Beam Reach

Opening week to the San Juan Islands

A week has gone by since I first set foot on the San Juan Islands.  Coming from San Francisco, my body has not fully assimilated to the colder temperatures here up in the northwest.  Arriving via the ferry from Anacortes, this is my first time on the San Juan Islands.  My very first impression of the Friday Harbor Labs was a good one.  There was this sense of a small family community here, much like my old high school back two years ago.  It is very different from being in a large lecture hall filled with nothing but hundreds of students.  This year in Beam Reach’s spring 2010 program, including myself, there are only four students.  I feel this is a great opportunity for us to get to know all the instructors one-on-one, enabling a much more in depth relationship towards each other.  Personally, I think a small teaching environment is very rigorous and demanding, but yet again, the experience grants one more friends, support, and encouragement to do better.

On the first week, we were able to learn a lot of the basics of acoustics and how sound works.  I learned a lot of new things that I have never been taught before, and things were revisited that I should have remembered back long ago.  Being the youngest one of the Beam Reach group and a second year undergraduate at UC Davis, I have never had much experience in dealing with loads of reading on a “close to graduate level” expectation level.  The first week dealt with plenty of article reading that we discussed later on during the days in class.  The discussions went well, delving into topics about the southern resident killer whales’ endangerment status, to the influences of boat noises underwater.  Our instructors, Dr. Jason Wood, Dr. Val Veirs, and Dr. Scott Veirs, provided us with a general background to the southern resident killer whales’ world in the northwest.  Acoustics, involving graphs, physics, and noise, really blew my mind.  Even though it might take a while for me to personally adjust to this hard-working environment, I will try my best to keep up with the pace.  Moreover, I would love to take the lead sometimes in the group and help others out as I anticipate the amount of help I shall receive.

We visited the Lime Kiln Lighthouse on the second day of the week, where we formulated our five initial questions to help narrow our thoughts to a potential research question that we will be answering over the course of these ten weeks.  From the photo, the lighthouse can be seen with my two fellow classmates in the background, Kathryn and Nora.  When the weather permitted, we strolled by the docks.

But the most interesting place that we went to was indeed the Whale Museum in town.  Walking there took about half an hour, but that time was worth it.  Although small, I felt that this museum really emphasized that sense of specification with the southern killer whales and other marine species in this particular northwest area.  The exhibits really portrayed what are affecting the species and how we can protect them.  One exhibit that really stuck out to me though, was the acoustic exhibit, created by Dr. Val Veirs himself.  I thought that this exhibit can give the public a general idea of the effects of fluctuating noise levels in the ocean that can cause an irritation to the killer whales.  I had so much fun twiddling around with the different sounds and buttons on the dashboard, quizzing myself to the various calls of the southern resident killer whales out there.

Weather was decent the first week, with much sun, with a gale on Friday and Saturday. :]