A Whale World SDG Goal 14 – “Life Below Water”

11/14/2018 A Whale World SDG Goal 14 – “Life Below Water”

Lewis Matthew V, Griffiths E James, Von der Heyden Stefan

Table of Contents The Journey of “Life Below Water” ...... 2 Introduction: ...... 3 ROAD MAP OF LIFE BELOW WATER: ...... 4 We read up and found this very interesting… ...... 5 OUR BIG IDEA ...... 9 So we planned to do this … ...... 10 Commercial whaling: ...... 12 Illegal Whaling:...... 13 Scientific Whaling: ...... 13 Aboriginal Whaling: ...... 14 And we did this … ...... 17 And here is the evidence of how it went...... 18 ...... 23 And this is how well it worked … ...... 24 ...... 28 The successful results of our blog: ...... 29 ...... 29 ...... 30 Conclusion… ...... 31 Our reflections looking back on the Big Ideas curriculum:...... 33 Bibliography: ...... 35

The Journey of “Life Below Water”

“Life Below Water” started with a group of boys, a very different 3 guys who all share a common passion - life below water! The team was Matthew Lewis from Gray house , James Griffiths from Ogilvie house and Stefan Von Der Heyden from Mallett house. We know we are very privileged to be attending a school like Bishops and the opportunities it presents to us each and every day.

A huge example of one of these privileges is the Big Ideas curriculum. At the end of term 2 a few subject teachers (Mr Noel, Mr Firth, Mrs Mallett, Mr Henchie and Mrs Douglas) presented the grade 9’s of 2018 with the chance to work on a new curriculum, “Big Ideas”. This is the first year that this curriculum has been offered at Bishops and we feel that it is such a positive move forward in an education system that is very stuck in the past. The boys had to submit a motivational letter on why they should be and wanted to be in the Big Ideas class. This motivational letter revolved around the concepts of the “4 C's”: communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity which are skills needed for the future. From the 70 boys that submitted motivational letters, a class of 30 was selected (the current big ideas class). Big ideas includes a sort of curriculum that has been introduced to some schools overseas. Even during the duration of our time in Big Ideas, we have heard of a few schools in South Africa (e.g. Dainfern in Johannesburg) that are trying a similar program.

The whole idea revolves around the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (the SDGs). The Big Ideas class uses these goals as a platform to base their lessons on. The Boys are educated about and exposed to a variety of problems facing the world, regarding all the goals. All in all, training and providing the boys with the right knowledge and equipment to thrive in the 2030’s - 2050’s (our prime working days).

Introduction:

By now we all know that our oceans are facing many problems dealing with human-created waste: non-biodegradable materials - plastics, polystyrene, Perspex, glass; chemical pollution and greenhouse gas emissions - carbon dioxide, methane etc. The rise in carbon dioxide in the ocean itself leads to ocean acidification and CO2 and other gas emissions in the atmosphere are causing ocean temperatures to rise due to global warming. There are many other threats and problems concerning our oceans in the form of poaching and hunting or overfishing too.

The specific problem that we will be addressing is climate change as a result global warming and within that, more directly speaking, the fact that whales are the climate changers that we need in our battle to absorb carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Global warming is affecting every aspect of life on earth (including Donald Trump) from the top of our atmosphere to the very depths of the ocean floor. We are trying to help the sustainability of the whale species through creating awareness and indirectly we aim to help save the planet from global warming and complete ecosystem destruction.

Our initial project idea think tank took place at Bishops, Diocesan College, soon leading to the Two Oceans Aquarium where we met up with Maryke Musson (Curator) and Devon Bowen (Online Content Coordinator). Here we discussed our activation plan to create an awareness around whales as climate changers with the help of Devon and his social media team. From there we were offered the opportunity to meet up the with the world renowned Ken Findlay, the global expert on whales. He was an instrumental help in providing us with true information. We soon also established that some of what we read isn’t always what’s happening in the real world. Once our Blog was published, you can say that our project took place in cyberspace!

Our SDG is goal 14, “life below water”. The other SDGs that are related to our project are goal 13, “climate change” and goal 12, “responsible consumption and production”. These all interlink in some way or another. We all believe that without a sustainable and balanced ocean, that we cannot survive as a species. Luckily we are all very passionate about marine conservation and that is why we stressed and addressed goal 14.

• Goal 13 was stressed and addressed by us as it plays a huge role in sustaining life on earth and whales play a huge part in the absorption of carbon dioxide. If we ignore climate change, it could lead to ultimate extinction of us as “beings” too and we don't want that to happen. • Goal 12 requires the world to stop this irresponsible consumption of whale meat. We don’t require whale blubber any longer since finding fossil fuels so why is the world still hunting whales?

We as a group, care, as we desperately desire future generations to enjoy and experience the same world as we have, if not a better world. The other reason why we care is that if no one does anything and just carries on destroying the world, it won't be a pretty place. So we know

that we have to actively educate and activate. It is the only way. The oceans are a privilege to us and we all think that it's extremely important to protect and conserve them.

So we have taken the fact that having more whales on the planet plays a major role in the process of absorbing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Our narrative will guide you through this fact and the threats that these giants of the deep face.

ROAD MAP OF LIFE BELOW WATER:

1. Ocean cleanups along the West and East Coastlines in Cape Town/Western Cape 2. Estuary and River Conservation in various areas in Western Cape. 3. Involving Poor communities in establishing sustainable mussel farms along the West and East Coastlines. 4. Creating a fundraising event in the form of a Fun Run to raise money and awareness for the Non-profit organization – Sea Shepherds. 5. Our Final Plan: Meeting with a world whale expert – Professor Ken Findlay to discuss everything to do with whales sustaining Planet Earth. With all our Information gathered from our researching and our successful meeting, we decided to create awareness for whales by gathering all our research and Ken’s information and sending a blog to the Two Oceans Aquarium and together with the help of their fun and creative input we would post it on their website for the whole world to explore:

How are Whales major contributors to combatting Climate Change?

Go have a look for yourself at the Two Oceans Aquarium Website under the “Blog” page and Enjoy!

We read up and found this very interesting…

We started off with choosing our SDG. We walked into Mrs Douglas's classroom and we were told to stand by the SDG that stood out the most to you or you were most passionate about. All the SDGs were spread out equally around the sides of the classroom and some even on the desks. All 3 of us new right away which one resonated with us the most and that was SDG goal 14 (life below water). We all ran to secure the SDG. From there we were set into groups and assigned a tutor teacher/coach to help us and guide us along this unknown journey. Mr Firth was lucky enough to get us!. We could see that we all were truly passionate about goal 14. All of us were extremely happy with how the group turned out.

The moment team “life below water” walked into seminar room 1 to start our brainstorming, we started to group the different problems that the ocean is facing and some of the actions that have been and are currently being done to address these problems:

• From what we gathered, we all decided that starting a beach/ocean clean-up is something that eventually becomes futile as you need to stop the waste from getting there in the first place. We concluded this from the videos World Ocean Clean Up day - 15th September (World Cleanup day, 2018) and The Ocean Clean up Technology Explained (The Ocean Cleanup, 2018). If large organizations are doing it on a large scale, we might as well start from the beginning where “educating” the public about the importance of marine life will take its toll in a larger way than doing beach clean ups which has been done multiple times and isn't a unique idea for conservation.

• After looking at the plastic clean-up we became very interested in estuary conservation.

In the first week of researching and sitting in the cloud we were a bit lost, not knowing exactly what we should do. Our coach, Mr Firth, came in to see how we were doing at the end of that week and said that our ideas were a little vague and that we were looking at too many problems and a too bigger picture all together. His example was, there are vast amounts of pollution in the ocean. How does it get there? Was his question. He said that we should thin it down to one type of pollution and that was plastic bags. How do they get there? Through rivers that flow into the sea and wind (the bags left around get blown by the wind), so who do they affect? The turtles as they perceive it as tasty jellyfish, they then digest the bag and it clogs their stomachs and unfortunately they die. Now come up with a solution (a Big Idea). This got us thinking over the weekend and on Monday Stefan introduced us to his idea about estuaries and how they are a vital part in the underwater food chain and biosphere.

We researched the potential of estuary conservation, as 99% of South African inshore species are estuarine associated. Our idea was to compare two estuaries as we had been to both of them before.

The first was De Mond Nature Reserve; the estuary there is in pristine condition De Mond Nature Reserve (Cape Nature, n.d). (We also used examples of other estuaries such as the Breede River estuary. Breede River Trust (Lower Breede River Conservancy Trust, n.d) ) Why? It is protected by guards who check your fish legal size limits and quotas. There is a time frame as to when you can enter and have to exit. Due to these efforts these estuaries have seen a large comeback. The second and for our purposes, the comparative estuary being the Kleinmond lagoon: it is absolutely shocking. Why? It is overfished and poached. action needs to be taken and laws need to be enforced.

The Zandvlei estuary is situated near Muizenberg. This estuary is under great threat from habitat degradation and biodiversity threat. The Zandvlei Trust is an organization that protects the Zandvlei lagoon and educates the local communities on sustaining and conserving this estuary. Zandvlei Trust (Zandvlei Trust, n.d)Due to large amounts of sewage spillage and insufficient clean water from the ocean, the water in Zandvlei is quite polluted and has resulted in a number of mass fish die offs and algal blooms over the past years. This system has also been highly modified through human activities.

“Modification included the stabilisation of parts of the shore into steep concrete banks, canalisation of the estuary mouth and the development of a marina system. Through these developments, large areas of hard substratum were created within a system that previously consisted of soft sand.” Western Cape Invasive Species. (Charles Griffiths, 2014)

The estuary is however not yet spoiled and although the fish stocks such as Garrick, Mullet and Steenbras are depleted, the fish still survive in the lagoon and it is in our interest to conserve the estuary for generations to come. So do your little bit by not exploiting the fish stocks, stick to catch limits and don't pollute or damage the environment.

We had found the link between education, estuaries and pollution or so we thought.

We researched it for the rest of the week and found that estuaries are vital as they act as breeding grounds for most of the sea fish to breed and sanctuaries for their young whilst they grow up. We wanted to get the nearby communities to conserve their estuaries and to show them how to.

It was Inthe realising last week that before many we of left our to estuariesgo on holiday are actuallyand Matthew being was quite on well a first protected, Aid course and and Jamesactually and have Stefan very were strict tired fishing of estuaries regulations and didn't and seeconservation the point in efforts going inany place further. which

have resulted in these estuaries becoming stable eco-systems, we then moved on to mussel farming.

• We looked at Mussel Farming on the West Coast (Ferreira, 2016)and found that there was a gap for involving coastal, poorer schools in farming mussels as it would increase food security as well as to help grow more naturally occurring species on our coastlines. It would help teach children about growing sustainably, harvesting correctly afterwards and maintaining the process to make it last a long time. We chatted about the things that would be vital in starting a project like this to help locals set up a mini business: • The easiest and most cost-effective way of farming oysters and mussels (maybe DIY - all you need is a rope attached to a buoy and a heavy weight to make it light on the wallet.). • Searching how to do farms • Sourcing material from the beach with beach clean-ups • Needing permits to farm • Identifying close coastal locations near Cape Town • Establishing the effect of mussel farming on the surrounding environment • Contacting landowners and getting permission to farm

When we got back from holiday we were all feeling the pressure hectically and that's when arguments broke out we were not gelling like a team and we weren't using our time productively. We became lost as we came to the realisation that the mussel farm wasn’t going to work for us anymore. We were starting to panic a little as exams drew near and deadlines for Big Ideas closed in. That's when we all decided to go home on Wednesday 10th of October and crack on down to start thinking, because Matthew thought our group wasn’t passionate enough about the other ideas.

• After all this brainstorming there was still something missing. None of us was feeling any passion for any of the ideas and we knew that to act on something effectively one needed passion, commitment and a warm fuzzy feeling…

That’s when it hit Matthew, he needed to find something that gave us goose bumps and made us want to make a change. The first video is about whales and their ability to affect climate change. Matthew went back in his google history and found it again, to his amazement! He started watching it and another idea popped into his head and that was when he

remembered a program called Whale Wars on Animal Planet. This was about a group of volunteers from a non-profit organization called Sea Shepherds and the leader Paul Watson who was making a change buy captaining an expedition every year off the shores of Australia in the Japanese commercial whale hunting season to try and stop them from hunting whales.

Matthew came to school the next day and showed James and Stefan two videos that he felt very passionate about. Matthew proposed the idea to James and Stefan, James liked it, but Stefan took a bit of convincing. We eventually got Stefan to agree and to hop onboard. That was it, the team’s decision was made. We knew that there must be a bigger picture here – and we needed a big idea!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M18HxXve3CM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soxlqX5U2iQ

OUR BIG IDEA Whales are climate changers. It is as simple as that! So our identified problem became climate change and our solution, WHALES!

All photos are compliments of Jean Tresfon and are not to be copied or sold.

What absolutely amazed us was the fact that so few people were aware of this fact – that there is such a huge link between whales and climate change. We needed to change this, and decided the best way was to use social media to spread the word. There was so much information tied up in research papers, but the public had no access to them and billions of people were totally uninformed!

So we planned to do this …

We decided to put the two together and our Big Idea was to create awareness in South Africa about whales and what is actually going on behind the scenes in the cold waters of the Antarctic. We needed to awaken people as to how much whales actually contribute to the seas and our environment and the horrific global consequence if their numbers continued dropping.

This is when a “big idea” (well we thought it was big) hit us and that was to do a 5km run through Bishops eventually ending at Lutgensvale field (one of Bishops’ fields) where an ice cold Coca Cola, a boerie roll and music would await everyone who joined in. We decided that the entry that would allow you to participate would be donation style meaning that you would need to get friends and family to sponsor you. This would be a minimum requirement of R500 per person. Raising money and creating awareness at the same time. The money that we would raise, would be donated to the Sea Shepherds to help them combat whaling.

Whales have played a big part in combating CO2 levels over our existence of burning fossil fuels. We originally started with watching countless videos on Sea Shepherds, a non-profit organisation/movement. Sea Shepherds were instrumental in giving us the brutal knowledge about whaling and gave us a really good insight into how and what they do.

The one piece of information that we found interesting through all these videos was that -

Sea Shepherds is not a company, it’s not an organisation but it's a movement and nothing can stop a movement!

What was also interesting is that they never give in to the Japanese no matter what the circumstance. The Japanese have constantly tried to destroy the Sea Shepherd’s ability to campaign against them every year by: instigating a lawsuit against Sea Shepherd USA; by removing Paul Watson, the fearless and passionate founder of Sea Shepherd and putting him on the Interpol red list for his heroic acts of “breaking into the Japanese vessel, damage to property, forcible obstruction of business, and injury”. This seriously hampered his ability to travel in international waters and he carried a significant risk of being arrested.

Sea shepherds are performing preservation, not really conservation. Their great work is around creating awareness of the ethics behind how the whaling is conducted. Their activation requires a lot of funding for example it costs R450 000 a day to run the SS Agulhas. (Ken Findlay 2018) Sea Shepherds and Green Peace are actually making a difference, but sadly it doesn’t really result in the hundreds and thousands of whale lives being saved. They need mass awareness and global protest to beat these horrific whaling ships!

According to Professor Ken Findlay the total whale kills (per species) before the moratorium in 1986 to put an end to commercial whaling was put in place were:

Blue whales 360 000

Fyn whales 725 000 Southern Right whales 60 000 – 70 000

Humpback whales 210 000 Sperm whales 420 000

Sei whales 405 000 Total Estimated 2 000 000

Adding in the estimated catches since then, the graph completes to look as follows:

Many of the global species of whales have been protected since the 1960’s and 1970’s onwards. However only in 1986 was there an international moratorium placed on whaling. The IWC (International Whaling Confederation) went to vote and received 25 votes to 7 in favour of the ban. An estimated 45000 whales have still been killed since the IWC’s 1986 ruling (UK whale and dolphin Conservation Society)IWC rejects Japan's proposal to lift commercial whale hunting ban (Child, 2018)

As the moratorium only applies to commercial whaling, whaling under the scientific-research and aboriginal-subsistence is still allowed. However, environmental groups argue the claim of research "as a disguise for commercial whaling, which is banned. Since 1994, Norway, has been whaling commercially and Iceland began hunting commercially in September 2006. Since 1986, Japan has been whaling under scientific research permits. The USA and several other countries are whaling under aboriginal whaling disguises! International Whaling Commission (From Wikipedia, n.d)

We then read an article called “Whaling: Past, Present and Future. This was a very clear article that described the four main types of whaling (since the ban on whaling in 1986) being: commercial whaling; illegal whaling (which includes pirate whaling); scientific whaling and aboriginal whaling Types of Whaling (Ballance, 2012) . This website gave us a great insight into how whaling still continues and the loopholes that countries are using to continue this horrific act of cruelty.

Commercial whaling: “The commercial hunting of whales in the 20th century represents what was arguably – in terms of sheer biomass – the greatest wildlife exploitation episode in human history.” (Ballance, 2012) Pre-exploitation levels are difficult to estimate as the data simply is not there. Regarding recovery, as whales live a very long time (a huge percentage of the adult populations having been mass hunted in the 20th century), they have delayed sexual maturity, and therefore there are low reproductive rates. These are increasing, and in some species, are recovering at 7% per annum.

In 1986 there was finally a moratorium on commercial whaling for all member nations of the International Whaling Commission. However, Whaling by Norway under IWC objection continues (estimated at 100,000 whales total since IWC moratorium)

Illegal Whaling: Whaling that occurs in contravention of national laws or internationally agreed upon quotas, season, area restrictions, and other limitations (Brownell and Yablokov 2009). We have seen that companies have also over-reported “legal” species to provide credible catch totals. A worldwide estimate of illegal take was approximately 180,000 whales. Pirate whaling is a form of illegal whaling and is defined as unregulated whaling conducted outside of national/international laws or agreements, sometimes by non- member nations of IWC and/or under a flag of convenience. Norway and Japan execute pirate whaling under Somalia, Cyprus, Curacao, Panamanian and Honduras flags. It is Operated in the Atlantic and in waters off Chile, Peru, Ecuador, and in the Antarctic, where the meat is shipped to Japan.

Scientific Whaling: Scientific Whaling is allowed through a provision in the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling. Member countries of the IWC allowed to kill whales for research related to management issues. It was formulated in the 1940s Scientific whaling nations include Japan and Iceland (periodically). The problem is that these programs lack testable hypotheses and performance measures and they use selective or inappropriate data for population estimation. What we found really sad is that this “research” relies unnecessarily on lethal sampling. which is not necessary to assess populations (primary objective of the IWC)

Since 1986, Japan has killed more than 10 000 whales through the JARPA and JARPN II “research” programs.

And it is therefore no surprise that publication of “research” is poor if not non-existent. JARPA produced 1 paper in peer-reviewed literature and “JARPN II exists to ‘demonstrate’ that whales eat too much fish and therefore should be culled by more whaling.”

Aboriginal Whaling: Accounts of human interactions with whales date back to at least 4th century BC with Alexander the Great’s men in the Indian Ocean. Perhaps dating back even to the Stone Age (2000-5000BC). Aboriginal whaling is highly regulated and IWC member nations must obtain their quota from the IWC. These hunters include the Greenland and Alaskan Eskimos, the Russian native people and the Bequians of the Caribbean. It is seen more as subsistence hunting.

The last available data we could find of these the types of whaling was of 2016 and the recorded catches (under the special provisions of the 1986 moratorium) were: Japan still under scientific research (333 catch limit) Norway and Iceland still commercial (combined 637 catch limit) Aboriginal catches 361 (Fin, Humpback, Minke, bowhead, gray) IWC rejects Japan's proposal to lift commercial whale hunting ban (Child, 2018) We were not happy with these numbers, it is still too many whales dying each year!

We needed an understanding of the history of whaling as a timeline and found one! This was an amazing website as it gave us a time line of whaling from 1611-2007. This helped us to understand the order in which whaling started, when it gained momentum as well as the times when it has been curtailed. Greenpeace Whaling Timeline (Greenpeace, n.d)

We then discovered that only 2 months ago on the 13th September, a terrifying meeting was held. The Japanese took the IWC (International Whaling Commission) to vote on lifting the ban on whaling at the 2018 Florianopolis declaration (13 sept 2018).

The vote went 27 pro-whaling for countries that are backing Japan to 41 votes against whaling. So the moratorium on whaling was upheld as it needs a 3/4 majority for the ban to be lifted IWC rejects Japan's proposal to lift commercial whale hunting ban We have to ensure that whaling doesn't become legal ever again. This result was rather close and scary in some way as there are still a rather large number of countries that are pro- whaling and want to lift a 32 year ban. This poses the question of how safe the whales’ future is? Six of the world's 13 "great whale species" are still classified as endangered, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Even after 32 years of global protection. WWF Whale Facts

What was even more scary was that it was uncovered that most of the countries that sided with Japan (many of them, African countries that had more recently joined the IWC and don’t even have a coastline!) had recently received financial aid from Japan – terrifying how economics and politics could potentially swing the votes in favour of whaling in the future. And why is Japan whaling anyway? It is more about political and cultural heritage if you dig deeper into the real reasons why. Apparently the youth don’t even eat whale meat and the frozen stockpiles are building up to extreme quantities! Japanese Whaling Refusal

Just as a point of interest we tried to find out the oldest recorded whale. We found an extraordinarily interesting article that revealed that when autopsies were performed on many hunted bowhead whales, in the space of 12 years, the researcher found 6 stone arrow harpoon heads embedded in a dead bowhead whales flesh that had last been used for whale hunting 180 years ago by the Northern Inupiaq and Yupik hunters. This proved bowhead whales to live for at least 177-245+ years old. This could mean that the Bowhead whales may be the longest-living mammal on the planet.

What was also interesting, prior to this, was that a researcher, in charge of establishing the ages of bowhead whales through a process involving the aging of a whale’s eye had her unbelievable results rejected. She established though her testing that they could live as long as 240 years! Her research was thrown out as impossible and she was told that her instrument of measuring age must be defective. Well clearly she hadn’t been wrong and was in fact right all along. These are indeed the longest living mammals on the planet and they need a secure global protection that will surpass any political, economic or cultural reason for being hunted. Whale Aging

So we were getting ourselves deep in research but still needed to work out how to get the world to know how important it was that every attempt is made to protect whales as they are the climate changers we need!

We were in a bit of a panic as we were running out of time to start our project fun run. With exams drawing near, the only time we had was the weekend after exams and before Grade 9 camp so we planned to do it on that Saturday. At this point we were advised that the Fun Run was maybe not a “Big” enough idea! So we were back to the drawing board. Team “life under water” needed to wake up! This made us feel anxious and like we too were getting our heads below water. We thought we were sinking a bit.

And we did this …

"Oh, simple thing, where have you gone? I'm getting old, and I need something to rely on”

First words sung in the Chorus of the song, “Somewhere only we know” We realised there was something missing in life, and we realised this was whales. Something we are really passionate about is helping marine life prosper and the way we wanted to help was by creating awareness through big organisations so many people would see what whales do for us, physically and emotionally.

While planning the fun run and exams approaching we realised that it would be unrealistic to try hold an event like this as there was so little time and we would struggle to get a lot of people to participate and therefore - donate. We decided to move away from raising money for the Sea Shepherds and founded a new idea. It now all made sense - our problem was climate change and our solution was whales. We didn’t need to raise money, we just needed to raise awareness, and not only in South Africa, we needed to create awareness on a global scale.

We needed current information first hand and who better than the most renowned whale expert in SA and globally, a professor by the name of Ken Findlay who is a marine conservationist and studies whales. Through a connection that Matthew had, we managed to organize an interview with him and this was a turning point in “life below water’s” excitement levels.

We decided to abandon the idea of a fun run and to rather create a blog that had all the information about whales and their climate changing abilities that we thought would be beneficial to share with the public. In mentioning this topic to many family and friends (who are all reasonably educated and conservation minded) we realised how few people actually knew this fact! There was a massive gap in possibly 99% of the global population’s awareness of this very simple solution to what seems to be the source of absorption of between 40-60% of our human carbon emissions. This would make people aware of the impact that a mammal like a whale would have on the global sustainability system.

At first we thought of posting our blog on our social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter but then we recalled back to the 14th of September where James said “We should get in touch with the Two Oceans Aquarium” and that’s when we decided to use the Two Oceans Aquarium platform. Matthew and his mom contacted, Maryke Musson (the curator of the aquarium) where she and Devon Bowen would help us share our thesis on a creative public blog on the Two Oceans Aquarium website and their Facebook page. We needed to write up the information including pictures and videos if necessary, that we wanted the public to know about, and needed to keep it as concise as possible but still powerful enough and send it in to Devon who formatted it and posted it. Once it was posted our job was to spread the link as far and as wide as possible.

And here is the evidence of how it went...

There is a misconception out there about the importance of whales in the ocean. Whales move the nutrients in the ocean, not the water itself, and it is this bringing of nutrients to the surface of the ocean, into the photic zone, that makes them climate changers. This whole concept relies on "Whale Poo" – the miracle of the ocean.

When whales poop, that huge plume becomes a massive dose of fertilizer, heavily rich in iron and nitrogen that feeds the primary production of phytoplankton. The bloom in growth of all this phytoplankton is what forms the base of the ocean’s ability to gobble up what scientists believe to be somewhere between 40 and 60% of the Carbon dioxide that is produced on earth by us humans. You can clearly see that the ocean is a massive absorber of CO2 and hence is instrumental in combating global warming which is creating these horrific climate changes that our planet is experiencing.

And at the very beginning of this simple food chain lies Whale Poo!! So, it is as simple as that, if the whales are hunted out to the levels that they were between 1904 and 1965 (check this date?) where 2 million whales were harpooned and slaughtered in the most unethical and inhumane way, the earth is going to be overrun with carbon dioxide and the consequences of that, well we can only begin to comprehend.

Japan argued that killing whales would boost the populations of fish and krill but as the great numbers of whales declined so did the fish and krill populations: it seemed counter intuitive. Whales actually help to sustain the entire living system of the ocean and world. When whales have finished eating down in the twilight zone they return to the photic zone where there is enough light for photosynthesis to take place. Here they release vast amounts of poo that is rich in Iron and Nitrogen - Nutrients that are scarce in the surface waters. The nutrients fertilisers plant plankton (Phytoplankton). Whales plunge up and down through the water column and in doing this they keep kicking the nutrients and plankton back into the photic zone allowing the plankton more time to reproduce before it sinks into the deep. Plant plankton does not only feed the animals of the sea it also absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during the process of photosynthesis. The phytoplankton is eaten by the zooplankton (plankton consisting of small animals and the immature stages of larger animals) When the zooplankton dies and sinks, it takes this carbon out of circulation down into the depths where it no longer has an effect on the world above. This process is known as carbon sink.

The other contributor to this food chain is what is known as upwelling. Upwelling on the south African coastline is what makes our oceans unbelievably nutrient rich. Upwelling is a process whereby ocean currents, tides, and wind, constantly force the deep, cold, nutrient rich water up to the surface. (Upwelling Process)

However it is believed that the movement of ocean nutrients attributable to whales is roughly the same as the amount of mixing caused by all the world’s wind, waves and tides. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M18HxXve3CM)

The nutrients have to be constantly brought back to the surface so that they can feed the phytoplankton, and the constant movement of the whales though the water column increases this important upwelling process.

Southern Right Whale calves grow an inch a day (Ken Findlay 2018) and there is simply not enough krill in our oceans surrounding South Africa to feed the mothers so that they can fill their “oil tanks” up to provide the 4 months’ worth of milk that is required to wean their calves. The Antarctic is the feeding zone for many of the world’s populations of whales. This is interesting as the Antarctic waters are very low in Iron which is the most essential nutrient for the primary production of phytoplankton. Those waters have very little iron as it only gets swept from soils and sand into the ocean. In the Antarctic, there is an obvious shortage of open land (the ice locks the soil in).

The CO2 chain also needs to be considered. The phytoplankton absorb the CO2 from the air, and use it to photosynthesis (converting it into growth of these micro plants and a by-product

of Oxygen) The krill then eat the plankton and the whales eat the krill transferring the carbon onto the secondary consumers (the whales). Now, what happens to all this carbon? “Whale fall” is the simple answer. The carbon (embedded in the growth of the now dead adult whale, simply falls to the deep ocean floor when these whale carcasses plummet to their final place of rest in the abyssal zone (deeper than 1000m). Here they can create complex, localized ecosystems that supply sustenance to deep-sea organisms for decades. Whale Fall

The one concept that is a known side effect of the too much CO2 in the atmosphere is one known as Carbonic acidification - too much CO2 in the Ocean. The impact of this is undergoing much research but acidification can have dramatic consequences for the ocean and marine life – the most scary for us being the negative effect on branching corals in coral reefs. Ocean Acidification

Graph showing the relationship between Dissolved Carbon Dioxide in the ocean and the resulting PH of the ocean

“Over the past 300 million years, ocean pH has been slightly basic, averaging about 8.2. Today, it is around 8.1, a drop of 0.1 pH units, representing a 25-percent increase in acidity over the past two centuries.” (National Geographic Author, 2017). Although the numbers show small changes, the devastating effects of these small changes are killing entire marine eco-systems.

So, the maths is actually easy. The more whales in the ocean, the more whale poo, the more fertilizer, the more phytoplankton, the more CO2 absorption, the more oxygen and marine plant growth, the more zooplankton, the more whales the ocean can sustain.

Whale numbers were once thought to be top down forced (determined by how many whales can the ocean sustain). What is the ocean’s maximum whale carrying capacity? We first have to decide if the process of controlling the whale numbers is a “top-down” or a “bottom-up” process.

Top-down forcing – if the last in the food chain, the whales, are removed in large numbers this would result in the krill surplus, eating all the primary producers (phytoplankton) and raising the other krill predator species (penguins and seal populations). However as we have seen, as no fertilizer is being put back into the ocean as there is less whale poop there will be a decline in primary production of phytoplankton and the eco system goes into decline.

Bottom-up forcing – however if we change how scientists used to see food chains and now remove the pressure and the whale numbers increase, this will potentially increasing the maximum carrying capacity of the oceans. There will be more fertilizer, more phytoplankton, more zoo plankton (krill) hence a higher whale carrying capacity!

Whales are “ecosystem engineers” – they have the ability to modify their environment to change their survival. (Ken Findlay, 2018)

We still don’t know exactly what age whales live to, however there is some evidence that some species live to at least 180 years of age if not up to 240 years. This is staggering. So each of these beautiful creatures can absorb CO2 by feeding off the food chain that absorbs this

CO2 for 240 years each at a rate of 400 000 tonnes per year, the equivalent carbon emissions from 80,000 cars. Whale Poop Fights Global Warming

And to think that these whales migrate every year in winter to the same bay where their mothers showed them the way for the very first time.

This whole concept of whales being climate changers relies on the ability of whale populations to continue increasing at the rate at which they are doing so currently, under the protection of the IWC’s ban on whaling since 1986.

Ken’s best fact: The fact that these whales have the ability to recover so remarkably from near extinction. for example in the Southern Rights being taken from 20 000 to less than 100 individuals globally and then to recover to 15000-18000 today.

We still need to get the Southern Rights up to where they should be (70 000-80 000 globally). Some species and some populations within species have recovered faster than others. Some have increased by 10% compound every year (so they would recover at that rate within 7 years) The recovery is exponential and the effect of that could clearly be seen this year with 1347 babies, calves and mating pairs seen from Witsand to Hawston alone. This was the largest population in years!

A contact that we managed to connect with was Els Vermeulen from the Mammal Research Institute. She is based at the whale museum in Hermanus. She was happy to share the South African Coastline Southern Right whale numbers with us:

Unfortunately the data was a bit skewed in 2015-2017. This was the result of a period of the super El Nino that drastically affected the availability of food around the coasts of South Africa. However, if one ignores that data as the upward trend continued after that, you can see, there is no doubt that this pressure to lift the ban on whaling needs to be very closely monitored as whales are like sitting ducks, and there are entire armies out there waiting to gun them down! We cannot have this graph going backwards ever again!

So we decided that the only way to protect these giants of the deep is to raise mass awareness, to spread the word about whales being almost the single biggest controller of climate change on our planet! This is when we realised how important networking is.

And this is how well it worked …

Matthew’s mum had recently met a woman who managed to put us in contact with Maryke Musson (the curator of the Two Oceans Aquarium). She was completely amazed and so excited about Bishops encouraging young people to think this way and so she put us in contact with Devon Bowen (the head of the IT department and all social media platforms) and so the idea of a blog was born. Having the meeting at the Two Oceans Aquarium was such a lucky strike. This worked out well as we thought we were not going to see them in person as we were interacting with them via email. Through this meeting we got a better understanding of each other. I think they saw how passionate and interested in the topic we were, which was great. We discussed what we would like to incorporate in the blog and set a deadline for the submission of all the information by us and a publication date of the blog by Devon which was to be the 5th of November 2018.

Our meeting with Maryke Musson and Devon Bowen at the 2 oceans aquarium.

The interview with Ken Findlay that same afternoon was an extraordinary experience that will not be forgotten by us. Arranging an interview with Ken was a shot in the dark due to his ongoing, busy schedule. The interview was a big success on our behalf as we gained a mountain of knowledge, some new and some re-enforcing the facts that we had already researched. A lot of our questions weren't answered as there was a bit of a time frame and so much information to be gained. As we walked into CPUT’s sciences department, we all shrunk into our shoes a little. It was quit scary as we are only 15 year old boys and we were interviewing an academic professor who is a world renowned whale expert. When it came to

note taking we were so hypnotised by all the information that on the odd occasion forgot to take the fact or point down leaving us too embarrassed to make him repeat what he said. The one difficulty was trying to take down notes considering the speed at which he talked. He also made us think and challenged our thoughts and what we thought we already knew. He gave us 2 hours of his very precious time and that experience of sitting across the table with such a world expert was something we will never forget. All in all it worked out extremely well, it far exceeded our expectations.

Our interview with Ken Findlay at the CPUT in the Sciences department.

We turned out to have an extremely productive day as the day before had been full of disappointments. We became aware of the demands on experts and how unbelievably busy they are. We had arranged an interview with Ken but at the last minute he cancelled and we weren't going to see him at all, then we got an email saying that he could do the following day after school. He said we could have 45 minutes of his time, well after 2 hours we were still glued to our seats, interviewing him. He really challenged us and made us work hard to get the information that we wanted and needed. What a brilliant day that was for us. We shot two birds with one stone and managed to squeeze in a free tour of the newly renovated aquarium. (Thanks too to parental ability to lift us all over and the traffic!!!)

“Life Below Water” visiting the new Two Oceans Aquarium renovations.

Questions for Ken – Interview CPUT (Science faculty)

· What is your opinion on global warming and whales? do you think that they are a big contributor to stopping global warming?

· In your opinion what kind of percentage do whales contribute towards CO2 absorption?

· In your opinion what percentage of CO2 absorption is attributable to the ocean in its entirety?

· What is your view on “whale fall” the sinking of whales, do their bodies actually sink with

CO2 inside of them? Could it be a big factor in battling climate change?

· What is your view on the Sea Shepherds anti-whaling organization?

· Do you feel that they are making a difference?

· What is your opinion on whaling?

· In your opinion has whaling improved or not?

· Which countries are the worst culprits in whaling?

· Why does japan still whale? If it’s not for “research”?

· Has the Minke whale that japan states has recovered really recovered or is that just an excuse to hunt them again?

· What is your view on the ban of whaling in South Africa, is it safe, will it be like this forever or could south Africa’s attitude towards whaling swing around/change?

· Where exactly do whales breed. and the migratory paths that they take to reach the Antarctic?

· Do you agree with the that if ships and boats were to travel at slower speeds we could decrease the amount of whale deaths?

· Which species of whale is most endangered?

· Which species of whale is the most common?

· Which species of whales have recovered the fastest? And why?

· Are whales a great tourism aspect?

· How did you start/find your passion for whales?

· What other anti-whaling organizations are there?

Our biggest success was the blog and the fact that we managed to spread our message far and wide. We received so many incredible messages and comments of encouragement and we have decided to share them in this narrative.

These are some of the comments sent to Matthew’s mom about the blog that we published on the Two Oceans Aquarium website.

The successful results of our blog:

We could not believe that we received well over 1200 direct hits on the Two Oceans Aquarium Website! Maryke and Devon were so impressed, especially with the fact that not only had we been republished, but that we had been re Tweeted by some really great companies too.

And then finally, on Facebook was where the real power of social media platforms played its part…

So, at the end of the 10 days, we had reached 43 countries across the world. And we even managed to infiltrate Japan itself. We can only hope that our message manages to find its way the cruel whale hunters and any uninformed public who support them without knowing the consequences of their actions.

Conclusion…

The final problem we addressed was climate change in the area of global warming and how whales are able to help reduce carbon emissions in the atmosphere by themselves fertilizing the primary producers of phytoplankton, the start of a very simple food chain, who by photosynthesis are responsible for taking up to 60% of carbon dioxide emissions out of circulation.

Our brainstorming sessions brought us to the idea of interviewing Ken Findley to confirm and understand the scientific background of how whales involve themselves in the Carbon sink process. Once we had the information we needed, we would then put it into our blog and finally conclude in our written narrative. Our information gathering came together well (although once you start you just can’t stop and you get pulled into the deep abyss of the internet!) and we were then able to raise the awareness that we planned to do, through a creative blog that the Two oceans Aquarium published for us.

We are all really pleased with the progress that we have made as our idea has been spread all over the internet, on multiple platforms. Our content was so good that within 24 hours we were actually republished in Cape Town Etc. They initially plagiarised us word for word, but then were forced by the Two Oceans Aquarium to give us the credit or to withdraw their article.

They chose to keep our article and give us the credit and that gave us 241 shared hits that we could then add to our total!

So that was a great learning - to be victims of plagiarism as we are always told at school not to plagiarize and now we know how it feels!!

We hope that the concept will change the way people act in terms of helping to keep our world healthy and sustainable. The relationship between SDG 14 (life below water) and our problem is that the biggest mammal on this planet lives below water, and she ,as a species is equipped with being the system engineer of a huge method of combating climate change, our problem. A crucial combination for the sustainability of land, sky and sea. The carbon footprint is made on land by us humans, it ends up in the atmosphere, in the sky, and the sea

is as responsible for absorbing it as are the trees on land. We cannot ignore this crucial part that the ocean and the mammals therein play, and they are at the mercy of the whalers, pollution (plastics, chemicals and ocean noise, nets and passing ship collisions to name a few). We simply had to educate and create an awareness around this topic.

Complexity in our group would take the gold medal at one point as arguments broke out very quickly and continuously. However, it did help us to find each other’s strengths and weaknesses and from that point on we flourished as a group.

Name Strength weakness Matthew Very determined and keeps Very poor at English the group working at all sentence structure. times. James Always is keen to work hard Very good at distracting the and never moans about a group with noises. task assigned. Good at correcting mistakes in our narrative. Stefan He is a great arguer, has Concentration deficit, short good sentence construction. tempered.

For example - On the 5 November - “The team argued quite a lot as no one was working productively.” We found out that Stefan had been hiding something from us. All Stefan could think about was Julia, a girl that he met on the weekend. Anyway, we resolved this by taking Stefan’s phone away. We all sat down and resolved our issues, followed by 20 minutes of solid working which got us back on track. This was just one of the many situations of group dynamics that we experienced over the last two terms. Overall though, we experienced a highly adaptable, self-organising system where rules were established, roles became apparent, conflicts were resolved and the job got done!

As far as the long term sustainability of whale awareness and education goes, it came to our attention that the Two Oceans Aquarium has designed a Marine Science matric syllabus that has been approved by the Department of Education to be offered at the start of 2019. We are sure that the interest that we sparked in the staff at the aquarium could lead to the inclusion of a module on the importance of whales in that syllabus. It was also suggested by a reader of our blog that we present our topic at TED Talks Cape Town or TEDXSEAPOINT (more marine related) to spread our “Big Idea”. We also plan to repost our Blog on all social media platforms including the Aquarium’s as it is a universal topic that has no cell by date.

We have all been very satisfied with what we have gained from “Big Ideas”, as we have been allowed to think freely, to reflect often, and run with ideas that led us to a solution that we hope has made a difference. We feel we have helped solve a problem in “Life below Water” by raising awareness which in itself remains a big problem. We can only hope that our message continues to filter through to the billions of people on our planet, all going about their daily routines being blissfully unaware.

Our reflections looking back on the Big Ideas curriculum:

James’s reflection: • “This course will give me an opportunity to broaden my perspective and experience in order to apply knowledge to a relevant and real-world situation. • Finding solutions, solving problems and developing skills to explore big ideas that can truly make a difference is something I’d love to do. • There are ideas that I have and would like to explore further which could solve environmental, sustainability and humanitarian problems we face in society today. I’d like more knowledge on how to broaden these ideas and learn how to actually make them happen.” This was a bit of my Motivation at the beginning of the course when we didn’t know what was going to happen. If I take my whole experience of the journey, I didn’t realize that creating something like we have done would have been adequate for my expectations at the very beginning, but now I see that spreading news of “how whales have such a significant impact on the world” is something that money cannot buy. I have been happy to have done this course as I have only improved my ability to communicate, critically analyse a situation, create and manipulate innovative ideas and collaborate with my team mates and Big Ideas Pupils of the Class of 2018. I hope to carry on interacting with the Big Ideas classes in the future and take our project further to make an even larger impact on our Planet to achieve global sustainability!!

Stefan’s’ reflection: The big ideas have been a very educative and interesting but also challenging course.

In the beginning for about eight weeks we did a process known as loading heads where we learnt about many of the problems facing our world. The idea of the head loading was to get us to identify which problem we would like to tackle as well as perhaps educating us more on something that we had originally thought on doing, the good part of the head loading is that all the goals were covered and thereby giving all boys an opportunity to learn about all the goals, so EMS would cover economic related goals and Biology would cover environmental goals such as goal 14 etc.

After this we were allocated into groups after a process in which we decided which goal we would be doing. After being allocated into our groups we went through long and very much frustrating and group conflicting procedure known as sitting in the cloud. This is a research procedure where you are supposed to struggle and go this way and that until you eventually find your way out with a goal in mind. During our time in the gigantic cumulonimbus cloud we researched all manner of issues we found interesting to address relating to our goal.

Finally, we emerged with a goal in mind that revolved around educating people about the importance of whales in our oceans and the importance of their conservation and what negative affects whaling had on ocean ecosystems

Matthew’s reflection: At the beginning I was a little sceptical about the Big Ideas course and as it was going to be a test run and we were the guinea pigs so I didn’t know what to expect. I was also a little nervous about missing out on the other subjects that Big Ideas took up and if it would impact my decision on subject choices or not.

Looking back on big ideas I would say it has been a roller-coaster ride. We have had our ups and downs as a group and individually. Big ideas has lived up to its expectations of us (I think?) and has exceeded mine. Big ideas has also taught us how to work in a group. It has most certainly displayed the leaders in each group. Big ideas has taught me that procrastination is not an option and that working every day and using your time efficiently is key to success. Planning and making sure that the whole group is on the same page it vital as well. But most of all I have realised that Big Ideas isn’t free YouTube time. Big ideas is not just a course, it’s a revolution. The world is changing faster that we know it and we need to adapt. The one thing that I like about Big Ideas is that I has given me the chance to spread my wings in new ways and styles. It has given me the chance to do something that I wouldn’t have had the chance to do if I was stuck in the normal curriculum. The ability for you to do what you want, to come up with something new is the best for me. I have also enjoyed taking charge of the project.

The reflection part of each week was something that really helped me to write down what I was feeling (my emotions) onto paper. The reflections also drastically improved my writing skills.

The “Life Below Water” group hard at work!!

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