Beam Reach

1. How does a captive whale’s vocal repertoire differ from that of its wild family members?

2. To what degree are vocalizations learned and/or innate? Do mothers teach their calves how to “speak”?

3. Do orcas respond to human music? If so, is it possible to use this connection to study orca cognition?

4. Are there stereotyped vocalizations that occur during greeting ceremonies and/or other kinds of rituals?

5. What role do intonation and duration play in orca vocalizations? Could calls have different meanings depending on behavioral context?

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1. How do orcas know where and when is the right time that food resources, such as salmon, are available?

2. Is breaching a way of communication between whale individuals, and are there certain meanings behind breaches, such as full breaches vs. half-breaches?

3. How are orcas able to distinguish different pitches of calls from different whale individuals or different pods?

4. What impact does the orca populations of the world have on the biodiversity of the ocean?

5. How largely will the inevitable global changes of the planet, such as pollution and continued industrialization, affect the future orca populations and what can we humans act to conserve their numbers?

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1. How do Southern Residents react vocally when in close proximity to orca from another community? Do they become more or less vocally active? Does their call frequency change?

2. Is it possible to distinguish individuals by their vocalizations?

3. When an individual is stranded or beached do either the pod or stranded individual have changes in their vocal patterns?

4. Is there a pattern in the differences that distinguish dialects from one another? If so do these differences only exist in one social level or can it be traced from matrilines to pods to communities?

5. Are there overall patterns in ocra calls? If so do they occur individually, among adolescents vs. adults, males vs. females, daily, seasonally? Do the patterns change during different activities? Do these patterns differ from pod to pod or community to community?

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1. Is noise from Industrial Park impacting the way whales communicate with one another? Do increased noise levels in that area affect their ability to find and catch prey? What does it take for a masking effect to impact the success rate of a foraging whale? What is the stress threshold where orcas exhibit changes in behavior due to “too many” boats in the area?

2. Is the public opinion of whales still positive after recent negative captive whale media coverage? What is the ratio of attacks on humans from whales in captivity compared to those in the wild?

3. Do orcas sleep in a specialized configuration? Do they show preferences of who they are sleeping next to? How does that compare to the general configuration of when they are active? What about foraging versus play?

4. What is the process of establishing a Marine Protected Area? What are the driving factors of a consensus or compromise between various perspectives? Which voices seem to be heard by legislature? How definate do scientific findings need to be? What could a program like Beam Reach do to aid in establishing an MPA? What is the public opinion of the proposed changes in regularion, specifically regarding the MPA on the west side of San Juan Island? What kind of compromise would make everyone happy?

5. What are the impacts of hydropower on an ecosystem? Are their behavioral (or measurable acoustic) changes from the whales in areas that have introduced a form of hydropower? What kind of technologies need to be in place to insure the safety of the surrounding ecosystem?

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2. When killer whales emerged as a species, did they eat fish,
marine mammals, or both?

3. In what ways do residents and transients use sound differently?

4. Do killer whales interact differently with kayaks than other
vessels, and what role does sound play in this distinction?

5. How closely related (geneticially, culturally…) are the northern
and southern residents?

2. Do killer whale calls exemplify Morton’s motivational-structural rules? If so, is this done by call selection, or by the way the call is expressed.

3. Are there calls that have been or are being phased out of the Southern Residents’ call repertoire, and could this be a result of masking by anthropogenic noise.

4. How do the Southern Residents decide where to go? Does one whale make this decision?

5. Why do killer whales keep post-reproductive members of the pod around?

2. When foraging, are the clicks used for communicating between the whales about where the fish are or is it to actually locate the fish, or is it a combination of both?

3. Vessel noise is said to mask the whales’ communication or force them to make their calls louder to be heard over the noise. Is communication more important for socialization or foraging? Is it more damaging for the whales’ socialization calls to be masked or foraging clicks to be masked?

4. How different/similar are the calls, clicks, and whistles between J, K, and L pods? Are there differences in communication or “dialects” between the matrilines of the pods?

5. How long does it take a calf to learn to communicate? Is some of it learned and some of it known or is it all taught?

2. When boat number increases do the whales surface less frequently than when there are less boats?

3. I still want to know how killer whales distinguish Chinook from the rest of the salmon. Is it size they look at or is there something different that they sense for Chinook?

4. Does boat noise mask the echoes of the clicks that are important to the whales?

5. Are the echoes of clicks really shared? I would be curious to do a study to check if the click rate per whale decreases and the number of whales increase.

2. What is the actual cause of death of the majority of whales dying since the population decline began? Ship strike? Starvation? Pneumonia? etc.

3. How does a convergence of noise on a pod in a particular state of behavior affect that state of behavior?

4. How is the chemical contamination of POPs directly affecting the whales’ bioenergetics?

5. What purpose do percussive behaviors serve and are they intended to convey signals via noise or motion?

2. What are the direct bioenergetic costs of increased vocalization in killer whales?

3. What is the primary cause of death in juvenile killer whales?

4. What component of a ship’s propulsion system creates the majority of ambient noise generated?

5. Do killer whales alter their call duration in response to background noise?

2. Would an individual whale be able to learn another dialect?

3. If a calf which had been separated from its pod, would the calf be accepted or rejected in a new pod because of its dialect?

4. What behavioral changes occur in an orca or pod when another dialect is heard?

5. Are there certain frequencies of sound that orcas cannot stand and would cause them to leave a given area?

2. Are tail slaps used to communicate a desired direction change to the remainder of the pod?

3. What are the call rates for each of the five behavioral states?

4. What factors cause the different dialects in killer whales?

5. Where do the Southern Resident killer whales go when they leave the Salish Sea for weeks at a time?

2. How do fishing and other human activities affect the Orcas behavior?

3. How do Orcas react and do their behaviors change when the tidal height and current change?

4. Is there classes or a hierarchy in the social system in an Orca pod?

5. What other social activities do Orcas do as a pod besides hunting?

2. Does call duration vary between each of the five behavioral states classified by the NOAA workshop in 2004?

3. Does boat noise affect call duration during a different behavioral state?

4. Why do killer whales hunt and click in certain areas and not others? What are the characteristics of a foraging hot spot?

5. Why don’t each of the killer whale ecotypes interact with each other?

2. Does SRKW volume change over the 10 week period? If so, at what point does it change and how does it compare with the whale watch season’s peak?

3. Has infant mortality increased with increasing anthropogenic disturbances such as ambient noise and vessel traffic?

4. When in the presence of loud vessels, do SRKWs simply increase their volume, or do they also alter which calls they make and the frequencies of certain calls?

5. Vessel operators present in SRKW critical habitat has dramatically increased over the past 20 years. Have the SRKWs been observed to have proportionately more scaring or other morphologic damage?

2. Do they experience TTS?! Do closer, faster ships cause TTS?

3. Is there a relationship between the background noise level and when the whales stop vocalizing?

4. Do they talk about the same things we talk about? Are all of their vocalizations expressing vital pieces of information? Or do they communicate non-important messages like “I ate too much”, etc.

5. How have the PCBs and other toxins influenced offspring? If they are endocrine disruptors, what are offspring experiencing that original individuals which acquired the toxins did not?

2. The importance of the habitat- why are the Orcas here? Why is this an optimal summer migration area for the Southern Residents?

3. Are certain behaviors more optimal for survival?

4. How much noise can Orcas tolerate before their survival is compromised? Does the Lombard Effect cause reduced fitness?

5. High frequency calls: are there any other types of high frequency calls besides echolocation clicks? What is the highest range of killer whale vocalizations?

2. How do orcas respond to the acoustics of other marine mammals, like gray whales, humpback whales, seals, and sea lions?

3. During socializing events, how much does tail slapping, breaching, and splashing account for their communication and how much is made with whale calls?

4. Do orcas vocalize differently during different times of day (i.e. dawn, daylight, dusk, and night)?

5. How far can orcas be in acoustic contact with each other and how much does noise pollution from human activities reduce that distance?

2. More work on Temporary Threshold Shifts! (Dominique’s topic made me curious about the potential for TTS over the busiest time in Haro — all through the summer.)

3. What do fecal analyses reveal about the diet of SRKWs as the salmon fishery collapses? (This one I got curious about after Ryan spotted that 6 gill shark with the orca teeth marks.)

4. While nobody looked out for this directly, we recognized we had fewer vocalizations in the presence of vessels and Dominique mentioned it at the end of her talk. I guess I would like to see some more numbers on the frequency of calls, clicks, whistles and other vocalizations in and out of the presence of boats.

5. I don’t know if it will ever be possible, but I am still really interested in associating specific calls and meanings, so I would like to see a follow-up on some of the previous Beam Reach research for correlations between calls and behaviors.

2. What are the relationships between sounds produced and specific behaviours in
killer whales? If any what are they?

3. Boat noise vs. killer whales communication: To what degree does boat traffic
noise drown out killer whale communication?

4. What are the differences in calls in male and female killer whales?

5. Do killer whale matrilines appear to respond to matriarch communication?

2. Sound propagation in echolocation clicks: Does distance affect potential masking by ambient noise?

3. Does boat noise affect killer whale behaviour? An investigation of playback studies in the Salish Sea
(not a realistic investigation I know but it would be very interesting to test)

4. Comparison of calls in wild vs. captive orcas: Is captivity hindering/altering communication?

2. How do the lifestyle traits of the Southern resident orca population differ
from that of orcas elsewhere, and how closely can they be interpolated to
correlate with environmental factors?

3. How does acoustic disturbance interact with other existing threats to amplify
the overall threat to survival of the Southern resident population?

4. What are the human noise-inducing activities that appear to have the greatest
short-term impact on orcas?

5. How common is each different type of acoustic disturbance?

2. Is the potential for masking from vessel noise frequency dependant?

3. Does the impact of vessel noise upon an orca (in terms of hearing ability, communication, behavior etc.) vary based on age and/or sex?

4. Are different behaviors displayed by orcas depending on ambient noise level?

5. How much additional energy must an orca expend in order to increase the volume of its call?

2. Is it possible to construct a “voiceprint” for orcas, or to determine whether or not individuals have distinctive characteristics in their vocalizations? How many vocalizations, and of what types, would one need to record for each animal to do so?

3. What factors in the Southern Residents’ physical environment (currents, reflective objects) differ from those of the Northern Residents’ and the transient populations’? Are they significant acoustically? Could these differences impact the nature of their vocalizations, perhaps because certain sounds may carry better (or worse) in their environment than others?

4. How does vocal behavior differ between males and females? individuals of different age? individuals of different rank?

5. The diet of transient orcas includes marine mammals, while that of resident orcas is more composed of fish. If the fats in these prey items differ, does the composition of the acoustic fat in the melon of resident and transient orcas differ? Does that affect the possible sounds they can produce?

2. Do matriarchs vocalize more frequently, and with certain calls more often than non-matriarchs?

3. What is the association pattern of calves with other members of the pod? If we see a calf with a certain animal, how often can we assume it is with its mother? In addition, at what age does association change?

4. Where do SRKW’s go when they’re not in Haro Strait? During the winter?

5. What impact does boating have on the SRKW population? Does it bother them?

2. What will the higher orders of entropy reveal about the orca’s communication?

3. What do their calls mean to them?

4. Is their information transferred in the combination of calls or in the variation between different calls of the same call type?

5. When can we do PLAYBACKS?!

2. What level of information is available to killer whales in their communications?

3. How can the success of community involvement with respect to killer whale conservation be mirrored elsewhere to mitigate human impacts on natural resources?

4. Is there a negative impact on killer whales if they are forced to overcome masking effects of vessel noise?

5. How can variables such as flow noise be minimized to increase the quality of recordings to better acoustic research in marine environments?

2. How does the impact of kayak-based whale watching
compare to the impact of large motor vessels and or
high-speed zodiacs?

3. Can circadian rhythms (or other short scale
rhythms) be observed in orca behavior? What do orcas
do at night? For that matter, what do salmon do at
night?

4. Which characteristic, of an anthropogenic sound,
has a greater impact on orca communication- pitch
(frequency) or volume (amplitude)?

5. How does bathymetry and sea floor composition
affect sound propagation? Do orcas alter their
vocalizations in areas with differing characteristics?

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