By Rachel Kaplan, PhD student, Oregon State University College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences and Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab
This year in late February is the 2022 Ocean Sciences Meeting, an interdisciplinary bonanza of ocean scientists from all over the world. The conference will be held online this year as a precaution against Covid-19, and a week of virtual talks and poster sessions will cover new research in diverse topics from microbial ecology to ocean technology to whale vocalizations.
The meeting will also include my first poster presentation at a major conference, and so I have the typical grad student jitters that accompany each new thing I do (read more about the common experience of “imposter syndrome” here). This poster is the first time since starting graduate school and joining Project OPAL that I’m trying to craft a full science story that connects whales, their prey, and oceanographic conditions.
Learning how to do the analyses to assess and quantify these connections has involved plenty of head-scratching and periodic frustration on my part, but it has also offered a surprisingly joyful and even moving experience. In my efforts to troubleshoot a problem with my prey analysis, I’ve reached out to nearly everyone who works with krill acoustic data on the West Coast. Every single person has been incredibly welcoming and ready to help me, and excited to learn about my work in return. This experience has made me realize how many people I have on my team, and that even strangers are willing to support me on the whacky journey that is a PhD.
Through these collaborations, I am learning to analyze the acoustic signal of krill, small animals that are important food for whales foraging off the coast of Oregon and beyond. As part of Project OPAL, we plan to compare krill swarms with whale survey data to learn about the types of aggregations that whales are drawn to. From the perspective of a hungry whale, not all krill are created equal.
In addition to developing great remote relationships through this work, the ability to meet in person as we continue adapting to life during the pandemic has absolutely not lost its thrill. After over a year of meetings and collaborating on Zoom, I was delighted to meet GEMM Lab postdoc Solène Derville this January, after she journeyed from her home in New Caledonia to Oregon. It was so exciting to see her in real life (we’re more similar in height than I knew!) and a few minutes into our first lunch together she was already helping me refine my analysis plans and think of new approaches.
Our interaction also made me think about how impressive the GEMM Lab is. The first two people Solène saw upon her arrival in Oregon were me and fellow GEMM Lab student Allison Dawn, two newer members who joined the lab after her last trip to Oregon. Without a moment of hesitation, Allison stepped up to give Solène a ride to Newport from Corvallis to finish her long journey. The connection our lab has developed and maintained during a pandemic, across borders and time zones, is special.
As I look out at the next few weeks until the Ocean Sciences meeting, and out towards the rest of my PhD, I inevitably feel worried about all I need to accomplish. But, I know that the dynamics in our lab and the other collaborative relationships I’m forming are what will carry me through. Every meeting and new connection reminds me that I’m not doing this alone. I’m grateful that there’s a team of people who are ready and willing to help me muddle my way through my first Principal Components Analysis, puzzle over algorithm errors, and celebrate with me as we make progress.
