This looks like a generous fellowship if you’d like to study marine ecosystem sustainability in Alaska for a few years. They are offering $30k+tuition/year for graduates students attending the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, for cohorts starting in 2009 through 2012. They even include health insurance and research funding.
To me, the MESAS program (Marine Ecosystem Sustainability in the Arctic and Subarctic) seems philosophically aligned with Beam Reach. They emphasize interdisciplinary research, a focus on sustainable solutions, and even provide service opportunities within local communities.
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The footage taken by Brett Becker and Courtney Kneipp back in 2005 keeps adding value to the community of orca advocates and scientists. It was heartening to hear the fundraiser participants ooh and ah at the simultaneous “logging” behavior of J and L pod members, as well as the synchronous chorus of calls that occurs suddenly in the last 30 seconds of the video.
If you enjoy the video, don’t hesitate to
make a donation to The Whale Museum this spring. They could use some help to keep Soundwatch on the water continuously this summer…
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More than 150 avid supporters turned out at Mullis Community Senior Center Saturday night for The Whale Museum’s third annual Celebration of the Orca Greeting Ceremony. By the end of the evening, the museum had raised more than $16,000 to support its education and research projects.
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| The popular event, which features a gourmet dinner, raffle, and silent and live auctions, was inspired by an orca greeting ceremony documented in the waters off of Hannah Heights on Oct. 4, 2004, by Dr. Scott Veirs and a group of BeamReach students. |
| Auctioneer Eugene Cuomo cajoled and coaxed the enthusiastic crowd into raising their fluke-shaped bidding paddles for such treats as Leslie Veirs’ “Scrumptious Ice Cream Torte” ($375) |
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Despite the amount of build-up, preparation and thought that went into our departure, I’ve come to find that I had very few concretely formed expectations regarding boat life. I now believe that even if I had formed expectations, they would have been thoroughly altered after the first two hours.
So many small things in life need to change to make life on a boat possible. At home, my mixed family live in a strangely laid-out mother and law house. My mom and I joke by calling our part of the house, the ‘Paris apartment’ because it is so small and compact. The concepts required for peaceful cohabitation in the ‘Paris apartment’ must be multiplied tenfold to be acceptable on the Gato Verde.
One of the first rules of a small space is keeping it clean and uncluttered, particularly in communal spaces like kitchens and bathrooms. At home that meant leaving my school books In a tucked away corner of the living room, vacuuming at least twice a week, and always, always neatening my room once day. Here, it means cleaning every communal area at least once a day, never leaving your personal belongings in a communal area and living out of a backpack.
Val, Hannah and Peter getting some work done in our main communal quarters
We get up in the morning and the first thing after breakfast is completing our chore rotation. The breakfast dishes have to be washed, the systems and holding tanks for water sewage and fuel checked, the deck squeegeed and wiped, the galley cleaned, the floors swept and the weather and currents for the day reported on.
In chemistry, the term limiting reagent refers to the substance which determines how much of the reactants can completely turn into products. On the Gato Verde, the limiting reagent which determines whether or not we can keep sailing during the day is black water. I’m not, of course, talking about the erstwhile security contractor but about sewage which is what drives us to a fully functioning harbor more often than freshwater, food, or fuel.
Depending on your frame of reference, the Gato Verde can be accurately described as palatial or miniscule. I tend to try to classify it another way. Emotionally, the space is miniscule. Physically, the space is palatial for a boat. It’s trying to live in a place where everyone knows where everyone is and what they are doing every moment of every day. There just aren’t very many places to hide and have alone time on a boat.
All of that said, however, the experience has been incredible. The ability to travel over water, close to it, powered by it and living in it is an absolutely awe-inspiring one and something I have never been able to experience the same way. From a research perspective, it is an amazing opportunity. We tie up every night in beautiful secluded places and breathe clean, cool air, smiling into the wind, as we drift among islands covered in trees. We’ve watched otters, bald eagles, buffleheads, cormorants, harbor seals, transient orcas, Dall’s and harbor porpoises, and elephant seals all while learning loads and laughing.
Who could ask for more? It’s just that lovely.
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FHL to Jones Island
OK, we didn’t discover giant squid, but the students did get a chance at the helm of the Gato Verde. The students were very efficient in moving all of the gear and food out of S1 and onto the Gato Verde so that we made a good start from FHL. We even got a chance to see Anne Harmon one of our students from 2007 on the dock at FHL. She is now working for Kwiaht, the Center for Historical Ecology of the Salish Sea. The journey was a smooth one under partly cloudy skies. Transited under electric power and tied up easily to the mooring bouy on the south end of Jones.
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After several years of “regrouping” (a.k.a. child-rearing) I will finally take the next step toward my academic goal this coming fall. I’m entering the Master’s program in Wildlife and Fisheries Science at Penn State. Thanks to ongoing encouragement from Jason, Scott, Val, and Celia (of course!), and a lucky posting on MARMAM last spring, I found my advisor, Dr. Jennifer Miksis-Olds, who works jointly with the Graduate Program in Acoustics and the Wildlife and Fisheries department at Penn State. I will be supported through the Applied Research Laboratory at Penn State and am excited to be the first master’s student in Wildlife and Fisheries to receive ARL support (thanks to my acoustics background via BR). I hope to set a good example for that partnership, and also to raise interest in Beam Reach at Penn State.
My research project will use acoustics to study sport fish populations in local Pennsylvania lakes following habitat restoration. Current study practices utilize “electro-fishing” techniques and will provide a comparison. Acoustics should allow a less intrusive and more sustainable approach to fisheries management. How does that relate to Southern Residents? I plan use the acoustic and fisheries experience I gain from this project to investigate salmon populations in the Salish Sea. Examining the salmon populations was actually one of my 20 questions on day one in ‘05… imagine that! 
Best wishes to the new Beam Reach spring class of 2009!
(Hang on to those questions)
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