Beam Reach

More hydrophone calibrations

Monday, September 24, 2007

After Anne’s freshly baked bread for breakfast, we completed our chores and sat down to voyage planning. We discussed goals for the day, as well as goals for the week. We lifted anchor and motored out of Snug Harbor for a quick lunch and then set up our hydrophone calibration. The speaker was dropped off the starboard side of the Gato Verde, while 7 hydrophones strung together were lowered off the port side. We played S1 calls, cal tones, and tones to try to calibrate our hydrophone array, high frequency hydrophone, and Marla Holt’s high frequency hydrophone. After disassembling all of the gear, Todd spotted two cargo ships on the horizon and Tim wanted to try to record vessel noise with the high frequency hydrophone. Shannon took photos, Anne held the hydrophone, Alex found distance with the range finder, and Sam helped with recording data. We rolled out the jib and sailed north for a little, waiting for the ferry at 1630. As the ferry approached, Tim used the high frequency hydrophone again to record vessel noise. After the ferry passed, we headed to Reid Harbor on Stuart Island for the night. We tied up to the dock, and Alex made eggplant parmesan with linguine for dinner. Shannon was aching for a stroll—so, she, Val, and Ashleigh attempted to check their voice messages at the top of the hill, but only Val was successful. Then Shannon updated this blog and Ashleigh and Marla discussed Marla’s thesis research. Anne baked a second loaf of bread. Alex caught up on her Vanity Fair reading. Sam tried unsuccessfully to get online. And Tim worked with Val on creating a calibration curve for the high frequency hydrophone.

Roche Changeover

Sunday, September 23, 2007

We had a bit of a sleep in and woke up for breakfast at 8:30 am at Roche Harbor. Shannon took her weekly shower as the rest of the team packed up their stuff to move off the Gato Verde. The rest of the morning was spent cleaning up and catching up on data entry. After lunch of grilled cheese and tomato soup, we joined the land team for a talk by guest expert, Marla Holt. Dr. Holt spoke about studying acoustics in marine mammals. Val, Anne, Ashleigh, Tim, Sam, Alex, and Todd climbed onboard, settled in, and unpacked the food for the week. We disconnected from shore power and motored out of Roche Harbor as the sun was just starting to sink a bit lower in the sky. We pulled into one of our favorite haunts for the night, Snug Harbor. Anne started baking some bread using Jason’s sourdough starter, “Bubbles,” and then started knitting a hat for Ashleigh. Todd hoisted students up the mast, with Sam first in line and Tim second. Alex read, Shannon caught up on email, Val boosted the memory in the Beam Reach laptop, and Tim and Ashleigh prepared veggie burgers for dinner.

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.

Elf Shoe Extravaganza

Friday, September 21, 2007

Wes and Heather prepared scrambled eggs, avocado, and toast for breakfast. After chores and our morning meeting, we lifted anchor at Mackaye Harbor. Wes, Liz, and Kenna hoisted the main and unfurled the screecher. Mike was going over parts of the boat with all the students, while Shannon read over students’ methods for their proposals and Jason worked on amp calibration. Jason got a call from a previous BeamReacher who had spotted whales heading south from Lime Kiln, so we pulled in the screecher and headed north along the coast of San Juan Island. We found members of J and L pods. We spent about five hours with the whales again today—recording calls, whistles and echolocation clicks, and recording surface behaviors, bearing, distance, and identification. We watched spyhops, breaches, tail slaps, and pec slaps. We also caught many glimpses of the highly elusive elf shoes and Elise even snapped a couple of photos.< Just as we were getting ready to head back south for the evening, Tim and Ashley radioed us from Prince of Whales, a whale watching vessel they had joined for the day from Victoria. As the sun was setting, Kenna and Shannon prepared eggplant parmesan for dinner and we headed into Fisherman’s Bay on Lopez Island.

A Quiet Night at the Labs

It is a Friday night. My big plans are to watch a movie and eat popcorn. It’s been a busy week, and I’m enjoying the quiet.

Our time on land has been productive. We did an exercise on energy and human dietary choices, did a statistics exercise, met with the sea group for an amazing curry dinner- thank you sea group for cooking delicious food so that I didn’t have to eat another turkey sandwich, and talked about sustainability and choices in our lives. And we turned in our final research proposals. I finally settled on a topic. I will be investigating the effects of depth on the killer whale’s production of echolocation clicks. To do this, we will have to stop the boat and deploy the hydrophone array vertically through the water column. Everyone else can collect their data from a horizontally towed array. I guess this is just one more example of me wanting to do something different and independent.

Like I said above, it’s been a busy week. Even our time off has been productive. Alex went to Lacrover Farm to wash onions in the cold wind. Sam went out to the Center for Whale Research to move rocks (there was no data to be entered, so why not move rocks?), and tomorrow she’s going to Seattle to “bounce sound off of fish.” Tim and Ash are in Victoria, Canada. Tim is talking to whale watching operators to arrange “drive-bys” so that he can make recordings of underwater boat noise. The two are probably enjoying big city life. And I went to the Whale Museum today to meet with their education director to talk about possible volunteer opportunities. I will be creating part of a presentation that will be given to school groups on the Southern Resident Killer Whales and their acoustic environment. I will also be part of (coordinating?) the Whale Museum’s event for the People for Puget Sound’s 2007 Kid’s Day. I’m not quite sure what this means, but the day is a month off, and it should be a lot of fun.

Tomorrow, Alex and I are going to tackle shopping for a week’s worth of food for nine people. We’re determined to have it all done in two hours or less. This means I can’t linger over all of the beautiful vegetables at the farmer’s market, but I will definitely have to buy some lemon cucumbers (like a regular cucumber, but yellow, lemon shaped, and especially delicious) and ana kiwis (grape-sized, fuzz free kiwis that grow on island).

Now, time for that popcorn…

J and L pods are back!

Thursday, September 20, 2007

As Elise and Heather prepared breakfast, we motored out from Garrison Bay to Roche Harbor to pump out our holding tank and fill up our water tank. We heard that J and L pods were near the lighthouse, off the west coast of San Juan Island, so we headed through Mosquito Pass and turned south. We caught up with J pod first and followed them southwest. The day was filled with recording calls, whistles and clicks, as well as collecting data on behavior, bearing, distance and identification. We spent almost 5-6 hours with whales, only breaking for lunch (egg salad). The whales spyhopped, tailslapped, and breached. We were able to successfully identify L2, L88, L67, L78, J1, J2, J16, J17, J26, J27… through binoculars using the photo ID catalog. Towards the end of the day, we watched a large group resting, as individuals from J and L pods caught up with them. At around 5:30 pm, we motored towards our anchorage for the night, back at Mackaye Harbor on Lopez Island.

Sailing and Whale Museum Talk

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

We woke up in Aleck Bay at Lopez Island. Still no whales, but the wind had picked up, so we decided to try our luck and sail west towards Vancouver Island. We raised the main sail and the rolled out the screecher. Mike discussed the use of emergency flares and VHF marine radios. Kenna and Shannon went through the phonetic alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Unicorn, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu). The whole group also practiced knots—bowline, clove hitch, figure eight, square knot, round turn and two half hitches, and sheet bend. After lunch, we discussed sustainability and issues such as how to eat meat sustainably, what sustainability means to each of us, and sustainability in different cultures. We then had to prepare dinner for a pot luck with the land team. Jason baked bread and whipped up a veggie curry. We met up with the other group at English Camp in Garrison Bay to catch up socially and further discuss sustainability as we enjoyed dinner. Afterwards, we piled into the van to drive to our weekly whale museum talk. D.B. Giles discussed her thesis dissertation research on biogeography of the southern residents. We toasted Val’s birthday on Thursday and headed back home to clean our dirty dishes.

Practice run

 Tuesday, September 18, 2007

After waking up in Mackaye Harbor, we motored away from Lopez Island and headed north to parallel the west coast of San Juan Island. The students continued to work on their final proposals and some began to read Kenna’s choice for this week’s journal club, Quantitative tools for comparing animal communication systems: information theory applied to bottlenose dolphin whistle repertoires. Once we saw a fleet of fishing boats, the students practiced their roles for data collection. Liz called out with boat, or “whale” to focus on while recording behaviors, Elise listened to “calls”, Kenna took ID photos, Heather measured bearing relative to the Gato Verde, and Wes recorded distance to our boat using the rangefinder. Afterwards, they discussed ways to improve and optimize data collection. Unfortunately, the whale’s locations were not in our favor today, so we headed back to Lopez island as the sun was setting. Wes prepared pasta with vegetables in cream sauce for dinner.

BeamReach Life Aquatic

 

Monday, September 17, 2007

The new sea team (Liz, Elise, Kenna, Heather, and Wes) woke up to a cloudy day in Roche Harbor. After breakfast, we topped up the water tank and motored out of the harbor, while we discussed plans for the day. Unfortunately, there were no whales and no wind. So the students discussed how to optimize data collection as a team and organized who would be collecting what during whale observations. Then the students worked on their final proposals, while Jason and Shannon graded and returned previous assignments. After a delicious lunch prepared by Wes and Jason, the wind picked up enough for Mike to go through the points of sail. After practicing tacking and chicken jibing with the main sail and screecher, the students settled back down to their computers. We arrived into Mackaye Harbor at Lopez Island as the sun was setting and Heather was starting to prepare quesadillas for dinner. After dinner, the students finished up their work and we watched Life Aquatic.