Difference between revisions of "Fall 2007 science synopsis"

Revision as of 10:21, 3 December 2007

The fall 2007 Beam Reach program lasted 10 weeks, from August 26 through October 27. Science data were collected during the middle 8 weeks (September 3 through October 20) by two teams, each consisting of 5 students, a lead instructor, an instructor, and a captain. One team was named Jami (Jason was lead instructor and Mike was captain); the other was Vato (Val was lead instructor and Todd was Captain). The instructor was Shannon Fowler and the students are listed on the 071 home page.

The research theme for the program was acoustic exploration of killer whales and their environment. Most data collection was focused by applied environmental questions (e.g. do orcas compensate for anthropogenic noise) or basic biological questions (e.g. correlating acoustic and surface behaviors). The central instrumentation used to address these questions were a towed 4-element hydrophone array, a calibrated hydrophone sensitive at higher frequencies (flat response up to ~50kHz), new versions of Val's custom data acquisition software (Windows laptop-based), and a solid state recording system capable of digitizing at 192k samples/s.

Links (potential and extant):

• science blog
• integrated science/ship log (database?)
• student research questions, proposals, papers, and presentations
• image gallery