Cruise News & Trends | World Ocean Day with ORCA

Holly Payne: 00:00:04

Hello and welcome to this special Cruise News and Trends Podcast. I'm Holly Payne, Editor Video Production and Deputy Editor at Seatrade Cruise.

Rachel Wehrle: 00:00:15

And I'm Rachel Wehrle, Cruise Relationship Manager at Seatrade Cruise. Today is a special podcast because it's drumroll please... World Ocean Day!

Holly Payne: 00:00:26

That's right, Rachel 70% of the Earth's surface is ocean, the foundation for life on Earth, and home to more than half of all life on Earth today. It provides food for billions and jobs to millions. And it absorbs over 90% of heat and almost a third of all carbon dioxide that humans have ever produced. It even provides the air we breathe. Every second breath we take comes from the

Steve Jones: 00:01:06

Hello, thanks for having us.

Kate Weston: 00:01:07

Hi. So happy to be here!

Holly Payne: 00:01:09

Thanks for joining us.

Rachel Wehrle: 00:01:11

Thank you guys for joining. We're so excited to have you. So really, I heard about ORCA when Steve joined the panel at Seatrade Cruise Global right. You spoke a little bit about the organization there. And I think today we'd love to dive deeper learn a bit more about the organization and the amazing things you guys are doing. So if you guys could each tell us a little bit about

Kate Weston: 00:01:36

Yeah, sure. Um, so as you said, my name is Kate and I'm the Ocean Conservationist Coordinator at ORCA. And so ORCA are a Whale and Dolphin Conservation charity. As you might have guessed from our name, we are based in the UK, but we work all around the world, on what we call platforms and opportunity. So those are cruise ships, and ferries and my role within ORCA is I send our

Holly Payne: 00:02:03

So what's the most fascinating or surprising fact that you've learned about marine life? During your work at ORCA Kate?

Kate Weston: 00:02:12

There's so many wonderful things and you kind of if anyone's like me, I kind of ended up going on a crazy deep dive anywhere I'm sent over the world. But I think the thing that surprised me most was something I learned really early on at ORCA about Blue Whales. And that's that a blue whales heart is about the same size as a small car. So the Volkswagen Beetle is what we usually say.

Rachel Wehrle: 00:02:35

What! The heart is the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. Wow.

Kate Weston: 00:02:44

Yeah. So in theory, a small child could crawl through its arteries because they're ginormous, right? The largest animal that has ever lived. So 33 meters long, pretty enormous. But yeah, they can only swallow something about the same size as a grapefruit because they eat krill.

Rachel Wehrle: 00:02:58

Well, that's probably the most interesting thing I'll hear all day. And we just started.

Kate Weston: 00:03:07

There's a lot of cool facts about whales and dolphins, which I could go on about for hours. But we probably got other things to discuss as well.

Holly Payne: 00:03:13

So, Kate, do you feel enough is being done to educate passengers on board ships about the ocean or the fragility of the ocean? And Steve, what do you think about that, just to bring you in?

Steve Jones: 00:03:26

Yeah, I think that there's a lot of great work that is being done. There are lots of brands that ORCA work with who are really celebrating the ocean. And we know that the people who live and work at sea and rely on the ocean for their business, often the most passionate about protecting, but there is absolutely more that can be done as well. Because ultimately, as a cruise industry,

Kate Weston: 00:04:15

Yeah, I totally agree. I think that, you know, we are on cruises all around the world now. And we see all sorts of passengers from you know, kids that are sort of five or six years old who really care to you know, the crew themselves. So I think there's definitely the passion there for it but as Steve said, there's always more to be done and that's, you know what we're here to try

Rachel Wehrle: 00:04:15

Yeah, absolutely. It's such an important thing. The Sustainable Tourism practices within cruising, or I think other sectors is such importance but specific to cruise. Could you also tell the audience a bit more about what ORCA does in cruise? And what ORCA does to protect the world's oceans with that?

Kate Weston: 00:04:55

what that really means we really do mean everyone. So from the program, I run the ocean conservationist program where we send people on board to work with the guests, do education, you know, to teach them about threats, like whale meat, and how their choices on board can really influence the whaling industries, to things like responsible whale watching. And we also do monitoring on

Steve Jones: 00:05:42

So we are really lucky because we've got a range of friends in all sorts of parts of the sector. And we're working with 10 or 11. Brands actively at the moment. Some of them we have active programs, and some of them we have programs in the pipeline. And most of them at the core is the program Kate runs. It's the ocean conservationist program, where we'll work with those companies

Holly Payne: 00:07:21

Steve, thanks so much. And I'm really pleased that you've mentioned about some of these training programs. And one of the training programs I was really interested to read about was MSC Cruises, because in partnership with them, you're helping to introduce a deck officer training program for the prevention of whale strikes, I believe, because it is, you know, the shipping route goes

Steve Jones: 00:08:01

The Pelagos Sanctuary is a great example because it's an area that quite a lot of ships and cruise ships in particular travel through, and it's near to the Ligurian sea. And so it's in quite a high traffic area, you have freight, you have cruise, you also have ferries going from the mainland to places like Sardinia and Corsica, but it's also a hotspot for two particular species of

Steve Jones: 00:09:46

recently launched. And so it's a great project and one that we're really hoping will help to keep some of those vulnerable animals safe sort of in future seasons.

Holly Payne: 00:09:54

Thank you so much, Steve. That's excellent. Really good to hear that and hopefully as time goes on this is something that will, you know, more crew members and more people working on board ships can perhaps learn and understand more and more about the fragility of, you know, these vulnerable animals that we need to protect?

Steve Jones: 00:10:14

Absolutely.

Rachel Wehrle: 00:10:15

We know ship strikes, you've said, Steve and, Kate, that there's some of those key areas that you work to mitigate. Could you really explain to anyone listening, what we what really a ship strike is, and you mentioned a few things of how you're working to combat this. So sharing some of the best practices on how to mitigate the ship strikes that the cruise lines can practice?

Steve Jones: 00:10:35

Yeah, there's a few different ways that you can avoid ship strike. And this is why we work across the operation, we don't just work on the ship. And we don't just work shoreside because it's really a concerted effort. And the most obvious way to avoid ship strikes is to not go to places where the whales are in high density. That's the ultimate measure. And actually, we are finding

Steve Jones: 00:12:13

difficult to retrospectively put some of these measures in place, which is why as well as working with the bridge officers, we're also working with those people planning their cruises, so that they can build extra time in to allow the ships to go that little bit slower. And just help everyone enjoy the scenery, enjoy the views of the animals, hopefully, but also minimize the risk of a collision.

Holly Payne: 00:12:33

So what you're saying there, Steve, is that you also are working with itinerary planners. So you know, you're able to advise on the itineraries that are being followed by cruise ships. Is that right?

Steve Jones: 00:12:47

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we won't tell people whether this port is better than that port. We're not no destination experts. Although in our jobs, we get to travel around a bit. So I've got a couple of recommendations if anyone's interested. But I ultimately and yeah, we're we're talking to people about high risk areas. And so if you look at, for example, a place like Alaska, and we

Holly Payne: 00:13:43

That's an excellent advice there. Steve. I wanted on that note to bringing Kate because you work with I believe, over 100 conservationists globally. And I wondered what kind of monitoring and research ORCA is carrying out on board the ships and the how its significance?

Kate Weston: 00:14:07

Yeah, so we do have quite quite a big network now, which is absolutely incredible. And you know, they're all conservation professionals. And they're really dedicated and they love what they do. In terms of monitoring, we have a data collection app that we use. So everything's on an app on your smartphone nowadays. So we thought we'd get on that trend that our data collection is goes

Kate Weston: 00:16:03

exciting, what is really exciting, and we're hoping to continue it moving forward. So we can help monitor the populations and increase hopefully the geofence area, which has a speed restriction around it for the whales.

Rachel Wehrle: 00:16:14

So Kate, if I'm a cruiser, or a crew member on board, how can I practice responsible whale watching? And what are we looking out for if we're keeping an eye out for the whales in that area?

Kate Weston: 00:16:26

Yeah, so responsible whale watching is an interesting one. Because when you're talking about cruises, obviously, you've got the ships themselves, which need to be responsible in terms of how they, you know, interacting with whales and dolphins, and then you've got any sort of tender boats or operations that are happening on shore. So if we take the ships themselves, it's, it's all

Kate Weston: 00:18:06

there's one ship, you shouldn't be spending any more than 30 minutes with an animal. And if it's two, you cut that down to 15. And that's just because right, if you think about it, as a as a human, if you have someone spending half an hour with you, that's fine. But then if it's several ships, you know, each one of those ships spends half an hour with you that several hours very quickly. And it can

Holly Payne: 00:18:56

Absolutely. You know, one of the most important things, isn't it, Kate to be able to ensure that the animal isn't stressed and hearing you speak about the behavior and the body language. This is so insightful. And is this something that you know, is shared with the passengers on board?

Unknown: 00:19:16

Yeah, 100% because, you know, a lot of the people who go to especially places like Alaska, Iceland, Norway, they're there to see whales and dolphins, right. You know, they're, they're going there to have these amazing encounters. And we don't want to stop see people seeing whales and dolphins, we want to see them ourselves. So it's all about teaching them the right ways to look for them.

Holly Payne: 00:20:43

Kate, it's really good to hear you speak about that. Which brings me on to the subject of ethical travel options. You know, going back a couple of years ago now, I remember Ambassador revealed that they would be prohibiting excursions to oceanariums and any experiences involving captive marine mammals, and warned the Prime Minister of the Faroe Islands against dolphin hunting, and

Holly Payne: 00:21:31

I think 100% Yes. And anyone who was at Seatrade Global and saw the different talks, throughout the sessions, were would have seen the word sustainability use more time than I could possibly count, which was great, because it's a front and center issue of the sector. And it's something that hopefully, people are taking really seriously, in terms of how that translates to sort of customer

Holly Payne: 00:23:10

levels, you know, executives of these, of these big brands are really engaged and talking about this, I think is something to be really positive about.Absolutely. So if you could share any success stories you've had from the work you've done in cruise, to each of you, what would it be?

Kate Weston: 00:23:29

For me, the biggest success has been the growth of our responsible whalewatching work. And over the past sort of two, two ish years. It's something that is a real passion project of mine. So when I first started as an Orca, I was one of the ocean conservationists based on the ship, there's not really when it comes to responsible whale watching, there's not really a global standard. And

Holly Payne: 00:24:36

Excellent.

Steve Jones: 00:24:38

From my point of view, it's hard to pick because every partnership we have is bespoke. You know, we're all of our partners are very special snowflakes. They're all very different. And we all want to make sure that they're very treated in a very different way because ultimately, every business is unique. I think that some of the programs we've mentioned the Ambassador anti whaling and

Steve Jones: 00:26:23

these high seas and remote areas. And to the extent they are in a way that allows us to collect data onboard. So you know, that's a really, that's a really exciting thing for us, it's, you know, it's maybe something that we'll be shouting a bit more about in the coming months, because we've been doing a lot of work in the background. But ultimately, every every time someone goes on a cruise ship

Holly Payne: 00:26:51

I'm very interested to hear about that, Steve. Actually, recently, MSC Cruises and MSC foundation revealed that they would be partnering with Nature Metrics, which is a nature and intelligence, environmental DNA specialist to advance understanding of endangered marine species. So we're talking about eDNA taken from seawater, and then undergoing analysis and this really opens up

Steve Jones: 00:27:40

Well, we don't do eDNA ourselves, although I am aware of that project I read about, and it's a really interesting one, and hopefully one that's going to be really fruitful. But what we do do is take our data and combine it with other data from different sources. So when we're looking at, you know, the data we might have collected in a particular area, we'll look at other measures like

Steve Jones: 00:29:27

we're using the as the basis of the Observation Protocol we're using on our program with Cunard this summer in Alaska, where we're doing some bridge based monitoring and in Galatia Bay, to try and understand the humpback whales there and try and help to reduce the risk of ship strikes or serving as an extra Watchkeeper. And doing some training on board as well. So, you know, all of this sort of

Holly Payne: 00:30:05

Well, that's incredible. And it certainly sounds like you've got your hands full. Really great stuff for me, you've told me so much, but I didn't know that I didn't understand before. And really good to hear you talk about this use of technology and data and moving forward. Rachel, what did you think about you know, what did you learn about this? Was there one thing that you could name

Rachel Wehrle: 00:30:34

I feel like such a sponge right now, it's just been so interesting to learn all of the projects that you guys are working on all of the wonderful things you're doing for not only the cruise community, but but everyone else around the world. Obviously, I said before learning about the blue whales heart being the size of the Volkswagen bug was jaw dropping enough. But I think just

Holly Payne: 00:31:24

Thank you so much. It really has been incredible. Hearing you both and I know we can't keep you forever talking about this subject, and you've got great work that you need to be doing so. But I would like to end with one cheeky question, which was first to you, Kate, if you could be a marine animal for a day. Which one would you choose? And why?

Kate Weston: 00:31:48

Okay, it was gonna be a whale or dolphin, right? Otherwise, I'm completely off brand, I would probably say I would like to be one of the deep diving whale, so maybe something like a sperm whale, because they can dive to 2000 meters, which is pretty incredible. And they can echolocate if you think of like a bat. So now they have that same ability to sort of make a picture with sound.

Holly Payne: 00:32:23

I agree. And Steve, same question?

Steve Jones: 00:32:27

For me... I was gonna say a pilot whale because it's my favorite, but I'm actually going to choose a Dall's porpoise, a Dall's Porpoise is a type of porpoise you get in the Pacific. They're black and white. And they're kind of like my spirit animal because they're almost rectangular in shape. They look like a black and white cow that's had the legs chopped off with a dorsal fin

Rachel Wehrle: 00:33:11

have you ever seen one in the wild Steve?

Steve Jones: 00:33:14

Yeah, I've seen them. I went to Alaska in 2019 for a couple of weeks, and to do a cruise up the inside passage from Vancouver. And we saw a bunch of Dallas porpoises and I was out on a whale watching trip out of was Seward. And we went out we were we went see some orcas and some humpbacks. But we saw these delta porpoises. And when we went past, they just went crazy in the wake of

Rachel Wehrle: 00:33:45

That's amazing.

Holly Payne: 00:33:46

That's absolutely incredible, really special. So take it away Steve!

Steve Jones: 00:33:51

And if anyone wants to find out more about how they can get involved, whether they're a member of the public just interested to find out more or a cruise brand who wants to get a bit more involved in Whale and Dolphin Conservation, they can visit our website www.orca.org.uk.

Holly Payne: 00:34:12

Perfect. Well, that's all we've got time for today. So thank you so much for being with us. And I know that there is a number of initiatives that different cruise lines are doing to restore and support ocean health, whether it's coral restoration, coral nurseries, and also restoration of habitat around private islands. So this is all that we've got time to discuss today. But if

Rachel Wehrle: 00:34:54

Thank you everyone.

Holly Payne: 00:34:55

Thank you very much to our speakers. Thank you for joining us.

Steve Jones: 00:34:59

It's our pleasure. Thanks for having us!

Kate Weston: 00:35:01

Yeah thank you so much!

Holly Payne: 00:35:02

Happy World Ocean Day!