Mitchell Bay to Reid Harbor
Finally the winds died down enough for us to venture forth into Haro Strait again to look for whales and conduct other research. We enjoyed some breezes in the morning and rode the flood time up to Turn Point on Stuart Island where we positioned ourselves to watch and listen for killer whales. Val came aboard this morning in Snug Harbor which allowed us to have mentor meetings with both Val and Jason and all to iron out some more of the wrinkles in research methods. Science always makes its best progress when multiple minds focus on a problem and discuss the matter at hand. During the day we were graced with sightings of a number of porpoises, including two different sightings of around 3 Dall’s porpoise in the area of Turn Point. This was a real treat as we have not seen many in these waters during the last several years. After a wonderful dinner at the dock in Reid Harbor we revisited our calibration exercise to make sure we all understood the process and decide which the most appropriate calibration factors to use were. Nothing like an invigorating discussion of logarithmic decibel scales around the lounge of the Gato Verde to end off the day.
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Mitchell Bay to Mitchell Bay
We bunkered down in snug harbor today and didn’t even bother to stick our noses out into the Strait. The small craft advisory and warnings of gusts up to 60 mph kept us away and content today. The sun was shining although the wind was blowing, and we were able to avoid all sea-sickness by avoiding everything other than our lovely harbor. We discussed various methods of taking data and send Jason out in La Gatita to pretend to be whales behaving in several manners while we took recordings.It was quite entertaining to see the dingy bouncing around in the harbor and catching enough wind to almost send Jason into the brisk water. Luckily, he made it back just in time to start dinner. Being the responsible one on board, he was sure to serve broccoli, beets, and polenta-lasagna. Oh, we did spot a harbor seal taking a few breaths and resting at the surface just a few meters from the bow. So there’s the reported science from the day. Other than that, we worked on papers and read several scientific articles between the five of us. I think that if you combined all of the knowledge that our brains host, you could form a small acoustic and marine mammal behavioral library.
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Mitchell Bay to Mitchell Bay
We headed out towards the south side of the island in hopes of finding J pod. Not much wildlife sightings today, other than some seagulls. No updates on the phone or email on sightings of J pod either, which was sad for us to hear. We had a general prediction that since they finally came back into the area, they are still looking for the fish to eat. It is like moving back home after college life in the dormitories: the whales have to resettle into the area. We anchored at Mackeye Harbor on Lopez Island to have a quick lunch consisting of grilled cheese sandwiches. At Mackeye, we finished our calibration exercise using the data that we got from the hydrophone calibration yesterday. Afterwards, we headed back up to Mitchell Bay, spotting about 3 seals (unidentified) poking their heads out of the waters. At Mitchell (Snug Harbor), we then enjoyed at nice dinner cooked up by Jason and Nora: chile. Then moved on towards journal club to finish off the night.
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Prevost Harbor to Mitchell Bay
Since J Pod is back in town, our main goal today was to find the whales. We started drifting down the west side of San Juan Island hoping we’d find them in Haro Strait. Around 10 am, several Dall’s porpoises surfaced off of Gato Verde’s stern. Recently, Dall’s sightings have been few and far between, so it was very exciting to see them! Once we had passed Lime Kiln Point State Park without any whale sightings, we decided to calibrate our hydrophones (the array, the “blue box,” and the flat-frequency hydrophone). We rigged them up side by side and lowered them 5 meters below the surface. We made several successful recordings. Later in the afternoon, we decided to try to search for the south hydrophone array with the Splashcam. Unfortunately we had technical difficulties and had to abort our mission, but Jason solved the problem and we will likely try to deploy the Splashcam again soon. After a morning and afternoon of no whales, we made the executive decision to start working our way back up the west side to find someplace to anchor for the night. The Southern residents seem to be swimming clockwise around the San Juan Islands, and we are hoping they’ll loop back around to Haro Strait tomorrow.
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