class resources and references

marine environmental issues

• Puget Sound Partnership (Recent effort to coordinate marine ecosystem recovery)
• Puget Sound Action Team: State of the Sound 2004 (Archived PDF)

orca overviews

• NOAA/NMFS orca page
  1. 2008 Final Recovery Plan [1.8Mb PDF, 251pp]
  2. Revised Draft Conservation Plan (October 05, 2005) [1.0Mb PDF, 189pp]
  3. NOAA/NMFS 2004 Status Review [1.9Mb PDF, 96pp]
• Center for Biodiversity orca overview and recommendations
• Canada Draft Recovery Strategy (March 16, 2005)
• Ken Balcomb's reading list (html) for Earth Watch groups
• ACS Online killer whale issues
• Rick Keil's orca powerpoint presentation

scientific papers, reports, theses, etc

• Sound Exposure and Southern Resident Killer Whales (Holt, 2008; NOAA/NMFS Technical Memorandum)
• Sound Exposure of Southern Resident Killer Whales (Griffin and Bain, 2006) [source]
• Theses related to southern resident killer whales (Osborne, 1999; Foote, 2005; Hauser, 2006; McCluskey, 2006)
• Orca Relief research results (Mark Anderson et al's 3 sponsored papers plus links to other key literature)
• BR /research/whales directory
• Photo identification guides (from the Center for Whale Research)
• Marine Mammal Populations and Ocean Noise: Determining When Noise Causes Biologically Significant Effects, 2005, NRC
• Ocean Noise and Marine Mammals, 2003, NRC

acoustics: general

• NOAA Ocean Acoustics Program (Director, Dr. Brandon Southall)
• Discovery of Sound in the Sea (U of Rhode Island)
• NOAA/PMEL acoustics primer
• Val's page on sound basics
• NOAA Symposium on Shipping Noise
• Mellinger's Acoustic Assessment Workshop Report (PDF)
• Animal Bioacoustics resource page (NOAA/PMEL)
• Acoustic Ecology
• World Forum for Acoustic Ecology
• CIBRA - Center for Interdisciplinary Bioacoustic Research (in Italy; has good long list of references and soft/hardware guidance)

acoustics: software packages

• Syrinx for spectral analysis, editing, and playback (Windows; free)
• Ishmael (Windows; PMEL pub; free)
• Rainbow Click (Windows; click detection and localization; free)
• Logger (Windows; GPS and localization logging; free)
• AcousticLocation (Matlab routines to calculate the locations of sound sources; free)
• XBAT (Extensible sound analysis application and MATLAB platform [automatic detectors!]; free)
• Audacity (OSX, Windows, Linux; open source; free)
• Signal Scope (OSX)
• Sound Forge (v.8.0, 30-day free trial, $300; Windows only)
• Canary (Mac OS 9.2 and older; Windows)
• Raven (OSX; Windows) Download links: 1.2 | 1.3 (beta in Fall 2006)
• R (statistics)
• PRAAT: doing phonetics by computer
• EthoLog behavioral observation transcription tool (Windows)
• Seadragon Whistle simulator and detector (Java Runtime Environment)
• PamGuard = Passive Acoustic Monitoring (automatic detection and localization; opensource Java-based; free)

acoustics: equipment and hardware

• T-POD (Chelonia Ltd, Long Rock, UK): static passive acoustic monitoring device with self-contained submersible data-logger commonly used to record porpoises and dolphins and to inform environmental impact studies (EIS) of offshore wind farms.

• Fish tags

  • Hydroacoustic Technology, Inc. (fish tags, receivers, arrays; based in Seattle)
  • POST: Pacific Ocean Shelf Tracking
  • TOPP: Tagging of Pacific Pelagics
  • Acoustic tags in Big Beef steelhead (Kitsap Sun, May 9, 2006)
  • Vemco (fish tag) tutorials and other resources

local interest groups

• San Juan County Marine Resource Committee, Friday Harbor, WA, USA
• The Whale Museum, Friday Harbor, WA, USA
• The Center for Whale Research, San Juan Island, WA, USA
• Orca Network (Sightings email and archives) | (Beam Reach mirror of sighting archives)
• Whale Watch Operators Association Northwest
• Orca Relief, San Juan Island, WA, USA
• Cascadia Research Collective, Olympia, WA, USA
• BC Sighting Network
• Johnstone Strait Killer Whale Interpretive Centre Society, Telegraph Cove, BC, Canada
• Friends of the San Juans, Friday Harbor, WA, USA
• American Cetacean Society, Puget Sound Chapter, Seattle, WA, USA
• Long Live the Kings, Orcas Island and Seattle, WA, USA

general whale references

• From AAAS session on "What Cousteau never knew about whales" (via Catherine):
  
  • Christopher Clark (Cornell): Long distance blue whale calls
  • Roger Payne (Ocean Alliance): Sperm whales inform global pollution
  • Craig Smith (U Hawaii): Whale falls in the deep sea
  • Steve Palumbi (Stanford): Whale history from DNA

marine protected areas (MPAs)

• Rational design of MPAs in the San Juan Islands by Danny Grunbaum, Terrie Klinger, and Alan Trimble.

tides and currents

• Xtide Harmonic tide clock and tide predictor (Unix, MacOSX)

Sailing

• Basic navigation (US Sailing)
• Rules of the road (US Sailing)

Sustainability and service project

• San Juan County Renewable Energy Producers Cooperative. Contact Sandy Bishop on Lopez, Kyle Davies on San Juan, or Eric Youngren on Orcas or lclt@rockisland.com for more info.

FHL, Friday Harbor, and San Juan County

• Friday Harbor Laboratories
• Historical timeline by Claudia Mills
• 100 things to do in Friday Harbor (at fridayharbor.com)
• Future impacts of growth for San Juan County (cached from http://www.doebay.net/appeal.html)

Press

• Seattle PI article: Orca Relief brochures on WA State ferries
• Whales and noise, Newsletter of the Vancouver Aquarium, Sept 13, 2004

Whale Watching

• Relevant links from the Whale Museum
• Northwest Whale Watch Operators guidelines

Miscellanea

• Statistics for practical people
• Linear regression in Excel
• This dynamic Earth: the story of plate tectonics, Kious and Tilling, USGS.