the whales are back!
 yesterday after making a few phone calls in the morning we found J-pod off the southern tip of San Juan! We got some wonderful recordings along Salmon Bank – and even though it was cold, raining, and miserable, I don’t think any one of the beam reacher’s noticed – in fact I think I can say for everyone it was our best day yet – I’ve never seen so many breaches and tail slaps in my life!!
 The coolest part was when J27 was following directly behind us for about 20 minutes (he seemed to like us) not only did he completely jump out of the water (which we could pick up on the radar!) but he clicked away loud and clear staight towards our hydrophones – and we’re pretty sure we got some foraging actions with all his deep dives and clear clicks with no calls for the duration. It was very cool and I can’t wait to look at the data!
 My other task, (which of course is more reliant on finding time now in between our hopefully now frequent sightings) is to start deploying my light bulb clicks and test for some masking effects. I was a bit daughted for a while about getting it all done, mostly because I hadn’t actually found a good enough mechanism for making a click – but my most recent recordings show that my light bulb bursts aren’t so bad after all- so now I feel like I’m going somewhere.
 It should only get better (and busy busy busier) from now on – and it should be sunny and warm by the end of this week!!
~Laura~
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Roche Harbor to Snug Harbor
We didn’t catch up to the whales again today, but there were some conflicting reports, probably because some transients were in the area of Kelp Reef and then moved down past Discovery Island. Under that decoy cover it seems that J-pod headed north past Active Pass, probably heading for the Fraser River again. Although we didn’t see whales we did have a very productive science day. Marla finished off her lecture on masking, critical ratios, critical bandwidths, directional effects on masking, and temporary threshold shifts. It is always good to have her expertise available to the students as they are grappling with these complex issues. During the day we managed to deploy the CTD to measure the sound speed profile at various depths. The sound speed was very close to 1480 meters per second at all but the deepest points we went, where it peaked at 1482 meters per second. We dropped Val and Marla off at Snug in the afternoon and spent the rest of our time analyzing data. The students are making good progress on our data from yesterday which is exciting. Keep tuned in for exciting findings….
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Garrison Bay to Roche Harbor
Today was a good day. We started calling other people in the whale network and found J pod by Lummi Island in Bellingham Channel. We made our way around the south side of San Juan and Lopez islands and finally found them. At 14:20:00 we started recording whale data for the first time in our research trip. The first 45 minutes or so the whales were silent then at the we got great recordings of calls and clicks. We also got to see a lot of behavioral events like breaching and tail-slapping. We stayed with them and continued to record until 17:24:28 with one break inbetween to turn on the generator and catch up to the whales. Once we finished with the whales we motored around to Roche Harbor to spend the evening. Our last report was from Orca Spirit and they said the whales were slowly heading west. And we hope to be able to catch up to them again tomorrow.
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Jones Island to Garrison Bay
We left Jones Island this morning and sailed through Speiden channel. Because it was calm conditions we practiced doing actual jibes. Around one o’clock we picked up Val and Marla Holt at Snug Harbor. Marla will be on until Wednesday teaching us what she knows about sound and masking in the killer whales. We also used Marla’s hydrophone in addition to all of our own to perform another calibration exercise playing pure tones out of the underwater speaker. While we had the hydrophones out Dominique also managed to record a passing ship and Laura managed to record light bulbs breaking underwater. In the evening we started analyzing the calibration data that was collected in the afternoon.
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On land at FHL to Jones Island, North Bay
We loaded the boat on Sunday at noon when the Gato Verde arrived. We departed the Labs after talking with a guest expert: Gary Greene, a marine geologist from the non-profit Tombolo and Moss Landing. Scott had also joined us for some time, fiddling with computers and metadata, though he left us for the night to fullfill his Mother’s day duties. We embarked around 1630 with decent winds and headed for the North Bay of Jones Island. A beautiful place to spend the night, especially since we were tied up to a dock and were free to roam the small island — a State park. We took advantage of the land opportunity by taking our dinner out to the picnic tables on the beach and finished the night by huddling around a computer to watch a couple episodes of Planet Earth: Iceworld and Caves.
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It is disconcerting to me that J pod did not re-visit the west side of San Juan Island during the first two-week research cruise of the spring Beam Reach program. I joined the ship last Thursday fully expecting our fish tagging exercise to be interrupted by the returning southern residents. There was even a tantalizing missive from the respective American and Canadian killer whale God-fathers (from Ken Balcomb with allusions to John Ford) the previous day:
“Thursday, 1 May 2008 @ 13:41 …somewhere between here and Nanaimo there are 12-15 other whales that were heading south past John Ford’s house at sunset last night. It is about an 18 hour trip typically from there, so we could see whales any moment.”
But we were off Lime Kiln on Thursday and Friday and heard nothing but lingcod depth measurements. And so I returned to Seattle and listened fervently through the weekend — Port Townsend in one ear, Lime Kiln or OrcaSound in the other. I heard a lot of ships and noted that something seems to be beating the PT hydrophone during peak current flow, but there were no familiar calls or clicks.
Thus, I’m up late re-visiting my previous analysis of the historical sighting data. The general pattern is that there aren’t many days when southern residents are sighted (or heard) in Haro Strait during March, but the sightings per month steadily increase from April through June.
We designed the spring Beam Reach curriculum around these data which suggest that there is high likelihood of getting some preliminary data from J pod during the final two weeks of April. Analysis of the archives confirms that there are typically more sightings at the end of April than during the beginning.
Of course, our diligent (and patient!) students are now back on land analyzing simulated data sets so they’ll be ready for the arrival of J pod in May. We’re now about a week into May and J pod hasn’t been definitively sighted in the Salish Sea for nearly a month. When last seen on April 8th at 2pm, they were heading southwestward from Hein Bank into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, gateway to the Northeast Pacific.
Who else will be worried if they don’t return by this Thursday? The trend in sightings per month is hinting that 2008 is shaping up to be an unusual year. While March sightings were about average, April sightings were the lowest observed in the last 7 years. (There may be biases in these values, but if anything the sighting effort was less in the past, so older values are expected to be relatively low — not high!) Will May set a record low as well?
All this has me wondering what is going on out there. Has something appalling happened, akin to the surreptitious killing of California and Stellar sea lions in the Columbia River on Sunday? Or is there a problem with the fish that the residents prefer to eat: salmon, and Chinook in particular? We know that the California runs have essentially failed this year, with the commercial Chinook fishery mostly closed along the West Coast for the first time in more than 40 years.
Surprisingly, it’s proving very difficult (even for an oceanographer like me) to get a coherent overview of what marine fish are around Puget Sound. The data I’ve found and ways Beam Reach is helping to fill the gaps are the topic of my next post…
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Today on land I performed an experiment in order to measure the attenuation of a light bulb breaking under water. At the FHL dock a lined up the array with the CRT in place of hydrophone D. At the other end of the dock I lowered a light bulb about 4.8 m in depth 35m away from the CRT, and 75 away from Hydrophone A, etc, and dropped a weight on the bulb to make it break. I recorded two files, one with our class gain settings, and the second with the gain settings as low as the sound devices allowed me to put them, because I could hear the light bulb breaking under water and I imagined the sound would clip on the recording devices. Tim Hunt helped me out setting up the experiment and gave me some advice.
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i didn’t get a chance to post these at port while at sea- so here’s my journal entries from the last few weeks:
4-20-08
Well it’s my first official night on the Gato Verde. Lo and behold I ended up in the portside forecastle – I volunteered, I kind of like it. It’s definitely the smallest space I’ve ever slept in – but it’s roomier than I thought – though I wonder how organized I’m actually going to be (and how moist).
But here the sea is completely around me, literally 6 inches to the right and left of me – I can hear every creek of the boat and the ripples of the water – I have a little port hole window looking out to the water and a hatch to look straight out to the sky – I know I’m not very far away from everyone (I can hear Juan and Ryan talk at the moment) but I’ve already gotten lost in solitude here.
I remember my time in the forecastle last time in the Harvey Gamage – the initial anxiety that soon turned into comfort, ease, and enjoyment – I’m just slightly in the anxiety phase right now – that I hope I can do everything phase-
In fact tomorrow I’ll be getting up to explore Jones Island a bit with Scott!
 4-22-08
Earth Day!
Today we headed out of Prevost Harbor into the high seas after spending the night at the dock at Stewart Island. We had maybe 3-4 foot waves with 20-30 knot winds! It was my favorite time to sail – I love the adventure of it!
The night before I strolled around Stewart Island – it was so quiet – all I could hear was my echo travel in a circle around the inland water and the croaking of frogs.
5-2-08
So much has happened that I haven’t blogged about- guess I’ve been out at sea too long (I’m not complaining).
I definitely got over that anxiety part- I sure don’t mind my bunk and life on the boat got easy pretty quick- I don’t even mind not eating meat (except with a few occasional binges on shore). We haven’t seen any whales yet (we’re starting to wonder why they aren’t here), but we did see some Stellars and a Dall’s Porpoise (I’m still pulling to see a Gray whale). There have been some wonderful quiet nights and sunsets while anchored on the Gato Verde and it’s great to just be surrounded by nature and the tides are the currents.
Even though some of us seemed a bit groggy to get back on the boat last week for our second round, I quickly woke out of it when we decided to head out for Port Angeles in search of transients. I had very much wanted to go to the Olympic Peninsula – and it was good to on a “far†voyage from the San Juan islands – though we didn’t encounter any rough seas…I don’t think mountains or the sea for that matter will ever cease to fascinate me!
And yesterday I caught my first ever fish (3 for that matter…)!! (and yes I have been fishing before- I just was never lucky enough to catch a fish!). Eric came by to try out his fish tags for the lingcod- and I caught a 26-inch lingcod that we named Ted for our first candidate! The surgery went well and after my shaky release of Ted we could hear his sonar tag with the hydrophone! Today as we wait as Roche Harbor for our broken engine were going to go back out again to get another fish for the second tag- all of the few fish we caught yesterday afternoon either became eagle food or food for eagle disputes – perhaps I’ll catch another one!
Other than that my primary work has been to figure out how to make my own high frequency “clicks†to play under water. So far I have attempted to burst a light bulb and get the speaker to play some previously recorded clicks, although they don’t have a great enough amplitude yet in my opinion to be heard under water, or travel very far either- but I think once I get part this hurdle I can really move forward in my project, and while I don’t need the whales as my as my classmates- I really do hope they come when we are back at sea in a week.
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Since the last entry, nearly two whole weeks of sailing have gone by! Unfortunately, I am posting a blog because the engine is out of commission for the next couple days as salt water got sucked into it through the air intakes; until it gets fixed, we sit here at Roche Harbor amongst the fancy yachts with terrible names such as the Victoria’s Other Seacret, Neverland, and La Sea. There is one perk, however…well, two, the first being that there are coin-operated showers!! Big deal here on the Gato Verde where freshwater is in high demand and short supply, especially hot water which is contingent on the engine running-this is further hard to come by on a vessel which primarily propels itself by harnessing wind power. Number two perk: the vessel thoughtfully broke down in a time where the whales seem to have disappeared. I should be used to no-sighting events like these occurring and certainly should have learned by now to never get my hopes too high-but it’s hard!!  I guess what I have learned is that I will inevitably get excited beyond the point of healthy when it comes to whale sightings. I am starting to worry about when they will return in order to start gathering data. While I am starting to become more and more confident that I will be more useful and productive on the policy end of ocean/marine mammal conservation, I am also finding it more and more vital to have participated in the research process first in order to most effect conservation. For this to happen I need those orcas!!
On the other hand, sailing in the absence of whales has been simply amazing and has passed the time quite quickly. When they do finally decide to grace us with their presence, we will be super sailors handling those lines and sails like pros. My favorite part of the day has been raising the main sail. It’s getting the point where the captain has altered his offer to raise the sail to “does anybody BUT Dominique want to raise the main sail?†Sometime soon though, he promised I’ll get to do it by myself!
With so few people on the boat, I’ve been able to frequently participate in most every sail task, resulting in a much better understanding of wind and wave dynamics, how sails should be set in response to such dynamics, and how to manage the sails and lines in different conditions and situations. My second favorite part of the day is the navigation duty. This job requires one to listen to the VHF radio in order to gather local marine weather forecasts, check tides and currents and their forces as well as list any navigational hazards we might encounter. From this gleaned information the navigator must pick a destination which suits the tides and weather conditions and figure out how long it will take to get there. Fun! Finally, my third favorite part of the day is bedtime. Being out in the elements, which are always quite numbingly cold, combined with moving about and maintaining balance on a boat for 11-12 hours is really tiring! The gentle rocking of the boat only makes it more difficult not to simply lay back and be lulled to sleep. I have never before gone to bed at 10pm for more than one or two nights in a row! I haven’t even been able to finish my book as 10 pages per night are all I can muster before crashing, despite the cold.
Overall everything is going well as there is never a shortage of things to do, both sailing related as well as practice-data collection and analysis related. My inevitable inability to stay warm hasn’t even been able to sour the experience! The scenery is beautiful and my pictures folder on the computer is filling exponentially by day with shots of the landscape, sailing, classmates, and organisms we’ve encountered so far. Surprisingly, though, I’m finding I miss northern New England and even Maine, much to the satisfaction and “told you so†of some in particular.
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Today we focused on fishing for the opening day of lingcod season. Everyone caught at least one fish, with several lingcod (too small for tagging unfortunately), and a few quill back rockfish. Laura caught the first taggable fish, a 26 inch lingcod. The surgery was performed after a few second dip in clove oil water anesthetized the fish. A small lateral incision was made in the ventral side of the fish and the tag was inserted. The incision was stitched up delicately and the patient seemed to be doing well upon release. We spent the whole afternoon fishing around Limekiln with our fish expert Eric and naturalist friend Erin and Jason in Eric’s motorboat for the second lingcod big enough to tag, but we were unsuccessful and had to quit around 5pm.
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