Beam Reach

Thanks to Fred Felleman for the appended articles: new B.C. ferries are drawing complaints about being too noisy in air. One has to wonder whether the Coastal Celebration and its two sister ships, the Coastal Inspiration and the Coastal Renaissance, are also noisier underwater than their predecessors. The Celebration
BC’s Noisy New German [...]

Lead Beam Reach instructor Jason Wood makes a cameo appearance in this nice video put out a week ago by the Puget Sound Partnership.   Here he is wearing his Research Curator hat for The Whale Museum and pointing out the aesthetic value of the Salish Sea along with Kari Koski, Jenny Atkinson, and other local [...]

The appended story is a great example of sustainability science.  Ed is a bioacoustician who found a way to understand why manatees were getting hit by so many boats.  Then he devised a technological solution: an alarm sound beamed out in front of a boat.
While I’m curious to know how he plans to work with [...]

As multiple agents in Western Washington begin the process of harnessing the tidal currents of the Salish Sea for generating electricity, it’s worth a close examination of what’s been learned by a pioneering tidal turbine project associated with the Race Rocks Ecological Reserve/Marine Protected Area. Through a partnership between Pearson College of the Pacific [...]

One of the grandest gestures we humans in Western Washington can make for endangered orcas and salmon is to finally remove the Elwha dams.  The result would be a wonderful experiment in salmon restoration, as well as sediment dynamics.
I remember thinking that the removal was just a couple years away when I lived in Port [...]

It was just announced that the oldest southern resident killer whale is believed to have died this year. Lummi (K-7) lived to be about 98 years old and was last seen by Brad Hansen of NOAA/NWFSC on December 23rd. As the Center for Whale Research has surveyed all of K pod multiple times [...]

I just read a story about a band that tours and amplifies under bicycle power alone. The technology they use could jump start an idea spawned during dinnertime discussions during past Beam Reach programs: mounting two bikes on the foredeck for power generation and exercise during the sea component. A nice twist would [...]

Thanks to Lindsay Delp (081) who just sent me a Discovery Channel article about the fluid mechanical efficiency of cetacean fins and flukes. It turns out (ha!) that wind turbines can be made more efficient by roughening the leading edge of the blades. The idea was inspired by studying the bumpy fins of [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]