Dr. Phil Clapham is currently the Program Leader for the US National Marine Mammal Laboratory’s Cetacean Assessment and Ecology Program--part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center based in Seattle. Dr. Clapham has studied almost every whale species, and as of this writing he has published over 150 peer-reviewed papers. He is a member of the US delegation to the International Whaling Commission’s Scientific Committee, and he was recently chosen by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to be their speaker for the 2016 Revelle Lecture, which focuses on the connections between marine science and public policy.

Dr. Clapham was kind enough to speak with me via Skype from Seattle one August morning in 2015 so we could learn from his whale world expertise.

Fonarow: Dr. Clapham, I read that you first found yourself doing whale research by accident. How did that happen?

Clapham: In 1980 I was traveling around the US from England, and while looking for a place to stay for the winter, I fell in love with Cape Cod. Four days after I arrived, I saw a humpback whale breach, and I had no idea what I was looking at. Someone told me that studies of whales were going on at the Center for Coastal Studies nearby. I knocked on their door and asked if I could volunteer, and surprisingly, they said, “Sure!”

I fell in love with whales and whale research, and decided years later to go back to school to get a PhD in zoology. That’s the short version.

Fonarow: How has the field of whale research changed over time?

Clapham: Genetics began to be applied in the 1980s, and that opened up a whole suite of opportunities in this field. With just a small biopsy sample, determining

Fonarow: What do you consider your greatest accomplishment so far?

Clapham: Marrying my wife. I have the world’s most wonderful woman, and I have no idea how I got her to marry me. I wake up every morning and say, “Yeah, it wasn’t a dream. She really is here.”

So, my second greatest achievement? I don’t know, actually. For my PhD, I tried to synthesize what we knew about the behavioral ecology of humpback whales with the broader context of mammalian and animal biology. I think I was reasonably successful. People have done a better job of it since, as we’ve learned more. And the other thing that I do--as penance for something terrible I did in a past life, apparently-is deal with Japan on scientific whaling on the International Whaling Commission (IWC).

Fonarow: Can you tell us more about your experience in the IWC?

Clapham: The IWC passed a moratorium on commercial whaling which came into effect in 1985, and it contains two massive loopholes: the objection procedure--which allows countries to not be bound

CLAPHAM hasbeenstudyinglargewhalesforthelastthirty-fiveyears.

INTERVIEW

ABOVE | Kagoshima City, Japan, April 27, 2008, Whaling ship Yushin Maru, a ship that hunts and harpoons whales.OPPOSITE | Coral reef completely decimated as the result of ocean acidification.

the sex and genetics of a whale suddenly became routine. Now, we also use hormone analysis to look at issues like stress and pregnancy. We use unmanned aerial vehicles like hexacopters to get length and girth measurements and even to fly down and sample the animals’ breath for pathogens and other health indicators.

Also, there are far more women involved in senior positions than when I started. There used to be a very strong male sex bias in the upper ranks, but that has changed radically in the last thirty-five years—thank heaven!

Fonarow: Those of us who spend time in Hawaii are wondering, “Why don’t the humpbacks just stay here? It’s warmer!”

Clapham: There’s nothing to eat in Hawaii. There’s very low productivity in tropical waters, and why they migrate there in the first place remains something of a mystery. There’s no agreed explanation as to why humpbacks and some other large whales leave productive feeding grounds and travel to warmer waters. It may be because it’s a safer, warmer place for calves to be born and grow in their first weeks of life.

Fonarow: What are you working on right now?

Clapham: I manage a group of twenty-six researchers who study everything from porpoises to large whales. Because I’m “senior” in the field, I get to lead the group and arrange fun things for them to do. [Laughing] Among other things, we are conducting research in the Arctic using aerial surveys; we have an upcoming cruise involving oceanography, acoustics, and basic whale biology in the Bering and Chukchi Seas; and we study harbor porpoises and killer whales in Southeast Alaska. Two of the world’s few satellite taggers are on our team, so we have a tag out right now in Oman in the Arabian Sea, and we may be tagging right whales off Argentina this fall. We’re very much into worldwide collaboration and sharing of information.

BY AMY FONAROW

by any decision if they object within 90 days, and the scientific whaling clause--which allows whalers to take whales for the purpose of scientific research, and was never intended for more than a few whales here and there. Japan has taken around 14,000 whales under that provision, but they are having a harder and harder time justifying the necessity for lethal “scientific” research. So far no one’s made them pay a price, and Japan continues to flaunt both international public opinion and the decision made last year by the International Court of Justice that temporarily shut down their Antarctic whaling program.

Japan came back with a new program that they said had fixed all those problems--which it hasn’t--and though an expert panel from the IWC said they hadn’t justified the need for lethal sampling, Japan said, “Well, we disagree, and we’re going to go down there and kill whales anyway.”

I think the only thing that could stop it is Japanese public opinion. Right now, most people in Japan don’t really care about whaling one way or the other. They’re still whaling because Japan’s Institute of Cetacean Research which does the “research” is partly funded by the proceeds of whaling, and because whaling politics have important implications for Japan’s fisheries policy generally. They are concerned that if they give in on whaling, the next thing could be bluefin tuna or other fisheries agreements.

Fonarow: How is the recent rapid melting of sea ice affecting the whales?

Clapham: We don’t know yet. It is causing the range of humpbacks and fin whales to extend northward. I think there might be a positive benefit for humpbacks, and possibly for fin whales. It’s not clear what the impact is going to be on ice-associated species like bowheads.

Trans-polar shipping routes are going to open up. For whales, that means an increase in noise, pollution, and potential ship strikes, especially in choke points like the Bering Strait and some of the passes in the Aleutian Islands.

The big issue for me is not so much the profound changes that will be brought by Arctic ice melting, but it’s the whole issue of ocean acidification. If worst-case scenarios come true, that could be literally catastrophic for ecosystems, and all whales would be affected.

Fonarow: What do you think about the potential of humpbacks being removed from the endangered species list?

Clapham: It’s a good thing. Humpbacks are doing really well in most places, and they would still have protection under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. You need success stories! Gray whales were removed in 1994—the only large whale that’s been removed from the list so far—and they’ve come back to 20,000 animals. If you keep humpbacks on the endangered species list, you continue to devote resources to a species that doesn’t need it at the expense of those that do.

Fonarow: Besides not whaling, what can we do as a species to make life more comfortable for cetaceans in general and humpbacks specifically?

Clapham: Fishing gear is a big problem for whales and cetaceans generally, but entanglement tends not to receive the press, even though the consequences and impact are much greater than for whaling. The best example now is the vaquita—the Gulf of California harbor porpoise. This species is likely going to be extinct in the next few years because of entanglement in the gear of a relatively small fishery. The issue is simple and quite fixable, but I don’t think

it is going to be resolved.

The big problem with environmental work is that if you take steps to stop something bad from happening, then you can never demonstrate that that something would have happened if you hadn’t taken those steps. Meanwhile, the corporate world will say, “See, you lost all these jobs and you caused all this financial hardship, and it didn’t even happen.”

For me, whaling and whales have become a symbol of the very bad way that we treat the planet in general. I think humans live by symbols, and if we make the commitment to not kill another whale, that’s a step forward in our evolution towards maybe a more enlightened way of dealing with this planet.

Fonarow: What is something only you know that you want everyone else to know about?

Clapham: I think we’re getting reasonably close to understanding how humpback whales navigate. My genius collaborator Travis Horton asked us a few years ago if he could have our satellite tagging data for humpbacks, and we immediately gave him everything.

It is remarkable to watch humpback whales migrate in a straight line, sometimes to better than one degree accuracy despite currents, bad weather, and storms. They know where they are all the time; they come back to exactly the same spots year after year, and how they do that has always been a mystery. We speculate that it’s a combination of geomagnetic and celestial cues, and I think with the tagging data, we may have an answer soon.

Fonarow: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Clapham: No, I don’t think so. You’ve exhausted my knowledge of everything. [Laughing]

Fonarow: Thank you so much, Dr. Clapham. We wish you whale!

Clapham: Thank you! [Both laughing]

CLAPHAM edits for three scientific journals: Marine Mammal Science, Mammal Review, and the Royal Society’s Biology Letters.