The 'Whale Safe' Project Is Working To Eliminate Whale Deaths From Boating Accidents

David Shultz

David Shultz reports on clean technology and electric vehicles, among other industries, for dot.LA. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside, Nautilus and many other publications.

The 'Whale Safe' Project Is Working To Eliminate Whale Deaths From Boating Accidents
Padraig Duignan

It’s difficult to calculate exactly how many whales are killed by collisions with ships every year because many strikes go unnoticed and unreported. But some estimates put the number as high as 20,000 per year. This spring, the SF Chronicle reported that as many as 83 endangered whales are killed by ships off the coast of California each year, citing projections from Petaluma organization Point Blue Conservation Science. As the shipping industry continues to grow and climate change forces whales into closer proximity to humans, the problem is only set to get worse.


Fortunately, there’s a simple solution: Simply reducing the speed of the boat gives the whales enough time to respond and escape from threats. Which is why a new initiative, born out of the University of California Santa Barbara, is beginning to supply vessels with strategic information about when and where to brake for whales.

Known as Whale Safe, the project is an offshoot of Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory, which was created through a donation from SalesForce co-founder and co-CEO Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne. The concept behind the technology is relatively simple: An underwater microphone sits around 600 feet below the surface listening for whale vocalizations near the shipping lanes in the Santa Barbara Channel. That data is then combined with blue whale habitat maps and models as well as surface observations from whale watchers and scientists out on the water. All the inputs are then used to create a “whale presence rating” that’s sent out to ships indicating how likely a whale strike is in a given location.

“The best way I can describe the whale presence rating is it's almost like a Smokey the Bear fire warning, but for whales,” says Callie Steffen, the lead scientist at Whale Safe. “It's just a really easily digestible way to understand how much whale activity is happening in the Santa Barbara Channel on any given day.”

For now, the slowdowns are voluntary, but the second part of Whale Safe’s model is that it also collects data about which ships adhere to the warnings and issues public report cards for each company and the individual ships in their fleet.

The analytics are captured from each ship’s automatic identification system (AIS), which is essentially a GPS unit that large ships use to navigate and avoid collisions, says Steffen. The AIS data is obtained through Global Fishing Watch, but WhaleSafe processes the data to pull out the bits relevant to the whale zones they’re studying.

At first glance, it might seem like industry would hate this kind of oversight, but Steffen says there’s a lot of demand for these data from various stakeholders. Retailers and consumers now have a way to prove their goods are being moved in a whale-safe way, and shipping companies like it because it lets them check up on their colleagues and competition.

So far, the project appears to be working. When Whale Safe first began in 2019, only 47% of ships heeded the recommendation, but in 2020 that number jumped to 54%. Today, Steffen says 62% of ships follow the technologies recommendations.

Buoyed by the success, Whale Safe has recently set up a second operation off the coast of San Francisco. The team is also looking for a way to expand its vessel analytics software to the rest of North America. Which means report cards could soon be coming to the East Coast as well—a massive boon for the highly endangered North Atlantic right whale population. All of the data will remain open-source and free to the public.

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How the 'Thrift Haul' Boosted Secondhand Ecommerce Platforms

Lon Harris
Lon Harris is a contributor to dot.LA. His work has also appeared on ScreenJunkies, RottenTomatoes and Inside Streaming.
How the 'Thrift Haul' Boosted Secondhand Ecommerce Platforms
Evan Xie

If you can believe it, it’s been more than a decade since rapper Macklemore extolled the virtues of thrift shopping in a viral music video. But while scouring the ranks of vintage clothing stores looking for the ultimate come-up may have waned in popularity since 2012, the online version of this activity is apparently thriving.

According to a new trend story from CNBC, interest in “reselling” platforms like Etsy-owned Depop and Poshmark has exploded in the years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. In an article that spends a frankly surprising amount of time focused on sellers receiving death threats before concluding that they’re “not the norm,” the network cites the usual belt-tightening ecommerce suspects – housebound individuals doing more of their shopping online coupled with inflation woes and recession fears – as the causes behind the uptick.

As for data, there’s a survey from Depop themselves, finding that 53% of respondents in the UK are more inclined to shop secondhand as living costs continue to rise. Additional research from Advance Market Analytics confirms the trend, citing not just increased demand for cheap clothes but the pressing need for a sustainable alternative to recycling clothing materials at its core.

The major popularity of “thrift haul” videos across social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok has also boosted the visibility of vintage clothes shopping and hunting for buried treasures. Teenage TikToker Jacklyn Wells scores millions of views on her thrift haul videos, only to get routinely mass-accused of greed for ratching up the Depop resell prices for her coolest finds and discoveries. Nonetheless, viral clips like Wells’ have helped to embed secondhand shopping apps more generally within online fashion culture. Fashion and beauty magazine Hunger now features a regular list of the hottest items on the re-sale market, with a focus on how to use them to recreate hot runway looks.

As with a lot of consumer and technology trends, the sudden surge of interest in second-hand clothing retailers was only partly organic. According to The Drum, ecommerce apps Vinted, eBay, and Depop have collectively spent around $120 million on advertising throughout the last few years, promoting the recent vintage shopping boom and helping to normalize second-hand shopping. This includes conventional advertising, of course, but also deals with online influencers to post content like “thrift haul” videos, along with shoutouts for where to track down the best finds.

Reselling platforms have naturally responded to the increase in visibility with new features (as well as a predictable hike in transaction fees). Poshmark recently introduced livestreamed “Posh Shows” during which sellers can host auctions or provide deeper insight into their inventory. Depop, meanwhile, has introduced a “Make Offer” option to fully integrate the bartering and negotiation process into the app, rather than forcing buyers and sellers to text or Direct Message one another elsewhere. (The platform formerly had a comments section on product pages, but shut this option down after finding that it led to arguments, and wasn’t particularly helpful in making purchase decisions.)

Now that it’s clear there’s money to be made in online thrift stores, larger and more established brands and retailers are also pushing their way into the space. H&M and Target have both partnered with online thrift store ThredUp on featured collections of previously-worn clothing. A new “curated” resale collection from Tommy Hilfiger – featuring minorly damaged items that were returned to its retail stores – was developed and promoted through a partnership with Depop, which has also teamed with Kellogg’s on a line of Pop-Tarts-inspired wear. J.Crew is even bringing back its classic ‘80s Rollneck Sweater in a nod to the renewed interest in all things vintage.

Still, with any surge of popularity and visibility, there must also come an accompanying backlash. In a sharp editorial this week for Arizona University’s Daily Wildcat, thrift shopping enthusiast Luke Lawson makes the case that sites like Depop are “gentrifying fashion,” stripping communities of local thrift stores that provide a valuable public service, particularly for members of low-income communities. As well, UK tabloids are routinely filled with secondhand shopping horror stories these days, another evidence point as to their increased visibility among British consumers specifically, not to mention the general dangers of buying personal items from strangers you met over the internet.

How to Startup: Mission Acquisition

Spencer Rascoff

Spencer Rascoff serves as executive chairman of dot.LA. He is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso and Supernova, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. During Spencer's time as CEO, Zillow won dozens of "best places to work" awards as it grew to over 4,500 employees, $3 billion in revenue, and $10 billion in market capitalization. Prior to Zillow, Spencer co-founded and was VP Corporate Development of Hotwire, which was sold to Expedia for $685 million in 2003. Through his startup studio and venture capital firm, 75 & Sunny, Spencer is an active angel investor in over 100 companies and is incubating several more.

How to Startup: Mission Acquisition

Numbers don’t lie, but often they don’t tell the whole story. If you look at the facts and figures alone, launching a startup seems like a daunting enterprise. It seems like a miracle anyone makes it out the other side.

  • 90% of startups around the world fail.
  • On average, it takes startups 2-3 years to turn a profit. (Venture funded startups take far longer.)
  • Post-seed round, fewer than 10% of startups go on to successfully raise a Series A investment.
  • Less than 1% of startups go public.
  • A startup only has a .00006% chance of becoming a unicorn.

Ouch.

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From The Vault: VC Legend Bill Gurley On Startups, Venture Capital and Scaling

Spencer Rascoff

Spencer Rascoff serves as executive chairman of dot.LA. He is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso and Supernova, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. During Spencer's time as CEO, Zillow won dozens of "best places to work" awards as it grew to over 4,500 employees, $3 billion in revenue, and $10 billion in market capitalization. Prior to Zillow, Spencer co-founded and was VP Corporate Development of Hotwire, which was sold to Expedia for $685 million in 2003. Through his startup studio and venture capital firm, 75 & Sunny, Spencer is an active angel investor in over 100 companies and is incubating several more.

Bill Gurley in a blue suit
Bill Gurley

This interview was originally published on December of 2020, and was recorded at the inaugural dot.LA Summit held October 27th & 28th.

One of my longtime favorite episodes of Office Hours was a few years ago when famed venture capitalist Bill Gurley and I talked about marketplace-based companies, how work-from-home will continue to accelerate business opportunities and his thoughts on big tech and antitrust.

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