Beam Reach

First whale recordings

Garrison Bay to Roche Harbor

Today was a good day. We started calling other people in the whale network and found J pod by Lummi Island in Bellingham Channel. We made our way around the south side of San Juan and Lopez islands and finally found them. At 14:20:00 we started recording whale data for the first time in our research trip. The first 45 minutes or so the whales were silent then at the we got great recordings of calls and clicks. We also got to see a lot of behavioral events like breaching and tail-slapping. We stayed with them and continued to record until 17:24:28 with one break inbetween to turn on the generator and catch up to the whales. Once we finished with the whales we motored around to Roche Harbor to spend the evening. Our last report was from Orca Spirit and they said the whales were slowly heading west. And we hope to be able to catch up to them again tomorrow.

Calibration with Marla Holt

Jones Island to Garrison Bay

We left Jones Island this morning and sailed through Speiden channel.  Because it was calm conditions we practiced doing actual jibes. Around one o’clock we picked up Val and Marla Holt at Snug Harbor. Marla will be on until Wednesday teaching us what she knows about sound and masking in the killer whales. We also used Marla’s hydrophone in addition to all of our own to perform another calibration exercise playing pure tones out of the underwater speaker. While we had the hydrophones out Dominique also managed to record a passing ship and Laura managed to record light bulbs breaking underwater. In the evening we started analyzing the calibration data that was collected in the afternoon.

Bathymetry and Jones Island picnic

On land at FHL to Jones Island, North Bay

We loaded the boat on Sunday at noon when the Gato Verde arrived. We departed the Labs after talking with a guest expert: Gary Greene, a marine geologist from the non-profit Tombolo and Moss Landing. Scott had also joined us for some time, fiddling with computers and metadata, though he left us for the night to fullfill his Mother’s day duties. We embarked around 1630 with decent winds and headed for the North Bay of Jones Island.  A beautiful place to spend the night, especially since we were tied up to a dock and were free to roam the small island — a State park. We took advantage of the land opportunity by taking our dinner out to the picnic tables on the beach and finished the night by huddling around a computer to watch a couple episodes of Planet Earth: Iceworld and Caves.

Has someone shot J pod?

It is disconcerting to me that J pod did not re-visit the west side of San Juan Island during the first two-week research cruise of the spring Beam Reach program. I joined the ship last Thursday fully expecting our fish tagging exercise to be interrupted by the returning southern residents. There was even a tantalizing missive from the respective American and Canadian killer whale God-fathers (from Ken Balcomb with allusions to John Ford) the previous day:

“Thursday, 1 May 2008 @ 13:41 …somewhere between here and Nanaimo there are 12-15 other whales that were heading south past John Ford’s house at sunset last night. It is about an 18 hour trip typically from there, so we could see whales any moment.”

But we were off Lime Kiln on Thursday and Friday and heard nothing but lingcod depth measurements. And so I returned to Seattle and listened fervently through the weekend — Port Townsend in one ear, Lime Kiln or OrcaSound in the other. I heard a lot of ships and noted that something seems to be beating the PT hydrophone during peak current flow, but there were no familiar calls or clicks.

Thus, I’m up late re-visiting my previous analysis of the historical sighting data. The general pattern is that there aren’t many days when southern residents are sighted (or heard) in Haro Strait during March, but the sightings per month steadily increase from April through June.

We designed the spring Beam Reach curriculum around these data which suggest that there is high likelihood of getting some preliminary data from J pod during the final two weeks of April. Analysis of the archives confirms that there are typically more sightings at the end of April than during the beginning.

Of course, our diligent (and patient!) students are now back on land analyzing simulated data sets so they’ll be ready for the arrival of J pod in May. We’re now about a week into May and J pod hasn’t been definitively sighted in the Salish Sea for nearly a month. When last seen on April 8th at 2pm, they were heading southwestward from Hein Bank into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, gateway to the Northeast Pacific.

Who else will be worried if they don’t return by this Thursday? The trend in sightings per month is hinting that 2008 is shaping up to be an unusual year. While March sightings were about average, April sightings were the lowest observed in the last 7 years. (There may be biases in these values, but if anything the sighting effort was less in the past, so older values are expected to be relatively low — not high!) Will May set a record low as well?

All this has me wondering what is going on out there. Has something appalling happened, akin to the surreptitious killing of California and Stellar sea lions in the Columbia River on Sunday? Or is there a problem with the fish that the residents prefer to eat: salmon, and Chinook in particular? We know that the California runs have essentially failed this year, with the commercial Chinook fishery mostly closed along the West Coast for the first time in more than 40 years.

Surprisingly, it’s proving very difficult (even for an oceanographer like me) to get a coherent overview of what marine fish are around Puget Sound. The data I’ve found and ways Beam Reach is helping to fill the gaps are the topic of my next post…

Sailing dinghy sighted at Friday Harbor Labs!

Row boats have graced the docks of the Friday Harbor Labs for many decades. To me, they have always offered a heart-warming counterpoint to the academic intensity of the Labs. After a day spent inside studying the oceans’ creatures with pipettes, microscopes, and computers, the row boat fleet beckons to the simple scientist, offering a chance to reconnect physically with the sea, marine history, and maritime language. An added appeal of the row boats is the possibility of making it to town or around the Harbor under your own power.

This spring, thanks to the good fortune and generosity of Beam Reach instructor Jason Wood, a wind-powered vessel supplemented the maritime scene down on the FHL docks. Jason inherited a sailing dinghy this winter from a neighbor on the west side of the Island. With a little rust-busting assistance from instructor Val Veirs, the mighty (little) Ciprid was deployed for the first time this spring as a sail training vessel.

So, Beam Reach students now have two ways to experience sustainable transport technologies and to train for navigating our 42′ sailing research vessel, the Gato Verde. I’m pleased these intrepid vessels are available to strengthen our curriculum early in each program.

Spring program starts & ORCACAM is up

I had a fine time transporting the five intrepid Beam Reach students up to the San Juans yesterday. Tracy and I agreed that it is a real treat to get out of Seattle to visit the beautiful archipelago and the peaceful pines of the Friday Harbor Labs campus. It’s exciting to get the first spring program started!

We spent the first morning of class together. We started with an orientation at the Friday Harbor Labs. Then we grabbed some box lunches kindly assembled by the FHL dining hall staff and headed west. We got a nice overview of Haro Strait all the way to Victoria and the snowy Olympic Mountains at Sharon Grace’s observation deck. Then we headed up the coast to Lime Kiln to generate 21 burning questions and discuss a few of them. It was chilly, but intermittent sun and scintillating ideas kept us reasonably comfortable. Next time I’ll turn that heater on while the questions are getting thought up!

After lunch in the light house, Tracy and I ran for the ferry and the students returned to the Labs with Jason and Val to go over the syllabus and get further oriented to the labs. We enjoyed seeing some harbor porpoises, a bald eagle, and a river otter, but were all a little disappointed that J pod didn’t show up.

The disappointment dissipated rapidly today when I heard (through Susan, JB, and some combination of Sandy Buckley, Jeanne Hyde, and Ivan) that J pod was in Haro Strait! Thanks to further guidance from Jeanne, the class made it over to Landbank in time to observe the J16s. As the afternoon progressed, there were some great calls heard, first at Lime Kiln, then at OrcaSound.

The coup was that those of us in Seattle got to participate virtually in an enhanced way. The Center for Whale Research had *just* gotten a new web camera installed and streaming. With a little practice, it proved wonderful fun to watch the whales and boats go by while listening to the OrcaSound hydrophone located a few hundred meters to the north. If you’d like to try it, here are the relevant links:

http://www.whaleresearch.com/thecenter/orcacam01.html

http://orcasound.net/os/

The camera has a 25x optical zoom, as well as pan/tilt controls. It even lets you snap stills like this one…

L-pod encounter

Friday, October 5, 2007

Left Aleck Bay this morning and heard via VHF that L-pod might be inbound in the Straits of Juan de Fuca. Headed up west side and encountered L-pod between Salmon Bank and South Beach at around 11:00. By 1:30 they could be heard on the Lime Kiln hydrophone. Stayed with them while towing our hydrophone array today and got 4Gb of data that should help us figure out the call sequences between a group of females spanning three generations. They were headed north in Swanson Channel (NW corner of San Juan Islands) around 1800PST on 10/5.

Searching the home range

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Searched the southwest side of the San Juan Archipelago from Garrison Bay on San Juan Island to Aleck Bay on Lopez Island…

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

We emerged from Prevost Habor after enjoying a quiet night on the dock and the chance to stretch our legs.  We listened with Lon’s single hydrophone while we drifted in Boundary Pass on the flood tide.  After an intercalibration of the array with the Interocean Systems hydrophone, we sailed southward at various speeds using a protractor to understand how the angle of the weighted line changes as function of boat speed.  After pulling the hydrophone the wind picked up.  An exciting moment occurred when attempting to furl the screecher.  It wrapped near the top, but a substantial patch of sail ballooned out and halted the roller furler.  There was a classic rattling of sail as the entire team worked to lower the sail to the deck and control it.  Finally, we had it lashed securely in the nets and headed for Roche.  There we pumped out, dropped Scott off, and the completed our transit to Garrison Bay and our Wednesday evening rendevous with the land group.  Mike Vouri capped the day with a presentation on the history of the San Juan Islands.

Passing in the night

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

We departed MacKaye Harbor at 7:45 after receiving a call from Val who had heard J pod on the OrcaSound hydrophone at 7:00. He mentioned that Ken Balcomb had also heard them at 9:00 pm last night at Lime Kiln (only 2 hours after we dropped anchor!). As the calls grew fainter at OrcaSound and weren’t heard further south at Lime Kiln, Val thought they were headed north, though he couldn’t see them. We motored and sailed up the west side of San Juan Island, stopping to listen intermittently. Half way up Haro, we coordinated with the Western Prince whale watching vessel to search for the southern residents. The orcas apparently continued traveling to the north while we stopped to drop Shannon off for her break and sighted a lone Stellar sea lion. We continued north, sailing fast; Mike hit 9.6 knots and then Wessal topped 10! After rounding Turn Point, we tucked into Prevost Harbor for the night, tying up to the dock and taking the opportunity to run, walk, and stroll on land.