April 3- National Tweed Day
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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