Beam Reach

Methods: Day 1

I had a really great science-experience today and I figure that since those sorts of events are more important to write about than my fascination over the physiology of raspberries, it’s important to get it down now.

Today is the first full day back on the boat. We stayed in North Bay last night, and since we weren’t getting very clear indications about where the orcas were this morning we decided to head southward, usually not a bad place to be for whale-watching. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any whales today, but perhaps what we did accomplish was more important; we not only started planning out our group methods, we actually did a pretty good practice run too.

Sam and I need the hydrophone array for localization purposes, and Ash has volunteered to help us out with that. We have a whole complicated arrangement; after we’ve all worked together to deploy the array into the water (which was an enormous operation because of how tangled the cable was) Sam is taking bearings with the compass, Ash is taking pictures of the orcas, and I’m going to completely ignore the orcas so I can count and ID all the boats in the area. The array is going to be used with Val’s computer and the orange box, which we were trying to name earlier. It’ll probably end up being called “Ron Weasley, though I think it would be funnier to call it “Bloody Hell.” Somehow I don’t feel like that would go over too well with Val though. Someone needs to be on the computer too, that’ll probably be me since boats really don’t take that long to count. And 400 meters, the radial limit I was originally considering, is actually VERY small! I might have to reassess that distance simply so that I can have a more reliable data pool. Tim and Anne are using the high frequency hydrophone, the “pothead,” I thought Tim’s name “Uber Doobie” was a lot funnier.

The test that we did first was to anchor the dinghy to a certain location and to deploy a speaker from which an S1 call was emanating, we used the array to record sounds from that. Sam got bearings, Ash got pictures, I monitored the recordings. It went pretty well I thought. Then Val did echolocation clicks using two hammers and we got recordings of that, Anne and Tim got recordings using the HF hydrophone also. Finally, Val got into the dinghy and did pass-bys, I had to use the range-finder for that and it doesn’t help that I can’t hold the device steady. But we got some pretty good recordings and data there too. So we practiced methods for orca calls, echolocation clicks AND boat noise. We may not have seen orcas, but I still think today was really great because we were a lot more structured than we tend to be when orcas are around, maybe it’s because it was the first week but it would seem to get a little chaotic whenever orcas were sighted. I was excited about seeing them too, but the cold thing was definitely a damper for me. Speaking of which, thanks to the gear that my mom sent, and maybe a little of my own acclimatization, the weather hasn’t bothered me at all so far, which is really great. Another important thing about today, now when we DO see orcas, we’ll be ready and know exactly what to do.

I’m on science log tomorrow, so I better run to get everyone’s details, then start to put together the crazy puzzle I’ll have to present tomorrow.