Asha De Vos is a marine biologist and educator with a strong affinity for marine mammals.

 

 

Armed with degrees from the Universities of St. Andrews, Oxford and Western Australia, she is driven with the passion to increase awareness about conservation through innovative outreach tools, strong international collaboration and good quality science.

Asha’s main field of research focuses on the blue whale populations around Sri Lanka and forms the first long-term study on this species within the northern Indian Ocean.

She has engaged in research and presented  her work in the Maldives, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the US. Currently a post-doctoral scholar at the University of California Santa Cruz, Asha is working with a team of scientists to try to mitigate the impact of ship strike on this unique population of blue whales.

Asha is also a writer to the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and serves as a member of IUCN's Cetacean Specialist Group and publish both scientific and non-scientific articles on all things marine. Asha is a TED Senior Fellow and a Duke University Global Fellow in Marine Conservation.

 

To this end, in June 2012 I was selected as a panelist for the Oceans themed Sustainable Development Dialogue at the UN organized Rio +20 summit in Rio de Janeiro. My work has been showcased internationally by Channel 7 Australia, CNN, the BBC and the New York Times and globally in the print media.

 Founder of The Sri Lankan Blue Whale Project, Asha runs a blog at www.ashadevos.com as part of her commitment to sharing knowledge and engaging more people in marine conservation. The term 'The Unorthodox Whale' came into being after many years of research on the blue whales around Sri Lankan waters and a realisation that they were simply - different. The concept of 'the Unorthodox Whale' was first presented to the world at the TED 2012 conference in Long Beach, California.


1. What are the characteristics of the blue whale that sets them apart?
 
Blue whales are the largest animals on the planet. They are actually a mottled grey colour but when they are underwater their surface is a turquoise blue, which is why they got their name.

2. How are they at risk?

The southern coast of Sri Lanka is home to one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. It also happens to be adjacent to prime blue whale habitat. As such, the biggest risk for the blue whales in our waters is death by ship strike.

 Off California, ship traffic is about half that experienced off our coastline and they are currently putting measures in place that will help to reduce whale death by strike.  

3. How are the species found in the North Indian Ocean different to ones found elsewhere?

The blue whales in the northern Indian Ocean are particularly interesting because they do not appear to migrate beyond the warm waters of this ocean basin. This is unlike other blue whale populations that migrate between colder polar feeding areas and warmer breeding and calving areas.

They also tend to lift their tail flukes out of the water before a deep dive more often than in any other population and they are 5 m shorter than the Antarctic blue whale.

 

4. Why it is important to protect the species?

Blue whales, like other organisms on this planet represent a component in a larger, more complex ecological web. As top predators in the food web their conservation delivers broader biodiversity benefits with their presence or absence cascading through nature in complex ways.

If removed, the vanished top predator’s prey proliferate, in turn putting pressure on the species that the prey eats. In the case of the blue whale, removing this species will likely lead to a proliferation of krill that consume plankton – the base of every food web in the ocean, and the biggest source of oxygen on the planet.  A decrease in plankton could affect the local fish catch as many of the commercially important fish depend on it.

Whales also play an important role in nutrient cycling. A dead whale carcass is important for the transport of carbon to the deep sea. As the carcass sinks to the depths, it draws carbon acquired at the surface to the deep.

This is important in the context of global climate change as this export system means there is less carbon available to interact with the atmosphere. Once on the ocean floor the carcass also provides a source of food to many organisms in the deep ocean, a place generally devoid of food.

5. What we can do to help?

The biggest way you can help is by informing yourself about the value of these species and what they mean to the ecosystem. Ship strike is not an uncommon problem and using the lessons learned in other countries I am building a plan with a list of achievable goals that will enable all of you to get more involved in the protection of this population from its biggest threat, so stay tuned….

 

6. What measures do you take to protect the species and how successful have the efforts of "The Unorthodox Whale" venture been so far?

Blue whales in our waters have been little studied. In fact, the marine environment around Sri Lanka has been little explored. Through The Sri Lankan Blue Whale Project that hosts the blog ‘The Unorthodox Whale’, we have established a long-term research plan for working with and protecting the whales and other marine megafauna around Sri Lanka.

We have conducted multiple field seasons in an attempt to understand how the physical environment influences the biology, and thereby the blue whales within the waters off our southern coast.

Understanding a population and its needs is important if we are to effectively protect them in the longer term. At present, I am specifically working on the problem of whale death by ship strike and how we can mitigate and reduce this from occurring.

In terms of our success, I believe that the media work that I have been involved in and my blog have created a lot of awareness on this population and marine life around Sri Lanka. The most rewarding moments are when Sri Lankans write to me to tell me that they didn’t know that blue whales lived in our waters prior to seeing some of my work.

I feel that through these means I have been able to engage and ignite the imagination of the public in a way that creates a more supportive environment for conservation.

 

Pics by Asha De Vos and Ryan Lash