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desoto_hia873I did my MSc at the Memorial University of Newfoundland in the early 1990s. My supervisor was Jon Lien, "the whale man" of Newfoundland. Collisions between humpback whales and codtraps were a big problem in the 1980s, so he set up a provincial whale entrapment network: fishermen who found whales stuck in their nets or stranded on beaches could call, and a team would be sent out to release them/roll them back into the water. It was a very win-win arrangement. Most inshore fishermen only owned one or two codtraps, and they had only a couple of months in which to use them and make the bulk of their income for the year, so the loss of one of their traps to a whale was a serious financial blow. It didn't do much for the whales, either--often, they'd become completely ensnarled and would drag the entire mess around with them until they died from starvation or infection from the lacerations caused by the ropes.
Jon figured out a way to get whales out of nets quickly and with the least amount of damage caused to both whale and net. He also developed alarms that could be mounted on the nets to alert whales to their presence and prevent entrapments in the first place. The alarms proved so successful that they were sent to Australia to keep sharks out of sharks nets that protect the beaches there.
Jon is a really neat guy and one of my favourite people in the entire world. He's orginally from St. Olaf, the same town that Rose Nylund told stories about in The Golden Girls. As a grad student, he helped train the chimpanzees that NASA sent into space in their earliest flights. "Jon stories" are legendary. He once hit a grouse while driving home from an entrapment; not wanting to waste it, he hopped out of the truck, threw it into the back, and took it home and cooked it for his wife for their anniversary dinner. Anniversary dinner = roadkill. That's our Jon.
Another time, he lost his Visa card *in* a dead humpback from which he'd been taking samples, which made for an interesting phone call when he reported the loss. During a trip to test the whale alarms on sharks nets in Australia, he somehow managed to jam a large fishing hook through his hand and then fell out of the boat, bleeding like a stuck pig, into waters where a great white shark had taken a swimmer just a couple of days earlier.
Someone really needs to write this man's biography--it would be such a fantastically entertaining read.
Jon's retired now and has had some serious health problems in recent years. Every time I see a reference to him, I fear that it will be his obituary. My father sent me an email yesterday titled "Jon Lien" and I dreaded opening it. But it was good news: the Governor-General is appointing him as a Member of the Order of Canada for his contributions to science.
Which is just awesome beyond the telling of it.
You rock, Jon.
Jon figured out a way to get whales out of nets quickly and with the least amount of damage caused to both whale and net. He also developed alarms that could be mounted on the nets to alert whales to their presence and prevent entrapments in the first place. The alarms proved so successful that they were sent to Australia to keep sharks out of sharks nets that protect the beaches there.
Jon is a really neat guy and one of my favourite people in the entire world. He's orginally from St. Olaf, the same town that Rose Nylund told stories about in The Golden Girls. As a grad student, he helped train the chimpanzees that NASA sent into space in their earliest flights. "Jon stories" are legendary. He once hit a grouse while driving home from an entrapment; not wanting to waste it, he hopped out of the truck, threw it into the back, and took it home and cooked it for his wife for their anniversary dinner. Anniversary dinner = roadkill. That's our Jon.
Another time, he lost his Visa card *in* a dead humpback from which he'd been taking samples, which made for an interesting phone call when he reported the loss. During a trip to test the whale alarms on sharks nets in Australia, he somehow managed to jam a large fishing hook through his hand and then fell out of the boat, bleeding like a stuck pig, into waters where a great white shark had taken a swimmer just a couple of days earlier.
Someone really needs to write this man's biography--it would be such a fantastically entertaining read.
Jon's retired now and has had some serious health problems in recent years. Every time I see a reference to him, I fear that it will be his obituary. My father sent me an email yesterday titled "Jon Lien" and I dreaded opening it. But it was good news: the Governor-General is appointing him as a Member of the Order of Canada for his contributions to science.
Which is just awesome beyond the telling of it.
You rock, Jon.
