Much of this week has been spent closing in on our research proposals which were originally due this morning. However, the whales had their own ideas about how things would go this week. After getting a call about whales off of San Juan again. We quickly got our stuff together, packed some quick lunches from the dining hall and ran to meet the Western Prince at the dock to go on a whale watch. Since there was not enough room in the car for five students and two instructors, Ryan and I went by bike.
On a side note riding to and from town is in my opinon the best way to get there. Although it might be easier at times to row, riding is much more enjoyable working your way through the hilly roads into town. Coming back much of the road is downhill which makes for a great ride. Also, I’ve always enjoyed getting around by bike when and where possible. But I’m getting a little side tracked…back to the whales.
After a seemingly short ride out of the harbor and around the island to where the whales were we finally got there. We were not alone. There was another whale watch boat getting there as we did and more soon showed up. There was also a research boat studing the whales. When the whales are sighted word travels fast and it seems like so many people drop what they are doing to see the whales if they can. Once again it was J Pod, which is the same group as last time. There were certainly noticable differences between sightings. The first time we saw them they were travelling slowly in a very widely spread out group. This time they were slowly milling back and forth in a much closer group.
Seeing them from the water was a great experience for us. It allowed us to get familiar seeing them from a boat for one. Also, it gave us an idea of how close 100 yards from the whales is. Since we need to stay 100 yards or more away at all times due to the whale wise regulations it was important for us to get that concept in our heads. Even from 100 yards you can still get a very impressive view of these creatures. The one slightly disappointing thing about the sighting was the lack of vocals. Twice a hydrophone was dropped of the boat, but it both cases we heard only silence from the whales.
Although J Pod was certainly the highlight of the trip, there was more to come. On the way back we saw porpoises, harbor seals, stellar sea lions, a bald eagle, and oystercatchers. All in all it was a pretty good day. As for our research proposals, they were still waiting for us when we returned. Due to the change in plans our instructors were kind enough to push the deadline to Thursday morning. Now all of us are hard at work finishing them up before the end of the day. Speaking of which I need to get back to mine now that I have spent enough time telling everyone about our exciting second encounter with the whales.
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Going into the second week I think some of us are a little nervous about our initial research proposals which are due Wednesday morning. The good news is most of us our narrowing in on our topics. I still have some uncertainty on mine, however I am leaning towards the vocalizations made during socializing in southern residents. Now I just need to see if I can narrow it down to specifics and define the behaviors I am looking at.
As for the local area I am loving it more and more. This weekend a bunch of us went into town to check out the whale museum which was really well done and had a really nice exhibit set up on acoustics so that we could quiz ourselves on specific orca calls. Then Sunday I went over to Orcas island with some other people from the lab and poked around on the beaches there for a while. Digging around in the rocky inter-tidal zone to see what can be found can be really interesting. Although sandy beaches are really nice, rocky shorelines offer a lot more fun in my opinion. Below is a little something I did while killing time on the beach last week.
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So far, I’ve seen a pod of killer whales, multiple harbor seals, harbor porpoises, and columbian black-tailed dear, a river otter, and the two foxes that just trotted through my field of vision as i sit here at my laptop in my dorm room, which looks out to the waters of Friday Harbor. As an Arkansan, this is pretty exciting (we don’t often see many of those species back home). The kicker is that this is only day five of my two month stay here in the San Juans.
On the first day, we went to Lime Kiln State Park and played around with hydrophones as well as with our intial questions about killer whales. Furthermore, I was deemed seaworthy as a level 1 rower…
On day two, I discovered my preference for riding a bike into town. Me and my classmates tried out our non-existent rowing skills and made it across the harbor into Friday Harbor in a matter of half an hour. There we were greeted by Popeye the harbor seal, something of a celebrity in the marina. Our trip home went much more smoothly, and we made it back in half the time it took to get there initially. However, I’m still sold on using the bikes to get to town because you only have to worry about propelling yourself and not three other people.
On day three, our class time was interrupted by news of J pod’s arrival. Anxious to get a first glimpse at our study subjects (including accompanying whale-watching vessels) we high-tailed it to Lime Kiln and spent two hours watching and listening to the killer whales as they passed by and out of sight.
Today I got my first taste of sailing and, as noted in my biographic section, it’s sure to be my new favorite thing to do. I can say for certain that it beats rowing.
So that’s just a highlighted version of my first week here in Washington. There is way more that I could say, so I’ll be doing my best to add stuff as it comes this week…
more soon…
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     So we just finished an intense first week at Beam Reach. Our first day way was spent touring the labs and taking in the view from scenic Lime Kiln State Park on the west side of San Juan Island. Our second day became even more exciting as we got our first sighting of Orcas. J Pod was along the west side and we were able to get over there in time to see them from a distance of about 1/2 a mile or so. Even at that distance we were able to clearly hear their blows when they came to the surface. It was an exciting way for the whales to welcome us to washington.
Since then we’ve been doing a lot of work with the math and physics of sound and learning about the differences between sound in the air and sound in the water. As someone who hasn’t been in a physics or math course in a while it was very good for me to relearn all these important concepts. I’m sure they will ocme in very handy in the coming weeks.
Today we also got an introduction to sailing and underwater acoustics off of the back dock. Using a little dingy we each sailed out and back. We also used an underwater speaker to play sounds underwater and record them to practice sound analysis this weekend. During the playback a seal popped up near the dock perhaps curious to see what these new sounds were. All in all it was a good way to wrap up the final week of work here.
One thing I love is the atmosphere of the small island community. As someone who has spent most of his life on Cape Cod I would like to consider myself a small town islander but in reality the development of the Cape in recent years has caused it to move away from that small town feeling. Only Nantucket and the Vineyard still come close. However, here in Friday Harbor everyone is friendly and there is a feeling of trust. Nothing around the lab is locked and the town is equally picturesque. As for the scenery, it can’t be beat. With rocky shorlines coming downing to meet the chilly blue waters of the Pacific Northwest its easy to feel at home on the island. In the distance mountains loom adding to the overall effect. I’m greatly looking forward to the coming weeks.
Another exciting thing about living here is the wildlife. As I write this two foxes just ran across the grass in front of my window. In addition to that I’ve seen quite a few black tailed deer along the way and a bald eagle on the way to Lime Kiln our first day. Looking out over the water it is not uncommon to see a seal looking back at you. One seal in particular might come say hello when rowing into town. His name is Popeye due to the fact he is blind in one of his eyes. Our first time rowing into town he came right up to the dock as we tied up our boat and said hello before swimming off again. This weekend I am looking forward to doing some trail running through the woods near the lab.
As for my specific research project I haven’t quite narrowed it down yet. I first wanted to do something with the effect of sonar on orcas but realized that logistically might pose some difficulties. I was also interested in differences in calls between specific age groups but localizing the calls to a specific whale of known age could prove difficult. It seems like every time I come across a new paper I come up with more possibilities and it fuels my motivation. Hopefully this weekend I will be able to narrow it down more. In the mean time I still have some papers I am interested in reading.
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Today we practiced sailing on Jason’s little dingy the Cyprid, as well as testing out how to use the hydrophones and underwater speaker. There was a seagull listening near by, and when he heard the S1 call from the speaker on deck I heard him start to cawk at it- Seabird and Orca communication!
It was so much fun! It really is the best way to sail- and Dominique and I were able to successfully tack on our voyage- which faced perils such as the massive ferry heading full speed towards us (from 1/2 mile away)- but thanks to our tacking techniques we were able to dodge just in the nick of time!
Lindsay and I also poked an anemone off the side of the dock- it sucked our finger and we got Ryan to touch it too! What a wonderful way to end the week!Â
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Well, Friday Harbor is gorgeous-similar to Bar Harbor, though, as many people have eluded to, the mountains here are truly impressive and rather dwarf the entire northeast. Being so close to the water here on campus is also a huge perk-certainly one that I could never take for granted. The campus is apparently home to lots of different creatures which unabashedly wander past Laura, Lindsay, and my duplex-like river otters! Despite their local reputation, I find them adorable.
The program itself has proven to be well worth the loans and the scrambling for extra money so far. First of all because we saw orcas from J-pod on the second day here!!! That event pretty much cleared up any qualms I may have had-ever. Second, the opportunity to examine orcas from a new perspective-acoustics-is very exciting. Thus far I have observed whales and their behaviors at the surface, and as exciting as that has been, I’ve only been privy to an extremely small percent of their lives; a weighty “but what happens now” questioning has always persisted in the back of my mind as the whales dove out of sight. This experience allows for the opportunity to scratch the surface of that question via acoustics…which are more complicated than I had hoped by the way. My complete lack of prior experience in this area of marine science has left me slightly intimidated to be perfectly honest, but also excited to gain a new perspective and hopefully acquire new as well as improved skills.
The next step is to establish my research question. While I have many, feasibility has become quite the issue. I am most motivated to examine a topic whose results can have management implications, as southern residents are endangered, or at least serve as a starting point for others more invested in killer whale conservation. Essentially…I want to shed some light on an aspect of killer whale life history which can be used, ideally to establish management regulations somewhere in the near future. While this may be naive and too far-reaching for a 10-week study by a beginner acoustician, I can’t see my motivations straying much.
Finally, I’m excited for this program as it has great potential to answer many “life questions”, you know, provide some of that clarity stuff-if anything prove where my expertise lie, or not as the case may be, as well as let me check off a bunch of things on my list of “things to do before I die.”
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I have finally made it to the third corner of the country, to another island. I have bounced from Mount Desert Island to Lido Key and now to San Juan Island, so I now consider myself an official island hopper. I like it.
It’s been only a week since I’ve been here, but I already love it. I can’t wait to explore more of the island and what the lab has to offer- rocky coasts are for me. It’s also quite odd how this place reminds me so much of Maine yets fascinates me with its new things at the very same time. The town is laid back, friendly, and kept unlocked just like bar harbor, there are small mountain “hills”, farms, and the lighthouse, and the labs are very much like the COA campus, from the dining hall, the trails, the dock, the library porch, the rope swing and hidden benches, the random labs you can get lost in looking at all the cool things, to the overall “camp” like feeling – and everyone seems to love being here.
But I even love the differences more- the Olympic mountains off in the horizon, the giant bull kelp along shore, the row boats (I LOVE the roat boats), the blooming cherry trees, the river otters and blacked tailed deer roaming all over the lab campus, and the fact that everyone runs to the west side when they hear the orca calls on the radio- something I already got to experience. I also know this is a place I’ll love when I see all the marine biology dorks get together and get excited about seaweed and marine slugs – I want to know all the species of everything on this island!!
It’s also refreshing to get back into class mode since last fall- even though I am scratching my head over all the math and physics of acoustics – I feel I really am going to learn something out of all this, and be able to use it in the future- at the moment now it comes down to deciding on what question to research for my project- I’ve got it narrowed down pretty well at the moment, but more reading to do first.
And thinking that it would be at least a month until I saw orcas, lo and behold we saw J pod on April Fool’s day! (no joke). We just happened to check out the streamlining hydrophones on the website due to Dominique’s insistence 🙂 and after hearing them we went as quick as we could to the West side and Lime Kiln- Val told me, why don’t you check out by that boat in your binoculars- and sure enough I spotted my first Orca! we saw a good number of J pod individuals about 1/2 a mile away- this is only the beginning too!
here’s a picture of our first sighting- kind of far away but I was just excited!! and we could listen to them too while we heard them
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Up to this point we have learned about acoustics and non-salmon fish. Val helped me install a program on my computer to practice orca calls so I can distinguish them. We saw orcas on only the second day here, but there are a lot of other animals too.
I rowed into town today to get groceries. They had some post cards, but I’m holding out for another card store I saw downtown. Dominique and Laura and I are all improving on rowing, and Laura is the best so far. Actually, I guess Ryan and Juan are better but I wasn’t counting them because they took bikes instead today. The food is really good in the cafeteria and they have a lot of variety. I have already met other people from UW that are doing studies of the nervous systems of sea slugs and some other stuff, but ours is the best. Of course I knew that, but when we say we’re from Beam Reach, it is re-inforced because they all say “OH Man! Yours is the best!” Then they say “Aren’t you supposed to be on a boat?, Where’s your boat?” so we explain about that and it’s a good conversation starter.
I picked my topic today. It’s “Jumping for Joy”: Studying the Meaning Behind Breaching and other Percussives (tail slapping, splashing) In San Juan Island Southern Resident Orcas .
I want to do some PR for the program, so I will say that I have already learned a lot more than in a typical classroom. Val and Jason let us use some musical instruments so we could understand some of the acoustic equipment and we did an experiment with clapping outside to measure the speed of sound.
One of the most wonderful things about Friday Harbor is that they seem to love the orcas as much as we do. On the first day they were spotted it seemed like the whole town dropped what they were doing to see them.
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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…
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I realise it has been 3 weekssince the program finished but I have been travelling and haven’t had time to post this blog. Here is how the final week of Beam Reach 07 went down.
 Monday 22nd October
What a bloody busy day! I’ve processed all of my boat data and put them into graphical form for ease of comparison. Still not sure of my stats yet but hope to get some idea for them tomorrow. Work work work.
Tuesday 23rd October to Sunday 28th OctoberAs I write this I am sitting at a table at the airport in Seattle and the Beam Reach Program is now over. Here’s how the one of the busiest weeks of my life went down.Tuesday to Thursday was the same as Monday. I wake up, go to breakfast, get my laptop, go to the library and work on my project. Some days I would change it up and work half a day in my room and half in the library. Exciting I know! I had meetings with Val everyday and we talked about how my project was going and what direction I’m heading in. Tuesday morning was a little different in that we each gave a quick oral presentation on our Sustainability Reports. As I have explained earlier, mine was on outfitting an existing whale watch vessel with a hybrid biodiesel/electric propulsion system. The sustainability part of it was that it’s using a natural fuel that when used is absorbed back into the carbon cycle, and the electric motor is almost silent underwater when slow motoring with the whales. The beauty of it is that whale watch operators could still be able to get to and from a whale watch site at high speeds and would be able to charge their battery in doing so. All it needs is someone to pioneer it. Granted it would be very expensive but if an operator did it and put a lot of marketing in it, who do you think the public would choose: an operator that is like every other operator, or an operator that has a propulsion system that is environmentally friendly and has minimal noise impact on the whales? I know who I would choose. Pretty soon the other operators would be getting the shits because this particular operator is actually the most “environmentally friendly†and getting the majority of the customers, and so the only way they can compete is to outfit their vessels with a similar system. The beauty with it is that as battery technology and electric power advances, the system can be modified to achieve greater efficiency. If only I had the money to do it myself.Thursday I analysed 101 individual echolocation clicks which was somewhat time consuming. I really should have done it earlier but I have a system with the way I work. As some of you probably know I’m somewhat of a perfectionist. I like everything to be organised and so when I write projects I think appearance is a vital part. What I mean when I say this, is that I like to have figures and formats all done before I finish the text part of my document. I hate to finish the paper knowing I have to go over everything and make sure it is all formatted. Granted that is probably how u should do it as content is the most important part of a paper, but I like to know when I’ve finished a paper, I’ve finished it (after a proof read of course), and not have to work about making sure all the graphs can be read easily. I started my presentation also, not surprisingly, I have similar “perfectionism†tendencies when creating powerpoint slides.Friday was crunch time. Up early, worked all day and yep, all night – got 2 hours sleep. Got everything finished of course but I spent way too much time “perfecting†things and could have got a lot more sleep, but I think it was the fact that I’d worked on this project for so long and it was mine, so I wanted everything to be just right. I’m quite happy with the paper overall, but of course, wish I had more time as there are so many more things I could have done with the data I had. Anyway, after 2 hours sleep on Friday night, well, early Sat morning, I got up, practiced my talk again and headed to the Commons at the Labs for the day of talks. Family members of about half the students were there, as were other well respected scientists and members of the industry (Giles, Ken Balcomb, Kari from Soundwatch and others). I was 5th off the rank, last one before lunch, and honestly I thought it went pretty well. It was the first official oral presentation I had done without notes and I was quite satisfied with my effort. I guess it was because I had worked on this paper for 10 weeks and knew it pretty much inside out so was quite comfortable in talking about it. I had to somewhat simplify the contents to make it more understandable to the general public, but I still maintained a scientific yet practical approach to the talk. It was videoed so I’ll be very interested to see what it came out like, as I have never seen what I look like when giving public presentations. During lunch I was chatting to Kari and she wanted a copy of my paper and explained to me the possibility of me going with her over winter to meet with legislators and explaining my science to them, just so they can get a basic understanding on boat noise and echolocation clicks, but particularly vessel types. Granted my work is based on a small sample size but it still really gives you an idea of what different vessels sound like underwater and how they can affect a killer whale’s ability to echolocate. I’m pretty excited as it gives me the opportunity to present science in a way that is different to giving it to an assessor for a grade for a subject. This is something that if happens, will be a fantastic experience.We finished the talks around 3 and overall they were awesome. It was really good to see exactly what everyone had been working on, as we have all been too busy to explain the specifics of our research, so it was exciting to hear what they had found. The quality of the research overall was awesome. We all had one thing in common, and that was the fact that we needed to increase our sample size. But nonetheless, awesome overall.After the talks half of the Beam Reach crew left on the 4:15 ferry so it was kind of a rushed goodbye to people I had got to know well over the past 10 weeks. As Ash and I were the only Aussies on the program and in the same group we formed a great friendship over the program and so it was tough to see her go. I know I will see her again back in Oz so I look forward to catching up with her. No doubt we will keep in touch over the next 12 months. I was absolutely buggered when I got back to the dorms so had to have an afternoon nap (2 hours of sleep will do that to you). We (half of the Beam Reach crew, family and staff) met up after dinner in the dining hall for a Leslie Veirs dessert (always amazing food) and had a bit of a slideshow presentation of some of the awesome photos taken on the program. I’m definitely blowing some of these up and framing them. It was then goodbye to the staff, but I know I will see them again as I’m going to be working (hopefully) only a few miles across the Haro Strait, and I’m confident I will see them out on the water for the Spring and Fall ’08 Beam Reach Programs. I mentioned to Scott about Beam Reach possibly being a co-supervisor for an Honours program I may do in 2009, and he definitely had a positive response so it’s something we can chat about when I settle back down in Canada. I’m excited about the prospect of continuing this kind of work that could potentially have an impact on setting a benchmark for whale watch operator vessels in the future. The operative word however being “potentiallyâ€.Anyway, after having a few drinks with the other students at the labs to celebrate the end of the program, Kenna and I went into town and met Wes and her husband there. I’d never actually been out in Friday Harbor so it was a good night as it was Halloween and pretty much everybody except us had dressed up. It would have been nice if all of us could have been there to celebrate our final night on San Juan Island but it was not to be unfortunately.Sunday I packed up all my gear, copied photos from the Beam Reach computer, said goodbye to Anne who was th
e only one left, and made my way to the ferry. Kenna and her family were on the ferry so I chatted to them, and upon arrival into Anacortes I had to go through Customs as it was an International Ferry from Sidney, B.C. US Customs being US Customs I missed my shuttle by 5 mins, which seriously annoyed me because I had booked the shuttle which you would think would wait for people to get off the ferry as the majority of its passengers would be on the ferry, but no, they left without me. I’m going to get almost a full refund so I guess that’s something. So I get out to the parking lot and yep, a woman had told me that the shuttle had just left. Foreseeing this happen I had already asked Kenna’s parents that if for some reason I miss the shuttle would it be cool if I caught a lift down to Seattle with them as they were flying out the next morning. They were more than happy to help me out so after they got through Customs in their car we re-arranged an already full car of luggage and made our way down to Seattle Airport. They dropped me off, we said our goodbyes, and so here I am at the airport writing this final blog.The Beam Reach program has been a phenomenal experience, one that I will treasure and am very thankful for. It has helped me open up my eyes to what I want to do for the future and has given me invaluable experience to help me path that future. Don’t get me wrong, this experience was a hectic, very full on, sometimes frustrating one, but I’m happy with the outcome and how I conducted myself over the past 10 weeks. It was a great networking opportunity and I was able to make some great contacts in the industry. I learnt al lot about the industry (both scientific in terms of marine mammal biology and bioacoustics, and eco-tourism) and this has definitely helped me get a foot in the door for potential work in the near future. Of course, the marine mammal interactions were fantastic and they will stick with me forever. I learnt a great deal and will be coming back next season to get another fix! Thanks again to everyone at Beam Reach for the great experience and the great memories, and thanks to Flinders University for allowing this program to count as the final part of my undergraduate double degree. I will definitely be promoting Beam Reach to all those that are interested, and would be happy to answer any queries people may have. Although these blog/log book entries have often been long-winded, I hope you have enjoyed reading them.
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