Outreach Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Laboratory

New steps towards community engagement: introducing high schoolers to the field

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 Kownacki

The audience during the final community presntation. photo credit: Alexa Kownacki

Quince 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 samples

Maggie, 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

This research and student internships would not have been possible without the generous support from Oregon Sea Grant, the Oregon Coast STEM hub, the Port Orford Field Station, South Coast Tours, partnerships with the Bernard and Chapman labs, the OSU Marine Mammal Institute, and the Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab.

Through the intern’s eyes; a video log of the 2017 gray whale foraging ecology project.

By: Maggie O’Rourke-Liggett, GEMM lab summer intern, Oregon State University

Enjoy this short video showcasing the intern experience from the gray whale foraging ecology project this summer. Check back next week for a recap of our preliminary results.

The passion of a researcher

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.

“Marching for Science” takes many forms

By Florence Sullivan, MSc student, Oregon State University.

Earth day is a worldwide event celebrated annually on April 22, and is typically observed with beach, park, or neighborhood clean ups, and outreach events sponsored by environmental groups. Last year, environmentalists rejoiced when 195 nations signed the Paris Agreement – to “strengthen global response to the threat of climate change by keeping global temperature rise below 2 degrees C”.

GEMM Lab member Dawn Barlow helps carry the banner for the Newport, OR March for Science which over 600 people attended. photo credit: Maryann Bozza

This year, the enviro-political mood is more somber. Emotions in the GEMM Lab swing between anger and dismay to cautious optimism and hope. The anger comes from threatened budget cuts, the dismissal of climate science, and the restructuring of government agencies, while we find hope at the outpouring of support from our local communities, and the energy building behind the March for Science movement.

The Newport March for Science. photo credit: Maryann Bozza

What is perhaps most striking about the movement is how celebratory it feels. Instead of marching against something, we are marching FOR science, in all its myriad forms. With clever signs and chants like “The oceans are rising, and so are we”, “Science, not Silence”, and “We’re nerds, we’re wet, we’re really quite upset” (it rained on a lot of marches on Saturday) echoing around the globe, Saturday’s Marches for Science were a cathartic release of energy, a celebration of like-minded people.

Our competition room for NOSB 2017! Game officials are in the front of the picture, competitors at the first two desks, and parents, coaches and supporters in the back.

While millions of enthusiastic people were marching through the streets, I “Ran for Science” at the 20^th annual National Ocean Science Bowl (NOSB) – delivering question sheets and scores between competitors and graders as 25 teams competed for the title of national champion! Over the course of the competition, teams of four high school students compete through rounds of buzzer-style multiple choice questions, worksheet style team challenge questions, and the Scientific Expert Briefing, a mock congressional hearing where students present science recommendations on a piece of legislation. The challenges are unified with a yearly theme, which in 2017 was Blue Energy: powering the planet with our ocean. Watching the students (representing 33 states!) compete is exciting and inspiring, because they obviously know the material, and are passionate about the subject matter. Even more encouraging though, is realizing that not all of them plan to look for jobs as research scientists. Some express interest in the arts, some in policy, or teaching or engineering. This competition is not just about fostering the next generation of leading marine scientists, but rather about creating an ocean-literate, and scientifically-literate populace. So, congratulations to Santa Monica High School, who took home the national title for the first time this year! Would you like to test your knowledge against some of the questions they faced? Try your luck here!

Santa Monica competes in the final round

The GEMM Lab also recently participated in the Hatfield Marine Science Center’s Marine Science Day. It’s an annual open house where the community is invited to come tour labs, meet scientists, get behind the scenes, and learn about all the exciting research going on. For us as researchers, it’s a great day to practice explaining our work and its relevance to many different groups, from school children to parents and grandparents, from artists to fishermen to teachers, fellow researchers, and many others. This year the event attracted over 2,000 people, and the GEMM Lab was proud to be a part of this uniquely interactive day. Outreach events like this help us feel connected to our community and the excitement present in all the questions field during this event reassure us that the public still cares about the work that we do.

Lab members Florence, Leila, and Dawn (L to R) answer questions from the public.

Our science is interdisciplinary, and we recognize the strength of multiple complimentary avenues of action to affect change. If you are looking to get involved, consider taking a look at these groups:

500 Women Scientists: “working to promote a diverse and inclusive scientific community that brings progressive science-based solutions to local and global challenges.” Read their take on the March for Science.

314Action: starting from Pi (3.14), their mission is “to (1) strengthen communication among the STEM community, the public and our elected officials, (2) Educate and advocate for and defend the integrity of science and its use, (3) Provide a voice for the STEM community on social issues, (4) Promote the responsible use of data driven fact based approaches in public policy and (5) Increase public engagement with the STEM Community through media.”

She should run: “A movement working to create a culture that inspires women and girls to aspire towards public leadership. We believe that women of all backgrounds should have an equal shot at elected leadership and that our country will benefit from having a government with varied perspectives and experiences.” https://peoplesclimate.org/

And finally, The March for Science is finishing up it’s week of action, culminating in the People’s Climate March on April 29.

How will you carry the cause of science forward?

Oceanus Day Three: Dolphin Delights

by Florence Sullivan, MSc student

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.

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?

Click through link for better resolution: Randall Munroe www.XKCD.com/1040/large

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 mola mola we spotted. photo credit: Florence Sullivan — 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.

Fork-tailed storm petrels. photo credit: Florence Sullivan

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!

Oceanus Day Two: All the Albatrosses

By Amanda Holdman and Florence Sullivan

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! — 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. — Dahl’s Porpoise. photo credit: Florence Sullivan. Taken under NMFS permit 16111 John Calambokidis.

R/V Oceanus Day One: Hungry Hungry Humpbacks

By Florence Sullivan and Amanda Holdman

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 — 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

Outreach and education: sharing the stoke

By Erin Pickett

My friend Matt and I chased after a butterfly waving our nets through the air, jumping and swatting at the trees. For a brief moment I considered how ridiculous I probably looked running around in circles, looking up at the sky and not at my feet or where I was going. I was just about to step on a wasp nest before I came to my senses. The butterfly got away as I looked up to see our group of middle school students walking back to us after finishing their snack break.

It was day three of “Ecosystem sleuths” summer camp, and while Matt and I were helping lead this camp, we were certainly not going to let that stop us from having some good old fashioned fun catching bugs.

Last week my fellow fisheries and wildlife grad students and I walked away from our computers and experiments and took a break from thesis writing and summer field work to spend the week with a group of local middle and high school students. We ran a weeklong ecology-themed summer camp sponsored by Oregon State’s STEM Academy and inspired by our desire to share what we love with young students who are interested in science. This is what I call “sharing the stoke”.

We hoped to teach our students about a few broad and important ecological concepts while introducing them to field methods and sampling techniques. Neither the Corvallis city limits nor IACUC could hold us back and we managed to bring a menagerie of animals into the classroom including polar bears, elk and sharks. We have OSU’s extensive research and teaching collections to thank for giving our students a chance to handle some cool skulls, pelts and other preserved specimens.

One afternoon I led the students in crafting homemade humpback whale flukes, so that we could practice re-sighting them and estimating population sizes using the mark-recapture method. In between lectures and lab activities, with the help of YouTube, we watched two male elephant seals fight for dominance on a northern California beach and got a birds-eye view of a bald eagle soaring through a canyon. One student couldn’t help but jump up and down while watching this video. At the end of the week took the students to Hesthavn Nature Center and spent two afternoons outside collecting terrestrial and aquatic invertebrates, identifying birds, and learning how to pin insects.

After our students left each afternoon we’d all sit down to discuss the next day’s plan. Exhausted, we’d finish the last of the juice boxes and granola bars and wonder how teachers do what they do. Hats off to you, teachers!

PdD student Emily Campbell brought her personal insect collections in to share

Students separate stream invertebrates into functional groups. Many thanks to Oregon Sea Grant’s StreamWeb project for lending us stream sampling kits!

We were impressed by the final results!

Many thanks to Hatfield Marine Science Center and Oregon Sea Grant for lending us some neat marine mammal biofacts!

It’s not everyday you get to practice bird ID with sounds, skins and Sibley’s!

Fisheries and Wildlife PhD student Emily Campbell shows the students how to pin the insects they’ve caught

Fisheries and Wildlife PhD student Mike Burns pulls out all the stops and brings out the sharks and rays

Sharing the Coast Conference

GEMM lab recently attended the Sharing the Coast Conference 2015 at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Oregon where graduate student Courtney Hann presented on a marine mammal citizen science project, called Whale mAPP.

The Sharing the Coast Conference was a wonderful opportunity for scientists, researchers, community members, and avid ocean enthusiasts alike to come together and discuss current research on the Oregon Coast, with a focus on citizen science research. Many of the presenters introduced Oregon Coast or online citizen science projects people could participate. Other hands-on activities included field trips to Moolack Beach, Devil’s Punchbowl, along with tutorials on how to monitor marine debris and sea star wasting.

Courtney Hann represented the GEMM lab with her Sunday presentation on Whale mAPP, an Android application that can be used by volunteers, whom we call citizen scientists, to record marine mammal sighting data. The audience was inquisitive and intrigued by this project, along with many of the other wonderful citizen science projects. The American Cetacean Society, Oregon Chapter, will be using the Whale mAPP website (www.whalemapp.org) this whale watching season to record shore-based marine mammal, focusing on grey whale, sightings.

Overall, the Sharing the Coast Conference was an ideal event that brought people from all around Oregon and from multiple organizations (Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition, Northwest Aquatic and Marine Educators, American Cetacean Society, CoastWatch, Hatfield Marine Science Center, GEMM lab, etc.) together to talk about relevant Oregon Coast topics. The focus on engaging volunteers with scientific research represents an exciting turn towards embracing citizen science research, and incorporating free-choice learning opportunities into citizen science projects.

Depoe Bay STEAM fair at Kids Zone

Hello All!

As promised, this weekend, the GEMM lab attended the first ever S.T.E.A.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) Fair organized by the friendly folks at the Depoe Bay Kids Zone. We had a table and a half available for us to showcase some bio-artifacts such as: harbor seal, northern fur seal, and river otter pelts, skulls from a male California sea lion, a Dahl’s porpoise, and a beaked whale, and a humerus bone from a sea lion as well as several species of whale baleen and teeth – Did you know that you can count growth rings on whale teeth just like tree rings to get an idea of how old they are?

Our booth, and fearless leader Dr. Torres explaining blubber gloves to guests.

We also had a small hands-on experiment showcasing how whales (and seals) stay warm in the frigid ocean waters. Want to try at home? Here are some directions! You’ll need some (at least 1/4 gallon) zip-lock bags, a container of crisco, a bucket of ice water, a towel and some curiosity. Fill a ziplock bag about ~1/3 way with crisco. Now turn another bag inside out, squish it into the other bag and zip the two bags together so that you have a continuous layer of crisco sealed between the two bags – no more mess for your hands! Make sure when you place your hand inside this crisco-d bag that the layer of crisco is evenly distributed on all sides -voila! blubber glove! The crisco is intended to simulate the effect that a nice thick layer of blubber has on cetacean (whale) and pinniped (seals & sea lions) heat retention in water. Stick one hand in the “blubber glove”, and place it in the icy water. Simultaneously, place your un-protected hand in the ice water.

How long can you keep your hands in the water? Can you keep one hand in longer than the other? Which one? Why? Can you think of any technology that humans use to mimic this effect? (Hint: think clothing for surfers and divers)

One of our lab members is studying harbor porpoises by using acoustics (sound), so she brought her laptop and some headphones so that interested folks could listen to all the weird sounds in the ocean and all the crazy cool calls that whales and porpoises and seals make to communicate with each other.

IMG_20150221_104333 — Amanda helps a pair of students identify sounds in the ocean.

One of the difficult things about studying marine mammals is that we can only truly see them when they come to the water’s surface to breathe, so we invited people to learn how to spot whale blows, fins, and flukes (pictures that we had scattered around the hall) and start to get creative about how one can spot these elusive animals.

IMG_20150221_103340 — Florence and Solene explaining comparative anatomy.

All together, it was a lovely, well organized event – among others, we were joined by the OSU Fish and Wildlife club, the Coast Guard, local artists, and many of the students had their own booths showcasing home wind-energy, chemistry and physics experiments that all could try. We had a lot of fun and will most likely be back in future years! Until next time, Fair winds everyone!

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