By Dawn Barlow, MSc student, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab
“The marine environment is patchy and dynamic”. This is a phrase I have heard, read, and written repeatedly in my studies of marine ecology, and it has become increasingly tangible during the past several weeks of fieldwork. The presence of the blue whales we’ve come here to study is the culmination of a chain of events that begins with the wind. As we huddle up at anchor or in port while the winds blow through the South Taranaki Bight, the water gets mixed and our satellite images show blooms of little phytoplankton lifeforms. These little phytoplankton provide food for the krill, the main prey item of far larger animals—blue whales. And in this dynamic environment, nothing stays the same for long. As the winds change, aggregations of phytoplankton, krill and whales shift.
When you spend hours and hours scanning for blue whales, you also grow intimately familiar with everything that could possibly look like a blue whale but is not. Teasers include whitecaps, little clouds on the horizon, albatrosses changing flight direction, streaks on your sunglasses, and floating logs. Let me tell you, if we came here to study logs we would have quite the comprehensive dataset! We have had a few days of long hours with good weather conditions and no whales, and it is difficult not to be frustrated at those times—we came here to find whales. But the whale-less days prompt musings of what drives blue whale distribution, foraging energetics, and dreams of elaborate future studies and analyses, along with a whole lot of wishing for whales. Because, let’s admit it, presence data is just more fun to collect.
The view from the flying bridge of R/V Star Keys of Mt. Taranaki and a calm sea with no whales in sight. Photo by D. Barlow.
But we’ve also had survey days filled with so many whales that I can barely keep track of all of them. When as soon as we begin to head in the direction of one whale, we spot three more in the immediate area. Excited shouts of “UP!! Two o’clock at 300 meters!” “What are your frame numbers for your right side photos?” “Let’s come 25 degrees to port” “UUUPPP!! Off the bow!” “POOOOOOP! Grab the net!!” fill the flying bridge as the team springs into action. We’ve now spotted 40 blue whales, collected 8 biopsy samples, 8 fecal samples, flown the drone over 9 whales, and taken 4,651 photographs. And we still have more survey days ahead of us!
A blue whale surfaces just off the bow of R/V Star Keys. Photo by D. Barlow.
In Leigh’s most recent blog post she described our multi-faceted fieldwork here in the South Taranaki Bight. Having a small inflatable skiff has allowed for close approaches to the whales for photo-identification and biopsy sample collection while our larger research vessel collects important oceanographic data concurrently. I’ve been reading numerous papers linking the distribution of large marine animals such as whales with oceanographic features such as fronts, temperature, and primary productivity. In one particular sighting, the R/V Star Keys idled in the midst of a group of ~13 blue whales, and I could see foamy lines on the surface where water masses met and mixed. The whales were diving deep—flukes the size of a mid-sized car gracefully lifting out of the water. I looked at the screen of the echosounder as it pinged away, bouncing off a dense layer of krill (blue whale prey) just above the seafloor at around 100 meters water depth. As I took in the scene from the flying bridge, I could picture these big whales diving down to that krill layer and lunge feeding, gorging themselves in these cool, productive waters. It is all mostly speculative at this point and lots of data analysis time remains, but ideas are cultivated and validated when you experience your data firsthand.
A blue whale shows its fluke as it dives deep in an area with abundant krill deep in the water column. Photo by L. Torres.
The days filled with whales make the days without whales worthwhile and valuable. To emphasize the dynamic nature of the environment we study, when we returned to an area in which we had seen heaps of whales just 12 hours before, we only found glassy smooth water and no whales whatsoever. Changing our trajectory, we came across nothing for the first half of the day and then one pair of whales after another. Some traveling, some feeding, and two mother-calf pairs.
The dynamic nature of the marine environment and the high mobility of our study species is what makes this work challenging, frustrating, exciting, and fascinating. Now we’re ready to take advantage of our next weather window to continue our survey effort and build our ever-growing dataset. I relish the wind-swept, sunburnt days of scanning and musing, and I also look forward to settling down with all of these data to try my best to compile all of the pieces of this blue whale puzzle. And I know that when I find myself behind a computer screen processing and analyzing photos, survey effort, drone footage, and oceanographic data I will be imagining the blue waters of the South Taranaki Bight, the excitement of seeing the water glow brilliantly just before a whale surfaces off our bow, and whale-filled survey days that end only when the sun sets over the water.
A big moon rises to the east and a bright oil rig on the horizon at the end of a long and fruitful survey day. Photo by L. Torres.And to the west of the moon and the rig, the sun sets over the South Taranaki Bight. Photo by L. Torres.
After four full-on days at sea covering 873 nautical miles, we are back in port as the winds begin to howl again and I now sip my coffee with a much appreciated still horizon. Our dedicated team worked the available weather windows hard and it paid off with more great absence data and excellent presence data too: blue whales, killer whales, common dolphins, and happily swimming pilot whales not headed to nearby Farewell Spit where a sad, massive stranding has occurred. It has been an exhausting, exhilarating, frustrating, exciting, and fulfilling time. As I reflect on all this work and reward, I can’t help but feel gratified for our persistent and focused planning that made it happen successfully. So, as we clean-up, organize data, process samples, and sit in port for a few days I would like to share some of our highlights over the past four days. I hope you enjoy them as much as we did.
The team in action on the RV Star Keys. Callum Lilley (DOC) on the bow waiting for a biopsy opportunity, Dawn Barlow (OSU) on the radio communicating with the small boat, Kristin Hodge (Cornell) taking photos of whales, Captain James Dalzell (Western Work Boats) on the helm, and Chief Engineer Spock (Western Work Boats) keeping his eyes peeled for a blow. (Photo credit: L. Torres)
In the small boat off looking for whales in a lovely flat, calm sea with an oil rig in the background. (Photo credit: D. Barlow)
Small boat action with Todd Chandler (OSU) at the helm, Leigh Torres (OSU) on the camera getting photo-id images, and Callum Lilley (DOC) taking the biopsy shot, and the dart is visible flying toward the whale in the black circle. (Photo credit: D. Barlow)
The stars of the show: blue whales. A photograph captured from the small boat of one animal fluking up to dive down as another whale surfaces close by. (Photo credit: L. Torres)
Collecting oceanographic data: Spock and Jason (Western Work Boats) deploy the CTD from the Star Keys. The CTD is an instrument that measures temperature, salinity, fluorescence and depth continuously as it descends to the bottom and back up again. (Photo credit: L. Torres)
The recently manufactured transducer pole in the water off the RV Star Keys (left) deployed with the echosounder to collect prey availability data, including this image (right) of krill swarms near feeding blue whales. (Photo credit: L. Torres)
The small boat returns to the Star Keys loaded with data and samples, including a large fecal sample in the net: The pooper scooper Leigh Torres (OSU), the biopsy rifle expert Callum Lilley (DOC), and the boat operator Todd Chandler (OSU). (Photo credit: D. Barlow)
Drone operator and videographer, Todd Chandler (OSU) under the towel (crucial piece of gear) to minimize glare on the screen as he locates and records blue whales. (Photo credit: K. Hodge)
A still shot captured from the drone footage of two adult blue whales surfacing in close proximity. (Photo credit: T. Chandler)
The team in action looking for blue whales in ideal survey conditions with Mt. Taranaki in the background. Todd Chandler (OSU) enters survey data while Dawn Barlow (OSU) spies for whale blows. (Photo credit: L. Torres)
A late evening at-sea after a big day sees Callum Lilley (DOC) processing a blue whale biopsy sample for transport, storage and analysis. (Photo credit: K. Hodge)
And we can’t forget why so many have put time, money and effort into this project: These blue whales are feeding and living within a space exploited by humans for multiple purposes, so we must ensure minimal impacts to these whales and their sustained health. (Photo credit: D. Barlow)
“This is the worst summer ever in New Zealand.” During our four days of prep in Wellington before heading off on our vessel, almost all my friends and colleagues I spoke to said this statement (often with added emphasis). It’s been cold and windy here all summer long, and when the weather has cleared it has brought only brief respite. These comments don’t bode well for our blue whale survey dependent on calm survey conditions, but February is typically the prime month for good weather in New Zealand so I’m holding out hope. And this unpredictable weather is the common denominator of all field work. Despite months (years?) of preparation, with minute attention to all sort of details (e.g., poop net handle length, bag size limits, length of deployment lines), one of the most important factors to success is something we have absolutely no control over: the weather.
After just one day on the water, I can see that the oceanographic conditions this year are nothing like the hot-water El Niño conditions we experienced last summer. Surface water temperatures today ranged between 12.8 and 13.6 ⁰C. These temps are 10 degrees (Celsius) cooler than the 22 ⁰C water we often surveyed last summer. 10 degrees! Additionally, the current windy conditions have stirred up the upper portion of the ocean water column causing the productive mixed layer to be much deeper (therefore larger) than last year. While Kiwis may complain about the ‘terrible’ weather this summer, the resulting cold and productive oceanographic conditions are likely preferable for the whales. But where are the whales and can we find them with all this wind?
Today we had a pocket of calm conditions so our dedicated research team and crew hit it with enthusiasm, and collected a whole lot of great absence data. “Absence data?” you may ask. Absence data is all the information about where the whales are not, and is just as important as presence data (information about where the whales are) because it’s the comparison between the two sets of data (Presence vs Absence) that allows us to describe an animal’s “habitat use patterns”. Today we surveyed a small portion of the South Taranaki Bight for blue whales for about 6 hours, but the only blue animals we saw were little blue penguins and a blue shark (plus fur seals, dolphins, albatrosses, shearwaters, gannets, prions, kahawai, and saury). But during this survey effort we collected a lot of synoptic environmental data to describe these habitats, including continuous depth and temperature data along our track, nine CTD water column profiles of temperature, salinity and florescence (productivity) from the surface to the seafloor, and continuous prey (zooplankton) availability data with our transducer (echosounder).
So, now that we have absence data, we need presence data. But, the winds are howling again and are predicted to continue for the next few days. As we hunker down in a beautiful protected cove I know the blue whales continue to search this region for dense food patches, unencumbered by human-perceived obstacles of high wind and swell. So, while my Kiwi friends are right – this summer is not like previous years – I also know that it is the effects of these dynamic weather patterns that we have come so far, and worked so hard, to study. Even as my patience wears thin and my frustrations mount, I will continue to wait to pounce on the right weather window to collect our needed presence data (and more absence data too, I’m sure).
Our research team collecting absence data aboard the RV Star Keys:
Today we are flying to the other side of the world and boarding a 63-foot boat to study the largest animals ever to have inhabited this planet: blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus). Why do we study them, and how will we do it? Before I tell you, first let me say that no fieldwork is ever straightforward, and consequently no fieldwork lacks exciting learning opportunities. I have learned a lot about the logistics of an international field season in the past month, which I will share with you here!
The South Taranaki Bight, which lies between the north and south islands of New Zealand, is the study area for this survey.Research vessel Star Keys will be our home for the month of February as we look for whales.
Unmanned aerial systems (UAS, a.k.a. “drones”) are becoming more prevalent in our field as a powerful and minimally invasive tool for studying marine mammals. Last year, our team was able to capture what we believe is the first aerial footage of nursing behavior in baleen whales, in addition to feeding and traveling behaviors. And beyond behavior, these aerial images contain morphological and physiological information about the whales such as how big they are, whether they are pregnant or lactating, and if they are in good health. I’ll start making a packing list for you to follow along with. So far it contains two drones and all of their battery supplies and chargers.
Aerial image of a blue whale mother and calf captured by a drone during the 2016 field season.
Perhaps you read my first GEMM Lab blog post, about identifying individual blue whales from photographs? Using these individual IDs, I plan to generate an abundance estimate for this blue whale population, as well as look at residency and movement patterns of individuals. Needless to say, we will be collecting photo-ID images this year as well! Add two large pelican cases with cameras and long lenses to the packing list.
Blue whale photo-ID image, showing the left and right sides of the same whale. I have identified 99 unique individuals so far, and look forward to adding to our catalog this year!
Now wouldn’t it be great to capture video of animal behavior in some way other than with the UAS? Maybe even from underwater? Add two GoPros and all of their associated paraphernalia to the mounting gear pile.
Now, bear with me. There is a wealth of physiological information contained in blue whale fecal matter. And when hormone analysis from fecal samples is paired with photogrammetry from UAS images, we can develop a valuable picture of individual and population-level health, stress, nutrition, and reproductive status. So, say we are able to scoop up lots of blue whale fecal samples – wouldn’t that be fantastic? Yes! Alright, add two nets, a multitude of jars, squirt bottles, and gloves to the gear list. And then we still need to bring them back to our lab here in Newport. How does that happen? Well, we need to filter out the sea water, transfer the samples to smaller tubes, and freeze them… in the field, on a moving vessel. Include beakers, funnels, spatulas, and centrifuge tubes on the list. Yes, we will be flying back with a Styrofoam cooler full of blue whale “poopsicles”. Of course, we need a cooler!
Alright, and now remember the biopsy sampling that took place last season? Collecting tissue samples allows us to assess the genetic structure of this population, their stable isotopic trophic feeding level, and hormone levels. Well, we are prepared to collect tissue samples once again! Remember to bring small tubes and scalpel blades for storing the samples, and to get ethanol when we arrive in Wellington.
An important piece in investigating the habitat of a marine predator is learning about the prey they are consuming. In the case of our blue whales, this prey is krill (Nyctiphanes australis). We study the prey layer with an echo sounder, which sends out high frequency pings that bounce off anything they come in contact with. From the strength of the signal that bounces back it is possible to tell what the composition of the prey layer is, and how dense. The Marine Mammal Institute here at OSU has an echo sounder, and with the help of colleagues and collaborators, positive attitudes, and perseverance, we successfully got the transducer to communicate with the receiver, and the receiver to communicate with the software, and the software to communicate with the GPS. Add one large pelican case for the receiver. Can we fit the transducer in there as well? Hmmm, this is going to be heavy…
Blue whale team members and colleagues troubleshoot and test the Simrad EK60 echo sounder before packing it to take to New Zealand.
Now the daunting, ever-growing to-do lists have been checked off and re-written and changed and checked off again. The mountain of research gear has been evaluated and packed and unpacked and moved and re-evaluated and packed again. The countdown to our departure date has ended, and this evening Leigh, Todd, and I fly out of Portland and make our way to Wellington, New Zealand. To think that from here all will be smooth and flawless is naïve, but not being able to contain my excitement seems reasonable. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep, but more likely it’s the dreams coming true for a marine ecologist who loves nothing more than to be at sea with the wind in her face, looking for whales and creatively tackling fieldwork challenges.
In the midst of the flurry of preparations, it can be easy to lose sight of why we are doing this—why we are worrying ourselves over poopsicle transport and customs forms and endless pelican cases of valuable equipment for the purpose of spending several weeks on a vessel we haven’t yet set foot on when we can’t even guarantee that we’ll find whales at all. This area where we will work (Figure 1) is New Zealand’s most industrially active region, where endangered whales share the space with oil rigs, shipping vessels, and seismic survey vessels that have been active since October in search of more oil and gas reserves. It is a place where we have the opportunity to study how these majestic giants fit into this ecosystem, to learn what about this habitat is driving the presence of the whales and how they’re using the space relative to industry. It is an opportunity for me as a scientist to pursue questions in ecology—the field of study that I love. It is also an opportunity for me as a conservation advocate to find my voice on issues of industry presence, resource extraction, and conflicts over ocean spaces that extend far beyond one endangered species and one region of the world.
Fieldwork preparations have made clear to me once again the strength and importance of collaboration in science. Kim Bernard from OSU’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences and Craig Hayslip from the Marine Mammal Institute’s Whale Telemetry Group spent half a day troubleshooting the echosounder with us. Western Work Boats has manufactured a pole mount for the echosounder transducer, and Kristin Hodge is joining us from Cornell University’s Bioacoustics Research Program to assist with data collection. Callum Lilley and Mike Ogle from the New Zealand Department of Conservation will join us in Wellington to collect the biopsy samples, and Rochelle Constantine and Scott Baker will facilitate the archiving and transport of the tissue samples back to Newport for analysis. Scientific colleagues at NIWA will collaborate on oceanographic aspects and conduct stable isotope analysis of tissue samples. We are also grateful to the indispensable logistical support from Kathy Minta and Minda Stiles in the OSU Marine Mammal Institute. And, of course we could not do any of this work without the generous funding support from The Aotearoa Foundation, The New Zealand Department of Conservation, Greenpeace Aotearoa New Zealand, OceanCare, The International Fund for Animal Welfare Oceanea Office, Kiwis Against Seabed Mining, the OSU Marine Mammal Institute, and the Thorpe Foundation. Our science is stronger when we pool our energy and expertise, and I am thrilled to be working with this great group of people.
Stay tuned, the next several blogs will be posted from the field by the New Zealand blue whale team!
By Dawn Barlow, MSc Student, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Oregon State University
The year is rapidly coming to a close, and what a busy year it has been in the Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab! In 2016, our members have traveled to six continents for work (all seven if we can carry Rachael’s South African conference over from the end of 2015…), led field seasons in polar, temperate, and tropical waters, presented at international conferences, processed and analyzed data, and published results. Now winter finds us holed up in our offices in Newport, and various projects are ramping up and winding down. With all of the recent turmoil 2016 has brought, it is a nice to reflect on the good work that was accomplished over the last 12 months. In writing this, I am reminded of how grateful I am to work with this talented group of people!
The year started with a flurry of field activity from our southern hemisphere projects! Erin spent her second season on the Antarctic peninsula, where she contributed to the Palmer Station Long Term Ecological Research Project.
Erin in action collecting a crabeater seal scat sample along the West Antarctic Peninsula.
Aerial image of the research vessel and a pair of blue whales during the 2016 New Zealand survey.
The New Zealand blue whale project launched a comprehensive field effort in January and February, and it was a fruitful season to say the least. The team deployed hydrophones, collected tissue biopsy and fecal samples, and observed whales feeding, racing and nursing. The data collected by the blue whale team is currently being analyzed to aid in conservation efforts of these endangered animals living in the constant presence of the oil and gas industry.
Midway atoll is home to one of the largest albatross colony in the world, and Rachael visited during the winter breeding season. In addition to deploying tracking devices to study flight heights and potential conflict with wind energy development, she became acutely aware of the hazards facing these birds, including egg predation by mice and the consumption of plastic debris.
Laysan albatross equipped with a GPS data logger.Fledgling from last year with a stomach full of plastic.
Early summertime brought red-legged kittiwakes to the remote Pribilof Islands in Alaska to nest, and Rachael met them there to study their physiology and behavior.
Rachael with a noosepole on St. George Island, AlaskaSolene with Dr. Claire Garrigue during fieldwork at the Chesterfield Reefs, New Caledonia.
As the weather warmed for us in the northern hemisphere, Solene spent the austral winter with the humpback whales on their breeding grounds in New Caledonia. Her team traveled to the Chesterfield Reefs, where they collected tissue biopsy samples and photo-IDs, and recorded the whale’s songs. But Solene studies far more than just these whales! She is thoroughly examining every piece of environmental, physical, and oceanographic data she can get her hands on in an effort to build a thorough model of humpback whale distribution and habitat use.
A humpback whale in New Caledonia’s South Lagoon.
Summertime came to Oregon, and the gray whales returned to these coastal waters. Leigh, Leila, and Todd launched into fieldwork on the gray whale stress physiology project. The poop-scooping, drone-flying team has gotten a fair bit of press recently, follow this link to listen to more!
The overhead drone captures a pair of gray whales surfacing between kelp beds off Cape Blanco, Oregon, with the research vessel nearby. Take under NOAA/NMFS permit #16111 given to John Calambokidis.
And while Leigh, Leila, and Todd followed the grays from the water, Florence and her team watched them from shore in Port Orford, tracking their movement and behavior. In an effort to gain a better understanding of the foraging ecology of these whales, Florence and crew also sampled their mysid prey from a trusty research kayak.
Florence and the summer 2016 gray whale field team.Kelli Iddings sampling mysid near Port Orford.
With the influx of gray whales came an influx of new and visiting GEMM Lab members, as Florence’s team of interns joined for the summer season. I was lucky enough to join this group as the lab’s newest graduate student!
All of the summer 2016 GEMM Lab members.
Our members have presented their work to audiences far and wide. This summer Leigh, Amanda, and Florence attended the International Marine Conservation Congress, and Amanda was awarded runner-up for the best student presentation award! Erin traveled to Malaysia for the Scientific Convention on Antarctic Research, and Rachael and Leigh presented at the International Albatross and Petrel Conference in Barcelona. With assistance from Florence and Amanda, Leigh led an offshore expedition on OSU’s research vessel R/V Oceanus to teach high school students and teachers about the marine environment.
Amanda with her award!Science Party musters in the dry lab for safety debrief aboard R/V Oceanus.
Wintertime in Newport has us tucked away indoors with our computers, cranking through analyses and writing, and dreaming about boats, islands, seabirds, and whales… Solene visited from the South Pacific this fall, and graced us with her presence and her coding expertise. It is a wonderful thing to have labmates to share ideas, frustrations, and accomplishments with.
Solving a coding problem together on a wintery evening.
As the year comes to a close, we have two newly-minted Masters of Science! Congratulations to Amanda and Erin on successfully defending their theses, and stay tuned for their upcoming publications!
Our third day aboard the Oceanus began in the misty morning fog before the sun even rose. We took the first CTD cast of the day at 0630am because the physical properties of the water column do not change much with the arrival of daylight. Our ability to visually detect marine mammals, however, is vastly improved with a little sunlight, and we wanted to make the best use of our hours at sea possible.
Randall Munroe www.XKCD.com
Our focus on day three was the Astoria canyon – a submarine feature just off the Oregon and Washington coast. Our first oceanographic station was 40 miles offshore, and 1300 meters deep, while the second was 20 miles offshore and only 170 meters deep. See the handy infographic below to get a perspective on what those depths mean in the grand scheme of things. From an oceanographic perspective, the neatest finding of the day was our ability to detect the freshwater plume coming from the Columbia River at both those stations despite their distance from each other, and from shore! Water density is one of the key characteristics that oceanographers use to track parcels of water as they travel through the ocean conveyor belt. Certain bodies of water (like the Mediterranean Sea, or the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans) have distinct properties that allow us to recognize them easily. In this case, it was very exciting to “sea” the two-layer system we had gotten used to observing overlain with a freshwater lens of much lower salinity, higher temperature, and lower density. This combination of freshwater, saltwater, and intriguing bathymetric features can lead to interesting foraging opportunities for marine megafauna – so, what did we find out there?
Morning conditions were almost perfect for marine mammal observations – glassy calm with low swell, good, high, cloud cover to minimize glare and allow us to catch the barest hint of a blow….. it should come as no surprise then, that the first sightings of the day were seabirds and tuna!
I didn’t catch any photos of the tuna, so here’s some sunfish we spotted. photo credit: Florence Sullivan
One of the best things about being at sea is the ability to look out at the horizon and have nothing but water staring back at you. It really drives home all the old seafaring superstitions about sailing off the edge of the world. This close to shore, and in such productive waters, it is rare to find yourself truly alone, so when we spot a fishing trawler, there’s already a space to note it in the data log. Ships at sea often have “follower” birds – avians attracted by easy meals as food scraps are dumped overboard. Fishing boats usually attract a lot of birds as fish bycatch and processing leftovers are flushed from the deck. The birders groan, because identification and counts of individuals get more and more complicated as we approach other vessels. The most thrilling bird sighting of the day for me were the flocks of a couple hundred fork-tailed storm petrels.
I find it remarkable that such small birds are capable of spending 80% of their life on the open ocean, returning to land only to mate and raise a chick. Their nesting strategy is pretty fascinating too – in bad foraging years, the chick is capable of surviving for several days without food by going into a state of torpor. (This slows metabolism and reduces growth until an adult returns.)
Just because the bird observers were starting to feel slightly overwhelmed, doesn’t mean that the marine mammal observers stopped their own survey. The effort soon paid off with shouts of “Wait! What are those splashes over there?!” That’s the signal for everyone to get their binoculars up, start counting individuals, and making note of identifying features like color, shape of dorsal fin, and swimming style so that we can make an accurate species ID. The first sighting, though common in the area, was a new species for me – Pacific white sided dolphins!
A Pacific white sided dolphin leaps into view. photo credit: Florence Sullivan. Taken under NMFS permit 16111 John Calambokidis
A pod of thirty or so came to ride our bow wake for a bit, which was a real treat. But wait, it got better! Shortly afterward, we spotted more activity off the starboard bow. It was confusing at first because we could clearly see a lot of splashes indicating many individuals, but no one had glimpsed any fins to help us figure out the species. As the pod got closer, Leigh shouted “Lissodelphis! They’re lissodelphis!” We couldn’t see any dorsal fins, because northern right whale dolphins haven’t got one! Then the fly bridge became absolute madness as we all attempted to count how many individuals were in the pod, as well as take pictures for photo ID. It got even more complicated when some more pacific white sided dolphins showed up to join in the bow-riding fun.
Northern right whale dolphins are hard to spot! photo credit: Florence Sullivan Taken under NMFS permit 16111 John Calambokidis
All told, our best estimates counted about 200 individuals around us in that moment. The dolphins tired of us soon, and things continued to calm down as we moved further away from the fishing vessels. We had a final encounter with an enthusiastic young humpback who was breaching and tail-slapping all over the place before ending our survey and heading towards Astoria to make our dock time.
Humpback whale breach. photo credit: Florence Sullivan. Taken under NMFS permit 16111 John Calambokidis
As a Washington native who has always been interested in a maritime career, I grew up on stories of The Graveyard of the Pacific, and how difficult the crossing of the Columbia River Bar can be. Many harbors have dedicated captains to guide large ships into the port docks. Did you know the same is true of the Columbia River Bar? Conditions change so rapidly here, the shifting sands of the river mouth make it necessary for large ships to receive a local guest pilot (often via helicopter) to guide them across. The National Motor Lifeboat School trains its students at the mouth of the river because it provides some of “the harshest maritime weather conditions in the world”. Suffice it to say, not only was I thrilled to be able to detect the Columbia River plume in our CTD profile, I was also supremely excited to finally sail across the bar. While a tiny part of me had hoped for a slightly more arduous crossing (to live up to all the stories you know), I am happy to report that we had glorious, calm, sunny conditions, which allowed us all to thoroughly enjoy the view from the fly bridge.
Cape Disappointment Lighthouse at the Columbia River Bar.
Finally, we arrived in Astoria, loaded all our gear into the ship’s RHIB (Ridged Hulled Inflatable Boat), lowered it into the river, descended the rope ladder, got settled, and motored into port. We waved goodbye to the R/V Oceanus, and hope to conduct another STEM cruise aboard her again soon.
Now if the ground would stop rolling, that would be just swell.
Last but not least, here are the videos we promised you in Oceanus Day Two – the first video shows the humpback lunge feeding behavior, while the second shows tail slapping. Follow our youtube channel for more cool videos!
Today got off to a bright and early start. As soon as daylight permitted, we had spotters out on duty looking for more marine mammals. We began to survey at the north end of Heceta bank, where we again encountered many humpback whales lunge feeding. We broke transect, and got some great video footage of a pair them – so check our youtube channel next week – we’ll upload the video as soon as we get back to better internet (dial up takes some getting used to again – the whales don’t know about highspeed yet).
Humpbacks lunge feeding at surface. photo credit: Leigh Torres. Taken under NMFS permit 16111 John Calambokidis.
After working with the humpbacks to capture photo-id data for about an hour, we turned south, and ran parallel to Heceta bank until we reached the southern edge. Along the way, we counted 30 humpbacks, and many California gulls, marbled murrelets, pink footed shearwaters, and sooty shearwaters.
After lunch, we conducted a CTD cast to see how conditions might be different between the southern and northern edges of the bank. Surface temperatures increased from 12.09C to 13.2C while bottom temperatures decreased from 8.7C to 7.8C. The northern station was a textbook perfect two layer system. It had a well mixed surface layer with a steep pycnocline separating it from the colder, saltier, denser, bottom layer. The southern station still had two layers, but the pycnocline (the depth where a rapid change in density occurs, which delineates the edges of water masses) was not as steep. We are interested in these discreet measurements of ocean conditions because areas of high primary productivity (the green chlorophyll-a line) are often re-occurring hot spots of food for many levels of the food chain. Since we can’t phone the whales and ask them where to meet up, we use clues like these to anticipate the best place to start looking.
Readout of the CTD cast. The left plot has temperature in blue, and salinity in green. The right plot has density in black, chlorophyll-a in green, and oxygen in blue. observe how different variables change with depth (on the y-axes)!
We next turned west to transect the continental shelf break. Here, we were hoping to observe changes in species composition as waters got deeper, and habitat changed. The shelf break is often known as an area of upwelling and increased primary productivity, which can lead to concentrations of marine predators taking advantage of aggregations of prey. As we moved further offshore, everyone was hoping for some sperm whales, or maybe some oceanic dolphin species, and if we’re really lucky, maybe a beaked whale or two.
Black footed Albatross with immature gulls. photo credit: Leigh Torres
Today our students learned the lesson of how difficult marine mammal observation can be when our target species spend the majority of their lives underwater – where we can’t see them. While there were a couple of hours of mammal empty water in there, observers were kept busy identifying long tailed- jaegers, cassin’s auklets, murrelets, petrels, shearwaters, fulmars, and so many black-footed albatrosses, that they almost became “normal”. That being said, we did spot a fin whale, a few groups of Dall’s porpoise, and three pacific-white-sided dolphins. Unexpectedly, we also saw an unidentified shark, and several sunfish (mola mola)!
Humpback whale profile – notice the hump before the dorsal fin. photo credit: Amanda Holdman. Taken under NMFS permit 16111 John Calambokidis.Fin Whale profile – notice how long the back is before the fin, and how pointed the dorsal fin is compared to the humpback. photo credit: Amanda Holdman. Taken under NMFS permit 16111 John Calambokidis.
Last but not least, we engaged in a long standing oceanographic tradition, which is to draw on Styrofoam cups, and send them down to Davy Jone’s Locker attached to the CTD. When you bring them back up, the pressure has caused them to shrink to a fraction of their original size, which is an excellent demonstration of the crushing power of pressure (and why its harder to build a submarine than a rocket).
Shrunken cups! The first row have been sent down to 1400m, while the back row are still full size!
Now, we are steaming north toward Astoria Canyon, where we hope to make some more sightings in the morning. Stand by for news from our final day at sea.
Fin Whale. photo credit Amanda Holdman. Taken under NMFS permit 16111 John Calambokidis.Dahl’s Porpoise. photo credit: Florence Sullivan. Taken under NMFS permit 16111 John Calambokidis.
The GEMM lab is adventuring out into the wild blue yonder of open ocean sampling and educational outreach! Leigh is the chief scientist onboard the R/V Oceanus for the next two days as we sail through Oregon waters in search of marine megafauna. Also onboard are four local teachers and five high school students who are learning the tricks of the trade. Amanda and I are here to help teach basic oceanography and distance sampling techniques to our enthusiastic students.
Science Party musters in the dry lab for safety debrief. photo credit: Florence Sullivan
We started the morning with safety briefings, and headed out through the Newport breakwater, direction: Stonewall Bank. Stonewall is a local bathymetric feature where upwelling often occurs, leading to a productive ecosystem for both predators and prey. Even though our main sampling effort will be offshore this trip, we didn’t even make out of the harbor before recording our first gray whale and California sea lion sightings.
California Sea Lions on the Newport buoy. Taken under NMFS permit 16111 John Calambokidis
Our students (and their teachers) are eager and quick to catch on as we teach them new methodologies. Amanda and I had prepared presentations about basic oceanographic and distance sampling methods, but really the best way to learn is to jump in and go. We’ve set up a rotation schedule, and everyone is taking turns scanning the ocean for critters, deploying and recovering the CTD, logging data, and catching plankton.
A small pod of Orca. Photo credit: Florence Sullivan. Taken under NMFS permit 16111 John Calambokidis
So far, we have spotted gray whales, sea lions, a pod of (lightning speed) killer whales, lots of seagulls, northern fulmars, sooty shearwaters, storm petrels, and cormorants, but today’s highlight has to the last sighting of ~42 humpback whales. We found them at the Northern edge of Heceta Bank – a large rocky reef which provides structural habitat for a wide variety of marine species. As we approached the area, we spotted one whale, and then another. At first, our spotters had no trouble inputting the data, getting photo-ID shots, and distinguishing one whale from the next, but as we continued, we were soon overwhelmed. With whale blows surrounding us on all sides, it was hard to know where to look first – here a surface lunge, there, a breach, a spout, a fluke, a flipper slap! The surface activity was so dense and enthralling, it took a few moments before realizing there were some sea lions in the feeding frenzy too!
Five humpback whales surface at once. photo credit: Leigh Torres. Taken under NMFS permit 16111 John Calambokidis
We observed the group, and tried to document as many individuals as possible as the sunset faded into night. When poor visibility put a stop to the visuals, we hurried to do a plankton tow and CTD cast to find some environmental insights for such a gathering. The CTD revealed a stratified water column, with two distinct layers, and the plankton tow brought up lots of diatoms and krill. As one of the goals of this cruise is to explore how marine mammals vary with ocean gradients, this is a pretty cool way to start.
A humpback whale lunge feeds. Photo credit: Leigh Torres. Taken under NMFS permit 16111 John Calambokidis
A long day observing has left us all exhausted, but not too tired to share our excitement. Stay tuned for more updates from the briny blue!
Follow this link for real time view of our beautiful ship! : http://webcam.oregonstate.edu/oceanus
Humpback flukes for photo ID. photo credit: Leigh Torres. Taken under NMFS permit 16111 John Calambokidis
By: Cathryn Wood, Lawrence University ’17, summer REU in the GEMM Lab
Greetings from Port Orford! My name is Cathryn, and I am the fourth member of the GEMM Lab’s gray whale foraging ecology research team, which includes Florence, Kelli, and the other Catherine (don’t worry, I go by Cat). Nearly 5 weeks into field season, I am still completely amazed with my first West Coast experience and doing what I’ve always dreamt of: studying marine mammals. Coming from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, this may seem slightly out of place, but my mom can attest; she read “Baby Beluga” to me every night when I was a toddler. Now a rising senior majoring in biology at Lawrence University, I’ve been focusing my coursework on aquatic and marine ecology to prepare for graduate school where I plan to specialize in marine science. Being part of this research is a very significant step for me into the field.
So how did I end up here, as part of this amazing project and dream, women-in-science team? I am interning through OSU’s Ocean Sciences REU program at the Hatfield Marine Science Center, where the GEMM Lab is located. REU stands for “Research Experience for Undergraduates”, and is an NSF-funded research internship program found in numerous universities around the country. These internships allow undergrads to conduct independent research projects under the guidance of a faculty mentor at the program’s institution. I applied to several REUs this past winter, and was one of 12 undergrads accepted for the program at HMSC. Each of us is paired with different faculty members to work on various projects that cover a diverse range of topics in the marine sciences; everything from estuarine ecology, to bioacoustics. I was ecstatic to learn that I had been paired with Dr. Torres as my faculty mentor to work on Florence’s gray whale project, which had been my first choice during the application process.
My particular research this summer is going to complement Florence’s master’s thesis work by asking new questions regarding the foraging data. While her project focuses on the behavioral states of foraging whales, I will be looking at the whale tracks to see if there are patterns in their foraging behavior found at the individual level. Traditionally, ecological studies have accepted classical niche theory, treating all individuals within a population as ecological equivalents with the same niche width. Any variances present among individuals are often disregarded as having an insignificant consequence on the population dynamics as a whole, but this simplification can overlook the true complexity of that population . The presence of niche variation among conspecifics is known to occur in at least 93 species across a diverse array of taxa, so the concept of individual specialization, and how it can affect ecological processes is gaining recognition progressively in the field (Bolnick et al., 2003). My goal is to determine whether or not the gray whales in this study, and presumably others in the Pacific Coast Feeding Group (PCFG), exhibit individual specialization in their foraging strategies . There are many ways in which individuals can specialize in foraging, but I will be specifically determining if fine scale spatial patterns in the location of foraging bouts exists, regardless of time.
To address my question, I am using the whale tracking data from both 2015 and 2016, and learning to use some very important software in the spatial ecology world along the way through a method that Dr. Torres introduced to me. Starting in ArcGIS, I generate a kernel density layer of a raw track (Fig. 1 ), which describes the relative distribution of where the tracked whale spent time (Fig. 2 ). Next, using the isopleth function in the software Geospatial Modelling Environment, I generate a 50% density contour line that distinguishes where the whale spent at least 50% of its time during the track (Fig. 3 ). Under the assumption that foraging took place in these high density areas, we use these 50% contour lines to describe foraging bout locations. I now go back to ArcGIS to make centroids within each 50% line, which mark the exact foraging bout locations (Fig. 4 ).
Fig. 1 Raw individual whale track.Fig. 2 Kernel Density map of whale track.Fig. 3 50% isopleth contours of locations with highest foraging densitiesFig. 4 Final centroids to signify foraging bouts
These centroids will be determined for every track by an individual whale, and then compared relative to foraging locations of all tracked whales to determine if the individual is foraging in different locations than the population. Then, the tracks of individuals who repeatedly visit the site at least three times will be compared with one another to determine if the repeat whales show spatial and/or temporal patterns in their foraging bout locations, and if specialization at a fine scale is occurring in this population. If you did not quite follow all those methods, no worries, it was a lot for me to take in at first too. I’ve finally gotten the hang of it though, and am grateful to now have these skills going into grad school.
Because I am interested in behavioral ecology and the concept of individuality in animal populations, I am extremely excited to see how this research plays out. Results could be very eye-opening into the fine scale foraging specialization of the PCFG sub-population because they already demonstrate diet specialization on mysid (as opposed to their counterparts in the Bering Sea who feed on benthic organisms) and large scale individual residency patterns along the Pacific Northwest (Newell, 2009; Calambokidis et al., 2012). Most significantly, understanding how individuals vary in their feeding strategies could have very important implications for future conservation measures for the whales, especially during this crucial foraging season where they replenish their energy reserves. Management efforts geared for an “average population” of gray whales could ultimately be ineffective if in fact individuals vary from one another in their foraging strategies. Taking into account the ways in which variation occurs amongst individuals is therefore crucial knowledge for successful conservation approaches.
My project is unique from those of the other REUs because I am simultaneously in the midst of assisting in field season number two of Florence’s project. While most of the other interns are back at Hatfield spending their days in the lab and doing data analyses like a 9-5 job, I am with the team down in Port Orford for field season. This means we’re out doing research every dawn as weather allows. Though I may never have an early bird bone in my body, the sleepy mornings are totally worth it because ecology field work is my favorite part of research. To read more about our methods in the field, check out Florence’s post.
Since Catherine’s last update, we’ve had an eventful week. To our dismay, Downrigger Debacle 2.0 occurred. (To read about the first one, see Kelli’s post). This time it was not the line – our new line has been great. It was a little wire that connected the downrigger line to the pipe that the GoPro and TDR are connected to. It somehow snapped due to what I presume was stress from the currents. Again, it was Catherine and I in the kayak, with a very successful morning on the water coming to a close when it happened. Again, I was in the bow, and she was in the stern deploying the equipment – very déjà vu. When she reeled in an equipment-less line, we at first didn’t know how to break it to Florence and Kelli who were up on the cliff that day. Eventually, Catherine radioed “Brace yourselves…” and we told them the bad news. Once again, they both were very level-headed, methodical, and un-blaming in the moments to follow. We put together the same rescue dive team as last time, and less than a week later, they set off on the mission using the GPS coordinates I had marked while in the kayak. Apparently, between the dredging taking place in the harbor and the phytoplankton bloom, visibility was only about 2 feet during the dive, but they still recovered the equipment, with nothing but baked goods and profuse thanks as payment. We are very grateful for another successful recovery, and are confident that our new attachment mechanism for the downrigger will not require a third rescue mission (Fig. 6-8). Losing the equipment twice now has taught us some very important things about field work. For one, no matter how sound you assume your equipment to be, it is necessary to inspect it for weak points frequently – especially when salt water and currents are in the picture. Perhaps even more importantly, we’ve gotten to practice our problem solving skills and see firsthand how necessary it is to act efficiently and calmly when something goes wrong. In ecological field research you have to be prepared for anything.
Fig. 5 Original setup of GoPro and TDR.Fig. 6 Photo taken after the wire that connected the pole to the downrigger line snapped.Fig. 7 New mechanism for attaching the pole to the downrigger line.Fig. 8 Equipment rescue team: Aaron Galloway and Taylor Eaton diving, Greg Ryder operating the boat, and Florence on board to direct the GPS location of where the equipment was lost.
In other news, unlike our slow-whale days during the first two weeks of the project, we have recently had whales to track nearly every day from the cliff! In fact, the same, small, most likely juvenile, whale pictured in Catherine’s last post has returned several times, and we’ve nicknamed her “Buttons” due to two distinguishing white spots on her tail peduncle near the fluke. Though we tend to refer to Buttons as “her”, we cannot actually tell what the sex is definitively…until now. Remember in Catherine’s post when she described how Buttons defecated a lot, and how our team if, given the opportunity, is supposed to collect the feces when we’re out in the kayak for Leila’s project? Everything from hormone levels to reproductive status to, yes, sex, is held in that poop! Well, Miss (or Mr.) Buttons was in Tichenor Cove today, and to our delight, she performed well in the defecation department once again. Florence and I were on cliff duty tracking her and Kelli and Catherine were in Tichenor on the kayak when we first noticed the defecation. I then radioed down to the kayak team to stop what they were doing and paddle quickly to go collect it before it sank (Fig. 9). Even in these situations, it is important to stay beyond 100 yards of the animal, as required by the MMPA. Florence and I cheered them on and our ladies did indeed get the poop sample, without disturbing the whale (Fig. 10). It was a sight to behold.
Fig. 9 Kelli and Catherine on a mission.Fig. 10 Kelli and Catherine collecting the feces.
We were able to track Buttons for the remainder of our time on the cliff, and were extremely content with the day’s work as we packed all the gear up later in the afternoon. Right before we were about to leave, however, Buttons had one more big treat for us. As we looked to the harbor before starting the trek back to the truck, we paused briefly after noticing a large, white splash in the middle of the harbor, not far from the dock. We paused for a second and thought “No, it can’t be, was that —?” and then we see it again and unanimously yelled “BREACH!” Buttons breached about five times on her way back to Tichenor Cove from where she had been foraging in Mill Rocks. It is rare to see a gray whale breach, so this was really special. Florence managed to capture one of the breaches on video:
At first I thought a big ole humpback had arrived, but nope, it was our Buttons! I am in awe of this little whale, and am forever-grateful to be in the presence of these kinds of moments. She’s definitely made her splash here in Port Orford. I think our team has started to as well.
Bolnick, D. I., Svanback, R., Fordyce, J. A., Yang, L. H., Davis, J. M., Hulsey, C. D., & Forrister, M. L. (2003). Ecology of Individuals: Incidence and Implications of Individual Specialization. The American Naturalist, 161(1), 28.
Calambokidis, J., Laake, J. L., & Klimek, A. (2012). Updated analysis of abundance and population structure of seasonal gray whales in the Pacific Northwest, 1998-2010 (Vol. 2010).
Newell, C. (2009). Ecological Interrelationships Between Summer Resident Gray Whales (Eschrichtius robustus) and Their Prey, Mysid Shrimp (Holmesimysis sculpta and Neomysis rayi) along the Central Oregon Coast.
By: Catherine Lo, Research Intern, Oregon State University ‘16
Hello everyone! My name is Catherine Lo and I am a recent graduate from Oregon State University with a Bachelor’s of Science in Biology with a focus in Marine Biology. It has been an incredible whirlwind leading up to this point: long nights studying for finals, completing my degree, and planning the next steps for my future. I am fortunate to be working as a summer research intern for the GEMM Lab under the supervision of Dr. Leigh Torres and Msc. student Florence Sullivan in their research on the foraging ecology of gray whales. I have dreamed of working with marine mammals, potentially as a research veterinarian and so, capturing this position has been a great opportunity to begin my career.
The days go slow, but the weeks go fast. It’s already week 4 of our field season and the team and I are definitely in the groove of our research. The alarm(s) goes off at 5:00 AM…okay maybe closer to 5:30 AM (oops!), getting dressed for either the kayak or cliff based work, scarfing down breakfast that is usually a diet consisting of toast and peanut butter, and then heading off to the beach to launch the kayak. But this week it was different. A dredging event in Port Orford coordinated by the US Army Corps of Engineers is now taking place right next to the port’s jetty near our study site (Figure 1). This is an important process to move the sediment built up during the year in order for ships to safely navigate in and out of the port. We knew this was going to happen at some point over the summer, and worried that it might impact our research methods and objectives, but at the same time it offers some new opportunities: the chance to see how our GoPro and mysid sampling methods in Tichenor Cove are impacted by the sediment flow from the dredging activities.
Figure 1. View of the dredger from the cliff field site in Port Orford.
My teammate Kelli and I were stationed on the cliff during the first deposit of sediment after the dredge’s first night and morning’s worth of scooping sand. None of us knew where the actual deposit site would be so we kept a good eye on it. The ship headed past the jetty. Turned around and, as a concerned feeling mustered within our field team, it began lowering the platform holding the sand just 250 yards away from our primary study site in Tichenor Cove! At this point, we knew things were going to be different in our samples. Unfortunately along with the sediment stirring up from dredging, we think a phytoplankton bloom is occurring simultaneously. Our GoPro footage lately has been rather clouded making it difficult to identify any mysid relative to our past footage. You can compare Figure 2 to the GoPro image found in Figure 2 of a previous post. It is times like these that we learn how dynamic the ocean is, how human activity can alter the ocean ecosystem, and how to adapt to changes, whether these adaptations are within our reach or not. We are interested to see how our sample sites will change again over time as the dredging operation finishes and the phytoplankton bloom ends.
Figure 2. This GoPro image taken in Tichenor Cove illustrates exactly how murky our view of the water column is with the sediment dredging operation in close proximity.
Aside from the current water clarity situation, we’ve also had some exciting moments! Given how few whales we’ve seen thus far and how the ones we have tracked are predominately hanging by Mill Rocks, which is ~1km east of Tichenor Cove, Dr. Leigh Torres—our head advisor—thought it would be a good idea to check out the mysid scene over there to see what the attraction was. So, we sent our kayak team over there to conduct a few GoPro drops and zooplankton net tows and figure out what is so enticing for the whales.
While conducting this sampling work at Mill Rocks, I and my teammate were lucky enough to encounter a gray whale foraging. And believe me, we were going “off-the-walls” as soon as we heard from the cliff team and saw a blow as the whale surfaced nearby. It was one of those “best time of my life” moments where my dreams of kayaking this close to a whale came true. We fumbled around for our waterproof camera to get clear shots of its lateral flanks for photo identification while also trying to contain our excitement to a more decent level, and at the same time we had to make sure we were not in the whale’s path. There it was; surface after surface, we admired the immense size and beauty of a wild animal before our eyes. The worst part of it was when our camera battery died not long after taking a few pictures, but in a way it gave us a chance to really appreciate the existence of these animals. Note to self during research: always check your batteries are fully charged before heading out!
It baffles me how so often people walk along beaches or drive by without knowing an animal as incredible as this whale is just outside of the shoreline. Every time I’m inside pulling out time stamps or doing photo identification, I always think, “I wonder if there’s a whale in Tichenor Cove or at Mill Rocks right now…Yeah, there probably is one”. Alas, the data management work needs to be done and there’s always the next day for an opportunity of a sighting.
For a few days, our kayak team wasn’t able to work due to a small craft advisory. If you’ve ever been to Port Orford, you’d understand the severity of how windy it gets here. Ranging between 15 knots to 25 knots as early as 7am, so it gets rather difficult to maintain position at each of our sampling stations in our kayak. Fortunately our cliff team was able to set out. We were lucky to see a small whale foraging inside Tichenor Cove and later move onto Mill Rocks. This little one was giving us quite a show! Almost every time it came to the surface, defecation was observed shortly after. As unpleasant as feces might be, it can actually provide an abundance of information about a specific whale including sex, reproductive status, hormone levels, and much more. While doing our research, we are always keeping an eye out for signs of defecation in order to collect samples for another lab member’s PhD work. Here you can check out more information about Leila’s research. Figure 3 depicts a great image of defecation captured by our cliff team.
Figure 3. Gray whale defecating as it dives into the water in Tichenor Cove.Figure 4. Gray whale swimming in Tichenor Cove taken by fellow intern Cathryn Wood.
In addition to helping out Leila’s work, we recently began a collaboration with Aaron Galloway from The Oregon Institute of Marine Biology (OIMB). Aaron and his post-doc are looking at the fatty acid composition of mysid as an approach to eventually infer the diet of an aquatic animal. Check out his website which is linked to his name to learn more about the basis of his approach! While we collect mysid samples for them, in return they give us substantial information about the energy content of the mysid. This information on the energetic content of mysid will help the GEMM Lab answer questions about how much mysid gray whales need to eat.
Oregon State University and University of Oregon have a long-standing, intense rivalry. However, as an Alumna from Oregon State, I am amazed and thrilled to see how these two institutions can come together and collaborate. I mean, we’re all here for the same thing. Science, right? It creates the opportunity to apply integrative research by taking advantage of various expertise and resources. If we have those chances to reach out to others, why not make the most of it? In the end, sound science is what really matters, not rooting for the ducks or beavers.
My marine science background is based on my experiences looking at tidepools and hopping around on rocks to understand how vast intertidal communities range from invertebrates to algae. These experiences were an incredible part of my life, but now I look at the ocean unsure of what animals or environmental situations I might encounter. That’s what makes it so attractive. Don’t get me wrong. The intertidal will always hold a special place in my heart, but the endless possibilities of being a part of this marine mammal research team is priceless. I have learned so much about myself including my strengths and weaknesses. Living in Port Orford, which is a small coastal town with just a little over 1,000 people gives you a new perspective. The community has been very welcoming and I have appreciated how so much interest is placed on the kind of work we do. As I eat my nightly bowl of ice cream, I think about how, from here on out, the good and the bad can only bring a lifetime of skills and memories.
Figure 5. Me being extremely happy to be out on the kayak on a beautiful morning.
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