Marine biologist Asha de Vos (watch her TED Talk, “Why you should care about whale poo”, above) is preparing to set sail in her native Indian Ocean to undertake research about the rare Sri Lankan blue whale and the tragedy of ship strike. To help fund this exciting expedition, she’s launched a campaign on David Lang’s new crowdfunding platform OpenExplorer, which supports new ideas, research and expeditions in science and engineering. Here, she tells us about the expedition and how you can join her in helping to save the planet by saving blue whales.
Tell us about your project.
I’m embarking on an expedition to save a unique and endangered blue whale from getting killed by ships in Sri Lankan waters – the core of what I have been doing for many years. Right now, I’m preparing to kick off my fieldwork in Sri Lanka between February and March 2015. The problem is that unlike most blue whale populations, these are pretty confined to the western part of the Northern Indian Ocean, so are exposed to the risk of ship-strike 365 days of the year. Given that ship traffic in this region has quadrupled since the ’90s because of how trade is changing in the oceans, and is predicted to double in the next two decades, the problem is only going to get worse. We urgently need to solve this problem.
During my field season I will be heading out on the water to look at where the blue whales are and, more importantly, where they overlap with the ships. This will help me understand where they are at highest risk, and enable me to come up with some realistic ways of reducing whale mortality.
I’ll also be taking photographs of all the whales we see, which will be added into our existing Sri Lankan Blue Whale Photo-identification catalog. Photo-identification is a low-cost technique used to identify individuals in the population. It’s commonly used for a lot of species. All you need is a decent DSLR that enables you to take photos of characteristic permanent marking patterns on specific parts of the whale’s body. This can be used to identify an individual because, like our thumbprints, the markings are unique to each animal.
This data will allow us to come up with an estimate of population size for these whales — an essential ingredient for answering a suite of other questions about them, including how threatened this non-migratory population is, and how we can help one of the least-studied and most unorthodox populations of blue whales in the world.
Whale poo is an essential part of the ocean ecosystem’s nutrient cycle. Photo: Asha de Vos
Why do you care about these whales so much?
Everyone should care about whales because they are really important for nutrient cycling in the oceans. Their poo holds vital nutrients that enable the growth of plankton (some of which produces the oxygen we breathe!) and their carcasses remove excess carbon in the atmosphere by taking it to the depths of the ocean. So whales potentially play a role in reducing climate change. Saving blue whales in Sri Lanka isn’t just good for Sri Lankans, but is important for a healthier planet overall!
To be honest, all of us are to blame every time a whale gets killed by a ship. Ninety percent of everything is shipped, and the industry is driven by human need and greed. So we should care about resolving this problem, too.
Why did you choose OpenExplorer to fund this expedition?
I chose OpenExplorer because it primarily acts as an expedition field journal, which allows people to follow me from inception to completion of a particular mission. I’m curious about using this function during my field season to see how it works and what its reach and interactivity will be compared to my blog. I think it might be a cool way for more people to feel they are part of my day-to-day experiences. Apart from that, it enables people to contribute funds to the expedition at any time, so it’s not designed for just front-end funding, like a lot of other platforms. It seems like a great way for people to follow, get excited, fund, watch, interact and feel like they are part of the expedition from start to finish.
I believe crowdfunding will become an increasingly important source of money for people like myself. Many of us from small developing nations don’t have access to research funds because the vast majority of the larger grants are provided by developed countries for research in their own waters. In my case, the sad reality is that Sri Lanka is one of the 40 worst-funded countries for conservation research. I get no internal financial support but have raise all my funds from outside. Given that blue whales are important for the global ocean ecosystem, I feel crowdfunding is a neat way for people from all over the world to get involved..
Photo: Erik Olsen/NYT
Do you need to raise this money before you go on the expedition itself, or are you hoping the campaign will sustain you as you go?
In the grand scheme of things, I would like to raise money for the longer term to create sustainability for this research. But right now, I am only fundraising for this initial trip. The costs are pretty high because boat time is always expensive. The other issue for me is safety. I have spent many hours far out at sea, on 6-meter boats with a single engine and no safety equipment, puttering around between the biggest container ships you can imagine. I would really like to raise enough money to pay for a safer platform – for my mother’s sake! So if you can help me fundraise $20,000, then I can collect data while reducing the risk of getting run over by ships. Any extra money I raise will go towards buying actual safety equipment like flares, an EPIRB and walkie-talkies, and saving for the next field season!
Is it true that we can get the opportunity to name a whale?
Sure thing! For $500 you can adopt a blue whale and help us name it! I will send you a photo of the individual you adopted, along with details of where and when it was sighted. These are limited edition, though because it’s limited by the number of whales we see. The more days I spend on the water, the more whales I photograph and the more there are to name – so help me stay out there! There are also a bunch of other gifts to reward different levels of donations here.
To donate to de Vos’s Save the Blue Whale expedition, visit her page on Open Explorer.
Above, watch Asha de Vos’s video about her passion for the Sri Lankan blue whale.
