Dr. Enid Sisskin sat down with Christian Wagley of Healthy Gulf to talk about the Endangered Species Committee, or the so-called “God Squad,” and how their latest action may impact wildlife in the Gulf, including the Rice’s whale. This interview is condensed and edited. A full version of the interview is located below.
Dr. Enid Sisskin: I understand that the Rice's whale has probably the fewest number of individuals of the Gulf whales. Are there estimates of just how many are left?
Christian Wagley: The Rice's whale is one of the rarest in the world, and it's certainly the rarest in the Gulf. The best estimate is fewer than 100, maybe only around 50 individuals remaining. And, interestingly, they really like it off Florida the most. We have a place out there called the De Soto Canyon, which is a place fishermen like to go for the pelagic fish like marlin, swordfish, and wahoo, and such. And the same things that attract those fish there are attracting the whales there to feed as well. So, the De Soto Canyon is about 60 miles out from Pensacola Pass. The whales, though, are found Gulf-wide. So they really like what they call the drop off or the shelf break. So, where the continental shelf drops off into the deeper waters of the Gulf, this is going to be between about 300 and 1,300 feet in depth. That's where the whales like to be. That's where they're feeding. That's where they're pretty much spending all of their lives.
Sisskin: No kidding. I understand the Rice's whale was not necessarily identified as a unique species until fairly recently. So how did that happen?
Wagley: Yeah, it's, you know, it's a fascinating story. They were only named as the Rice's whale, as a fully distinct and new species, five years ago. A little over five years ago. Now we knew the whales were there, right? So scientists have known about them since the 1960s when one came ashore dying stranded in the little town of Panacea, Florida, kind of over there, south of Tallahassee in the Big Bend area. And at the time, a scientist found out about it, actually saw a newspaper article and photos of the whale, and thought that the whale should not be in the Gulf. What is going on here? Wrote a paper about it. That was Dale Rice, who was a whale biologist, actually out in the Pacific Northwest. So he gets credit. That's when they redid the renaming. They gave him credit for it. But for years and years, for decades, scientists were referring to it as the Bryde's whale, which is a whale that ranges worldwide in temperate regions. And this was believed to be a subspecies of Bryde's whale. So a little bit different. Lived mainly or only in the Gulf of Mexico. But about 20 years ago, scientists were just thinking, " This seems to be different. We think there's some unique things about it. But science needs what? It needs evidence. And they didn't have enough evidence yet. And so what happened was one came ashore dead in the Everglades. It was 2018. And that's a tragedy, because when you have so few animals, losing even one is a tragedy. But scientists saw the opportunity, and so they, they seized that opportunity. That whale was buried in a very methodical way, actually, a specific mix of compost in order to get a clean skeleton. It was done first in Florida, and then it was taken to a place on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. In the coastal area of North Carolina. They nickname it Bonehead. The scientists were able to compare the skull of that specimen to other closely related whales, along with some new DNA. Analysis was done, and the paper was published. And both of those two lines of research said this is a fully distinct species. And it was renamed Rice's whale.
Sisskin: That's really interesting. You discussed where in the Gulf the Rice's whales generally live. What can you say about the habitat that far offshore?
Wagley: When you get that far offshore, it's relatively devoid of nutrients. And so we can tell that from the color of the water. And I've only been out there once. That's 60 miles out. And so the farther you go offshore, it just keeps getting bluer and bluer, and it becomes this just intense cobalt blue color. And that's really a reflection of low nutrient levels out there, as reflected by the lack of phytoplankton. The phytoplankton are capturing that energy in the sun. And, you know, there are little plants that are growing, and that's the base of that marine food chain out there. And the whales are there because the fish that they mostly target, which is called a silver rag drift fish, nobody's ever heard of that fish before. There's no commercial fishery for it. And they're doing what's called plunge feeding. They're diving down hundreds of feet and lunging literally like through a school of fish with their mouth open and getting hundreds or thousands of fish at a time. And these little fish, and I say little, they're five or six inches long. These drift fish are very high in fat. And so we know fat is calories, fat is energy. And so it's believed that the whales expend all that energy to go that far down to get these fish because it gives them a big return on that investment.
Sisskin: Now, whales have an interesting role in the ecology of the Gulf. Can you talk a little about that?
Wagley: This is being talked about and recognized more and more worldwide. Some whales feed at the surface, but these whales, like Rice's whales, feed at depth. So again, they're diving hundreds of feet down, they're getting those silver-eyed drift fish, and there's some other things they eat as well, and then they're returning to the surface. Right? Because they have to be, they have to be breathing every, every little bit. And when they do that, they inevitably poop; they defecate at the surface. And so remember we talked about the color of that water, and basically from a planktonic kind of nutrient level standpoint, it's almost like a desert in some ways out there. So the whales are taking those nutrients in the form of fish that they're consuming and bringing that back to the surface and putting those nutrients out there, when they defecate, and that's feeding the marine, the phytoplankton there. That's the base of the food chain. And so because of the whales, they're literally pumping. That's where the name "whale pump" comes from. Pumping nutrients that otherwise would just stay down there at the bottom. And they're pumping those and bringing those back up to the surface, where they feed that plankton. So you get a richer environment when the whales are there.
Sisskin: So we've got a small population of Rice's whales, estimated to be between 50 and 100 individuals. What are the threats facing the species that is keeping the population so small?
Wagley: Yeah, there are several main threats to Rice's whales, and some of these are the same threats to whales and other parts of the world as well. One is ocean noise. So, noise does not kill whales outright or directly, but it stresses them. And when an animal is stressed, it can't feed very well, it can't reproduce very well. It may shorten its life; it may not be able to have offspring. So ocean noise is largely created by vessel traffic. So shipping, and really the oil and gas industry in the Gulf, is really the biggest single source of impacts to the whales. And it has those impacts in multiple ways. One is called seismic surveys. This is what's done to find new areas for oil and gas where they tow an array behind a ship, and they fire thousands of explosions toward the bottom of the ocean and measure, try to find these deposits. The other one is oil spills. And so we get frequent, smaller events that may not be such an issue, but we get that occasional larger event in the Gulf.
Sisskin: What's being done to build support for the protection of the Rice's whale?
Wagley: Well, there are a whole lot of things happening on that front. And you know, we're playing catch-up a little bit because the whale has only been named as a new species five years ago. One of the things that's happening more recently now is one of the issues is we don't see these whales very often. And for science, we need to know when they're seen and to have those reported. So we've been working to get signs placed at boat ramps and marinas where there are fishermen and others that go far offshore to report those sightings. It's really important to building the case, you know, for the science of where the whales are and the seasonality and such. But I think the most important and exciting thing for me is the Gulf Coast Whale Festival. We just had our third one out on Pensacola Beach. As more people hear about the whales, they take it upon themselves to do something. And I just think it's a beautiful example of how humans have the ability to care about something even that they may never see. And I think about myself growing up. I loved big cats, I loved lions. I love tigers. Well, I've never been to Africa, I've never been to India. I've never seen them in their wild, and I've probably never will. But I still care about them and I still love them. And it's the same thing with Rice's whales.
Sisskin: So now the God Squad. Can you tell me what they are and what's going on with them right now? And particularly how it affects the rice as well?
Wagley: So there is this, pretty much little-known provision in the Endangered Species Act that was put in in the late 70s, which, the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973. And at some point, Congress recognized or thought that there might be a need for some occasional, very rare exception made to the Endangered Species Act. And so there's a committee that is structured under the law, made up of different cabinet-level positions. And it's been nicknamed the God Squad because they've literally been given the power to potentially decide whether a species lives or dies based on these actions. There's the ability under the law to provide an exception to endangered species laws for economic reasons.
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Sisskin: Only three times has this committee gotten together to make decisions.
Wagley: Yeah.
Sisskin: And in many cases, they haven't actually agreed to it.
Wagley: That's correct. So this was a historic thing. You know, we knew that this provision exists, but just didn't expect it to be used or hadn't been thinking about it being used. But at the end of March, that committee, which is actually called the Endangered Species Committee, convened at the Department of the Interior headquarters in Washington, D.C., upon the request of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. And the Secretary of Defense made a request that oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico needed to be exempted from having to comply with the Endangered Species Act, from having to protect over 20 species of endangered wildlife in the Gulf for national security reasons. And really, it has to do with being able to have enough oil and gas. And this is done, you know, in the backdrop of the Iran War going on. But interestingly, what the Secretary of Defense brought forward as a reason was that environmental groups like Healthy Gulf, like a number of others, using litigation to try to make sure that the oil industry follows the law in the Gulf, was actually a national security threat. And that's actually the very novel argument that was brought forward, and the reason for that they requested the exception.
Sisskin: And unfortunately, they got that exception.
Wagley: Interestingly, it was a 16-minute-long meeting, rather sloppily done. When you compare it to the other times this committee has been convened over the years, I think like only three times. And in each case, there was a very large body of science and information brought forward to build the case for why this exception was needed. That was not done in this case. Very little documentation was provided in other instances; there were, you know, multiple hearings held. In one instance, it did not end up going forward, but the process moved forward over a couple of years. It didn't happen in the end was around spotted owls in Oregon back in the early 1990s, and that had multiple public hearings in Oregon. So actually, out in the field where the issue was. So, that didn't happen in this case. They didn't build the case. They didn't really provide the documentation. It was rather hastily done. Hopefully, that makes it somewhat vulnerable in court. And so Healthy Gulf, along with other national partners are part of one lawsuit challenging this, along with, I think, there are two other lawsuits as well from other groups. So a total of three lawsuits and those have been filed right away to challenge this exemption.
And by the way, I think I mentioned 20 species in the Gulf. Let's talk about what some of those are. That's things like five species of sea turtles, which I think all of which maybe, but one will come up on our beaches here in Northwest Florida. It's the Gulf sturgeon that come through our bays and migrate up our rivers. It's of course the Rice's whales. There's a couple of species of corals in the mix there. Sawfish are in that, and a couple of other species of fish. But again, around or a little over 20 species in the Gulf that oil and gas now, as of the end of March, do not have to take any special actions to protect.
Sisskin: So what would you like listeners to come away with? What should people be doing?
Wagley: I mean, there are a couple of things that come to mind. One is to remind everybody something that I think we all know in our hearts, but we want to remind is: protecting endangered wildlife is very popular among Americans. I think we know that just from our own interests, and talking to our friends, and the things that we do. But the polling is very clear on this. It's not even close to 50/50. It's more like 85% support endangered species, the Endangered Species Act, and want to protect our wildlife, and don't want animals or plants, for that matter, to go extinct because of our actions. I think at this point, we don't feel (that) we're going to change the mind of that committee that met. But members of Congress are much more directly attributable to the people, especially in an election year, and so they're sensitive to that. And our hope is that by making sure our elected officials know how strongly we support endangered species and how this is an unpopular decision, that they'll convey that to the White House in various means, whether that's letters or just informal communications or whatever. But we've got to make sure that they know how unpopular this decision is and how much we do support our endangered wildlife.
