Marine Mammals and Staying Positive

Marine Mammals and Staying Positive
Current mood: hopeful

Last night we had an excellent guest speaker in my environmental science class. His name was Jeff Rash, and he is a marine mammal specialist. As one of the leading specialists in the world on gray whales and sea otters, he was the first person they called after the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989. He was there within 12 hours of the spill and was the lead expert on the attempt to save the otters that were exposed to the crude oil in the Prince William Sound of Alaska.

He went through an extensive slideshow detailing his work in the Puget Sound over the past 30 years, and the procedures that are used to perform necropsies on dead otters, seals, whales and sea lions. He also showed some of the procedures used to rehabilitate marine mammals.

He was very animated and it was easy to tell immediately the depth of his passion for his work. This guy spends his whole day on boats around the Sound, responding to people's calls of dead marine mammals that have washed up on the beach. The Puget Sound as an ecological system is in steep decline, thanks to the large amounts of toxic pollutants dumped in it over the past 100 years. His job is basically to find out why so many animals are dying, and to review toxicology reports that his lab creates.

You could really tell that he, um, has a bone to pick with the human race. Someone asked him what caused the Exxon spill, and his answer was simply "us." The poor guy---he has devoted his life to marine mammals but instead of studying their amazing and unique qualities, he has instead been forced to spend his life trying to figure out why these majestic animals are dying. And it is specifically because of us. There is so much trash, pollution, PCBs, and invasive species in the Sound that it hardly even resembles the pristine ecology settlers found 200 years ago. For example, our orca whales (only 79 left out of a herd that was over 140 just 25 years ago) have the highest levels of PCBs of any animals in the world. Pretty scary. And sad too, as the Sound is (or was) one of the more unique marine environments in the world.

But the most amazing thing was how positive this guy could be even after 30 years of this brutalizing work. He still, even after only being able to save 2 otters out of thousands that died in the Exxon spill, thinks that things are getting better, not worse. This was hard for me to reconcile especially after seeing all the photos of him holding sickly and dead otters from the spill. If I was him, I would think that I would just be permanently pissed off all the time.

It was very inspiring, all in all. I sometimes get pretty critical of we humans too, but it helps to have experiences like these which broaden my perspective. If Jeff can stay positive after all the shit he's seen, I should be able to as well.

Currently reading :
The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth
By Edward O. Wilson
Release date: 05 September, 2006