us. Each year more than 300 children and adults take a non-scary, night-time hike through the Bull Run Mountains and meet native "wildlife" that perform educational natural history skits.

BRMC works diligently to enhance our audiences' understanding of the natural world, to help them value and apprehend life and its interrelationships, and to lead them to an awareness that spawns conservation. As a nation we are economically poised to be the world's premier advocate for sustainability and conservation, but our hope lies in our youth. Perhaps when you're an islander you have a deeper appreciation for the limit of resources. We just need to remember we are all islanders, on a planet we call earth.

References:

Ferber, Dan. Sperm Whales Bear Testimony to Worldwide Pollution. Science. 309, 1166 (2005). Bohannon, John. A Toxic Odyssey. Science. 304, 1584-1586 (2004).