Want to Save the Whales? Start Studying Krill

[Host] To understand and protect the biggest creatures

on earth, you have to study this tiny thing.

No, not my thumb, the tiny crustacean known as krill

balancing on top of it.

Whales consume krill and consume fish

in humongous amounts.

[Host] Off the coast of San Francisco,

krills form in incredible numbers

and that attracts legions of whales.

And scientists aboard the NOAA research vessel Fulmar.

Yesterday we had at least 68 whales.

[Host] It' all starts with a process called upwelling.

Winds push warm surface waters away,

which are replaced by waters from the depths.

That deep cold nutrient rich water has it's production

when it comes up near the surface where the sun is

and we have the phytoplankton moving.

[Host] Phytoplankton are food for krill,

and lots of krill means lots of blue and humpback whales.

To get a better sense of how this ecosystem works,

scientists drop sensors and dragnets

at different depths to capture samples.

Everything from the net gets filtered down into this.

We will take the caught end off

and put that into our sample jar.

[Host] For over a decade, they've been gathering heaps

of this data and observing whales to better understand

and safeguard them.

One of the greatest threats the ocean and marine

wildlife face right now is climate change

and there is very little that we can do directly

other than decreasing human threats.

[Host] Threats like the ships running in and out

of San Francisco Bay, so officials have used

the Fulmar's observation data to tweak shipping lanes

to best protect the many whales here.

Now we see whales pretty often

when we're on these cruises.

Sometimes we have to stop our transit to allow them

to move in front us and finish feeding

before we can continue and it just doesn't get old.