After an overview of passage planning (charts, currents, weather) from Todd, we practiced tacking and jibing in 10-12 kt winds, traveling NW between Spieden and Waldron Islands. The wind moderated in the early afternoon and we eventually motored into Prevost. At the dock the students each collected a series of mocked up data to test out their projects. We had everything from pseudo-pectoral slaps and fake socializing orcas. They also collected associated acoustic recordings that they could analyze at a later date. After dinner most of the students took advantage of the land and went for a walk.
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Transited under electric power from FHL dock to SW Jones Island mooring buoy. Todd gave orientation to safety protocols, the Gato Verde, and the practicalities of cooking in the NOLS-style.
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This quarter in an attempt to keep people abreast of our science activities I’ve been asked to post blogs on our science endeavors. Each day we rotate our tasks, one of which is to be the science officer for the day. In addition to taking the lead on the science we conduct that day, the science officer also writes up a short synopsis of what science we did that day. For the science blog online I’ll just be posting these daily synopses, so only every sixth or seventh science blog will have actually been written by me. The others will have been written by the students and other staff, but in many ways this blog will emulate the collaborative science that we do, it’s a joint effort that we are all involved in.
I hope you enjoy following along this quarter.
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We just got back from the FHL dock. The difference between this trip to the dock and previous ones is that this time the purpose was not an acoustic exercise with speakers and hydrophones. It was a swimming exercise/cold plunge. The water temp is about 9 degrees celsius which is cold enough. The idea behind the cold plunge is that if one of us were to fall off the boat, we would know what the water feels like. We all took the plunge, Val and Jason included. I don’t know about everyone else, but I had a lot of fun taking the plunge.
This quick swim was the second coldest water I’ve been in. As a freshman my school has the viking bath which consists of running into the waters on cape cod in late December. It is actually a little bit of a rush which is why I always enjoy swimming in cold water. The cold plunge today brings back a lot of those memories, but at the same time seemed very much different. Thanks to Val’s waterproof camera we will have some good documentation of our plunge.
As for our time at FHL campus, it is slowly drawing to a close for the time being. Sunday afternoon we begin loading our gear on the boat and set sail. As excited as I am about finally being able to go to sea and study the orcas, something I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember, it is also very much bittersweet as I start to get ready to go. I’ve gotten so use to seeing the other people here at the labs that it is going to be strange to not be able to see and interact with them as we have the past few weeks. People some times get so caught up with the work they are doing that the forget to notice the people around them who enrich their daily experiences. It is something that is more and more common in todays society and something which I hope I never take for granted.
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in just a few short days we’re finally going to set foot on the Gato Verde!
i had been a bit daunted about how i was going to pull off my research idea as well as understand it all in time, but after meeting with Jason today I now pumped to start getting to work! I decided to go about recording actual masking, so I am going to play clicks from the underwater speaker while boats go by (and a whole bunch of other things too- I’m working on the list…) It finally feels like things are coming together for the trip- like all the food we bagged up at the NOLS center in Skagit, and putting together the watch rotation.
For now I’m going to enjoy FHL while I still have the chance…
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Well the Beam Reach students are about to figure that out. It’s amazing to me how quickly students learn in this hands on program. The instructors provide them with an introduction, show them how things work and why, and then help the students in the field. Some of the students know almost nothing about acoustics when they arrive and leave knowing how to gather acoustical data, interpret it, and use it to draw conclusions.
I’ve been a part of Beam Reach for a little over two years now (I’m in the office) and, while some of this rings familiar, it is still so complicated to me because I’m not a scientist and I haven’t gotten to do the program. (I’m finding it more and more difficult to get away for a week, much less ten of them!)
So it is with true joy and amazement that I watch our students absorb this information and become confident in their abilities. Here’s a sample from a beginning exercise they do. To some of you out there this will make sense, to the rest of us, well we can only be grateful that somebody understands it.
4598845920
Dear students,
Congratulations on making it through the calibration and spreading sessions
on the dock this morning, as well as the very brief Matlab tutorial.
For your exercise that you should hand in before 5:30 this afternoon (via
email) you should include the following information:
The metadata for the two experiments.
The calibration factor for each of the 4 hydrophones and an explanation of
how you calculated it.
The received level (in dB re 1 microPascal) of each hydrophone for the
spreading experiment.
A plot of those received levels vs the log of the distance from the source.
A regression line through those data points with the slope, R-squared value
and the source level (in dB re 1 microPascal @ 1 m).
Just in case your confused; the following channels correspond to the
following wav files:
Calibration ex:
A01_1.wav Ch 1
A01_2.wav Ch 2
C01_1.wav Ch3
C01_2.wav Ch4
Spreading ex:
A03_1.wav Ch1 (the farthest hydrophone from the speaker)
A03_2.wav Ch2
C03_1.wav Ch3
C03_2.wav Ch4 (the closest hydrophone from the speaker)
Also as a reminder, the energy exercise is Due at 8:30 on the
16th. Because we will be off island this weekend and again on Tues to pick
up food for our adventures at sea, you should plan on collecting the data
that is needed for the energy exercise today or on Monday (look back at the
excel sheet that Val gave you for a reminder).
I'll post next week's syllabus in S1 so you have an idea of what will be
happening.
Good luck
Jason
Jason Wood, PhD, Instructor
Beam Reach, http://beamreach.org
Marine Science and Sustainability School
jason@beamreach.org
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Into the third week already. I just returned from the commons where most every student here at Friday Harbor Labs got together to watch Finding Nemo; last week it was the Blue Planet series, deep ocean episode. So far it’s been great being surrounded by so many other students excited about marine biology. Though we only see each other at meals in the dining hall, the occasional dance party and the organized movie nights, we’ve been getting along great. It’s really rather refreshing to be part of a conversation where I can openly discuss my fascination with oceanography without an awkward silence following, or hear someone else exclaim their love for seaweed and everyone else chimes in with “me too!”, or “whoa, that IS cool”. It’s great sitting around a table where lame jokes and puns are about invertebrates or marine megefauna instead of the typical crude topics which often come up in non-marine bio dork social circles. I’m surrounded by people who are obsessed with microscopic marine worms! Not my forte, but still cool. The other students here are really a great crowd and the added company has really helped the social dynamics of the small Beam Reach class remain comfortable. The only downfall: my interesting facts are always followed by “I knew that already” instead of “wow, great random fact”. Oh, also, another major downfall–I have competition in the intertidal to collect cool shells!
Our days have been packed with lectures all morning, pertaining to topics ranging from sound propagation through water, detecting sound, calculating the speed of sound, critical ratios, salmon life history and whale watching guidelines to sound spreading and statistical programs and tests. We also………….WENT ON A WHALE WATCH! J-pod was hanging out at the mouth of the strait, moving slowly enough and surfacing often enough to allow me to begin identifying them individually-I now know Ruffles (J-1), Granny (J-2), Mike (J-26), and Blackberry (J-27)-he’s my favorite! I can also check stellar sea lions off my list of must-sees-before-I-die.
The afternoons have been proposal writing. Unfortunately, I only established a question that was both feasible AND exciting the day before the proposals were due. On the other hand-so relieved to finally have a research question! I will be addressing temporary threshold shifts (TTS) in the southern resident killer whales (SRKW) in Haro Strait and neighboring waters. After reviewing the primary literature, whale watch traffic does not seem likely to be causing TTSs in SRKWs, however, container ships as well as oil rigs that pass by, emitting low frequency sounds for extended periods of time, do have great potential to cause such damage. Further investigation into the literature, combining various authors’ findings, lead me to believe that if the southern residents are, in fact, experiencing TTSs, then it is likely that if SRKWs continue to experience the same sound levels over the next 10-15 years, they could experience permanent threshold shifts. Slightly important to know for such an acoustically active species. I’m not sure exactly how I am going to demonstrate this yet, but I’m sure it’s complicated, involves way more math than I’m comfortable with, and will cause me to question what I got myself into multiple times along the way-BUT, it is something I’m really interested in looking into and the management implications are too great to divert to an easier question.
On a lighter note, this past weekend was great! The class drove up to Vancouver, BC, for a marine mammal conference, student chapter. While I was hoping to meet professors and network with potential graduate profs, figure out my future, etc., listening to what grad students themselves were studying was just as useful. Hearing and seeing where I hope to be within the next couple years was extremely helpful in gauging what to realistically expect. It was also a very reassuring experience after being able to speak with many of the students; I approached many of them with questions such as what kind of experience they had prior to grad school and I was surprised to find that my own progress is right on track with successful students’ in positions and schools that I hope to be in as well. Many had worked on whale watch boats as naturalists, researchers, or deckhands and had also spent lots of time working on boats. I was also slightly surprised that many students were addressing marine mammal science from a conservation perspective, but aspects of such a perspective that didn’t seem to be the most important research questions needed answered to truly get at the core of their protection. Further, none of them really had answers as to why it is important to protect marine mammals in the first place beyond my own answer: because I like them-a question I’ve been thinking about for the past couple years.
Vancouver aside from the conference was also fun. Great food and a beautiful city! Skyscrapers, snow-peaked mountains-everywhere-the ocean, cherry trees, and a sunset, all in one picture shot! After our teachers retired to the hostel, the rest of us finished our card game of Egyptian Rat Screw (of which I remain the undefeated champion…) on the beach and headed into downtown to explore. We ended up at an arcade where I had my first dance dance revolution experience. It wasn’t all that. Perhaps because it is not one of my strongest skills but hey, I’ll take Egyptian Rat Screw over DDR. Soon after, Laura and I were ready to go find the next cool place and were met with yawns by the rest of the crowd so we shoved them in the direction of the hostel and went in search of live music-we were successful! We found a blues bar with a live band playing old songs and classics. We were too tired to dance with the rest of the crowd so we sat and watched…by the speakers. I may have experienced a TTS. We ended our stay in Vancouver with a bang at the Vancouver Aquirium where we were introduced to the data collection techniques, tools and subjects-stellar sea lions! So far this experience has been great: new places, new animals, new people, new concepts, new music, new outlooks, and learning something new every day–as someone said at the conference: “change is a constant”
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As Laura mentioned, it has been a busy week. However, I will try and mention a little bit of everything from each of our many events without ending up with a novel.
Last week we went to a oyster farm in westcott bay. It was really cool looking around in the intertidal mud for oysters and so much more. Once you start looking closer you find so many creatures who have carved themselves a niche in the intertidal realm. The boots I borrowed when I got there had a hole in them which was pretty much the only downfall of the day. We also did water quality to see how healthy it actually is to eat the oysters we collected. The temp was 12.1 degrees Celsius which was probably warmer then it actually was since the sample had been sitting in the sun for a short time. The salinity was 28.9 ppt. The phosphate levels and nitrate levels were 0.23 and 0.27 ppm respectivley, which is much cleaner then the minimum standards.
After leaving the oyster farm we went to the Center for Whale Research and met some of the researchers working there. I was really excited to do that since I’ve been wanting to go there since I arrived and learn about the research that they are doing. Also, the view from their office is amazing. I’ve pretty much decided that is my dream job.
We also got to go to Vancouver this weekend. We went for the NW student chapter of the society for Marine Mammalogists conference at UBC. The conference was a great way for us to see what other researchers in marine mammalogy were doing and network. The campus at UBC was really nice as well. Saturday night we got to explore downtown vancouver which I would recommend to anyone who gets the chance. It is a neat city to be in.
Sunday we got a backstage tour of the vancouver aquarium and saw the research they were doing with Stellar sea lions. Seeing those animals up close like that gives you a new appreciation of their size and strength. The aquarium was cool and seeing beluga whales was great although the issue of animals in captivity on display like that rather than being in their natural environment has always been a difficult one for me. My own personal debates about the issue aside, the aquarium was really well done. I seem to have a growing list of aquariums which I have visited recently and this one is certainly high up on that list. Now enough about Vancouver.
Today we had the day off which was a much needed way for me to catch up on sleep. I also got a chance to relax a little and play soccer with some of the other people here at the lab. I quickly realized just how long it has been since I stepped onto a soccer field. As if that wasn’t enough of an assault on my body I then decided to go for a six mile bike ride with some other students here at the lab. We went after dinner with the sun beginning to set which made for an amazingly picturesque ride through the hills. Tomorrow I’m pretty sure I’ll be extremely sore but it was certainly worth it. It was a good way to recharge after the exhausting days of last week. As for my project proposal which I seem to have forgotten to mention I decided to look at the correlation between vocalizations and socializing behavior in the southern residents. I’m really excited now that our time at sea is less than a week away. Now that I have finished rambling about all the exciting moments over the last week I think I will leave you with one of my favorite pictures from our last orca encounter.
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such a busy week with all the proposal writing and running around- but now with our day off I have some time to type!
Got the rough draft of my proposal done- I’m officially going to try to study the masking of echolocation clicks by high frequency boat noise- I’m excited, but now I have to figure out just how I am going to do it. So far modeling seems to be a route, but I would love to find a way to actually document masking, which is the tricky part—how can you show a sound that is lost in another sound? Hopefully I can figure it out.
We also had a very interesting talk by Russel Barsh last week about the diet of juvenile salmon, but the talk was so much more than about that. It was more about ecology as a whole, and I found his philosophy inspiring about different disciplines working together. He mentioned how salmon scientists compete for funds with the whale scientists- how ridiculous! Obviously Orcas are affected by what the salmon are doing, and the salmon are affected by what they eat and their habitats- for instance a lot of the causes we are looking at that are causing the decline of the killer whales may not be so direct- it could lie within what those juveniles are eating (or not finding enough of anymore) and so if studies like that aren’t funded, we might never find the actual problem.
I guess I really liked his talk- as well as his thoughts about a grassroots way of changing the world- He tried to get into international policy and change, and finding it didn’t get him very far, now tries to just change the opinions of his local community. I must admit I’ve also come to the realization that people won’t ever really change unless something is affecting them- and as Russel says they must care about what they want to save- to feel a connection to it.
Ooh so much more happened this week! We also went to an oyster farm last week where we looked at the different invertebrates and the water quality of the area. We spent most of the time tromping around in the mudflats collecting shells and getting stuck- it was quite fun, even when I managed to fall right on my behind in the water. It was a really cool day all together – we saw these funny llamas with “punk” hairdos as Val described them on the drive up, and on the way home we stopped at the Center for Whale Research, which wasn’t like I imagined at all – I thought it would be a very official sort of complex, but it is a much more relaxed and wonderful place- with a lot of history and new technology all sitting in the same room, with lots of stories to share about them- and very interesting research! I was excited to see the tags they are using on transients in their winter migration- maybe those can someday be on the Southern Residents!
And last but not least- we spent the weekend in Vancouver! I was SO excited (thanks Scott! 🙂 We headed up there for the Northwest Student Chapter meeting, where we got to listen to a bunch of grad student’s research in the area. It was great to get a better perspective of grad school life and see students start to collaborate, as well as chat with some during the breaks- who knows at the moment UBC sounds pretty cool for grad school at the moment. Afterwards we headed downtown to our hostel, had some awesome Greek food (there are so many ethnic restaurants and culture in the area!), play cards on the beach watching the sunset, then walked around town – Dominique and I ended up finding a cool band called the “Soul Train Express” (sounds like a band I’d love right off the bat) – they were really cool and you could tell the lead singer was very into his music- it’s one of those bands you can only really enjoy live!
And on Sunday we went to the aquarium- something I’ve been wanting to do for awhile- and we got a behind the scenes tour as well- we got to look at the UBC’s research lab and what they do with the Stellar sea lions, and the adopt a whale office as well- looks like there are a lot of opportunities. And I loved the belugas! I feel like lately between the Student chapter meetings and my own personal debates that the importance of aquariums has been a repeating theme, but I definitely think Vancouver Aquarium does a good job in its presentation, research, and environmental concern. Overall I was in heaven in Vancouver exploring the city, aquarium, research, education, and of course- the mountains- I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of being around mountains!
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