Beam Reach

Friday Harbor Labs to Port Angeles

Today after our day at land we left Friday Harbor Labs to make our way to Port Angeles, with the hope of seeing the transients at Race Rocks and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. We did not deploy anything besides the Gato Verde hydrophone for opportunistic listening, and throughout the day analyzed and localized our data from 4-25-08. We did not find any whales today, but spotted harbor seals and Stellar sea lions at Race Rocks. We also spotted loons, perhaps a yearling bald eagle, and the mountains of the Olympic Peninsula.

Showah day

We didn’t see any orcas the first week out but we did learn a lot and we had fun and beautiful weather a lot of the time. I like the following chores the best: navigation, systems log, and swab the decks (it’s fun to use the squeegee) , in that order. The most fun place to hang out is the trampoline, but the cabins are cozy which makes them nice. We got to trek around on Jones Island a little bit on our first night out and there were a lot of bald eagles (juveniles and adults) all over the place. We have gotten to practice some recording and localizing and I really think we will be ready when we run into the orcas .

Parks Bay to FHL

We made the short passage to FHL in the morning and spent the rest of the day cleaning, reprovisioning, and relaxing.

Roche Harbor to Parks Bay

After leaving Roche Harbor we went across Haro Straight into Canadian waters. We waited there for the currents in Spieden Channel to slacken. While there we did a localization exercise. Ryan and Jason had the speaker in the dinghy and we had the array deployed and did a drive by recording the calls they made. During the recordings we noted the distances and bearings of the dinghy in relation to the Gato Verde. We made a total of four recordings. This allowed us to practice using the hydrophone array as well as collect data which we can use to practice localizing calls. We anchored in Parks Bay to facilitate a quick return to FHL tomorrow morning.

Snug Harbor to Roche Harbor

The Earth Day mooring kept us secure all night. Our science goals today are to keep working on methods, practice using and deploying the sound devices and hydrophones, and hopefully encounter actual whales for recording data.We practiced using the acoustic fish tags and saw how far we could detect them off Lime Kiln. The furthest distance was around a quarter of a nautical mile. We used the high frequency hydrophone to record the bleeps from the tags (pings). The raw data from these tests was loaded in a new folder titled with today’s date.

Brrr…

It’s cold in that water.

All of our students have to complete the swim test before they can sail on the Gato Verde.  It almost always makes the students nervous.  Of course it happens just days before they sail (many of them for the first time), so it gets wrapped up in the mind with “what if’s” and “what’s going to happen”.  Always, every one makes it just fine and with an increased sense of not wanting to do that on accident.  We come away knowing that they’ll be able to take a few swimming strokes in the cold water.

Here’s what Dr. Val Veirs wrote about the plunge: “A few minutes after our ‘cold plunge’ in the waters off the Friday Harbor Labs’ dock, snow came spitting from the grey clouds above. But, all of us are now warm and dry and pretty pleased with ourselves. And, we now really know how cold that water is and we really, really won’t fall in during our weeks at sea!”

Dr. Veirs and Dr. Woods joined the students in the plunge (as they have with each program), so it was truly a team experience.

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Snug Harbor to Snug Harbor

We left Snug with a series of science goals for the day. We headed south on the ebb tide towards Lime Kiln. On the way there and back we deployed the Biosonics 200 kHz echosounder for the first time. This marks our first forays into using active acoustics. We got so excited that we even lowered a video camera under water to see if the objects we were interpreting as fish and eel grass really were fish and eel grass. We did see a few fish, but for sure the eel grass we saw on the echosounder was real eel grass. We also figured out how we would deploy the hydrophone array along with a high frequency hydrophone. Because some of the student projects involve high frequency clicks, we needed to add a hydrophone with a high frequency response. We figured out a new configuration that would allow us to do that with the regular linear array on the port stern and the single high frequency hydrophone on the starboard stern. After dinner we had our journal club discussion about an article on prey species of Northern and Southern Resident killer whales. All in all a productive science day.

Students set sail

On Monday of this week the Spring 08 Beam Reach program set sail on the Gato Verde. They’ve been all over the west side of the San Juan Islands including False Bay and Snug Harbor. I’ve gotten several emails and as of Tuesday they hadn’t seen the whales. I hope they are getting to use the tools from Biosonics to check out the salmon. I’m sure they are seeing plenty of other interesting sea life. I’ll post an update once I get more details.

Prevost Harbor to Snug Harbor

We awoke to white caps out in Boundary Pass and discussed navigation and weather forecasts. Emerging from Prevost Harbor we ran under jib alone around Turn Point lighthouse, enjoying our first views of Mt. Baker on the eastern horizon. The wind moderated in the lee of Stuart Island and we bore for Roche Harbor with a plan to pump out the sewage tank. Around noon we entered Roche, having noticed an unusual aluminum boat crossing Spieden Channel with us, pumped out and bought some lamp oil. Scott met the Al boat owners who had built it themselves and invited them to visit Gato Verde once we reached Snug. Around 1:15 we transited Mosquito Pass, anchored in Snug Harbor, and began our Earth Day project: creating and deploying an anchoring system that would do less damage to the bottom than spinning on our normal big anchor. About the time we were done, Bob and Helen Oliver (the owners of the Wharram Designs aluminum boat “Sanderling”) joined us for dinner on board and we all indulged in grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.

Fish Tools and a Pilot Project

We now have another state of the art tool for our students. In a pilot project with Biosonics — a fisheries research equipment manufacturer in Seattle — Beam Reach students will be using a 200kHz hydroacoustic instrument to track salmon (the food of choice for the killer whales).

This will allow students to investigate the whale’s food when the whales aren’t around, which could lead to some answers about where the whales go, when they go, and why. It really opens up a whole new dimension through which the students can investigate why the whale population is declining and what we can do about it.

I’ll continue to post updates, but I also recommend following Dr. Scott Veirs’s entries to see how this unfolds. It will also be interesting to see how the students utilize this new tool.