November 2017 - Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Laboratory

Meeting to disentangle factors influencing albatross bycatch in the deep-set Hawaii Longline Fishery

By Rachael Orben PhD., Research Associate in the Seabird Oceanography Lab and GEMM Lab

Seabird bycatch is a global problem (e.g. Anderson et al 2011). Humans like eating fish and seabirds do too. Fishing vessels provide a food source for seabirds through discards, bait, and target fish. Different types of fishing gear pose different risks for seabirds. The good news is there are things that we can do to decrease these risks.

Albatrosses and petrels are particularly vulnerable to being hooked by longlines as the baited hooks are set overboard. Albatrosses and petrels are long lived (e.g., Wisdom the 65-year-old Laysan Albatross) and have a limited number of off-spring. Therefore fishery mortalities can have devastating impacts on populations if left unchecked. Currently all 22 species of albatrosses have IUCN statuses ranging from Near Threatened to Critically Endangered.

North Pacific Albatrosses

Longlines are used to catch a number of target species including tuna, swordfish, halibut, black cod, and toothfish. Just like the diversity of species this type of fishing gear is used to catch, there are a number of ways to set long-lines and ways to mitigate seabird bycatch and a method that works well in one instance may not work so well in other places. Tori Lines (a.k.a. streamer lines), side setting, night setting, faster sinking lines, and discard regulations are a few of the methods used.

Tori lines work by scaring birds away from baited longline hooks while they sink. Once the hooks sink past a few meters albatrosses are not able to reach them. Photo by Ed Melvin/Washington Sea Grant

In early November, I had the opportunity to attend a workshop in Honolulu, Hawaii hosted by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council. The workshop was held due to a dramatic increase in black-footed albatross bycatch by the Hawaii deep-set longline fishery in 2015 and 2016 (see the figure below). It was our job to figure out why, or more realistically pave the path for future analysis and data collection to answer this question.

Recently Leigh Torres and I were funded by the NOAA Bycatch Reduction Engineering Program to characterize fine-scale fishery-albatross interactions using previously collected albatross tracking data and tracks of fishing boats processed in real time by Global Fishing Watch. The workshop provided the perfect opportunity for me to learn more about the Hawaii longline fisheries.

Reasons for Albatross Bycatch

Rates of bycatch can change due to many factors, including where or when the fish are being caught, subtle choices made by fishermen, changes in seabird distributions, changes in prey of fish or seabirds, and so on. So, it can be very challenging to pin-point the exact reasons for an increase in bycatch. But, across the North Pacific, 2015 and 2016, were very strange years oceanographically. There was the warm water phenomena known as ‘the Blob’ along with a strong El Niño, and a positive Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). So perhaps, bycatch levels will drop off again as we move into a La Niña, but perhaps not. It is good to know that fishery managers and scientists are paying attention.

Implications

From the perspective of the fisherman in the Hawaiian longline fleet, albatrosses are hardly ever caught; they are pulled in at a barely perceptible level of less than one bird per set and only from about December to July. Although one occasional dead bird among the menagerie of fish doesn’t seem like much, it can add up: there are ~140 boats in the deep-set longline fleet, that set 40-52 million hooks a year, plus the multiple other fisheries and fleets encountered by albatrosses across the North Pacific, and enough albatrosses could be killed to make a difference in their population numbers. And, we need to also consider the cumulative impacts since fisheries aren’t the only threat (e.g., sea level rise, storm surges, introduced predators; see Bakker et al 2018).

Inspecting the Catch

On the morning of the last day of the workshop we took a field trip to the Honolulu Fish Market at Pier 38 in Honolulu where the Hawaiian long-line fishing vessels dock to offload and sell their catch. We checked out some of the boats, watched fish being craned off a vessel into a large cart and went inside the cooler room to see where the fish are auctioned.

In the cooler room, the catch from one vessel was laid out on brilliant blue pallets. The tails of each tuna were sliced so the deep pink color of the meat could be assessed. A core sample of each fish was laid out on an identification tag. Then the auctioneer and the buyers visited each fish, rapidly bidding on a price per pound. Their quick words were basically incomprehensible to my untrained ear.

The prize-catch of the fishery, and the fish that gets the highest price per pound, is the big eye tuna. A number of other large and beautiful pelagic species are also caught and sold including: long and narrow marlins, with their bills cut off for packing, side table size pomfrets, speckled white with red accents; and the distinctive blunt headed mahimahi, with yellow bellies. Once the fish are sold, they are moved out of the auction room, packed and loaded into the trucks that whisk them away toward markets and restaurants in Hawaii, the U.S. Mainland, and beyond.

Sustainable management of these commercially valuable fish is dependent on a better understanding of their pelagic ecosystem, including when, where, and why albatrosses interact with fishing vessels. Hopefully, our current research project will help to answer some of these questions.

Early morning on Pier 38

Hawaiian longline vessels

Back deck of a Hawaiian longliner

Offloading the catch

Auctioning the fish

Big-eye tuna

mahimahi

Little bill fish

Yellow-fin tuna

Pomfrets

Tuna being shipped out

A Marine Mammal Odyssey, Eh!

By Leila Lemos, PhD student

Dawn Barlow, MS student

Florence Sullivan, MS

The Society for Marine Mammalogy’s Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals happens every two years and this year the conference took place in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Logo of the Society for Marine Mammalogy’s 22nd Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals, 2017: A Marine Mammal Odyssey, eh!

The conference started with a welcome reception on Sunday, October 22^nd, followed by a week of plenaries, oral presentations, speed talks and posters, and two more days with different workshops to attend.

This conference is an important event for us, as marine mammalogists. This is the moment where we get to share our projects (how exciting!), get important feedback, and hear about different studies that are being conducted around the world. It is also an opportunity to network and find opportunities for collaboration with other researchers, and of course to learn from our colleagues who are presenting their work.

The GEMM Lab attending the opening plenaries of the conference!

The first day of conference started with an excellent talk from Asha de Vos, from Sri Lanka, where she discussed the need for increased diversity (in all aspects including race, gender, nationality, etc.) in our field, and advocated for the end of “parachute scientists” who come into a foreign (to them) location, complete their research, and then leave without communicating results, or empowering the local community to care or act in response to local conservation issues. She also talked about the difficulty that researchers in developing countries face accessing research that is hidden behind journal pay walls, and encouraged everyone to get creative with communication! This means using blogs and social media, talking to science communicators and others in order to get our stories out, and no longer hiding our results behind the ivory tower of academia. Overall, it was an inspirational way to begin the week.

On Thursday morning we heard Julie van der Hoop, who was this year’s recipient of the F.G. Wood Memorial Scholarship Award, present her work on “Drag from fishing gear entangling right whales: a major extinction risk factor”. Julie observed a decrease in lipid reserves in entangled whales and questioned if entanglements are as costly as events such as migration, pregnancy or lactation. Tags were also deployed on whales that had been disentangled from fishing gear, and researchers were able to see an increase in whale speed and dive depth.

Julie van der Hoop talks about different drag forces of fishing gears
on North Atlantic Right Whales.

There were many other interesting talks over the course of the week. Some of the talks that inspired us were:

— Stephen Trumble’s talk “Earplugs reveal a century of stress in baleen whales and the impact of industrial whaling” presented a time-series of cortisol profiles of different species of baleen whales using earplugs. The temporal data was compared to whaling data information and they were able to see a high correlation between datasets. However, during a low whaling season concurrent to the World War II in the 40’s, high cortisol levels were potentially associated to an increase in noise from ship traffic.

— Jane Khudyakov (“Elephant seal blubber transcriptome and proteome responses to single and repeated stress”) and Cory Champagne (“Metabolomic response to acute and repeated stress in the northern elephant seal”) presented different aspects of the same project. Jane looked at down/upregulation of genes (downregulation is when a cell decreases the quantity of a cellular component, such as RNA or protein, in response to an external stimulus; upregulation is the opposite: when the cell increases the quantity of cellular components) to check for stress. She was able to confirm an upregulation of genes after repeated stressor exposure. Cory checked for influences on the metabolism after administering ACTH (adrenocorticotropic hormone: a stimulating hormone that causes the release of glucocorticoid hormones by the adrenal cortex. i.e., cortisol, a stress related hormone) to elephant seals. By looking only at the stress-related hormone, he was not able to differentiate acute from chronic stress responses. However, he showed that many other metabolic processes varied according to the stress-exposure time. This included a decrease in amino acids, mobilization of lipids and upregulation of carbohydrates.

— Jouni Koskela (“Fishing restrictions is an essential protection method of the Saimaa ringed seal”) talked about the various conservation efforts being undertaken for the endangered Lake Saimaa ringed seal. Gill nets account for 90% of seal pup mortality, but if new pups can reach 20kg, only 14% of them will drown in these fishing net entanglements. Working with local industry and recreational interests, increased fishing restrictions have been enacted during the weaning season. In addition to other year-round restrictions, this has led to a small, but noticeable upward trend in pup production and population growth! A conservation success story is always gratifying to hear, and we wish these collaborative efforts continued future success.

— Charmain Hamilton (“Impacts of sea-ice declines on a pinnacle Arctic predator-prey relationship: Habitat, behaviour, and spatial overlap between coastal polar bears and ringed seals”) gave a fascinating presentation looking at how changing ice regimes in the arctic are affecting spatial habitat use patterns of polar bears. As ice decreases in the summer months, the polar bears move more, resulting in less spatial overlap with ringed seal habitat, and so the bears have turned to targeting ground nesting seabirds. This spatio-temporal mismatch of traditional predator/prey has drastic implications for arctic food web dynamics.

— Nicholas Farmer’s presentation on a Population Consequences of Disturbance (PCoD) model for assessing theoretical impacts of seismic survey on sperm whale population health had some interesting parallels with new questions in our New Zealand blue whale project. By simulating whale movement through modeled three-dimensional sound fields, he found that the frequency of the disturbance (i.e., how many days in a row the seismic survey activity persisted) was very important in determining effects on the whales. If the seismic noise persists for many days in a row, the sperm whales may not be able to replenish their caloric reserves because of ongoing disturbance. As you can imagine, this pattern gets worse with more sequential days of disturbance.

— Jeremy Goldbogen used suction cup tags equipped with video cameras to peer into an unusual ecological niche: the boundary layer of large whales, where drag is minimized and remoras and small invertebrates compete and thrive. Who would have thought that at a marine mammal conference, a room full of people would be smiling and laughing at remoras sliding around the back of a blue whale, or barnacles filter feeding as they go for a ride with a humpback whale? Insights from animals that occupy this rare niche can inform improvements to current tag technologies.

The GEMM Lab was well represented this year with six different talks: four oral presentations and two speed talks! It is evident that all of our hard work and preparation, such as practicing our talks in front of our lab mates two weeks in advance, paid off. All of the talks were extremely well received by the audience, and a few generated intelligent questions and discussion afterwards – exactly as we hoped. It was certainly gratifying to see how packed the room was for Sharon’s announcement of our new method of standardizing photogrammetry from drones, and how long the people stayed to talk to Dawn after her presentation about an unique population of New Zealand blue whales – it took us over an hour to be able to take her away for food and the celebratory drinks she deserved!

GEMM Lab members on their talks. From left to right, top to bottom: Amanda Holdman, Leila Lemos, Solène Derville, Dawn Barlow, Sharon Nieukirk, and Florence Sullivan.

GEMM Lab members at the closing celebration. From left to right: Florence Sullivan, Leila Lemos, Amanda Holdman, Solène Derville, and Dawn Barlow.

We are not always serious, we can get silly sometimes!

The weekend after the conference many courageous researchers who wanted to stuff their brains with even more specialized knowledge participated in different targeted workshops. From 32 different workshops that were offered, Leila chose to participate in “Measuring hormones in marine mammals: Current methods, alternative sample matrices, and future directions” in order to learn more about the new methods, hormones and matrices that are being used by different research groups and also to make connections with other endocrinologist researchers. Solène participated in the workshop “Reproducible Research with R, Git, and GitHub” led by Robert Shick. She learned how to better organize her research workflow and looks forward to teaching us all how to be better collaborative coders, and ensure our analysis is reproducible by others and by our future selves!

On Sunday none of us from the GEMM Lab participated in workshops and we were able to explore a little bit of the Bay of Fundy, an important area for many marine mammal species. Even though we didn’t spot any marine mammals, we enjoyed witnessing the enormous tidal exchange of the bay (the largest tides in the world), and the fall colors of the Annaoplis valley were stunning as well. Our little trip was fun and relaxing after a whole week of learning.

GEMM Lab at the Bay of Fundy; from left to right: Kelly Sullivan (Florence’s husband and a GEMM Lab fan), Florence Sullivan, Dawn Barlow, Solène Derville, and Leila Lemos.

It is amazing how refreshing it is to participate in a conference. So many ideas popping up in our heads and an increasing desire to continue doing research and work for conservation of marine mammals. Now it’s time to put all of our ideas and energy into practice back home! See you all in two years at the next conference in Barcelona!

Conservation at the Science-to-Policy Interface

By Dominique Kone, Masters Student in Marine Resource Management

How can I practice conservation? As an early-career professional and graduate student, this is the very question I ask myself, constantly. In such an interdisciplinary field, there are several ways someone can address issues and affect change in conservation, even if they don’t call themselves a conservationist. However, there’s no one-size-fits-all method. A marine ecologist will likely try to solve a problem differently than a lawyer, advocate, journalist and so forth. Therefore, I want to explain how I practice conservation, how I develop solutions, and how this has factored into my decision to come to grad school and apply my trade to our sea otter project.

Jane Lubchenco – marine ecologist and environmental scientists – replanting coral. Photo Credit: Oregon State University.

Like many others in conservation, I have a deep appreciation for the field of ecology. Yet, I also really enjoy being involved in policy and management issues. Not just how they’re decided upon, but what factors and variables go into those decisions, and ultimately how those choices impact the marine environment. But most importantly, I’m curious about how these two arenas – science and policy – intersect and complement each other. Yet again, there are an endless number of ways one can practice conservation at the science-policy interface.

Think of this science-policy space as a spectrum or a continuum, if you will. For those who fall on one end of the spectrum, their work may be heavily dominated by pure science or research. While those who fall on the other end, conduct more policy-oriented work. And those in the middle do some combination of the two. Yet, what connects us all is the recognition of the value in science-based decision-making. Because a positive conservation result relies on both elements.

Infographic demonstrating the interface between conservation science and policy. Photo Credit: ZSL Institute of Zoology.

I’m fascinated by this science- policy space and the role that science can play in informing the management and protection of at-risk marine species and ecosystems. From my perspective, scientific evidence and the scientific community are essential resources to help society make better-informed decisions. However, we don’t always take advantage of those resources. On the policy end of the spectrum, there may be a lack of understanding of complex scientific concepts. Yet, on the other end, scientists may be inadvertently making their research inaccessible or they may not fully understand the data or knowledge needs of the decision-makers. Therefore, research that was meant to be useful, sometimes completely misses the mark, and therefore has minimal conservation impact.

Recognizing this persistent problem, I practice conservation as a facilitator, where I identify gaps in knowledge and strategically develop science-based solutions aimed at filling those gaps and addressing specific policy or management issues. In my line of work, I’m dedicated to working within the scientific community to develop targeted research projects that are well placed and thought-out to enable a greater impact. While I associate myself with the science end of the spectrum, I also interact with decision-makers on the other end to better understand the various factors and variables considered in decisions. This requires me to have a deeper understanding of the process by which decision-makers formulate policies and management strategies, how science fits within those decision-making process, and any potential gaps in knowledge or data that need to be filled to facilitate responsible decisions.

A commercial fishing vessel. Photo Credit: NOAA Fisheries.

A simple example of this is the use of stock assessments in the management of commercially important fisheries. Catch limits may seem like simple policies, but we often do not think about the “science behind the scenes” and the multitude of data needed by managers to set those limits. Managers must consider many variables to determine catch limits that will not result in depleted stocks. Without robust scientific data, many of these fisheries catch limits would be too high or too low.

Science protest in Washington, DC. Photo Credit: AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez.

This may all sound like theoretical mumbo jumbo, but it is real, and I will apply this crossover between science and policy in my thesis. The potential reintroduction of sea otters to Oregon presents a multitude of challenges, but the challenge is exactly why I came to grad school in the first place! This project will allow me to take what I’ve learned and develop research questions specifically aimed at providing data and information that managers must consider in their deliberations of sea otter reintroduction. In this project I will be pushed to objectively assess and analyze – as a scientist – a pressing conservation topic from a variety of angles, gain advice from other experts, and develop and execute research that will influence policy decisions. This project provides the perfect opportunity for me to exercise my creativity, allow my curiosity to run rampant, and practice conservation in my own unique way.

Everyone processes and solves problems differently. For those of us practicing conservation, we each tackle issues in our own way depending on where we fall within the science-to-policy spectrum. For me, I address issues as a scientist, with my techniques and strategies derived from a foundation in the political and management context.

Additional Resources:

Bednarek et al. 2015. Science-policy intermediaries from a practitioner’s perspective: The Lenfest Ocean Program experience. Science and Public Policy. 43(2). p. 291-300. (Link here)

Lackey, R. T. 2007. Science, Scientists, and Policy Advocacy. Conservation Biology. 21(1). p. 12-17. (Link here)

Cortner, H. J. 2000. Making science relevant to environmental policy. Environmental Science & Policy. 3(1). p. 21-30. (Link here)

We Are Family

By Alexa Kownacki, Ph.D. Student, OSU Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab

The GEMM Lab celebrating Leigh’s birthday with homemade baked goods and discussions about science.

A lab is a family. I know there is the common saying about how you cannot choose your family and you can only choose your friends. But, I’d beg to differ. In the case of graduate school, especially in departments similar to OSU’s Fisheries and Wildlife, your lab is your chosen family. These are the people who encourage you when you’ve hit a roadblock, who push you when you need extra motivation, who will laugh with you when you’ve reached the point of hysteria after hours of data analysis, who will feed you when you’re too busy to buy groceries, and who will always be there for you. That sure sounds a lot like a family to me.

GEMM Lab members at the Society for Marine Mammalogy 2017 Conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia at the masquerade ball. Photo source: Florence Sullivan

Many of us spend weeks—if not months—conducting field research for our various projects. None of us do this work from the main campus…seeing as the main campus for Oregon State University is located Corvallis, Oregon which is approximately 50 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean. The GEMM Lab isn’t actually based on the main campus; instead, you’ll find the lab at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Oregon, within a two-minute stroll of the picturesque Yaquina Bay. However, many of the core classes we need are only offered on main campus. This results in the GEMM Lab members being spread across Corvallis, Newport, and the dominant fieldwork site for their project (which could be locally in Oregon, or in the waters off of New Zealand). So rather than your typical, weekly, hour-long lab meetings, the GEMM Lab meetings are monthly and last on the order of 3-5 hours. Others hear this and think that must be overwhelming to have such a long lab meeting. On the contrary, these are scheduled to fit into all of our chaotic schedules. One day a month, all of us gather together as a family unit, share what’s new about our lives, be sounding boards for each other, solve problems, and do so in a supportive environment. Hopefully you’re getting the picture that just because we’re all part of the same lab, it doesn’t mean we’re geographically close. This is exactly why we cultivate meaningful relationships while we are together. The Harvard Business Review published an article 2015 based on multiple peer-reviewed journals, summarizing the six dominant characteristics necessary to foster a positive workplace:

Caring for colleagues as friends
Supporting each other
Avoiding blame and forgiving mistakes
Inspiring each other at work
Emphasizing the meaningfulness of the work
Treating each other with respect

And I can attest that every member within the GEMM Lab embraces all of these characteristics and I have a feeling that none of them have read that article prior to today. Family naturally follows those basic guidelines. And, our lab, is a family.

Case and Point: when I was applying for graduate programs, I made a point of traveling to meet the GEMM Lab members at the monthly lab meeting. Sure, I also wanted to make sure that both Newport and Corvallis would be good fits in terms of locations. But, mostly, I needed to see if this Lab would be a strong family unit for my graduate school career and beyond. The moment I arrived at Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, it was clear, this was a family that I could see myself being a part of. Not only had all the members brought some kind of food item to share at the lab meeting (this was important to me), but Florence had baked homemade bread, Dawn had offered to show me around Hatfield, and Leila had set up a time to take me around main campus with other grad students. During the lab meeting discussions, I was welcomed to contribute and I felt comfortable doing so. That was another big moment where something “clicked” and I knew I had found a great group of amazing scientists who were also amazing human beings.

GEMM Lab members at the Port Orford Field Station in August 2017.

Flash forward a few months, and now I am one of those lab members who is bringing food to lab meetings. More than that, we have GEMM Lab dinners and game nights. I may be based in Corvallis, but I commute out to Newport just for these fun activities because this is my family. I want to be with them—not only when we’re talking about our research—but when we’re laughing about the silly things that happen in our daily lives, comically screaming at each other in an effort to win whatever game is on the table, and enjoying home-cooked meals. This is my family.

GEMM Lab members helping some friends at South Coast Tours build a dirt-bag house in August 2017.

I guess I’d like to plug this message to any potential graduate student regardless of discipline(s): find a lab with people that you truly want to surround yourselves with—day and night—in good times and in bad times—because undoubtedly, you’ll need those kinds of people. And, to current lab constituents in any lab: it’s up to us to create a supportive family which will make everyone successful.

Sister Sledge knew just this when the group sang this verse of their hit, “We Are Family”:

Living life is fun and we’ve just begun
To get our share of this world’s delights
High, high hopes we have for the future
And our goal’s in sight
We, no we don’t get depressed
Here’s what we call our golden rule
Have faith in you and the things you do
You won’t go wrong, oh-no
This is our family Jewel

I’m grateful to have found a lab that embodies the lyrics of one of my favorite childhood karaoke songs. The GEMM Lab is not only a lab that produces cutting-edge science; it is a family that encourages one another in all facets of life—creating an environment where people can have high-quality lives and generate high-quality science.

North Pacific Albatrosses

Reasons for Albatross Bycatch

Implications

Inspecting the Catch

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