By Alexa Kownacki, Ph.D. Student, OSU Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab
It all started with a paper. On Halloween, I sat at my desk, searching for papers that could answer my questions about bottlenose dolphin metabolism and realized I had forgotten to check my email earlier. In my inbox, there was a new message with an attachment from Dr. Leigh Torres to the GEMM Lab members, saying this was a “must-read” article. The suggested paper was Martin A. Schwartz’s 2008 essay, “The importance of stupidity in scientific research”, published in the Journal of Cell Science, highlighted universal themes across science. In a single, powerful page, Schwartz captured my feelings—and those of many scientists: the feeling of being stupid.
For the next few minutes, I stood at the printer and absorbed the article, while commenting out loud, “YES!”, “So true!”, and “This person can see into my soul”. Meanwhile, colleagues entered my office to see me, dressed in my Halloween costume—as “Amazon’s Alexa”, talking aloud to myself. Coincidently, I was feeling pretty stupid at that moment after just returning from a weekly meeting, where everyone asked me questions that I clearly did not have the answers to (all because of my costume). This paper seemed too relevant; the timing was uncanny. In the past few weeks, I have been writing my PhD research proposal —a requirement for our department— and my goodness, have I felt stupid. The proposal outlines my dissertation objectives, puts my work into context, and provides background research on common bottlenose dolphin health. There is so much to know that I don’t know!
Alexa dressed as “Amazon Alexa” on Halloween at her office in San Diego, CA.
When I read Schwartz’s 2008 paper, there were a few takeaway messages that stood out:
People take different paths. One path is not necessarily right nor wrong. Simply, different. I compared that to how I split my time between OSU and San Diego, CA. Spending half of the year away from my lab and my department is incredibly challenging; I constantly feel behind and I miss the support that physically being with other students provides. However, I recognize the opportunities I have in San Diego where I work directly with collaborators who teach and challenge me in new ways that bring new skills and perspective.
Drawing upon experts—albeit intimidating—is beneficial for scientific consulting as well as for our mental health; no one person knows everything. That statement can bring us together because when people work together, everyone benefits. I am also reminded that we are our own harshest critics; sometimes our colleagues are the best champions of our own successes. It is also why historical articles are foundational. In the hunt for the newest technology and the latest and greatest in research, it is important to acknowledge the basis for discoveries. My data begins in 1981, when the first of many researchers began surveying the California coastline for common bottlenose dolphins. Geographic information systems (GIS) were different back then. The data requires conversions and investigative work. I had to learn how the data were collected and how to interpret that information. Therefore, it should be no surprise that I cite literature from the 1970s, such as “Results of attempts to tag Atlantic Bottlenose dolphins, (Tursiops truncatus)” by Irvine and Wells. Although published in 1972, the questions the authors tried to answer are very similar to what I am looking at now: how are site fidelity and home ranges impacted by natural and anthropogenic processes. While Irvine and Wells used large bolt tags to identify individuals, my project utilizes much less invasive techniques (photo-identification and blubber biopsies) to track animals, their health, and their exposures to contaminants.
(Image source: imgflip.com)
Struggling is part of the solution. Science is about discovery and without the feeling of stupidity, discovery would not be possible. Feeling stupid is the first step in the discovery process: the spark that fuels wanting to explore the unknown. Feeling stupid can lead to the feeling of accomplishment when we find answers to those very questions that made us feel stupid. Part of being a student and a scientist is identifying those weaknesses and not letting them stop me. Pausing, reflecting, course correcting, and researching are all productive in the end, but stopping is not. Coursework is the easy part of a PhD. The hard part is constantly diving deeper into the great unknown that is research. The great unknown is simultaneously alluring and frightening. Still, it must be faced head on. Schwartz describes “productive stupidity [as] being ignorant by choice.” I picture this as essentially blindly walking into the future with confidence. Although a bit of an oxymoron, it resonates the importance of perseverance and conviction in the midst of uncertainty.
(Image source: Redbubble)
Now I think back to my childhood when stupid was one of the forbidden “s-words” and I question whether society had it all wrong. Maybe we should teach children to acknowledge ignorance and pursue the unknown. Stupid is a feeling, not a character flaw. Stupidity is important in science and in life. Fascination and emotional desires to discover new things are healthy. Next time you feel stupid, try running with it, because more often than not, you will learn something.
Alexa teaching about marine mammals to students ages 2-6 and learning from educators about new ways to engage young students. San Diego, CA in 2016. (Photo source: Lori Lowder)
By Lisa Hildebrand, MSc student, OSU Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab
Science is truly meaningful because it is shared amongst colleagues and propagated to the wider public. There are many mediums through which information dissemination can occur. A common and most rigorous form is the peer-review scientific publication of papers. The paper approval process is vigorous, can last a long time – sometimes on the scale of several years – and is therefore an excellent way of vetting science that is occurring all over the world in many different disciplines. New studies build upon the results and downfalls of others, and therefore the process of research and communication of knowledge is continuous.
However, scientific journals and the publications within them can be quite exclusive; they are often only accessible to certain members of the scientific community or of an educational institution. For a budding scientist who is not affiliated with an institution, it can be very hard to get your hands on current research. Having said that, this issue is slowly becoming inconsequential since open access and free journals, such as PeerJ, are becoming more prevalent.
How some students feel after reading scientific publications. Source: Know Your Meme.
Something that is perhaps more restrictive is the amount of topic-specific jargon used in publications. While a certain degree of jargon is to be expected, it can sometimes overwhelm a reader to the point where the main findings of the research become lost. This typically tends to be the case for those just at the beginning of their scientific journeys, however I have also known professors to comment on confusing sections of publications due to the heavy use of specific jargon.
Conferences on the other hand offer an opportunity to disseminate meaningful science in a more open and (sometimes) more laid-back setting (this may not always be true depending on the field of science and the calibre of the conference). Researchers of a particular field congregate for a few days to learn about current research efforts, ponder potential collaborations, peruse posters of new studies, and argue over which soccer team is going to win the next World Cup. That is the beauty of conferences – it is very possible to get to know each other on a personal level. These face-to-face opportunities are especially beneficial to students as this relaxed atmosphere lends itself to asking questions and engaging with scientists that are leaders in their fields.
Logo for the Marine Technology Summit. Source: MTS.
Just over a week ago, the GEMM Lab had the opportunity to do all of the above-mentioned things. PI Dr Leigh Torres and I participated in the Marine Technology Summit (MTS) in Newport, OR, a “mini-conference” at which shiny, new technologies for use in marine applications were introduced by leading, and many local, tech companies. While Leigh and I are not technologists, we are ecologists that have greatly benefitted from recent, rapid advances in technology. Both of our gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) research projects use different technologies to unveil hitherto unknown ecological aspects of these marine mammals.
Leigh presented her research that involves flying drones over gray whales that grace the Oregon coastal waters in the spring and summer. Through these flights, many previously undocumented gray whale behaviours have been captured and quantified1, such as headstands, nursing and jaw snapping (check out the video below). Furthermore, still images from the videos have been used to perform photogrammetry to assess health and body condition of the whales2. These drone flights have added a wealth of valuable data to the life histories of individual whales that previously were assessed mainly through photo-identification and genetics. This still fairly new approach to assess health by using drones can be relatively cost-effective, which has always been one of Leigh’s key aims throughout her research so that methods are accessible to many scientists. These productive drones used by the GEMM Lab are commercially available (yup, just like the ones you see on the shelves at your local Best Buy!).
The use of cost-effective technologies is a common theme in the GEMM Lab and is also central to my research. The estimation of zooplankton density is vital to my project to determine whether gray whales in Port Orford select areas of high prey density over areas with less dense prey. However, the traditional technology used to quantify prey densities in the water column are often bulky or expensive. Instead, we developed a relatively cheap method of measuring relative zooplankton density using a GoPro camera that we reel down through the water column from a downrigger attached to our research kayak. While we are unable to exactly quantify the mass of zooplankton in the water column, we have been successful in assessing changes in relative prey density by scoring screenshots of the footage.
Screenshot of a GoPro video from this summer’s field season in Port Orford, OR revealing a thick layer of zooplankton. Source: GEMM Lab.
While our drones and GoPro technology is not without error, technology rarely is. In truth, we lost our GoPro for several days after it became stuck in a rock crevice and Leigh’s team regrettably lost a drone to the depths of the ocean this summer. This technology reality was part of the reason I presented at the MTS as I wanted to involve technologists to find solutions to some of the problems I have experienced. Needless to say, I got a lot of excellent input from many different people, for which I am very grateful. In addition to developing new opportunities to collaborate, I was very content to sit in the audience and hear about the ground-breaking new marine technologies that are in development. Below are short descriptions of two new technologies I learned about that are revolutionising the marine world.
ASV Unmanned Marine Systems develop autonomous surface vehicles that are powered by renewable energies (solar panels and wind turbines). These vessels are particularly useful for oceanographic monitoring as they are more capable than weather buoys and much more cost effective than manned weather ships or research vessels. Additionally, they can be used for a lot of different marine science applications including active acoustic fisheries monitoring, water quality monitoring, and cetacean tracking. Some models even have integrated drones that are launched and retrieved autonomously.
The Ocean Cleanup is a company that develops technologies to clean garbage out of our oceans. There is presently a large mission underway by The Ocean Cleanup to combat the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP). The GPGP is essentially a large island in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean comprised of diverse plastic particles – wrappers, polystyrene, fishing line, plastic bags, the list is endless3. A recent study estimates the amount of plastic in the GPGP to be at least 79 thousand tonnes of ocean plastic4. Unfortunately, the GPGP is not the only one of its kind. The Ocean Cleanup hopes to reduce this massive plastic accumulation with the development of a system made up of a 600-m long floater that sits on the ocean’s surface with a 3-m deep skirt attached below it. The skirt will collect debris while the float will prevent plastic from flowing over it, as well as keep the whole system afloat. The system arrived at the GPGP last Wednesday and the team of over 80 engineers, researchers, scientists and computational modellers have successfully installed the system. The team posts frequent updates on their Twitter and I would highly recommend you follow this possibly revolutionary technology.
While attending the MTS, it felt like there are no bounds for the types of marine technology that will be developed in the future. I am excited to see what ecologists working with technicians can develop to keep applying technology to address challenging questions and conservation issues.
References
Torres, L., et al., Drone up! Quantifying whale behaviour from a new perspective improves observational capacity.Frontiers in Marine Science, 2018. 5, DOI:10.3389/fmars.2018.00319.
Burnett, J.D., et al., Estimating morphometric attributes on baleen whales using small UAS photogrammetry: A case study with blue and gray whales, 2018.Marine Mammal Science. DOI:10.1111/mms.12527.
Kaiser, J., The dirt on the ocean garbage patches. Science, 2018. 328(5985): p. 1506.
Lebreton, L., et al., Evidence that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is rapidly accumulating plastic. Scientific Reports, 2018. 8(4666).
By Dawn Barlow, PhD student, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Oregon State University
Sun on my face and wind in my hair, scanning the expanse of blue. Forty minutes on, twenty minutes off, from sunrise until sunset, day after day. Hours of seemingly empty blue, punctuated by graceful black-footed albatrosses wheeling and gliding over the swells, by the splashing approach of a curious group of Pacific white-sided dolphins coming to play in the bow of the ship, by whale spouts on the horizon and the occasional breaching humpback. A flurry of data entry—geographic coordinates, bearing and distance from the ship, number of animals, species identification, behavior—and then back to blue.
Scanning for marine mammals from the flying bridge of NOAA ship Bell M. Shimada. Photo: Jess O’Loughlin.
I’ve just returned from the Northern California Current (NCC) ecosystem cruise aboard NOAA ship Bell M. Shimada. My role on board was the marine mammal observer, logging marine mammal sightings during the transits between sampling stations. We surveyed and sampled between Cape Mears, Oregon and Trinidad, California, from right along the coast out to 200 nautical miles offshore. Resources in the marine environment are patchy, and our coastline is highly productive. This diversity in environmental conditions creates niche habitats for many species, which is one reason why surveying and sampling across a broad geographic range can be so informative. We left Newport surrounded by gray whales, feeding in green, chilly waters at temperatures around 12°C. Moving west, the marine mammal and seabird sightings were increasingly sparse, the water increasingly blue, and the surface temperature warmed to a balmy 17°C. We had reached offshore waters, an ocean region sometimes referred to as the “blue desert”. For an entire day I didn’t see a single marine mammal and only just a few seabirds, until a handful of common dolphins—more frequently seen in warm-temperate and tropical waters to the south—joined the ship at sunset. As we transited back inshore over the productive Heceta Bank, the water became cooler and greener. I stayed busy logging sightings of humpback and gray whales, harbor porpoise and Dall’s porpoise, pacific white-sided dolphins and sea lions. These far-ranging marine predators must find a way to make a living in the patchy and dynamic ocean environment, and therefore their distribution is also patchy—aggregated around areas of high productivity and prey availability, and occasionally seen transiting in between.
Here are a few cruise highlights:
Curious groups of common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) came to play in the bow wake of the ship and even checked out the plankton nets when they were deployed. Common dolphins are typically found further south, however we saw several groups of them in the warmer waters far offshore.
Common dolphins (Delphinus delphis). Photo: Dawn Barlow.
Common dolphins (Delphinus delphis). Photo: Dawn Barlow.
Common dolphins (Delphinus delphis). Photo: Dawn Barlow.
Common dolphins (Delphinus delphis). Photo: Dawn Barlow.
Ocean sunfish (Mola mola) will occasionally lay themselves flat at the surface so that seabirds will pick them clean of any parasites. I was delighted to observe this for the first time just off Newport! There were several more sunfish sightings throughout the cruise.
Gull picking parasites off an ocean sunfish (Mola mola). Photo: Dawn Barlow.
A masked booby (Sula dactylatra) hung around the ship for a bit, 16 nautical miles from shore, just south of the Oregon-California border. Considered a tropical species, a sighting this far north is extremely rare. While masked boobies are typically distributed in the Caribbean and tropical Pacific from Mexico to Australia, one found its way to the Columbia River in 2006 (first record in the state of Oregon) and another showed up here to Newport in 2015 – reportedly only the second to be recorded north of Mendocino County, California. Perhaps this sighting is the third?
Masked booby (Sula dactylatra). Photo: Dawn Barlow.
While most of my boat-based fieldwork experiences have been focused on marine mammal research, this was an interdisciplinary cruise aimed at studying multiple aspects of the northern California current ecosystem. There were researchers on board studying oceanography, phytoplankton and harmful algal blooms, zooplankton, and microplastics. When a group of enthusiastic scientists with different areas of expertise come together and spend long days at sea, there is a wonderful opportunity to learn from one another. The hydroacoustic backscatter on the scientific echosounder prompted a group discussion about vertical migration of plankton one evening. Another evening I learned about differences in energetic content between krill species, and together we mused about what that might mean for marine predators. This is how collaborations are born, and I am grateful for the scientific musings with so many insightful people.
Thank you to the Shimada crew and the NCC science team for a wonderful cruise!
Solène Derville, Entropie Lab, French National Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD – UMR Entropie), Nouméa, New Caledonia
Ph.D. student under the co-supervision of Dr. Leigh Torres
Species Distribution Models (SDM), also referred to as ecological niche models, may be defined as “a model that relates species distribution data (occurrence or abundance at known locations) with information on the environmental and/or spatial characteristics of those locations” (Elith & Leathwick, 2009). In the last couple decades, SDMs have become an indispensable part of the ecologists’ and conservationists’ toolbox. What scientist has not dreamed of being able to summarize a species’ environmental requirements and predict where and when it will occur, all in one tiny statistical model? It sounds like magic… but the short acronym “SDM” is the pretty front window of an intricate and gigantic research field that may extend way beyond the skills of a typical ecologist (even so for a graduate student like myself).
As part of my PhD thesis about the spatial ecology of humpback whales in New Caledonia, South Pacific, I was planning on producing a model to predict their distribution in the region and help spatial planning within the Natural Park of the Coral Sea. An innocent and seemingly perfectly feasible plan for a second year PhD student. To conduct this task, I had at my disposal more than 1,000 sightings recorded during dedicated surveys at sea conducted over 14 years. These numbers seem quite sufficient, considering the rarity of cetaceans and the technical challenges of studying them at sea. And there was more! The NGO Opération Cétacés also recorded over 600 sightings reported by the general public in the same time period and deployed more than 40 satellite tracking tags to follow individual whale movements. In a field where it is so hard to acquire data, it felt like I had to use it all, though I was not sure how to combine all these types of data, with their respective biases, scales and assumptions.
One important thing about SDM to remember: it is like a cracker section in a US grocery shop, there is sooooo much choice! As I reviewed the possibilities and tested various modeling approaches on my data I realized that this study might be a good opportunity to contribute to the SDM field, by conducting a comparison of various algorithms using cetacean occurrence data from multiple sources. The results of this work was just published in Diversity and Distributions:
Derville S, Torres LG, Iovan C, Garrigue C. (2018) Finding the right fit: Comparative cetacean distribution models using multiple data sources and statistical approaches. Divers Distrib. 2018;00:1–17. https://doi. org/10.1111/ddi.12782
There are simply too many! Anonymous grocery shops, Corvallis, OR Credit: Dawn Barlow
If you are a new-comer to the SDM world, and specifically its application to the marine environment, I hope you find this interesting. If you are a seasoned SDM user, I would be very grateful to read your thoughts in the comment section! Feel free to disagree!
So what is the take-home message from this work?
There is no such thing as a “best model”; it all depends on what you want your model to be good at (the descriptive vs predictive dichotomy), and what criteria you use to define the quality of your models.
The predictive vs descriptive goal of the model: This is a tricky choice to make, yet it should be clearly identified upfront. Most times, I feel like we want our models to be decently good at both tasks… It is a risky approach to blindly follow the predictions of a complex model without questioning the meaning of the ecological relationships it fitted. On the other hand, conservation applications of models often require the production of predicted maps of species’ probability of presence or habitat suitability.
The criteria for model selection: How could we imagine that the complexity of animal behavior could be summarized in a single metric, such as the famous Akaike Information criterion (AIC) or the Area under the ROC Curve (AUC)? My study, and that of others (e.g. Elith & Graham H., 2009), emphasize the importance of looking at multiple aspects of model outputs: raw performance through various evaluation metrics (e.g. see AUCdiff; (Warren & Seifert, 2010), contribution of the variables to the model, shape of the fitted relationships through Partial Dependence Plots (PDP, Friedman, 2001), and maps of predicted habitat suitability and associated error. Spread all these lines of evidence in front of you, summarize all the metrics, add a touch of critical ecological thinking to decide on the best approach for your modeling question, and Abracadabra! You end up a bit lost in a pile of folders… But at least you assessed the quality of your work from every angle!
Cetacean SDMs often serve a conservation goal. Hence, their capacity to predict to areas / times that were not recorded in the data (which is often scarce) is paramount. This extrapolation performance may be restricted when the model relationships are overfitted, which is when you made your model fit the data so closely that you are unknowingly modeling noise rather than a real trend. Using cross-validation is a good method to prevent overfitting from happening (for a thorough review: Roberts et al., 2017). Also, my study underlines that certain algorithms inherently have a tendency to overfit. We found that Generalized Additive Models and MAXENT provided a valuable complexity trade-off to promote the best predictive performance, while minimizing overfitting. In the case of GAMs, I would like to point out the excellent documentation that exist on their use (Wood, 2017), and specifically their application to cetacean spatial ecology (Mannocci, Roberts, Miller, & Halpin, 2017; Miller, Burt, Rexstad, & Thomas, 2013; Redfern et al., 2017).
Citizen science is a promising tool to describe cetacean habitat. Indeed, we found that models of habitat suitability based on citizen science largely converged with those based on our research surveys. The main issue encountered when modeling this type of data is the absence of “effort”. Basically, we know where people observed whales, but we do not know where they haven’t… or at least not with the accuracy obtained from research survey data. However, with some information about our citizen scientists and a little deduction, there is actually a lot you can infer about opportunistic data. For instance, in New Caledonia most of the sightings were reported by professional whale-watching operators or by the general public during fishing/diving/boating day trips. Hence, citizen scientists rarely stray far from harbors and spend most of their time in the sheltered waters of the New Caledonian lagoon. This reasoning provides the sort of information that we integrated in our modeling approach to account for spatial sampling bias of citizen science data and improve the model’s predictive performance.
Many more technical aspects of SDM are brushed over in this paper (for detailed and annotated R codes of the modeling approaches, see supplementary information of our paper). There are a few that are not central to the paper, but that I think are worth sharing:
Collinearity of predictors: Have you ever found that the significance of your predictors completely changed every time you removed a variable? I have progressively come to discover how unstable a model can be because of predictor collinearity (and the uneasy feeling that comes with it …). My new motto is to ALWAYS check cross-correlation between my predictors, and do it THOROUGHLY. A few aspects that may make a big difference in the estimation of collinearity patterns are to: (1) calculate Pearson vs Spearman coefficients, (2) check correlations between the values recorded at the presence points vs over the whole study area, and (3) assess the correlations between raw environmental variables vs between transformed variables (log-transformed, etc). Though selecting variables with Pearson coefficients < 0.7 is usually a good rule (Dormann et al., 2013), I would worry of anything above 0.5, or at least keep it in mind during model interpretation.
Cross-validation: If removing 10% of my dataset greatly impacts the model results, I feel like cross-validation is critical. The concept is based on a simple assumption, if I had sampled a given population/phenomenon/system slightly differently, would I have come to the same conclusion? Cross-validation comes in many different methods, but the basic concept is to run the same model several times (number of times may depend on the size of your data set, hierarchical structure of your data, computation power of your computer, etc.) over different chunks of your data. Model performance metrics (e.g., AUC) and outputs (e.g., partial dependence plots) are than summarized on the many runs, using mean/median and standard deviation/quantiles. It is up to you how to pick these chunks, but before doing this at random I highly recommend reading Roberts et al. (2017).
The evil of the R2: I am probably not the first student to feel like what I have learned in my statistical classes at school is in practice, at best, not very useful, and at worst, dangerously misleading. Of course, I do understand that we must start somewhere, and that learning the basics of inferential statistics is a necessary step to, one day, be able to answer your one research questions. Yet, I feel like I have been carrying the “weight of the R2” for far too long before actually realizing that this metric of model performance (R2 among others) is simply not enough to trust my results. You might think that your model is robust because among the 1000 alternative models you tested, it is the one with the “best” performance (deviance explained, AIC, you name it), but the model with the best R2 will not always be the most ecologically meaningful one, or the most practical for spatial management perspectives. Overfitting is like a sword of Damocles hanging over you every time you create a statistical model All together, I sometimes trust my supervisor’s expertise and my own judgment more than an R2.
Source: internet
A few good websites/presentations that have helped me through my SDM journey:
Dormann, C. F., Elith, J., Bacher, S., Buchmann, C., Carl, G., Carré, G., … Lautenbach, S. (2013). Collinearity: A review of methods to deal with it and a simulation study evaluating their performance. Ecography, 36(1), 027–046. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0587.2012.07348.x
Elith, J., & Graham H., C. (2009). Do they? How do they? WHY do they differ? On finding reasons for differing performances of species distribution models . Ecography, 32(Table 1), 66–77. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0587.2008.05505.x
Elith, J., & Leathwick, J. R. (2009). Species Distribution Models: Ecological Explanation and Prediction Across Space and Time. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 40(1), 677–697. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.110308.120159
Friedman, J. H. (2001). Greedy Function Approximation: A gradient boosting machine. The Annals of Statistics, 29(5), 1189–1232. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2699986
Mannocci, L., Roberts, J. J., Miller, D. L., & Halpin, P. N. (2017). Extrapolating cetacean densities to quantitatively assess human impacts on populations in the high seas. Conservation Biology, 31(3), 601–614. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.12856.This
Miller, D. L., Burt, M. L., Rexstad, E. A., & Thomas, L. (2013). Spatial models for distance sampling data: Recent developments and future directions. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 4(11), 1001–1010. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.12105
Redfern, J. V., Moore, T. J., Fiedler, P. C., de Vos, A., Brownell, R. L., Forney, K. A., … Ballance, L. T. (2017). Predicting cetacean distributions in data-poor marine ecosystems. Diversity and Distributions, 23(4), 394–408. https://doi.org/10.1111/ddi.12537
Roberts, D. R., Bahn, V., Ciuti, S., Boyce, M. S., Elith, J., Guillera-Arroita, G., … Dormann, C. F. (2017). Cross-validation strategies for data with temporal, spatial, hierarchical or phylogenetic structure. Ecography, 0, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.02881
Warren, D. L., & Seifert, S. N. (2010). Ecological niche modeling in Maxent: the importance of model complexity and the performance of model selection criteria. Ecological Applications, 21(2), 335–342. https://doi.org/10.1890/10-1171.1
Wood, S. N. (2017). Generalized additive models: an introduction with R (second edi). CRC press.
By Alexa Kownacki, Ph.D. Student, OSU Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab
I love maps. I love charts. As a random bit of trivia, there is a difference between a map and a chart. A map is a visual representation of land that may include details like topology, whereas a chart refers to nautical information such as water depth, shoreline, tides, and obstructions.
Map of San Diego, CA, USA. (Source: San Diego Metropolitan Transit System)Chart of San Diego, CA, USA. (Source: NOAA)
I have an intense affinity for visually displaying information. As a child, my dad traveled constantly, from Barrow, Alaska to Istanbul, Turkey. Immediately upon his return, I would grab our standing globe from the dining room and our stack of atlases from the coffee table. I would sit at the kitchen table, enthralled at the stories of his travels. Yet, a story was only great when I could picture it for myself. (I should remind you, this was the early 1990s, GoogleMaps wasn’t a thing.) Our kitchen table transformed into a scene from Master and Commander—except, instead of nautical charts and compasses, we had an atlas the size of an overgrown toddler and salt and pepper shakers to pinpoint locations. I now had the world at my fingertips. My dad would show me the paths he took from our home to his various destinations and tell me about the topography, the demographics, the population, the terrain type—all attribute features that could be included in common-day geographic information systems (GIS).
Uncle Brian showing Alexa where they were on a map of Maui, Hawaii, USA. (Photo: Susan K. circa 1995)
As I got older, the kitchen table slowly began to resemble what I imagine the set from Master and Commander actually looked like; nautical charts, tide tables, and wind predictions were piled high and the salt and pepper shakers were replaced with pencil marks indicating potential routes for us to travel via sailboat. The two of us were in our element. Surrounded by visual and graphical representations of geographic and spatial information: maps. To put my map-attraction this in even more context, this is a scientist who grew up playing “Take-Off”, a board game that was “designed to teach geography” and involved flying your fleet of planes across a Mercator projection-style mapboard. Now, it’s no wonder that I’m a graduate student in a lab that focuses on the geospatial aspects of ecology.
A precocious 3-year-old Alexa, sitting with the airplane pilot asking him a long list of travel-related questions (and taking his captain’s hat). Photo: Susan K.
So why and how did geospatial ecology became a field—and a predominant one at that? It wasn’t that one day a lightbulb went off and a statistician decided to draw out the results. It was a progression, built upon for thousands of years. There are maps dating back to 2300 B.C. on Babylonian clay tablets (The British Museum), and yet, some of the maps we make today require highly sophisticated technology. Geospatial analysis is dynamic. It’s evolving. Today I’m using ArcGIS software to interpolate mass amounts of publicly-available sea surface temperature satellite data from 1981-2015, which I will overlay with a layer of bottlenose dolphin sightings during the same time period for comparison. Tomorrow, there might be a new version of software that allows me to animate these data. Heck, it might already exist and I’m not aware of it. This growth is the beauty of this field. Geospatial ecology is made for us cartophiles (map-lovers) who study the interdependency of biological systems where location and distance between things matters.
Alexa’s grandmother showing Alexa (a very young cartographer) how to color in the lines. Source: Susan K. circa 1994
In a broader context, geospatial ecology communicates our science to all of you. If I posted a bunch of statistical outputs in text or even table form, your eyes might glaze over…and so might mine. But, if I displayed that same underlying data and results on a beautiful map with color-coded symbology, a legend, a compass rose, and a scale bar, you might have this great “ah-ha!” moment. That is my goal. That is what geospatial ecology is to me. It’s a way to SHOW my science, rather than TELL it.
Would you like to see this over and over again…?
A VERY small glimpse into the enormous amount of data that went into this map. This screenshot gave me one point of temperature data for a single location for a single day…Source: Alexa K.
Or see this once…?
Map made in ArcGIS of Coastal common bottlenose dolphin sightings between 1981-1989 with a layer of average sea surface temperatures interpolated across those same years. A picture really is worth a thousand words…or at least a thousand data points…Source: Alexa K.
For many, maps are visually easy to interpret, allowing quick message communication. Yet, there are many different learning styles. From my personal story, I think it’s relatively obvious that I’m, at least partially, a visual learner. When I was in primary school, I would read the directions thoroughly, but only truly absorb the material once the teacher showed me an example. Set up an experiment? Sure, I’ll read the lab report, but I’m going to refer to the diagrams of the set-up constantly. To this day, I always ask for an example. Teach me a new game? Let’s play the first round and then I’ll pick it up. It’s how I learned to sail. My dad described every part of the sailboat in detail and all I heard was words. Then, my dad showed me how to sail, and it came naturally. It’s only as an adult that I know what “that blue line thingy” is called. Geospatial ecology is how I SEE my research. It makes sense to me. And, hopefully, it makes sense to some of you!
Alexa’s dad teaching her how to sail. (Source: Susan K. circa 2000)Alexa’s first solo sailboat race in Coronado, San Diego, CA. Notice: Alexa’s dad pushing the bow off the dock and the look on Alexa’s face. (Source: Susan K. circa 2000)Alexa mapping data using ArcGIS in the Oregon State University Library. (Source: Alexa K circa a few minutes prior to posting).
I strongly believe a meaningful career allows you to highlight your passions and personal strengths. For me, that means photography, all things nautical, the great outdoors, wildlife conservation, and maps/charts. If I converted that into an equation, I think this is a likely result:
This lab was my solution all along. As part of my research on common bottlenose dolphins, I work on a small inflatable boat off the coast of California (nautical ✅, outdoors ✅), photograph their dorsal fin (photography ✅), and communicate my data using informative maps that will hopefully bring positive change to the marine environment (maps/charts ✅, wildlife conservation✅). Geospatial ecology allows me to participate in research that I deeply enjoy and hopefully, will make the world a little bit of a better place. Oh, and make maps.
Alexa in the field, putting all those years of sailing and chart-reading to use! (Source: Leila L.)
Living the dream as a marine mammal observer onboard the R/V Bell Shimada Photo credit: Dave Jacobsen
I first learned that “Marine Mammal Observer” was a legitimate career field during the summer after my junior year at the University of Washington. I had the good fortune to volunteer for the BASIS fisheries-oceanography survey onboard the R/V Oscar Dyson where I met two wonderful bird observers who taught me how to identify various pelagic bird species and clued me in to just how diverse the marine science job market can be. After the cruise, younger Florence went off with an expanded world view and a small dream that maybe someday she could go out to sea and survey for marine mammals on a regular basis (and get paid for it?!). Eight years later, I am happy to report that I have just spent the last week as the marine mammal observer on the North California Current Survey on the Dyson’s sister ship, the R/V Bell M. Shimada. While we may not have seen as many marine mammals as I would have liked, the experience has still been everything younger Florence hoped it would be.
Finally leaving port a few days behind schedule due to stormy weather! photo credit: Florence Sullivan
If you’ve ever wondered why the scientists in your life may refer to summer as “field work season”, it’s because attempting to do research outside in the winter is an exercise in frustration, troubleshooting, and flexibility. Case in point; this cruise was supposed to sail away from port on the 24th of February, but did not end up leaving until the 27th due to bad weather. This weather delay meant that we had to cut some oceanographic stations we would like to have sampled, and even when we made it out of the harbor, the rough weather made it impossible to sample some of the stations we still had left on our map. That being said, we still got a lot of good work done!
The original station map. The warm colors are the west coast of the US, the cold colors are the ocean, and the black dots are planned survey stations
The oceanographers were able to conduct CTD casts at most planned stations, as well as sample the water column with a vertical zooplankton net, a HAB net (for looking for the organisms that cause Harmful Algal Blooms), and a Bongo Net (a net that specializes in getting horizontal samples of the water column). When it wasn’t too windy, they were also able to sample with the Manta net (a net specialized for surface sampling – it looks like a manta ray’s mouth) and at certain near-shore stations they did manage to get some bottom beam trawls in to look at the benthic community of fishes and invertebrates. All this was done while dodging multitudes of crab pots and storm fronts. The NOAA corps officers who drive the boat, and the deck crew who handle all the equipment deployments and retrievals really did their utmost to make sure we were able to work.
Stormy seas make for difficult sampling conditions! photo credit: Florence Sullivan
For my part, I spent the hours between stations searching the wind-tossed waves for any sign of marine mammals. Over the course of the week, I saw a few Northern fur seals, half a dozen gray whales, and a couple of unidentified large cetaceans. When you think about the productivity of the North Pacific Ecosystem this may not seem like very much. But remember, it is late winter, and I do not have x-ray vision to see through the waves. It is likely that I missed a number of animals simply because the swell was too large, and when we calculate our “detection probability” these weather factors will be taken into account. In addition, many of our local marine mammals are migrators who might be in warmer climates, or are off chasing different food sources at the moment. In ecology, when you want to know how a population of animals is distributed across a land- or sea-scape, it is just as important to understand where the animals are NOT as where they ARE. So all of this “empty” water was very important to survey simply because it helps us refine our understanding of where animals don’t want to be. When we know where animals AREN’T we can ask better questions about why they occur where they ARE.
Black Footed Albatross soars near the boat. Photo credit: Florence Sullivan
Notable species of the week aside from the marine mammals include Laysan and Black Footed Albatrosses, a host of Vellella vellella (sailor by the wind hydroid colonies) and the perennial favorite of oceanographers; the shrinking Styrofoam cup. (See pictures)
We sent these styrofoam cups down to 1800 meters depth. The pressure at those depths causes all the air to escape from the styrofoam, and it shrinks! This is a favorite activity of oceanographers to demonstrate the effects on increased pressure!
These sorts of interdisciplinary cruises are quite fun and informative to participate in because we can build a better picture of the ecosystem as a whole when we use a multitude of methods to explore it. This strength of cooperation makes me proud to add my little piece to the puzzle. As I move forward in life, whether I get to be the marine mammal observer, the oceanographer, or perhaps an educator, I will always be glad to contribute to collaborative research.
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 22nd, 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.
The beauty of the Bay of Fundy.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.We do love being part of the GEMM Lab!
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!
By Dawn Barlow, MSc Student, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab
Every two years, an international community of scientists gather for one week to discuss the most current and pressing science and conservation issues surrounding marine mammals. The thousands of attendees range from longtime researchers who have truly shaped the field throughout the course of their careers to students who are just beginning to carve out a niche of their own. I was able to attend the last conference, which took place in San Francisco in 2015, as an undergraduate. The experience cemented my desire to pursue marine mammal research in graduate school and beyond, and also solidified my connection with Leigh Torres and the Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Laboratory, leading to my current enrollment at Oregon State University. This year, the 22nd Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals takes place in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. At the end of this week, Florence, Leila, Amanda, Solene, Sharon and I will head northeast to represent the GEMM Lab at the meeting!
As those of you reading this may not be able to attend, I’d like to share an overview of what we will be presenting next week. If you will be in Halifax, we warmly invite you to the following presentations. In order of appearance:
Amanda will present the final results from part of her MSc thesis on Monday in a presentation titled Comparative fine-scale harbor porpoise habitat models developed using remotely sensed and in situ data. It will be great for current GEMM Lab members to catch up with this recent GEMM Lab graduate on the other side of the continent! (Session: Conservation; Time: 4:00 pm)
On Tuesday morning, Leila will share the latest and greatest updates on her research about Oregon gray whales, including photogrammetry from drone images and stress hormones extracted from fecal samples! Her presentation is titled Combining traditional and novel techniques to link body condition and hormone variability in gray whales. This is innovative and cutting-edge work, and it is exciting to think it will be shared with the international research community. (Session: Health; Time: 10:45 am)
Did you think humpback whales have been so well studied that we must know just about everything about them? Think again! Solene will be sharing new and exciting insights from humpback whales tagged in New Caledonia, who appear to spend an intriguing amount of time around seamounts. Her talk Why do humpback whales aggregate around seamounts in South Pacific tropical waters? New insights from diving behaviour and ocean circulation analyses, will take place on Tuesday afternoon. (Session: Habitat and Distribution Speed Talks; Time: 1:30 pm)
I will be presenting the latest findings from our New Zealand blue whale research. Based on multiple data streams, we now have evidence for a unique blue whale population which is present year-round in New Zealand waters! This presentation, titled From migrant to resident: Multiple data streams point toward a resident New Zealand population of blue whales, will round out the oral presentations on Tuesday afternoon. (Session: Population Biology and Abundance; Time: 4:45 pm)
The GEMM Lab is using new technologies and innovative quantitative approaches to measure gray whale body condition and behaviors from an aerial perspective. On Wednesday afternoon, Sharon will present Drone up! Quantifying whale behavior and body condition from a new perspective on behalf of Leigh. With the emerging prevalence of drones, we are excited to introduce these quantitative applications. (Session: New Technology; Time: 11:45 am)
GoPros, kayaks, and gray whales, oh my! A limited budget couldn’t stop Florence from conducting excellent science and gaining new insights into gray whale fine-scale foraging. On Thursday afternoon, she will present Go-Pros, kayaks and gray whales: Linking fine-scale whale behavior with prey distributions on a shoestring budget, and share her findings, which she was able to pull off with minimal funds, creative study design, and a positive attitude. (Session: Foraging Ecology Speed Talks; Time: 1:55 pm)
Additional Oregon State University students presenting at the conference will include Michelle Fournet, Samara Haver, Niki Diogou, and Angie Sremba. We are thrilled to have such good representation at a meeting of this caliber! As you may know, we are all working on building the GEMM Lab’s social media presence and becoming more “twitterific”. So during the conference, please be sure to follow @GEMMLabOSU on twitter for live updates. Stay tuned!
By Florence Sullivan, MSc, GEMM Lab Research Assistant
This summer, I had the pleasure of returning to Port Orford to lead another field season of the GEMM Lab’s gray whale foraging ecology research project. While our goal this summer was to continue gathering data on gray whale habitat use and zooplankton community structure in the Port Orford region, we added in a new and exciting community engagement component: We integrated local high school students into our research efforts in order to engage with the local community to promote interest in the OSU field station and the research taking place in their community. Frequent blog readers will have seen the posts written by this year’s interns (Maggie O’Rourke Liggett, Nathan Malamud, and Quince Nye) as they described how they became interns, their experience doing fieldwork, and some lessons they’ve learned from the project. I am very impressed with the hard work and effort that all three of them put into making this field season a success. (Getting out of a warm bed, and showing up at the field station at 6am sharp for five weeks straight is no easy feat for high-schoolers or an undergrad student during summer break!)
Quince hard at work scanning the horizon for whale spouts. photo credit: Alexa Kownacki
During the month of August, our team collected the following data on whale distribution and behavior:
Spent 108 hours on the cliff looking for whales
Spent 11 hours actively tracking whales with the theodolite
Collected 19 whale tracklines
Identified 15 individual whales using photo-ID – Two of those whales came back 3 times each, and one of them was a whale nick-named “Buttons” who we had tracked in 2016 as well.
We also collected data on zooplankton – gray whale prey – in the area:
Collected 134 GoPro videos of the water column at the 12 kayak sample sites
Did approximately 147 zooplankton net tows
Collected 64 samples for community analysis to see what species of zooplankton were present
Collected 115 samples for energetic analysis to determine how many calories can be derived from each zooplankton
The 2017 field team. From left to right: Tom Calvanese (Field Station Manager), Florence Sullivan (Project Lead), Quince Nye, Maggie O’Rourke-Liggett, and Nathan Malamud. Photo credit: Alexa Kownacki
Since I began this project in 2015, I have been privileged to work with some truly fantastic interns. Each year, I learned new lessons about how to be an effective mentor, and how to communicate our research goals and project needs more clearly. This year was no exception, and I worked hard to bring some of the things I’ve learned into my project planning. As the team can tell you, science communication, and the benefits of building good will and strong community relationships were heavily emphasized over the course of the internship. Everyone was encouraged to use every opportunity to engage with the public, explain our work, and pass on new things they had learned. Whenever the team encountered other kayakers out on the water, we took the time to share any cool zooplankton samples we gathered that day, and explain the goals of our research. Maggie and I also took the opportunity to give a pair of evening lectures at Humbug Mountain State Park, which were both well attended by curious campers.
Florence and Maggie give evening lectures at Humbug Mountain State Park
In addition, the team held a successful final community presentation on September 1 at the Port Orford Field Station that 45 people attended! In the week leading up to the presentation, Quince and Nathan spent many long hours working diligently on the powerpoint presentation, while Maggie put together a video presentation of “the intern experience” (Click here for the video showcased on last week’s blog). I am incredibly proud of Nathan and Quince, and the clear and confident manner in which they presented their experience to the audience who showed up to support them. They easily fielded the following questions:
Q: “How do you tell the difference between a whale that is searching or foraging?”
A: When we look at the boundaries of our study site, a foraging whale consistently comes up to breathe in the same spot, while a searching whale covers a lot of distance going back and forth without leaving the general area.
Q: “How do we make sure that this program continues?”
A: Stay curious and support your students as they take on internships, support the field station as it seeks to provide resources, and if possible, donate to funds that raise money for research efforts.
Nathan talks about the plankton results during the final community presentation. photo credit: Alexa KownackiThe audience during the final community presntation. photo credit: Alexa KownackiQuince and Nathan answer questions at the end of the community presentation. photo credit: Alexa Kownacki
When communicating science, it is important to results into context. In addition to showcasing the possibilities of excellent research with positive community support, and just how much a trio of young people can grow over the course of 6 weeks, this summer has highlighted the value of long term monitoring studies, particularly when studying long-lived animals such as whales. We saw far fewer whales this summer than compared to the two previous years, and the whales spent much less time in the Port Orford area (Table 1). As a scientist, knowing where whales are not (absence data) is just as important as knowing where whales are (presence data), and these marked differences drive our hypotheses! What has changed in the system? What can explain the differences in whale behavior between years? Does it have to do with food quality or availability? (This is why we have been gathering all those zooplankton samples.) Does it have to do with other oceanographic factors or human activities?
Table 1. Summary of whale tracking efforts for the three seasons of field work in Port Orford. Notice how in 2017 we only collected 194 whale location points (theodolite marks). This is about 92% less than in the previous years.
2015
2016
2017
Hours spent watching
72:49
148:30
108
Hours spent tracking
80:39*
82:30
11
Number of individuals
43
50
15
Number of theodolite marks
2483
2414
194
*we often tracked more than one individual simultaneously in 2015
Long term monitoring projects give us a chance to notice differences between years, and ask questions about what are normal fluctuations in the system, and what are abnormal. On top of that, projects like this create the opportunity for additional internships, and to mentor more students in the scientific method of investigation. There is so much still to be explored in the Port Orford ecosystem, and I truly hope this program is able to continue. If you are interested in making a monetary contribution to sustain this research and internship program, donations can be accepted here (gemm lab fund) and here (field station fund).
Quince records zooplankon sample weights in the wet lab.Quince sorts through a zooplankton sample in the wet lab.Nathan stores zooplankton community analysis samplesMaggie and Nathan out in the kayakQuince and Maggie in the kayakMaggie, Florence and Quince enjoy the eclipse!Quince and Maggie bundle up on the cliff as they watch for whales.Nathan and Quince organize data on the computer at the end of the day.Quince and Nathan build sand castles as we wait for the fog to clear before launching the research kayak
By Quince Nye, GEMM Lab Summer Intern, Pacific High School Junior
I have spent a lot of my life surrounded by nature. I like to backpack, bike, dive, and kayak in these natural environments. I also have the luck of having parents who are always planning to take me on another adventure where I get to see nature and its inhabitants in ways most people don’t get to enjoy.
Through my backyard explorations, I have begun to realize that Port Orford has an amazing ecosystem in the coves and rivers that are very tied into our community. I’ve fished and swam in these rivers, gone on kayaking tours in these coves (with a great kayak company called South Coast Tours that we partner with), and I’ve seen the life that dwells in them.
Nathan and Maggie paddle out to Mill Rocks for early morning sample collection
Growing up in a school of less than 100 kids I have learned to never reject an opportunity to be a part of something bigger and learn from that experience. So when one of my close friends told me about an OSU project (a college I’m interested in attending) that needed interns to help collect data on gray whales, and kayak almost every day, I signed up without a doubt in my mind.
The team gets some good practice tracking Buttons (Whale #3). Left to right; Quince, Nathan, Maggie, Florence.
Fast forward a month, and I wake up at 5:20 am. I eat breakfast and get to the Port Orford Field Station. We make a plan for the operations of both the kayak team and cliff team. Today, I’m part of the cliff team, so I head up above the station to Fort Point. Florence and I set up the theodolite and computer at the lookout point and start taking half hour watch shifts searching the horizon for the spout of a gray whale. Sometimes you see one right away, but other times it feels like the whales are actively hiding from you. These are the times I wish Maggie was here with her endless supply of Disney soundtracks to help pass the hours.
Imitating a ship’s captain, Quince points toward our whale while shouting “Mark”.
A whale spouts out at Mill Rocks and starts heading across to the jetty. Hurray, its data collection time! I try to quickly move the cross-hairs of the theodolite onto the position of the whale using a set of knobs like those on an etch-a-sketch. As you may understand, it’s not an easy task at first but I manage to do it because I’ve been practicing for three weeks. I say “Mark!” cueing Florence to click a button in the program Pythagoras on the computer to record the whale’s position.
The left hand side of Buttons – notice the scatter of white markings on the upper back.
Meanwhile, Florence sees that the whale has two white spots where the fluke meets the knuckles. Those are identifying marks of the beloved whale, Buttons. This whale has been seen here since 2016 and is a fan favorite for our on-going research program. Florence gets just as excited every time and texts her eagerly awaiting interns of previous years all about the sighting. Of course Buttons is not the only whale to have identifying marks such as scars and pigmentation marks. This is why we make sure to get photos of the whales we spot, allowing us to do photo-ID analysis on them through comparison to our database of pictures from previous years.
Quince practices CPR protocol on a training mannequin on his first day.
So far I have gained skill after skill in this internship. I got CPR certified, took a kayak training class, learned how to use a theodolite, and have spent many educational (and frustrating) hours entering data in Excel. I joined the program because I was interested in all of these things. It surprised me that I was developing a relationship with the whales I’m researching. By the end of August I’m now sure that I will also know many of the whales by name. I will probably be much better at using an etch-a-sketch, and I will have had my first taste at what being a scientist is like. What I strive for, however, is to have the same look in my eyes that appears in Florence’s whenever a familiar whale decides to browse our kelp beds.
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