Beam Reach

Data Analysis NOT going well

After shopping with Anne this morning for food (I hope we got enough for everything), I had to run some errands and go into town. When I got back, after dinner I started doing the data analyses for some files that I had gotten from the hard drive that Val brought for me this morning. In the process I came to the unfortunate realization that I had been using a bad background file to analyze almost all of my “best” files, so I ran to Fernald to run the file through the Beam Reach Analyzer again to redo everything. But the one computer with the software on it wasn’t working, even though I did a couple of forced shut-downs. Nothing doing.

Perturbed but still determined, I decided to try to analyze the few files that I DID have good background files for. Or so I thought. For three samples, things look pretty decent, though I’m still worried about the source levels being too low. I’m wondering if something went wrong with the analysis we did this week of the calibration files, because the sensitivity seems off. So, that was with the good background file.

Now I thought I had TWO good background files given that I had just made both earlier today (part of the errands earlier) but when I tried plugging the second one in to the boat recording files to calculate source levels, it made no sense at all. I thought it was a background file because it’s before all my other files, but it’s way too high to be background, so I’m going to have to try another file tomorrow…hopefully the computer WORKS then…There were a LOT of boats around on September 15. Will all of my “background” files be like this? Am I going to have to throw away over 10 of my recording samples? Are all of the rest of my samples going to be like this if I keep using the array? I really need to try using the blue box, maybe because it was the first hydrophone we worked with but I feel a bit safer with it.

That is part of the process of data analysis I suppose, but that doesn’t make me feel much better. On another unhappy note, it is supposed to be cool and rainy most of this week. I hope…that the computer works tomorrow, and I find a good file, and my data makes sense, and that the cold won’t mess me up like it did the first week…I just want everything to work out.

K and L pods

Saturday, September 22, 2007

We motored out of Fisherman’s Bay on Lopez early to beat the tides. Jason cooked pancakes as we went through Cattle Pass and soon we hit the largest swells (5-6 ft) we had experienced on BeamReach. We struggled through our morning chores in the high seas and gathered out on deck to get some fresh air. A couple of the students were feeling a bit sea sick, so we had a fairly easy morning as the rest of us practiced knots. Mike had the students practice a couple of man overboard drills. After lunch of egg salad, we headed out past Beaumont Shoals and towards Hein Bank to find K and L pods. When we saw the whale watching vessels, we deployed the hydrophone array and set up to record data. There were some good opportunities for possible localizations and some whales seemed to be investigating the hydrophones, clicking at the array and getting quite close to it. We moved slowly up along the coast of San Juan Island, collecting data and recording vocalizations. In the late afternoon, we saw a group of whales very close to shore that were breaching, tail slapping, and even cartwheeling. After hours of recording, the batteries died on one of the solid state recorders just as it was time to head up to Roche Harbor for the evening. We pulled into our slip as taps was being played at Roche and there was a spectacular sunset. Elise prepared a fabulous dinner of stir fry with veggies and fake chicken and Liz entertained us with stories from Dr. 90210.