December 2019 – Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Laboratory

GEMM Lab 2019: A Year in the Life

By Lisa Hildebrand, MSc student, OSU Department of Fisheries & Wildlife, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab

Another year has come and gone, and with the final days of 2019 upon us, it is fulfilling to look back and summarize all of the achievements in the GEMM Lab this year. So, snuggle up with your favorite holiday drink and enjoy our recap of 2019!

We wrapped up two intense but rewarding gray whale field seasons this summer. Our project investigating the health of Pacific Coast Feeding Group (PCFG) gray whales through fecal hormone and body condition sampling in the context of ocean noise went into its fourth year, while the Port Orford project where we track whales and prey at a very fine-scale celebrated its wood anniversary (five years!). The dedication and hard work of lots of people to help us collect our data meant that we were able to add a considerable amount of samples to our growing gray whale datasets. Our trusty red RHIB Ruby zipped around the Pacific and enabled us to collect 58 fecal samples, fly the drone 102 times, undertake 105 GoPro drops and record 141 gray whale sightings. Our Newport crew was a mix of full-time GEMMers (Leigh, Todd, Dawn, Leila, Clara, and myself) as well as part-time summer GEMMers (Ale, Sharon, and Cassy). Further south in Port Orford, my team of undergraduate and high school students and I had an interesting field season. We only encountered four different individuals (Buttons, Glacier, Smudge, and Primavera), however saw them repeatedly throughout the month of August, resulting in as many as 15 tracklines for one individual. Furthermore, we collected 249 GoPro drops and 248 zooplankton net samples.

Leila taking photos of gray whales from Ruby’s bow pulpit. Photo: Leigh Torres

The GEMM Lab’s fieldwork was not just restricted to gray whales. After last year’s successes aboard the NOAA ship Bell M. Shimada, Alexa and Dawn both boarded the ship again this year as marine mammal observers for the May and September cruises, respectively. They spied humpback, blue, sperm, and fin whales, as well as many dolphins and seabirds, adding to the GEMM Lab’s growing database of megafauna distribution off the Oregon coast.

Alexa observing on the R/V Shimada in May 2019, all bundled up. Image Photo: Alexa Kownacki

After winning the prestigious L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science fellowship and the inaugural Louis Herman Scholarship, GEMM Lab grad Solène Derville lead her first research cruise aboard the French R/V Alis. She and her team conducted line transect surveys and micronekton/oceanographic sampling over several seamounts to try to solve the mystery of why humpbacks hang out there. We are also very excited to announce that Solène will be returning to the GEMM Lab as a post-doc in 2020! She will be creating distribution models of whales off the coast of Oregon with the data collected by Leigh during helicopter flights with the US Coast Guard. The primary aim of this work is to identify potential whale hotspots in an effort to avoid spatial overlap with fisheries gear and reduce entanglement risk.

Solène soaking wet after spending several hours observing cetaceans and seabirds on R/V Alis. Photo: Jérôme Jambou

Switching the focus from marine mammals to seabirds, Rachael has had an extremely busy year of field work all across the globe. She island-hopped from Midway (Hawaiian Northwest island) to the Falkland Islands in the first half of the year, and is currently overwintering on South Georgia, where she will be until end of February. Rachael is tracking albatross at all three locations by tagging individual birds to understand movements relative to fishing vessels and flight energetics.

Besides several field efforts, the GEMM Lab was also busy disseminating our research and findings to various audiences. Our conferences kicked off in late February when Leigh and Rachael both flew to Kauai to present at the Pacific Seabird Group’s 46^th Annual Meeting. In the spring, Leila, Dawn, Alexa, Dom, and myself drove to Seattle where the University of Washington hosted the Northwest Student Society of Marine Mammalogy chapter meeting and we all gave talks. Additionally, the Fisheries & Wildlife grad students in the lab also presented at the department’s annual Research Advances in Fisheries, Wildlife, and Ecology conference. Later in the year, Dom and I attended the State of the Coast conference where Dom was invited to participate in a panel about the holistic approaches to management in the nearshore while I presented a poster on preliminary findings of my Master’s thesis. Most recently, the entire GEMM Lab (bar Rachael) flew to Barcelona to present at the World Marine Mammal Conference (WMMC).

GEMM Lab at the WMMC. Photo: Karen Lohman

Our science communication and outreach efforts were not just restricted to conferences though. Over the course of this year, the GEMM Lab supervised a total of 10 undergraduate and high school interns that assisted in a variety of ways (field and/or lab work, data analyses, independent projects) on a number of projects going on in the lab. Leigh and Dawn boarded the R/V Oceanus in the fall to co-lead a STEM research cruise aimed at providing high school students and teachers hands-on marine research. Dawn and I were guests on Inspiration Dissemination, a live radio show run by graduate students about graduate research going on at OSU. Our weekly blog, now in its fifth year, reached its highest viewership with a total of 14,814 views this year!

The GEMMers were once again prolific writers too! The 13 new publications in 10 scientific journals include contributions from Leigh (7), Rachael (6), Solène (2), Dawn (2), and Leila (1). Scroll down to the end of the post to see the list.

Academic milestones were also reached by several of us. Most notably and recently, Dom successfully defended his Master’s thesis this past week – congratulations Dom!! Unsurprisingly, he already has a job lined up starting in January as a Science Officer with the California Ocean Science Trust. Dom is the 6^th GEMM Lab graduate, which after just five years of the GEMM Lab existing is a huge testament to Leigh as an advisor. Leila, who is in the 4^th year of her PhD, anticipates finishing this coming March. We also had three successful research reviews – I met with my committee in late March to discuss my Master’s proposal, while Alexa and Dawn met with their committees in the summer to review their PhD proposals. All three reviews were fruitful and successful. And we want to highlight the success of a GEMM Lab grad, Florence Sullivan, who started a job in Maui with the Pacific Whale Foundation in September as a Research Analyst.

Dom during his MS seminar. Photo: Leila Lemos

Leigh was recognized for her expertise in gray whale ecology and was appointed to the IUCN Western Gray Whale Advisory Panel (WGWAP). The western gray whales are a critically endangered population. At one point in the 1960s, the population was so scarce that they were believed to have been extinct. While this concern did not prove to be the case, the population still is not doing well, which is why the IUCN formed WGWAP to provide advice on the conservation of the western gray whales. Leigh was appointed to the panel this year and traveled to Switzerland and Russia for meetings.

Clara aboard Ruby on her first day of gray whale field work in Oregon. Photo: Leigh Torres

We are excited about a new addition to the lab. Clara Bird started her MS in Wildlife Science in the Department of Fisheries & Wildlife this fall. She jumped straight into field work when she came in early September and got a taste of the Pacific. Clara joins us from the Duke University where she did her undergraduate degree and worked for the past year in their Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing Lab. Clara is digging into the gray whale drone footage collected over the last four field seasons and scrutinize them from a behavioral point of view.

If you are reading this post, we would like to say that we really appreciate your support and interest in our work! We hope you will continue to join us on our journeys in 2020. Until then, happy holidays from the GEMM Lab!

GEMM Lab at the beginning of June with some permanents GEMMs and some temporary summer GEMM helpers.

Barlow, D. R., M. Fournet, and F. Sharpe. 2019. Incorporating tides into the acoustic ecology of humpback whales. Marine Mammal Science 35:234-251.

Barlow, D. R., A. L. Pepper, and L. G. Torres. 2019. Skin deep: an assessment of New Zealand blue whale skin condition. Frontiers in Marine Science doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2019.00757.

Baylis, A. M. M., R. A. Orben, A. A. Arkhipkin, J. Barton, R. L. Brownell Jr., I. J. Staniland, and P. Brickle. 2019. Re-evaluating the population size of South American fur seals and conservation implications. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 29(11):1988-1995.

Baylis, A. M. M., M. Tierney, R. A. Orben, et al. 2019. Important at-sea areas of colonial breeding marine predators on the southern Patagonian Shelf. Scientific Reports 9:8517.

Cockerham, S., B. Lee, R. A. Orben, R. M. Suryan, L. G. Torres, P. Warzybok, R. Bradley, J. Jahncke, H. S. Young, C. Ouverney, and S. A. Shaffer. 2019. Microbial biology of the western gull (Larus occidentalis). Microbial Ecology 78:665-676.

Derville, S., L. G. Torres, R. Albertson, O. Andrews, C. S. Baker, P. Carzon, R. Constantine, M. Donoghue, C. Dutheil, A. Gannier, M. Oremus, M. M. Poole, J. Robbins, and C. Garrigue. 2019. Whales in warming water: assessing breeding habitat diversity and adaptability in Oceania’s changing climate. Global Change Biology 25(4):1466-1481.

Derville, S., L. G. Torres, R. Dodémont, V. Perard, and C. Garrigue. 2019. From land and sea, long-term data reveal persistent humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) breeding habitat in New Caledonia. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 29(10):1697-1711.

Fleischman, A. B., R. A. Orben, N. Kokubun, A. Will, R. Paredes, J. T. Ackerman, A. Takahashi, A. S. Kitaysky, and S. A. Shaffer. 2019. Wintering in the western Subantarctic Pacific increases mercury contamination of red-legged kittiwakes. Environmental Science & Technology 53(22):13398-13407.

Holdman, A. K., J. H. Haxel, H. Klinck, and L. G. Torres. 2019. Acoustic monitoring reveals the times and tides of harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) distribution off central Oregon, U.S.A. Marine Mammal Science 35:164-186.

Kroeger, C., D. E. Crocker, D. R. Thompson, L. G. Torres, P. Sagar, and S. A. Shaffer. 2019. Variation in corticosterone levels in two species of breeding albatrosses with divergent life histories: responses to body condition and drivers of foraging behavior. Physiological and Biochemical Zoology 92(2):223:238.

Loredo, S. A., R. A. Orben, R. M. Suryan, D. E. Lyons, J. Adams, and S. W. Stephensen. 2019. Spatial and temporal diving behavior of non-breeding common murres during two summers of contrasting ocean conditions. Journal of Experimental Biology and Ecology 517:13-24.

Monteiro, F., L. S. Lemos, J. Fulgêncio de Moura, R. C. C. Rocha, I. Moreira, A. P. Di Beneditto, H. A. Kehrig, I. C. A. C. Bordon, S. Siciliano, T. D. Saint’Pierre, and R. A. Hauser-Davis. 2019. Subcellular metal distributions and metallothionein associations in rough-toothed dolphins (Steno bredanensis) from southeastern Brazil. Marine Pollution Bulletin 146:263-273.

Orben, R. A., A. B. Fleischman, A. L. Borker, W. Bridgeland, A. J. Gladics, J. Porquez, P. Sanzenbacher, S. W. Stephensen, R. Swift, M. W. McKown, and R. M. Suryan. 2019. Comparing imaging, acoustics, and radar to monitor Leach’s storm-petrel colonies. PeerJ 7:e6721.

Yates, K. L., …, L. G. Torres, et al. 2019. Outstanding challenges in the transferability of ecological models. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 33(10):790-802.

Flying halfway around the world to learn about marine mammals from around the world!

By Lisa Hildebrand, MSc student, OSU Department of Fisheries & Wildlife, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab

The GEMM Lab is back from Barcelona after attending the World Marine Mammal Conference last week and it sure was a week to remember! Not only did every GEMM member present some aspect of their research at the conference (either as a poster, speed or full-length talk) but some of us also attended workshops, scheduled meetings with collaborators, new & old, and we certainly all learned a lot of new information about what is going on in marine mammalogy across the globe. Having had a few days now to reflect upon the intense four days spent at the conference, we want to highlight the talks that we each personally thought were some of the most interesting and exciting.

“Double Drone Drama” was the alliterative title of Héloïse Frouin-Mouy‘s talk about using two drones to collect simultaneous visual and underwater acoustic behavioral data of gray whales in Baja California, Mexico. While there were many talks during the week that discussed incorporating drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), into marine mammal research, this project was potentially the only one that discussed using two simultaneously. One drone collected visual aerial observations while the other obtained close-range passive acoustic measurements with an underwater recording hydrophone to better understand the behavioral contexts of call generation. Froiun-Mouy and her team detected call-type-specific source levels relative to behavior state through this dual-approach. For example, they were able to estimate the acoustic source levels of bubble-blasts produced by gray whales, and the double drone action recorded a variety of calls. Using two or more UAVs can provide a more integrated snapshot into the animal vocalization context, and it will be interesting to see whether this method is applied elsewhere on a variety of whale species.

Tara Sayuri Whitty. Source: UCSD Aquarium.

Tara Sayuri Whitty discussed her doctoral research focused on understanding the mental models of local, artisanal fishing communities at the heart of the vaquita conservation efforts. The vaquita has experienced rapid population declines due primarily to bycatch in gillnet fisheries from legal local gillnet fisheries and the illegal totoaba fishery. With the sole intent of preventing bycatch, gillnets were banned for legal practice, but the illegal totoaba fishery continued, as did vaquita bycatch. Whitty conducted interviews to understand the mental models and perceptions of local fishing communities towards officials and conservationists regarding the gillnet band. She discovered that these conservation efforts have not only failed to prevent vaquita bycatch, but they have now pitted conservationists against local communities because an important aspect of their livelihoods is now banned. This misstep and lack of trust with the community now threatens future conservation and recovery progress for the vaquita and highlights the need to collaborate and engage with local communities early and often when such efforts are so closely tied to human well-being.

Pauline Goulet, a PhD student in the Sea Mammal Research Unit at the University of St. Andrews, presented findings obtained from a novel sonar tag deployed on southern elephant seals (SES) in the Kerguelen Islands and Peninsula Valdes. Gaining insight into predator-prey interactions is critical to understanding the ecology of marine mammals as they live in dynamic and vast environments where prey is patchy. Collecting in-situ prey information is difficult, and in some cases impossible, due to the remote locations where marine mammals forage and it is not being feasible to follow individuals around continuously to collect prey samples at every foraging event. In an attempt to overcome this universal challenge to marine mammal research, Goulet and her collaborators decided to mimic the experts in prey detection and visualization from a distance in the marine environment – echolocating odontocetes. By equipping conventional DTAGs with a 1.5 MHz single beam sonar with a 6 m detection range, Goulet was able to identify whether SES were pursuing individual fish or large schools of fish. Additionally, by also analyzing the accelerometer data, she could document whether prey capture attempts were successful or not, and link these results to the body condition of individual SES (inferred from the horizontal distance an individual traveled during drift dives, whereby a longer horizontal distance in the same period of time suggested that the individual had gained weight and was now heavier). It was ingenious to see researchers utilize a biological trait that evolved millions of years ago in certain marine mammal predators to better understand the ecology of another marine mammal predator.

A trio of talks given by Kristi Fazioli, Valeria Paz, and Shauna McBride-Kebert, in the ‘Habitat and Distribution II’ session, discussed responses of coastal bottlenose dolphins to hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM). Besides continuing to be an area of interest in conservation after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the GoM frequently experiences hurricanes and other strong storm systems that cause extensive flooding events annually. Hence, dolphins along the GoM coast experience a large outflow of freshwater after severe precipitation, leading to low salinity events. Both Fazioli and Paz hypothesized that these changes in environmental conditions can create health problems to the dolphins.

Bottlenose dolphin underwater in the Gulf of Mexico. Source: Mike Heithaus.

Fazioli investigated encounter rates and skin conditions of bottlenose dolphins after Hurricane Harvey. She found that, in 2017, the encounter rates in her study area decreased, while skin lesions increased (Christina Toms, unpublished work, expected Spring 2020). Skin lesions are known to occur at higher rates after exposure to freshwater and even though they persist for some time, they eventually do heal. After less than two years, preliminary data suggest that these dolphins have returned to their original distributions in the study area. Paz’s study in Shark Bay Estuary examined different environmental drivers of dolphin distribution following Hurricane Irma. She found that dissolved oxygen, salinity, and temperature were the primary dynamic, environmental drivers of distribution following a major hurricane. Lastly, McBride’s species distribution models of bottlenose dolphins in response to severe flooding concluded that depth, slope, latitude, longitude, season, and dissolved oxygen all contributed in different percentages to distribution.

Marta Guerra presented findings from her PhD research at the University of Otago in New Zealand on the ecology and distribution of sperm whales in New Zealand. Kaikoura canyon is a region utilized by sperm whales for foraging, and Marta’s research highlighted marked differences in their distribution between the summer and winter, likely reflective of the sperm whales switching their target prey items seasonally. In the middle of their data collection period, a very intense earthquake struck the region in 2016, causing a canyon-flushing event that altered the canyon ecosystem. The sperm whales responded to this extreme event by altering their distribution away from the areas most affected by the earthquake, demonstrating that these marine predators respond to environmental shifts in the ecosystem they depend on at multiple scales.

On the final day of the conference, David Wiley gave a talk entitled “First documentation of coordinated bottom-feeding by humpback whales”. Using footage from tags containing a suite of sensors and video cameras, Wiley and colleagues observed humpback whales feeding on sand lace in the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. Sand lace are a species of fish that frequently burrow in the sand in an attempt to avoid capture by predators looking for their next meal. Humpback whales in the area have been observed with lacerations and scars along their mouths, originally leading to the hypothesis that whales were bottom-feeding. However, it was never known whether whales compete or cooperate when exploiting this resource and what the actual mechanics of this feeding behavior look like. The tag data revealed that groups of 3-4 individuals work together to approach the seafloor in a star-shape formation and when they get close enough, the sand lace emerge from the sand (probably an escape response to the approaching vibrations created by large whales) only to be engulfed by the humpbacks who are poised directly above them with wide-open mouths. Not only did the video footage reveal that individuals are so close together that their rostrums are almost touching, but Wiley and team were able to determine that whales perform their behavior usually within the same group of 3-4 individuals and that the orientation of each individual within the star-formation remains the same almost every time. This talk was so enjoyable because it was a reminder of how little we still know about marine mammals and provided a moment of audible awe and surprise throughout the room.

Barcelona-bound! The GEMM Lab heads to the World Marine Mammal Conference

By Dawn Barlow, PhD student, OSU Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab

Every two years, an international community of scientists, managers, policy-makers, educators, and students gather to share the most current research and most pressing conservation issues facing marine mammals. This year, the World Marine Mammal Conference will take place in Barcelona, Spain from December 7-12, and the whole GEMM Lab will make their way across the Atlantic to present their latest work. The meeting is an international gathering of scientists ranging from longtime researchers who have shaped the field throughout the course of their careers to students who are just beginning to carve out a niche of their own. This year’s conference has 2,500 registered attendees from 95 different countries, 1,960 abstract submissions, and 700 accepted oral and speed talks and 1,200 posters. Needless to say, it is an incredible platform for learning, networking, and putting our work in the context of research taking place around the globe.

This will be my third time at this conference. I attended in San Francisco in 2015 as a wide-eyed undergraduate and met with Leigh, who I hoped would soon become my graduate advisor. I also presented my Masters research at the conference in Halifax in 2017. This time around, I will be presenting findings from the first two chapters of my PhD. Looking ahead to the Barcelona 2019 meeting and having some sense of what to expect, I feel butterflies rising in my stomach—a perfect mixture of the nerves that come with putting your hard work out in the world, eagerness to learn and absorb new information, and excitement to reconnect with friends and colleagues from around the world. In short, I can’t wait!

For those of you reading this blog that are unable to attend, I’d like to share an overview of what the GEMM Lab will be presenting at the conference. If you will be in Barcelona, we warmly invite you to the following posters, speed talks, and oral presentations! In order of appearance:

What do Oregon gray whales like to eat? Do individual whales have individual foraging habits? To learn more visit Lisa Hildebrand’s poster “Investigating potential gray whale individual foraging specializations within the Pacific Coast Feeding Group”. (Poster presentation, Session: Foraging Ecology – Group A, Time: Monday, 1:30-3:00pm)

Todd Chandler, Faculty Research Assistant

Did you know it is possible to measure the mechanics of how a blue whale feeds using a drone? The GEMM Lab’s all-star drone pilot Todd Chandler will present a poster titled “More than snacks: An analysis of drone observed blue whale surface lunge feeding linked with prey data”. (Poster presentation, Session: Foraging Ecology – Group A, Time: Monday, 1:30-3:00pm)

The GEMM Lab’s newest student Clara Bird will present a poster on work she conducted with the Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing lab at Duke University using new technologies and approaches to investigate scarring patterns on humpbacks. Her poster is titled “A comparison of percent dorsal scar cover between populations of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) off California and the Western Antarctic Peninsula”. (Poster presentation, Session: New Technology – Group B, Time: Tuesday, 8:30-9:45am)

Dr. Leigh Torres, Principal Investigator

GEMM Lab PI Leigh Torres will synthesize some exciting new analyses from the GEMM Lab’s gray whale physiology and ecology research off the Oregon Coast. Is it stressful to feed in a noisy coastal environment? Leigh will discuss the latest findings in her talk, “Sounds of stress: Evaluating the relationships between variable soundscapes and gray whale stress hormones”. (Oral presentation, Session: Physiology, Time: Tuesday, 11:30-11:45am)

Carrying on with exciting new findings about Oregon gray whales, Leila Lemos will present a speed talk titled “Stressed and slim or relaxed and chubby? A simultaneous assessment of gray whale body condition and hormone variability”, in which she will summarize three years of analysis of how gray whale health can be quantified, and how physiology is influenced by ocean conditions. (Speed talk, Session: Physiology, Time: Tuesday, 11:55am-12:m)

Can we predict where blue whales will be using our understanding of their environment and prey? Can this knowledge be used for effective conservation? I (Dawn Barlow) will give a presentation titled “Cloudy with a chance of whales: Forecasting blue whale occurrence based on tiered, bottom-up models to mitigate industrial impacts”, which will share our latest findings on how functional ecological relationships can be modeled in changing ocean conditions. (Oral presentation, Session: Habitat and Distribution I, Time: Wednesday, 10:15-10:30am)

Dr. Solene Derville, Post-Doctoral Scholar

The GEMM Lab’s most recent graduate Solene Derville will present work she has conducted in New Caledonia regarding humpback whale diving and movement patterns around breeding grounds. Her speed talk is titled “Whales of the deep: Horizontal and vertical movements shed light on humpback whale use of critical pelagic habitats in the western South Pacific” (Speed talk, Session: Behavioral Ecology II, Time: Wednesday, 11:35-11:40am)

Can sea otters make a comeback in Oregon after a long absence? Dom Kone takes a comprehensive look at how Oregon coast habitat could support a reintroduced sea otter population in his speed talk, “An evaluation of the ecological needs and effects of a potential sea otter reintroduction to Oregon, USA”. (Speed talk, Session: Conservation II, Time: Wednesday, 2:45-2:50pm)

Alexa Kownacki will share her latest findings on dolphin distribution relative to static and dynamic oceanographic variables in her speed talk titled “The biogeography of common bottlenose dolphins (T. truncatus) of the southwestern USA and Mexico”. (Speed talk, Session: Habitat and Distribution II, Time: Wednesday, 3:35-3:40pm)

Other members of the Marine Mammal Mnstitute who will present their work include: Scott Baker, Debbie Steel, Angie Sremba, Karen Lohman, Daniel Palacios, Bruce Mate, Ladd Irvine, and Robert Pitman. For anyone planning to attend, we look forward to seeing you there! For those who wish to stay tuned from home, keep your eye on the GEMM Lab twitter page for our updates during the conference and follow the conference hashtag #WMMC19, and look forward to future blog posts recapping the experience.

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