Last week I got to spend a week offshore, participating in the last field season (what?!) of the SOCAL-BRS project. This was a bittersweet week, to say the least. I’ve been involved with this project since before I even started grad school (see here and here for my blogs on it the last two years). It’s a long-term project (2010-2017) so I’m not sure I ever realized I wouldn’t be spending a week or two every summer, offshore of Southern California doing awesome whale tagging and behavioral response research. But, here I am, back at home, and that’s it! We still have a year of analysis left (already counting down to the analysis meeting in December!) so more science is still to come. But this week was a great time to reminisce and reflect how things have changed for myself and others on the project.
My friend and colleague Caroline, and I, trying to catch us dinner after getting blown off the water in the afternoon.
First off, there are at least 5 BRS babies. Never saw that coming! Everyone is a bit more sun damaged (despite our best efforts) and a bit more grey. I went from being a nervous, naive, some-what-lost-soul trying to find my way in the acoustics world to a full blown bioacoustician (is it ok to call myself that?). Although this research is not directly related to my PhD….it is in a system I work in regularly, with collaborators I love working with, can learn so much from, and want to keep working with, so it’s a week well spent.
That SOCAL Magic
While I had an amazing few weeks of field work for my own PhD research earlier this summer, this past week provided something a little different. It served as a reminder of the wonder, the inherent magic, that comes from working with animals out on the water.
I saw more marine wildlife in one week then I have ever seen in my life. I saw no less than 12 species (blue, fin, humpback, sperm and killer whales, common (x2 species), bottlenose, and Risso’s dolphins, California sea lions, elephant seals, and harbor seals) of marine mammals. And I not only got a glimpse of them, but got to enjoy them. From watching blue whales up close from the RHIBs, to seeing common dolphins sprint away from killer whales, to hearing bottlenose dolphins whistling while bow riding. Each day reminded me why I LOVE what I do. (Oh, and maybe I was simply less stressed because my entire dissertation didn’t depend on if I could get the stupid QUEphone to work the way I wanted it to…)
Sperm whale flukes + spunky bottlenose dolphins + tagging boat. Photo taken under NMFS Permit #19116, J. Calambokidis.
Don’t get me wrong, I love sitting in the lab. Discovering new calls, answering questions through detailed analyses, and playing with shiny new yellow AUVs. But I also just love being outside, and enjoying that offshore world. No cell service, seeing Risso’s buzzes come through in real time on the towed array, catching my limit of rockfish in the evenings, hearing the elephant seals calling on the Channel Islands.
I guess the simple point of this blog is to share that contentment, and again that wonder, that I enjoy while thinking back on the last week. Till the next adventure….
Wow! Summer winded down quickly. It felt like a lot of time spent writing, some exciting and stressful glider piloting, and I wrapped it up with 2 weeks on the water in Southern California working on the SOCAL BRS project. (You can read a public summary of the project here).
Pretty morning at Santa Catalina Island
I’ve talked about this project before, and this was my 4th summer on the R/V Truth. This leg ended up a bit frustrating in the fact that the animals were more difficult to find and work with than past years. We didn’t observe the distribution of whales we typically do, and we suspect this has something to do with the abnormally warm waters off Southern California this summer.
For example we barely saw any Risso’s dolphins, where typically there are tons around Santa Catalina Island. And the blue and fin whales typically found feeding right in the LA shipping channel weren’t where we expected them. Instead we found them quite a bit further offshore near Santa Barbara Island. AND we saw schools on schools on schools of yellowfin!! (I think……I may edit this in a day or two…anyway I’d never seen so many leaping fish!) EDIT: Yellowfin tun and maybe some small bonitos and maybe some bluefin.
Always Learning
For me the trip was still a great learning experience. I got to use some new tools and learn some new skills, including running the sound propagation software we use in setting up a CEE (Controlled Exposure Experiment), running the sound source that projects the sound playback, and deploying and recording from sonobuoys, little one-time use floating recorders designed to listen for subs, but also work for whales.
Mapping how sound likely propagates through the Southern California Bight in August.My acoustic set up. Sonobuoy detector, sonobuoy recorder, and directions of course.
People started to refer to me as Jonesy. I embraced it whole-heartedly.
This summer I spent a long time underwater. Not only for work, not just for fun. For debriefing and peace of mind. The last couple of months, swimming has been my way of being with myself and thinking freely about life, cheese, and sperm whales. While performing long dives down to a few meters of depth, I have been thinking about the sperm whales’ amazing ability to dive so deep and for so long.
Even though marine mammals breathe air, just like us, some species are able to keep their breath underwater for longer than two hours and others can go down to 3 Km deep!
How do they do it?
I do not do scuba diving anymore and I am happy that I do not have to tolerate the suffocating, funky smelling, and how-do-I-get–out-of-this wet-suit. I love keeping my eyes wide open where the seawater is clear enough to make the use of mask or goggles unnecessary. This way I feel like a natural part of the mysterious sea world. The indescribable sensation of flying underwater can only be compared with a couple other feelings. Nevertheless, I admit to struggle, like any other human, with a couple of issues.
*Not A Human
Pressure, oxygen and temperature limit my expanding politics while in this wet world.
You have certainly noticed that the deeper you go in the sea the higher the pressure. Specifically, the pressure by the water to any object is called hydrostatic and increases by 14.5 pounds per square inch (psi) (=1 atmosphere) every 10m you dive deeper. You can quickly feel this pressure in your eardrums once you are 3-4 meters deep. Can you even imagine the pressure down at 2000 m?! Let me help you. It is estimated that at that depth the weight of the water becomes as heavy as two baby elephants (~200Kg) balancing on a postage stamp. If you have ever seen the squished styrofoam cups that return from our visits to 1500m with submergence vehicles, now you know what happened to them. It wasn’t exactly an elephant that sat on them but close…
Results from hitchhiking on a CTD.
The decrease of water temperature as I dive down is also a limitation. Luckily, all the cheese consumption I have been persistently investing on has helped me create this fine layer of fat tissue that makes me unbeatable to the cool (Mediterranean) water temperatures for long periods. Fortunately for human life, my fatty layer is thin enough, but unfortunately insufficient for whale depths.
While I move deeper into the darkness of the ocean there are more obstacles to encounter. Despite my healthy lifestyle, I am in need of oxygen less than a minute after I submerge myself. My lungs can only store a certain amount of air (probably a bit less than 5 liters) dependent on my age, physical size (consequently my lung size), and my fitness state. Even though I exercise a lot, I do not smoke, and I am tall, still my lung capacity does not allow me to stay underwater for as long as I desire. Specifically, no more than about 40 seconds. My body requires fuels for my brain and internal organs during a dive to the abyss. Or even, down to 7 meters and back.
Well it is actually not that bad, if you think that we can keep our breath for longer underwater than on air pressure. While submerged in cold water, instinctively decreases our heart rate and metabolism for saving up oxygen. Marine mammals use the same trick. The best example is the Weddell seals; during their deep dives their heart rate decreases down to four beats/minute!
“Haven’t felt my heart for 15 sec. I am worried.”
Whales have managed to succeed on everything that I suck at (besides slack line).
First of all the fat. They have a thick layer of fatty tissue under their skin, called blubber. It functions as the best thermoisolating material. Keeps their body temperature from dropping dramatically when the environmental temperature falls under what they can tolerate. See, fat is good. Go on, have that piece of brie.
Sperm whales and beaked whales do not crack under great pressure, as humans literally, and often metaphorically, do. In contrast, they thrive where the conditions are unbearable for other whale species. They have adapted in the extreme conditions of the deep seas and that pays them off with food. It gives them access to the bathypelagic squid to fill their demanding bellies. It resembles an all-you can-eat buffet where you are the only client.
Any psychological boosting, power phrases, meditation, or confidence injections prove to be useless towards their achievements. What helps them instead, is primarily their flexibility. Their rib cage can fold in to avoid crushing from the high pressure. Both the rib cage and lungs collapse every time the animal dives 2 Km down and then recover when it comes back at the surface. If you thought your routine is tough, now you may reconsider.
It is easy to understand how that works by the following image.
Ouch
In practice though, the sperm whale in action does not show any indications of being collapsed at great depths. Its skin and the whole body look smooth and perfectly well shaped without any evident ruptures or deformations. Yeah, there is proof of that. A lucky NOAA group incidentally captured a sperm whale on camera while sampling with an ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) at 600m depth. Check their reactions, surprised indeed.
These deep divers are known to remove the 90% of air from their body, by exhaling it before the dive, to be easier to simply sink down, dealing this way with buoyancy issues. Footage has proven that some marine mammals hardly move while they sink. They gently slide into the water, heads down, without even moving a muscle. You can imagine how much oxygen the muscles would require to move that giant tail…
For the same conserving purpose, marine mammals choose to “unplug” some of their internal organs and functions that are not vital during their long journey to the sea bottom. Who needs digestion, liver and kidneys while hunting…?!
However, they still need oxygen while down deep. They need to move around for chasing that yummy squid and their muscles require oxygen for that. Their well-hidden secret lays in their blood; they have what I call the super blood. They have a higher percentage of red blood cells where oxygen is stored, and a higher blood to body volume ratio that gives them extra storage. On top of that, there is the myoglobin. Ta-ta!
One unusual word for human, a tremendous offer for beaked whales!
Myoglobin, such a mouth filling word, is a protein in the animals’ muscles that stores oxygen and is responsible for making active muscles look red and sometimes even black. For the diving animals, myoglobin is 10 times more concentrated than in human. Too much of this protein could cause health implications to people mainly because of low viscosity, causing clogging and sticking together. A recent scientific discovery showed that in beaked whales, this crazy amount of myoglobin is functioning because it is positively charged. According to the laws of attraction (opposites attract and likes repel) the myoglobin particles manage to keep from sticking with each other and any circulation clogging is avoided.
I would be happy to announce that the sperm whales are the Kings of the Abyss. Yeah, that would give me immense satisfaction. However, beaked whales beat them to that. They get down to almost 3000 meters, about 1000m deeper than the Kings of my Heart do. They win, not only more of that elusive squid, and our admiration, but also the highest levels of myoglobin.
At these great depths, where any kind of light can only be bioluminescence produced by fish or other invertebrates, the sperm and beaked whales use their spectacular biosonars to “see”, making the deep oceans into Operas of Clicks. They are the Divas of the Deep for a reason.
If you want to learn 80 sec more about underwater fireworks (bioluminescence) don’t miss this video.
To return where I started from, I am going to take you for a swim. Not just a usual swim in the clear, turquoise, crystal calm, and safe Aegean Sea. We are going night swimming. The whole sea is dark and the whales cannot even see their own tails; we struggle to see if any swimming suits are on. The water is dark as the night. A starry night. Swimming at a beach on the western part of the island of Lesvos (home of the Department of Marine Sciences of the University of the Aegean), we feel like Divas while playing with the underwater stars. Every little movement causes the water to sparkle, and produces hundreds of tiny shiny tails just like shooting stars. Little planktonic organisms almost invisible to bare eye, produce bioluminescence when excited and make our experience exciting. Truly magical!
…A question that sometimes occurs when I tell people that I study the sounds of the whales. Still, my very close non-scientists friends do think that I try to talk to dolphins. This might not be accurate since my research equipment and purpose of my study do not allow anything like this, but essentially I do try to spy on their “conversations”.
Meet Dory, a (fictional but funny) colleague of mine
One of the functions of sound in dolphins and whales is communication. Communication is a keyword in bioacoustics and is defined as being “the transmission of a signal from one organism to another such that the sender benefits from the response of the recipient”. There are different purposes that it serves living organisms and different ways to express it.
A primary purpose of communication is to attract and repel. Plants use chemical signals that get transmitted through the air or their roots, people use the smell of pheromones to attract each other, and skunks use the same signal to repel. Dogs and foxes use face and body gestures to express submission and aggression. Elephants use touch interlinking their trunks as a means of close communication. Especially for attracting mates, vision (peacock elaborated feathers) and sound (bird songs) are both very useful.
Do you get the message?
Though the most common well-known animal communication signal heard by humans is the bird song, there are all sorts of animals that rely on their hearing and vocal ability to succeed and survive. Whales, the modern giants, appear to be experts in the art of sound communication with different species each having their own sounds. They use these sounds to navigate, locate and capture prey, communicate about the environment and the availability of food or predators, and to attract mates or repel competitors.
Whale chat #alltheycareforisfoodandromance
http://www.michw.com/
Such acoustic signals may be (a) instinctive that is genetically programmed or (b) learned from others through social learning.
Social learning is the information moving through communication from one organism to another. This information then passing on is what we call culture. Without this transfer there would be no life, no evolution, no biology. Culture is why we have the Parthenon, the South Park, boy bands and the MIT. What you read, like this blog, that you may pass it on is culture.
Random example of culture: the Parthenon
Cultural transmission, the social learning from conspecifics is believed to occur in a number of groups of animals, including primates, cetaceans and birds, elephants and bats. Cultural traits can be passed through different paths.
Cultural transmission can be done vertically: from parents to offspring, obliquely: from the previous generation via non related individuals to younger individuals, or horizontally: between unrelated individuals from similar age classes or within generations.
3 families of sperm whales and how they get their culture transmitted
Of the several types of social learning which have been recognized, imitation is particularly significant for the propagation of culture. Humans can imitate new sounds and learn how to use them correctly in social situations. This is called vocal learning which is considered to be one of the foundations of language.
My favorite example of imitation in the animal kingdom is the lyrebird of S. Australia, which has an unbelievable capacity for mimicry. During the breeding season in South Australia, the male lyrebirds spend six hours a day calling, doing their best to attract the ladies. They have the most complex syrinx (vocal organ in birds), and they make a remarkable use of it!
I know I am repeating myself since I have posted a video of the lyrebird before but this time the famous mime has enriched its repertoire with more sounds that will make you wonder how and why… Check out the lyrebird’s latest hits here.
Next I would like you to meet Luna, another excellent mime; Luna is a male orphan killer whale. Luna has been all alone since the age of two, living off the coast of Vancouver Island, Canada. There, in 2001, Luna became popular for getting in close proximity to people, interacting with local boaters and perfectly mimicking boat noises. A tragic result of this interaction was the tragic death of Luna in 2006 due to a tugboat collision!
Culture, through social learning, has been studied and papers have been published mainly in only four species of cetaceans: (1) the humpback whale, (2) the sperm whale, (3) the killer whale, and (4) the bottlenose dolphin.
Humpback: the Diva
Humpbacks are the most popular singers of probably all the non-human mammals. They have even released CDs with their songs ! When we think of whale songs the humpback is what we have in mind. They represent the best understood horizontal culture of cetaceans.
The males produce series of vocalizations that form songs used in sexual selection (through mate attraction and/or male social sorting). Their songs are very complex and can be heard mainly in breeding grounds and whales can hear them up to 10 km (about 6 miles) away. Whales sing the same song for hours and hours. Populations within an ocean basin have similar songs with this similarity dependent on geographical distance between populations.
Humpbacks can change their song after hearing other songs. A terrific example takes place in the southern ocean where the songs are horizontally transmitted from eastern Australia in the west across the region to French Polynesia in the east. The songs have been documented radiating repeatedly across the region from west to east, usually over a period of two years. The result: soon the song that was recorded on the east region is now fully replaced by the west region hit. This seems to me to be really similar to our music culture transmission.
Earworm!
Killer whales: The Intellectuals
The Sea Pandas (as some marketing teams have proposed renaming killer whales to help promote their conservation) are highly social.
The cheeky ones
The populations off the west coast of Canada have been studied for decades and are divided in different ‘‘types’’: the residents, transients and offshores. These 3 different types have diverse feeding preferences and subsequent vocalizations. The residents feed on fish and are highly vocal, the transients feed on marine mammals and are much quieter to not reveal their presence to their prey that has good hearing abilities. The offshores are also highly vocal and feed on sharks and rays.
Extroverted vs. Introverted (Resident vs. Transient)
Killer whales that are separated by great geographical distances have completely different dialects. An analysis of Icelandic and Norwegian killer whale pods revealed that the Icelandic population made 24 different calls and the Norwegian whales made 23 different calls, but the two populations did not share any of the same calls.
Besides dialects, killer whales have been shown to learn vocalizations from other species. Yes, they speak foreign languages! At a water facility, where they socialized with bottlenose dolphins, they changed the types of sounds they made to resemble those of their neighbors.
If I was not so enthusiastic about the sperm whales, killer whales would definitely receive most of my scientific admiration. They have evolved outstanding sophisticated hunting techniques and their vocal behavior is impressive, being specific to certain groups and passed across generations. Killer whales are great examples of cultural organisms.
Keeping these animals in captivity sounds like even less of a good idea now, right?
Bottlenose dolphins: the Eponymous
Bottlenose dolphins are well known for their signature whistles. They have stereotypical signatures attributed to each individual that work as their name. This helps to maintain contact between mom and calf or between individuals in a group. Each bottlenose dolphin has its own unique whistle and it uses it to broadcast their location and identity to others.
3 different whistles from different individuals. Hard to call a dolphin by its name…
Most of the characteristic whistles are usually fixed for all the lifetime of the dolphin. However in some cases, when a male dolphin leaves mom and joins with other males to form an alliance (which might last for decade), their distinctive whistles converge and become very similar. So the longer they stay together the more similar their whistles become. Based on the same reasoning, I can’t understand why my English accent is still the same after three years living in USA!
Sperm whales: the Bignose
Sperm whales are among the loudest animals on Earth, and my favorite (not sure if I have already mentioned my preference). They owe this to their huge nose which functions as a massive click producer. They also have the biggest brain. They produce a variety of loud and distinctive types of clicks for different functions. One of these types of vocalizations is called coda. It is stereotypical patterns of clicks resembling Morse code, and frequently serves social purposes. Codas are usually heard when the group of animals rest or socialize at the surface of the ocean. Similar codas used by one group may help maintain group cohesion after its members are done feeding.
Chilling after dinner
It is thought that each sperm whale has its own individually distinctive coda pattern and it has been reported that groups within one geographic area tend to have more similar codas than groups from further away. The “five regular” call is one of the few codas that all sperm whale groups around the globe use in their regional dialects; while the “plus one” type seems to be specific to Mediterranean inhabitants. These vocal behaviors are transmitted vertically, and loosing members of the population may seriously impact the transmission of this cultural trait that carries important information content vital for the survival of the population.
The “regular 5” and the “plus one” codas
We don’t need to watch Interstellar to search for life in different solar systems and unknown worlds. Like Anne Stevenson said: “the sea is as near as we come to another world”. The ocean is vast largely undiscovered. We can consider the open sea an intriguing new wet universe. In interstellar, communication or miscommunication played an important role and turned out to be vital for rescuing the world. Father and daughter that could not directly speak to each other used binary code to transmit their messages through different dimensions. The cetaceans also transmit their messages through codes that we try to identify and understand. It is vital for their world to be able to use these sounds to communicate. You can correctly guess that we are using their home for our anthropocentric purposes and we are being very noisy neighbors, polluting their ocean and impacting their survival. This can be changed… If you are looking for New Years resolutions…
Like in the movie, it’s not Them that will help us save the world. No external factors are required, all the power is in us!
Happy, quiet and peaceful holidays to y’all!!
This post was inspired by the presentation that me and Selene gave on Saturday 12/13/2014 for the Oregon Chapter of the American Cetacean Society entitled: “Do you speak whale?”.
Oscar Wilde said that “Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”
Sorry Oscar, despite my deep respect and admiration to you I will have to object this one.
Talking about the weather is lame; I seriously thought before. But I have changed my mind, since I moved to the Oregon Coast. Talking about the weather is lame at the cases that the weather is consistent, predictable and largely warm and sunny. This is not the case at the Pacific Northwest.
The variability of the weather at the Oregon Coast
I often find myself complaining about the weather (this is my version of talking about it) since I moved here, and now it’s time to better look into it. Without my usual pout when I curse the rain, or my frown when it’s sunny but really windy. I am not grumpy in reality; I am just a bicycle commuter. That means that I don’t have the choice of a well heated, or at least a dry seat at bike-unfriendly times. I am always exposed to the weather and it affects me every single day. I have been repeatedly soaked by the North Pacific rain and blown away by the Northerly winds (we name the winds from the direction that they come from) over and over again. Immediately when I arrived here I was warned about the horizontal rain that I had never heard of before and no umbrella could keep it off me. The wind is ruthless at the North Pacific.
The truth is that everyone is affected by the weather and has his/her own relationship with it depending on where they come from, what they are used too and how their internal thermostat is tuned, and also on their personality. If you come from Greece, the Oregon Coast will appear cold, whereas if you come from northern France (clear reference to one of my housemates) it will feel like home. If you are outgoing and social the warm sunny weather suits you and defines you. If you are more of an introvert the rain and the low temperatures will provide the right conditions for you to stay home and enjoy solitude.
Research shows that the weather and particularly the sun affect our mood. I clearly see more smiley faces in a sunny day, mine included. Studies indicate a link between low pressure and suicide. On rainy days people report lower satisfaction with their lives. Now imagine how challenging it can be to be a graduate student in a tiny town on the Oregon Coast…!
Overall, I think that the amount of energy that we receive from the huge flaming star on the sky defines who we are, and seems to be a driver of peoples cultures. I am certain that you also have noticed generic cultural differences among people that come from southern and northern regions in a global or even in a national scale. I might be judged for stereotyping but there is some truth to that.
There are 3 major factors why the weather is important for biologists-acousticians:
1. It is linked to food and everyone cares about food
The animals care about the weather! Their distribution is defined by the climate together with other parameters. The sperm whales for example, being truly cosmopolitan, are encountered in the most parts of the world’s seas from the equator to the edge of the polar ice. However they have their temperature preferences. The females like it warm and don’t go to temperatures lower than 15°C. While the groups of females and young males are thought to remain in lower latitudes year round, the macho adult males have wider physiological demands and are encountered in polar areas.
The sperm whales display a remarkable sexual dimorphism with the males being ~1.5 times longer than the females. The larger the size of the animal the more favorable is the surface-to-volume ratio. Even though they have a large surface area that they lose heat from, this area is small in relation to their heat-producing body mass. Thus the males can migrate to high latitudes, especially during summer months, to productive feeding grounds where they karaoke with my hydrophone located at the Gulf of Alaska.
Some enjoy field work more than others
Within their calls I am sure that whales talk about the weather too because highly productive spots are identified, like upwelling areas and other cool places where plenty of food is available and the animals tend to aggregate. Though, the precise process that links the environmental factors in the open ocean with the distribution and abundance of large predators is difficult to be determined and is a major goal of my research. Investigating the oceanographic parameters that affect the movements of sperm whale populations is a particularly complicated matter since they feed on deep sea creatures (bathypelagic squid) and the linkages of physical forcing (wind, temperature) with primary productivity and aggregations of prey and predators are temporally and spatially variable.
2. The sound in the ocean likes it hot
The propagation of sound in the oceans is largely affected by oceanographic variables (which are related to the weather) such as temperature, pressure and salinity. The speed that the sound travels underwater varies from area to area, season to season and different time in the day. Generally the sound speed increases when all the above variables increase. Since these variables change with the depth, the sound speed profile also changes with depth in the water column.
Temperature, Salinity and pressure ocean profiles at mid-latitudes
sound speed profile at mid latitudes
High sound velocity on the sea surface where the water gets warmed up by the sunlight decreases down to the depth where the water temperature becomes constant (~1000m) and then it starts increasing again when the pressure increase is dominant. At the transition point where the sound velocity reaches a minimum (~1000m) it is formed a sound channel where sound waves get trapped and propagate really far away. This is named as the SOFAR (SOund Fixing And Ranging) Channel and some species of whales find it to be very useful to communicate with their friends, partners, parents, cousins and aunts that are immigrants to faraway seas.
colorful figures with boats in them are always better
I use skype.
message to self: use SOFAR channel
Do remember this SOFAR chitchat when you decide to deploy your instrument to record whale voices and you cannot decide on the depth 😉
And to turn the talk-about-the-weather into a hot topic, consider what happens when climate change is introduced and the small talk becomes a conversation where personal ethics, political and social opinions are involved. More like loud talk now! Now that I said loud, did you wonder what is the effect of climate change to the sound propagation and consequently the whales’ communication, and you were afraid to ask?
Ocean acidification, the decrease of the pH in the seas, is a notorious climate change impact. This increase of the ocean acidity changes how sound travels underwater: the lower the pH (more acidic), the ocean absorbs less sound and the higher is the sound speed. And now you are thinking: “Voila, the whales can be heard even further now!”. However, the reality is less comforting (as usually). At the frequencies that the whales vocalize we make a whole lot of noise with shipping and naval activity, seismic exploration and other significant anthropogenic sound sources that interfere with the whales’ skype and consequent communication issues. Yep, ocean acidification makes the sound pollution in the seas into a magnified problem.
3. People love listening to the rain
Since the weather affects the ocean soundscape, then it can also be measured by the sound it makes! Rain and wind generate sound at the sea by producing bubbles during splashing at the ocean surface. These physical processes create different distribution of bubble sizes that have a different footprint on the soundscape. This way the sound from breaking waves (caused by the wind) can be distinguished from the rainfall sound and we are able to monitor the ocean surface conditions from below the surface. Huzzah, here is the solution to trying to measure wind speed and precipitation in difficult locations where the measured vicious weather elements can actually destroy the instruments that we use to measure them. The instrument that I use, the Passive Aquatic Listener (aka PAL) was originally designed by Dr. Jeffrey Nystuen to detect and measure rainfall and wind speed at sea. Lucky me, it works great with recording marine mammals too!
Weather and bubbles talk. This is so scientific.
By this point of this post I have been unnecessarily negative with the Oregon Coast weather which to be frank is what makes this corner of the world into a magical place. The northerly winds in the summer are the reason for the upwelling to take place and all the whales and other astounding marine life to move up this way for food. Seeing the whales from the beach or even just the balcony of your house is certainly worth suffering some cold winds. The world we live in is alive because of the winds. The wind is the breath and the heartbeat of the Earth. The rain on the other hand gives life to thriving and fairytale-like old-growth forests with splendidly diverse and abundant wildlife, fills the rivers and the lakes. Did I mention how outdoorsy I have become?
A question to you: do you also see an irony in the name “Pacific” or I am being grumpy again?
I am not grumpy at the Oregon Coast
Here it comes, a welcome wind: the wind of change. I am moving to the valley!
