Oregon whale distribution – Page 2 – Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Laboratory

Experiencing a Physical Manifestation of my PhD at Sea in the NCC

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

I always have a small crisis before heading into the field, whether for a daytrip or a several-month stint. I’m always dying to go – up until the moment when it is actually time to leave, and I decide I’d rather stay home, keep working on whatever has my current focus, and not break my comfortable little routine.

Preparing to leave on the most recent Northern California Current (NCC) cruise was no different. And just as always, a few days into the cruise, I forgot about the rest of my life and normal routines, and became totally immersed in the world of the ship and the places we went. I learned an exponential amount while away. Being physically in the ecosystem that I’m studying immediately had me asking more, and better, questions to explore at sea and also bring back to land.

Many of these questions and realizations centered on predator-prey relationships between krill and whales at fine spatial scales. We know that distributions of prey species are a big factor in structuring whale distributions in the ocean, and one of our goals on this cruise was to observe these relationships more closely. The cruise offered an incredible opportunity to experience these relationships in real time: while my labmates Dawn and Clara were up on the flying bridge looking for whales, I was down in the acoustics lab, watching incoming echosounder data in order to identify krill aggregations.

*From left, Clara and Dawn survey for marine mammals on the flying bridge.*

We used radios to stay in touch with what we were each seeing in real time, and learned quickly that we tended to spot whales and krill almost simultaneously. Experiencing this coherence between predator and prey distributions felt like a physical manifestation of my PhD. It also affirmed my faith in one of our most basic modeling assumptions: that the backscatter signals captured in our active acoustic data are representative of the preyscape that nearby whales are experiencing.

Being at sea with my labmates also catalyzed an incredible synthesis of our different types of knowledge. Because of the way that I think about whale distributions, I usually just focus on whether a certain type of whale is present or not while surveying. But Clara, with her focus on cetacean behavior, thinks in a completely different way from me. She timed the length of dives and commented on the specific behaviors she noticed, bringing a new level of context to our observations. Dawn, who has been joining these cruises for five years now, shared her depth of knowledge built through returning to these places again and again, helping us understand how the system varies through time.

*Observing whale behavior, such as for these humpbacks, provides valuable information on how they are using a given area.*

One of the best experiences of the cruise for me was when we conducted a targeted net tow in an area of foraging humpbacks on the Heceta Head Line off the central Oregon coast. The combination of the krill signature I was seeing on the acoustics display, and the radio reports from Dawn and Clara of foraging dives, convinced me that this was an opportunity for a net tow, if possible, to see exactly what zooplankton was in the water near the whales. Our chief scientist, Jennifer Fisher, and the ship’s officers worked together to quickly turn the ship around and get a net in the water, in an effort to catch krill from the aggregation I had seen.

This unique opportunity gave me a chance to test my own interpretation of the acoustics data, and compare what we captured in the net with what I expected from the backscatter signal. It also prompted me to think more about the synchrony and differences between what is captured by net tows and echosounder data, two primary ways for looking at whale prey.

*Collecting tiny yet precious krill samples associated with foraging humpbacks!*

Throughout the entire cruise, the opportunity to build my intuition and notice ecological patterns was invaluable. Ecosystem modeling gives us the opportunity to untangle incredible complexity and put dynamic relationships in mathematical terms, but being out on the ocean provides the chance to develop a feel for these relationships. I’m so glad to bring this new perspective to my next round of models, and excited to continue trying to tease apart fine-scale dynamics between whales and krill.

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Yonder Whales and Nearby Prey: A New Look at a Familiar System

Rachel Kaplan¹, Dawn Barlow², Clara Bird³

¹PhD 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

²Postdoctoral Scholar, OSU Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab

³PhD Candidate, OSU Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab

What do peanut butter m&ms, killer whales, affogatos, tired eyes, and puffins all have in common? They were all major features of the recent Northern California Current (NCC) ecosystem survey cruise.

The science party of the May 2022 Northern California Current ecosystem cruise.

We spent May 6–17 aboard the NOAA vessel Bell M. Shimada in northern California, Oregon, and Washington waters. This fabulously interdisciplinary cruise studies multiple aspects of the NCC ecosystem three times per year, and the GEMM lab has put marine mammal observers aboard since 2018.

This cruise was a bit different than usual for the GEMM lab: we had eyes on both the whales and their prey. While Dawn Barlow and Clara Bird observed from sunrise to sunset to sight and identify whales, Rachel Kaplan collected krill data via an echosounder and samples from net tows in order to learn about the preyscape the whales were experiencing.

From left, Rachel, Dawn, and Clara after enjoying some beautiful sunset sightings.

We sailed out of Richmond, California and went north, sampling as far north as La Push, Washington and up to 200 miles offshore. Despite several days of challenging conditions due to wind, rain, fog, and swell, the team conducted a successful marine mammal survey. When poor weather prevented work, we turned to our favorite hobbies of coding and snacking.

Rachel attends “Clara’s Beanbag Coding Academy”.

Cruise highlights included several fin whales, sperm whales, killer whales, foraging gray whales, fluke slapping and breaching humpbacks, and a visit by 60 pacific white-sided dolphins. While being stopped at an oceanographic sampling station typically means that we take a break from observing, having more time to watch the whales around us turned out to be quite fortunate on this cruise. We were able to identify two unidentified whales as sei whales after watching them swim near us while paused on station.

Marine mammal observation segments (black lines) and the sighting locations of marine mammal species observed during the cruise.

On one of our first survey days we also observed humpbacks surface lunge feeding close to the ship, which provided a valuable opportunity for our team to think about how to best collect concurrent prey and whale data. The opportunity to hone in on this predator-prey relationship presented itself in a new way when Dawn and Clara observed many apparently foraging humpbacks on the edge of Heceta Bank. At the same time, Rachel started observing concurrent prey aggregations on the echosounder. After a quick conversation with the chief scientist and the officers on the bridge, the ship turned around so that we could conduct a net tow in order to get a closer look at what exactly the whales were eating.

Success! Rachel collects krill samples collected in an area of foraging humpback whales.

This cruise captured an interesting moment in time: southerly winds were surprisingly common for this time of year, and the composition of the phytoplankton and zooplankton communities indicated that the seasonal process of upwelling had not yet been initiated. Upwelling brings deep, cold, nutrient-rich waters to the surface, generating a jolt of productivity that brings the ecosystem from winter into spring. It was fascinating to talk to all the other researchers on the ship about what they were seeing, and learn about the ways in which it was different from what they expected to see in May.

Experiencing these different conditions in the Northern California Current has given us a new perspective on an ecosystem that we’ve been observing and studying for years. We’re looking forward to digging into the data and seeing how it can help us understand this ecosystem more deeply, especially during a period of continued climate change.

The total number of each marine mammal species observed during the cruise.

The pathway to advancing knowledge of rorqual whale distribution off Oregon

By Solène Derville, Postdoc, OSU Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab

In September 2020, I was hired as a postdoc in the GEMM Lab and was tasked to conduct the analyses necessary for the OPAL project. This research project has the ambitious, yet essential, goal to fill a knowledge gap hindering whale conservation efforts locally: where and when do whales occur off the Oregon coast? Understanding and predicting whale distribution based on changing environmental conditions is a key strategy to assess and reduce spatial conflicts with human activities, specifically the risk of entanglement in fixed fishing gear.

Starting a new project is always a little daunting. Learning about a new region and new species, in an alien research and conservation context, is a challenge. As I have specialized in data science over the last couple of years, I have been confronted many times with the prospect of working with massive datasets collected by others, from which I was asked to tease apart the biases and the ecological patterns. In fact, I have come to love that part of my job: diving down the data rabbit hole and making my way through it by collaborating with others. Craig Hayslip, faculty research assistant in MMI, was the observer who conducted the majority of the 102 helicopter surveys that were used for this study. During the analysis stage, his help was crucial to understand the data that had been collected and get a better grasp of the field work biases that I would later have to account for in my models. Similarly, it took hours of zoom discussions with Dawn Barlow, the GEMM lab’s latest Dr, to be able to clean and process the 75 days of survey effort conducted at sea, aboard the R/V Shimada and Oceanus.

Once the data is “clean”, then comes the time for modeling. Running hundreds of models, with different statistical approaches, different environmental predictors, different parameters etc. etc. That is when you realize what a blessing it is to work with a supervisor like Leigh Torres, head of the GEMM Lab. As an early career researcher, I really appreciate working with people who help me take a step back and see the bigger picture within which the whole data wrangling work is included. It is so important to have someone help you stay focused on your goals and the ecological questions you are trying to answer, as these may easily get pushed back to the background during the data analysis process.

And here we are today, with the first scientific publication from the OPAL project published, a little more than three years after Leigh and Craig started collecting data onboard the United States Coast Guard helicopters off the coast of Oregon in February 2019. Entitled “Seasonal, annual, and decadal distribution of three rorqual whale species relative to dynamic ocean conditions off Oregon, USA”, our study published in Frontiers in Marine Science presents modern and fine-scale predictions of rorqual whale distribution off Oregon, as well as a description of their phenology and a comparison to whale numbers observed across three decades in the region (Figure 1). This research focuses on three rorqual species sharing some ecological and biological traits, as well as similar conservation status: humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae), blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus musculus), and fin whales (Balaenoptera physallus); all of which migrate and feed over the US West coast (see a previous blog to learn more about these species here).

*Figure 1: Graphical abstract of our latest paper published in Frontiers in Marine Science*.

We demonstrate (1) an increase in rorqual numbers over the last three decades in Oregon waters, (2) differences in timing of migration and habitat preferences between humpback, blue, and fin whales, and (3) predictable relationships of rorqual whale distribution based on dynamic ocean conditions indicative of upwellings and frontal zones. Indeed, these ocean conditions are likely to provide suitable biological conditions triggering increased prey abundance. Three seasonal models covering the months of December-March (winter model), April-July (spring) and August-November (summer-fall) were generated to predict rorqual whale densities over the Oregon continental shelf (in waters up to 1,500 m deep). As a result, maps of whale densities can be produced on a weekly basis at a resolution of 5 km, which is a scale that will facilitate targeted management of human activities in Oregon. In addition, species-specific models were also produced over the period of high occurrence in the region; that is humpback and blue whales between April and November, and fin whales between August and March.

As we outline in our concluding remarks, this work is not to be considered an end-point, but rather a stepping stone to improve ecological knowledge and produce operational outputs that can be used effectively by managers and stakeholders to prevent spatial conflict between whales and human activities. As of today, the models of fin and blue whale densities are limited by the small number of observations of these two species over the Oregon continental shelf. Yet, we hope that continued data collection via fruitful research partnerships will allow us to improve the robustness of these species-specific predictions in the future. On the other hand, the rorqual models are considered sufficiently robust to continue into the next phase of the OPAL project that aims to assess overlap between whale distribution and Dungeness crab fishing gear to estimate entanglement risk.

The curse (or perhaps the beauty?) of species distribution modeling is that it never ends. There are always new data to be added, new statistical approaches to be tested, and new predictions to be made. The OPAL models are no exception to this rule. They are meant to be improved in future years, thanks to continued helicopter and ship-based survey efforts, and to the addition of new environmental variables meant to better predict whale habitat selection. For instance, Rachel Kaplan’s PhD research specifically aims at understanding the distribution of whales in relation to krill. Her results will feed into the more general efforts to model and predict whale distribution to inform management in Oregon.

This first publication therefore paves the way for more exciting and impactful research!

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Reference

Derville, S., Barlow, D. R., Hayslip, C. E., and Torres, L. G. (2022). Seasonal, Annual, and Decadal Distribution of Three Rorqual Whale Species Relative to Dynamic Ocean Conditions Off Oregon, USA. Front. Mar. Sci. 9, 1–19. doi:10.3389/fmars.2022.868566.

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the immense contribution of the United State Coast Guard sectors North Bend and Columbia River who facilitated and piloted our helicopter surveys. We would like to also thank NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center for the ship time aboard the R/V Bell M. Shimada. We thank the R/V Bell M. Shimada (chief scientists J. Fisher and S. Zeman) and R/V Oceanus crews, as well as the marine mammal observers F. Sullivan, C. Bird and R. Kaplan. We give special recognition and thanks to the late Alexa Kownacki who contributed so much in the field and to our lives. We also thank T. Buell and K. Corbett (ODFW) for their partnership over the OPAL project. We thank G. Green and J. Brueggeman (Minerals Management Service), J. Adams (US Geological Survey), J. Jahncke (Point blue Conservation), S. Benson (NOAA-South West Fisheries Science Center), and L. Ballance (Oregon State University) for sharing validation data. We thank J. Calambokidis (Cascadia Research Collective) for sharing validation data and for logistical support of the project. We thank A. Virgili for sharing advice and custom codes to produce detection functions.

It Takes a Village to Raise a PhD Student

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.

Analysis of a layer of krill in the upper ocean. The blue color in the top panel indicates scattering of acoustic signal by the krill, and the outline in the bottom panel shows the results of an algorithm programmed to detect krill aggregations.

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.

*Hiking on gorgeous days is just one of the many benefits of being in the same place! This adventure included spotting a whale blow off the coast and a lot of GEMM excitement.*

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.

Learning to Listen for Animals in the Sea

Part of what makes being a graduate student so exciting is the way that learning can flip the world around: you learn a new framework or method, and suddenly everything looks a little different. I am experiencing this fabulous phenomenon lately as I learn to collect and process active acoustic data, which can reveal the distribution and biomass of animals in the ocean – including those favored by foraging whales off of Oregon, like the tiny shrimp-like krill.

*Krill, like this Thysanoessa spinifera, play a key role in California Current ecosystems. Photo credit:* *Scripps Institution of Oceanography*.

We know that whales seek out the dense, energy-rich swarms that krill form, and that knowing where to expect krill can give us a leg up in anticipating whale distributions. Project OPAL (Overlap Predictions About Large whales) seeks to model and provide robust predictions of whale distributions off the coast of Oregon, so that managers can make spatially discrete decisions about potential fishery closures, minimizing burdens to fishermen while also maximizing protection of whales. We hope that including prey in our ecosystem models will help this effort, and working on this aim is one of the big tasks of my PhD.

So, how do we know where to expect krill to be off the coast of Oregon? Acoustic tools give us the opportunity to flip the world upside down: we use a tool called an echosounder to eavesdrop on the ocean, yielding visual outputs like the ones below that let us “see” and interpret sound.

*Echograms like these reveal features in the ocean that scatter “pings” of sound, and interpreting these signals can show life in the water column*.

This is how it works. The echosounder emits pulses of sound at a known frequency, and then it listens for their return after it bounces of the sea floor or things in the water column. Based on sound experiments in the laboratory, we know to expect our krill species, Euphausia pacifica and Thysanoessa spinifera, to return those echoes at a characteristic decibel level. By constantly “pinging” the water column with this sound, we can record a continuous soundscape along the cruise track of a vessel, and analyze it to identify the animals and features recorded.

I had the opportunity to use an echosounder for the first time recently, on the first HALO cruise. We deployed the echosounder soon after sunrise, 65 miles offshore from Newport. After a little fiddling and troubleshooting, I was thrilled to start “listening” to the water; I was able to see the frothy noise at its surface, the contours of the seafloor, and the pixelated patches that indicate prey in between. Although it’s difficult to definitively identify animals only based on the raw output, we saw swarms that looked like our beloved krill, and other aggregations that suggested hake. Sometimes, at the same time that the team of visual observers on the flying bridge of the vessel sighted whales, I also saw potential prey on the echogram.

*I spent much of the HALO cruise monitoring incoming data from the transducer on the SIMRAD EK60. Photo: Marissa Garcia.*

I’m excited to keep collecting these data, and grateful that I can also access acoustic data collected by others. Many research vessels use echosounders while they are underway, including the NOAA Ship Bell M. Shimada, which conducts cruises in the Northern California Current several times a year. Starting in 2018, GEMM Lab members have joined these cruises to conduct marine mammal surveys.

This awesome pairing of data types means that we can analyze the prey that was available at the time of marine mammal sightings. I’ve been starting to process acoustic data from past Northern California Current cruises, eavesdropping on the preyscape in places that were jam-packed with whales, such as this echogram from the September 2020 cruise, below.

*An echogram from the September 2020 NCC cruise shows a great deal of prey at different depths.*

Like a lot of science, listening to animals in the sea comes down to occasional bursts of fieldwork followed by a lot of clicking on a computer screen during data analysis. This analysis can be some pretty fun clicking, though – it’s amazing to watch the echogram unfurl, revealing the preyscape in a swath of ocean. I’m excited to keep clicking, and learn what it can tell us about whale distributions off of Oregon.

Into the Krillscape: A Remote Expedition in Research and Mentorship

By Rachel Kaplan, PhD student, Oregon State University College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences and Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab

What are the most unexpected things you’ve done on Zoom in the last year? Since the pandemic dramatically changed all our lives in 2020, I think we’ve all been surprised by the diversity of things we’ve done remotely. I’ve baked bagels with a friend in Finland, done oceanography labs from my kitchen, had dance parties with people across the country, and conducted an award ceremony for my family’s Thanksgiving scavenger hunt – all on Zoom. Over the last several months, I’ve also mentored an Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, & the Arts (URSA) Engage student, named Amanda. Although we haven’t met in person yet, we’ve been connecting over Zoom since October.

Amanda is an Ocean Sciences student working with me and Dr. Kim Bernard (CEOAS) to conduct a literature review about the two species of krill found off the coast of Oregon. Thysanoessa spinifera and Euphausia pacifica are an important food source for many of the animals that live off our coast — including blue, humpback, and fin whales. I am trying to learn how krill distributions shape those of humpback and blue whales as part of project OPAL, as well as which oceanographic factors drive krill abundances and distributions.

*Thysanoessa spinifera* (source: Scripps Institute of Oceanography).

We’re also interested in T. spinifera and E. pacifica for the crucial roles they serve in ecosystems, beyond providing dinner for whales. Krill do many things that are beneficial to ecosystems and people, termed “ecosystem services.” These include facilitating carbon drawdown from the surface ocean to the deep, supporting lucrative fisheries species like salmon, flatfish, and rockfish, and feeding seabirds like auklets and shearwaters. We want to understand more fully the niche that T. spinifera and E. pacifica each fill off the coast of Oregon, which will help us anticipate how these important animals can be impacted by forces such as global climate change and marine management efforts.

Trying to understand the ecosystem services fulfilled by krill is inherently interdisciplinary, which means we have to learn a lot of new things, making this project a lot of fun. The questions Amanda and I have pursued together have ranged from intensely specific, to surprisingly broad. How many calories do blue whales need to eat in a day? How many krill do salmon need to eat? How big are krill fecal pellets, and how fast do they sink?

Trying to answer these questions has basically amounted to a heroic scouring of the internet’s krillscape by Amanda. She has hunted down papers dating back to the 1960s, pulled together findings from every corner of the world, and pursued what she refers to as “treasure troves” of data. In the process, she has also revealed the holes that exist in the literature, and given us new questions. This is the basis of the scientific process: understanding the current state of knowledge, identifying gaps in that knowledge, and developing the questions and methods needed to fill those gaps.

*Euphausia pacifica* (source: University of Irvine California, Peter J. Bryant).

Filling in knowledge gaps about T. spinifera and E. pacifica can help us better understand these animals, the ecosystems where they live, and the whales and other animals that depend on them for prey. It’s exciting to know that we will have the opportunity to help fill some of these gaps, as both Amanda and I continue this research over the course of our degrees.

Being able to engage in remote research and mentorship has been really rewarding, and it has shown me how far we’ve all come over the last year. Learning how to work together remotely has been crucial as we have adjusted to the funny new normal of the pandemic. As much as I miss working with people in person, I’ve learned that there’s a lot of great connection to be found even in remote collaboration – I’ve loved meeting Amanda’s pets on Zoom, learning about her career goals, and seeing her incredibly artistic representations of the carbon cycle held up to the camera.

Even though most of our conversations take place on Zoom from our homes, this research still feels plugged into a bigger community. Amanda and I also join Kim’s bigger Zooplankton Ecology Lab meetings, which include two other graduate students and eight undergraduate students, all of whom are working on zooplankton ecology questions that span from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Even though we’ve never met in person, a supportive and curious community has developed among all of us, which I know will persist when we can move back to in-person research and mentorship.

From land, sea,… and space: searching for whales in the vast ocean

By Solène Derville, Postdoc, OSU Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Science, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab

The ocean is vast.

What I mean is that the vastness of the ocean is very hard to mentally visualize. When facing a conservation issue such as increased whale entanglement along the US West Coast (see OPAL project ), a tempting solution may be to suggest « let’s go see where the whales are and report their location to the fishermen?! ». But, it only takes a little calculation to realize how impractical this idea is.

Let’s roll out the numbers. The US West Coast exclusive economic zone (EEZ) stretches from the coast out to 200 nautical miles offshore, as prescribed by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. It covers an area of 825,549 km² (Figure 1). Now, imagine that you wish to survey this area for marine mammals. Using a vessel such as the R/V Bell M. Shimada that is used for the Northern California Current Ecosystem surveys cruises (NCC cruises, see Dawn and Rachel’s last blog), we may detect whales at a distance of roughly 6 km (based on my preliminary results). This distance of detection depends on the height of the observer, hence the height of the flying bridge where she/he is standing (the observer’s height may also be accounted for, but unless she/he is a professional basket-ball player, I think it can be neglected here). The Shimada is quite a large ship and it’s flying bridge is 13 meters above the water. Two observers may survey the water on each side of the trackline.

Considering that the vessel is moving at 8 knots (~15 km/h), we may expect to be effectively surveying 180 km² per hour (6x2x15). That’s not too bad, right?

Again, perspective is the key. If we divide the West Coast EEZ surface by 180 km² we can estimate that it would take 2,752 hours to survey this entire region. With an average of 12 hours of daylight, this takes us to…

382 DAYS OF SURVEY, searching for marine mammals over the US West Coast. Considering that observations cannot be undertaken on days with bad weather (fog, heavy rain, strong winds…), it might take more than a year and a half to complete the survey! And what would the marine mammals have done in the meantime? Move…

This little math exercise proves that exhaustively searching for the needle in the haystack from a vessel is not the way to go if we are to describe whale distribution and help mitigate the risk of entanglement. And using another platform of observation is not necessarily the solution. The OPAL project has relied on a great collaboration with the United States Coast Guard to survey Oregon waters. The USCG helicopters travel fast compared to a vessel, about 90 knots (167 km/h). As a result, more ground is covered but the speed at which it is traveling prevents the observer from detecting whales that are very far away. Based on the last analysis I ran for the OPAL project, whales are usually detected up to 3 km from the helicopter (only 5 % of sightings exceed that distance). In addition, the helicopter generally only has capacity for one observer at a time.

If we replicate the survey time calculation from above for the USCG helicopter, we realize that even with a fast-moving aerial survey platform it would still take 137 days to cover the West Coast EEZ.

**Figure 1**. What is the best survey method to document marine mammal occurrence in the US West Coast Exclusive Economic zone (EEZ)?

First, we can model and extrapolate. This approach is the path we are taking with the OPAL project: we survey Oregon waters in 4 different areas along the coast each month, then model observed whale densities as a function of topographic and oceanographic variables, and then predict whale probability of presence over the entire region. These predictions are based on the assumption that our survey design effectively sampled the variety of environmental conditions experienced by whales over the study region, which it certainly did considering that all sites are surveyed year-round.

An alternative approach that has been recently discussed in the GEMM Llab, is the use of satellite images to detect whales along the coast. A communication entitled « The Potential of Satellite Imagery for Surveying Whales » was published last month in the Sensors Journal (Höschle et al., 2021) and presents the opportunities offered by this relatively new technology. The WorldView-3 satellite, owned by the company Digitalglobe and launched in 2016, has made it possible to commercialize imagery with a resolution never reached before, of the order of 30 cm per pixel. These very high resolution (VHR) satellite images make it possible to identify several species of large whales (Cubaynes et al. al., 2019) and to estimate their density (Bamford et al., 2020). Furthermore, machine learning algorithms, such as Neural Networks, have proved quite efficient at automatically detecting whales in satellite images (Guirado et al., 2019, Figure 2). While several new ultra-high resolution imaging satellites are expected to be launched in 2021 (by Maxar Technologies and Airbus), this “remote” approach looks like a promising avenue to detect whales over vast regions while drinking a cup of coffee at the office.

**Figure 2.** Illustration of a whale detection algorithm working on a gridded satellite image (DigitalGlobe). Source: Guirado et al., 2019.

But like any other data collection method, satellites have their drawbacks. We recently discovered that these VHR satellites are routinely switched off while passing above the ocean. Specific inquiries would need to be made to acquire data over our study areas, which would be at great expense. One of the cheapest provider I found is the Soar platform, that provides images at 50 cm resolution in partnership with the Chinese Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. They advertise daily images anywhere on earth at $10 USD per km². This might sound cheap at first glance, but circling back to our US West Coast EEZ area calculations, we estimate that surveying this region entirely with satellite imagery would cost more than $8 million USD.

Yet, we have to look forward. The use of satellite imagery is likely to broaden and increase in the coming years, with a possible decrease in cost. Quoting Höschle et al. (2021) ‘To protect our world’s oceans, we need a global effort and we need to create opportunities for that to happen’.

Will satellites soon save whales?

References

Bamford, C. C. G. et al. A comparison of baleen whale density estimates derived from overlapping satellite imagery and a shipborne survey. Sci. Rep. 10, 1–12 (2020).

Cubaynes, H. C., Fretwell, P. T., Bamford, C., Gerrish, L. & Jackson, J. A. Whales from space: Four mysticete species described using new VHR satellite imagery. Mar. Mammal Sci. 35, 466–491 (2019).

Guirado, E., Tabik, S., Rivas, M. L., Alcaraz-Segura, D. & Herrera, F. Whale counting in satellite and aerial images with deep learning. Sci. Rep. 9, 1–12 (2019).

Höschle, C., Cubaynes, H. C., Clarke, P. J., Humphries, G. & Borowicz, A. The potential of satellite imagery for surveying whales. Sensors 21, 1–6 (2021).

Lessons learned from (not) going to sea

By Rachel Kaplan¹ and Dawn Barlow²

¹PhD student, Oregon State University College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences and Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab

²PhD Candidate, Oregon State University Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab

“Hurry up and wait.” A familiar phrase to anyone who has conducted field research. A flurry of preparations, followed by a waiting game—waiting for the weather, waiting for the right conditions, waiting for unforeseen hiccups to be resolved. We do our best to minimize unknowns and unexpected challenges, but there is always uncertainty associated with any endeavor to collect data at sea. We cannot control the whims of the ocean; only respond as best we can.

On 15 February 2021, we were scheduled to board the NOAA Ship Bell M. Shimada as marine mammal observers for the Northern California Current (NCC) ecosystem survey, a recurring research cruise that takes place several times each year. The GEMM Lab has participated in this multidisciplinary data collection effort since 2018, and we are amassing a rich dataset of marine mammal distribution in the region that is incorporated into the OPAL project. February is the middle of wintertime in the North Pacific, making survey conditions challenging. For an illustration of this, look no further than at the distribution of sightings made during the February 2018 cruise (Fig. 1), when rough sea conditions meant only a few whales were spotted.

**Figure 1.** (A) Map of marine mammal survey effort (gray tracklines) and baleen whale sightings recorded onboard the NOAA ship R/V Shimada during each of the NCC research cruises to-date and (B) number of individuals sighted per cruise since 2018. Note the amount of survey effort conducted in February 2018 (top left panel) compared to the very low number of whales sighted. Data summary and figures courtesy of Solene Derville.

Now, this is February 2021 and the world is still in the midst of navigating the global coronavirus pandemic that has affected every aspect of our lives. The September 2020 NCC cruise was the first NOAA fisheries cruise to set sail since the pandemic began, and all scientists and crew followed a strict shelter-in-place protocol among other COVID risk mitigation measures. Similarly, we sheltered in place in preparation for the February 2021 cruise. But here’s where the weather comes in yet again. Not only did we have to worry about winter weather at sea, but the inclement conditions across the country meant our COVID tests were delayed in transit—and we could not board the ship until everyone tested negative. By the time our results were in, the marine forecast was foreboding, and the Captain determined that the weather window for our planned return to port had closed.

So, we are still on shore. The ship never left the dock, and NCC February 2021 will go on the record as “NAs” rather than sightings of marine mammal presence or absence. So it goes. We can dedicate all our energy to studying the ocean and these spectacularly dynamic systems, but we cannot control them. It is an important and humbling reminder. But as we have continued to learn over the past year, there are always silver linings to be found.

Even though we never made it to the ship, it turns out there’s a lot you can get done onshore. Dawn has sailed on several NCC cruises before, and one of the goals this time was to train Rachel for her first stint at marine mammal survey work. This began at Dawn’s house in Newport, where we sheltered in place together for the week prior to our departure date.

We walked through the iPad program we use to enter data, looked through field guides, and talked over how to respond in different scenarios we might encounter while surveying for marine mammals at sea. We also joined Solene, a postdoc working on the OPAL project, for a Zoom meeting to edit the distance sampling protocol document. It was great training to discuss the finer points of data collection together, with respect to how that data will ultimately be worked into our species distribution models.

The February NCC cruise is famously rough, and a tough time to sight whales (Fig. 1). This low sighting rate arises from a combination of factors: baleen whales typically spend the winter months on their breeding grounds in lower latitudes so their density in Oregon waters is lower, and the notorious winter sea state makes sighting conditions difficult. Solene signed off our Zoom call with, “Go collect that high-quality absence data, girls!” It was a good reminder that not seeing whales is just as important scientifically as seeing them—though sometimes, of course, it’s not possible to even get out where you can’t see them. Furthermore, all absence data is not created equal. The quality of the absence data we can collect deteriorates along with the weather conditions. When we ultimately use these survey data to fuel species distribution models, it’s important to account for our confidence in the periods with no whale sightings.

In addition to the training we were able to conduct on land, the biggest silver lining came just from sheltering in place together. We had only met over Zoom previously, and spending this time together gave us the opportunity to get to know each other in real life and become friends. The week involved a lot of fabulous cooking, rainy walks, and an ungodly number of peanut butter cups. Even though the cruise couldn’t happen, it was such a rich week. The NCC cruises take place several times each year, and the next one is scheduled for May 2021. We’ll keep our fingers crossed for fair winds and negative COVID tests in May!

**Figure 2.** Dawn’s dog Quin was a great shelter in place buddy. She was not sad that the cruise was canceled.

The ups and downs of the ocean

By Solène Derville, Postdoc, OSU Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab

As a GEMM lab post-doc working on the OPAL project, my main goal for 2021 will be to produce accurate predictive models of baleen whale distribution off the Oregon coast to reduce entanglement risk. For the past months, I have been compiling, cleaning, and processing about two years of data collected by Leigh Torres and Craig Hayslip during monthly repeat surveys conducted onboard United States Coast Guard (USCG) helicopters. These standardized surveys record where and when whales are observed off the Oregon coast. These presence and absence data may now be modeled in relation to habitat, while accounting for effort and detection (as several parameters, such as weather and sea state, can affect the capacity of observers to detect whales at the surface). Considering that several baleen whale species (namely, humpback, fin, blue and gray whales) are known to feed in the area, prey availability is expected to be a major driver of their distribution.

As prey distribution data are frequently the lacking component in the habitat model equation, whale ecologists often resort to using environmental proxies. Variables such as topography (e.g., the depth or slope of the seafloor), water physical and chemical characteristics (e.g., temperature, salinity, oxygen concentration) or ocean circulation (e.g., currents, turbulence) have proved to be good predictors for fish or krill distribution, and in turn potential predictors for whale suitable habitats. In my search for such environmental variables to be tested in our future OPAL models, I have been focusing my research on a fascinating ocean feature: sea height.

Sea height varies both temporally and spatially under the influence of multiple factors, from internal mass of the solid Earth to the orbital revolution of the moon. After reading this blog you will realize that the flatness of the horizon at sea is a deceiving perspective (Figure 1) …

**Figure 1**: Flat? Really? (source: Pixabay)

Gravity and the geoid

We all know of Newton’s s discovery of gravity: the attraction force exerted by any object with a given mass on its surroundings. Yet, it is puzzling to think that the rate of acceleration of the apple falling on Newton’s head would have been different if Newton had been anywhere else on Earth.

Why is that and what does it have to do with sea height? On Earth, the standard gravity g is set at 9.80665 m/s2. This constant is called a “standard” because in fact, gravity varies at the surface of our planet, even if estimated at a fixed altitude. Indeed, as gravity is caused by mass, any change in relief or rock composition results in a change in gravity. For instance, magmatic activity in the upper mantle of the Earth and the crust causes a change in rock density and results in a change in gravity measured at the surface.

Gravity therefore is the first reason why the ocean surface is not flat. Gravity shapes an irregular surface called the “geoid”. This hypothetical ocean surface has equal gravitational potential anywhere on Earth and differs from the ellipsoid of reference by as much as 100 m! So to the question whether Earth is round or flat, I would say it is potato shaped (Figure 2)!

Figure 2: Exaggerated view of the gravitational potential of Earth. View a video animation here. (credit: European Space Agency)

The geoid is an essential reference for understanding ocean currents and monitoring changes in sea-level. Hypothetically, if ocean water had equal density everywhere and at any depth, the sea surface should match with the geoid… but that’s not the case. Let’s see why.

Ocean dynamic topography

Not unlike the hills and valleys covering landscapes, the ocean surface also has its highs and lows. Except that in the ocean, the surface topography is ever changing. Sea surface height (SSH) measures the average height difference between the observed sea level and the ellipsoid of reference (Figure 3). SSH is mostly affected by ocean circulation and may vary by as much as ±1 m. Indeed, just like the rocks inside the Earth, the water in the ocean varies in density. The vertical and horizontal physical structuring of the ocean was extensively discussed by Dawn last November while she was preparing for her PhD Qualifying Exams. Temperature clearly is at the core of the processes. As thermal expansion increases the space between warming water particles, the volume of a given amount of liquid water increases with increasing temperature. Warmer waters therefore take up “more space” than cooler waters, resulting in an elevated SSH.

**Figure 3**: Overview of the different fields used in altimetry (credit: CLS, https://duacs.cls.fr/)

SSH may therefore be used as an indicator of oceanographic phenomena such as upwellings, where warm surface waters are replaced by deep, cooler, and nutrient-rich waters moving upwards. The California Current that moves southwards along the North American coast is known as one of the world’s major currents affiliated with strong upwelling zones, which often triggers increased biological productivity. Several studies conducted in the California Current system have found a link between the variations in SSH and whale abundance or foraging activity (Abrahms et al. 2019; Pardo et al. 2015; Becker et al. 2016; Hazen et al. 2016).⁠

SSH is measured by altimeter satellites and is made freely available by the European Space Agency and the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Lucky me! Numerous variables are derived from SSH, as shown in Figure 3. Among other things, I was able to download the daily maps of Sea Surface Height Anomaly (SSHa, also referred to as Sea Level Anomaly: SLA) over the Oregon coast from February 2019 to December 2020. SSHa is the difference between observed SSH at a specific time and place from the mean SSH field of reference calculated over a long period of time. Negative values of SSHa potentially suggest upwellings of cooler waters that could be associated with higher prey availability. Figure 4 shows an example of environmental data mining as I try to match SSHa with whale observations made during OPAL surveys. Figure 4B suggests increased whale occurrence where/when SSHa is lower.

**Figure 4:** Preliminary exploration of the relationship between sea surface height anomaly (SSHa) and baleen whales (blue, fin, humpback, unidentified) observed during OPAL surveys off Oregon, USA, between February 2019 and December 2020. A) Example covering 3 months of survey during summer 2019. Sightings were grouped over 5-km segments of surveyed trackline and segments with at least one sighting were mapped with colored circles. Dotted grey lines are the repeated survey tracklines for each of the labeled study areas (NB = North Bend). Sightings are symbolized by area (color)
and group size (circle size). Monthly averages of SSHa are represented with a colored gradient. B) Monthly averages of SSHa measured over 5-km segments where whales were detected (presence) or not (absence).

Although encouraging, these preliminary insights are just the tip of the modeling iceberg. Many more testing and modeling steps will be required to determine confounding factors and relevant spatio-temporal scales at which these oceanographic variables may be influencing whale distribution off the Oregon coast. I am only at the start of a long road…

References

Abrahms, Briana, Heather Welch, Stephanie Brodie, Michael G. Jacox, Elizabeth A. Becker, Steven J. Bograd, Ladd M. Irvine, Daniel M. Palacios, Bruce R. Mate, and Elliott L. Hazen. 2019. “Dynamic Ensemble Models to Predict Distributions and Anthropogenic Risk Exposure for Highly Mobile Species.” Diversity and Distributions, no. December 2018: 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1111/ddi.12940.

Becker, Elizabeth, Karin Forney, Paul Fiedler, Jay Barlow, Susan Chivers, Christopher Edwards, Andrew Moore, and Jessica Redfern. 2016. “Moving Towards Dynamic Ocean Management: How Well Do Modeled Ocean Products Predict Species Distributions?” Remote Sensing 8 (2): 149. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs8020149.

Hazen, Elliott L, Daniel M Palacios, Karin A Forney, Evan A Howell, Elizabeth Becker, Aimee L Hoover, Ladd Irvine, et al. 2016. “WhaleWatch : A Dynamic Management Tool for Predicting Blue Whale Density in the California Current.” Journal of Applied Ecology 54 (5): 1415–28. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.12820.

Pardo, Mario A., Tim Gerrodette, Emilio Beier, Diane Gendron, Karin A. Forney, Susan J. Chivers, Jay Barlow, and Daniel M. Palacios. 2015. “Inferring Cetacean Population Densities from the Absolute Dynamic Topography of the Ocean in a Hierarchical Bayesian Framework.” PLOS One 10 (3): 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0120727.

A Multidisciplinary Treasure Hunt: Learning about Indigenous Whaling in Oregon

By Rachel Kaplan, PhD student, OSU College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences and Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab

At this year’s virtual State of the Coast conference, I enjoyed tuning into a range of great talks, including one by Zach Penney from the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. In his presentation, “More Than a Tradition: Treaty rights and the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission,” Penney described a tribal “covenant with resources,” and noted the success of this approach — “You don’t live in a place for 15,000 years by messing it up.”

Indigenous management of resources in the Pacific Northwest dates back thousands of years. From oak savannahs to fisheries to fires, local tribes managed diverse natural systems long before colonial settlement of the area that is now Oregon. We know comparatively little, however, about how Indigenous groups in Oregon interacted with whale populations before the changes brought by colonialism and commercial whaling.

Makah hunters in Washington bring a harvested whale into Neah Bay (Asahel Curtis/Washington State Historical Society).

I’m curious about how this missing knowledge could inform our understanding of the coastal Oregon ecosystems in which many GEMM Lab projects take place. My graduate research will be part of the effort to identify co-occurrence between whales and fishing in Oregon, with the goal of helping to reduce whale entanglement risk. Penney’s talk, ongoing conversations about decolonizing science, and my own concerns about becoming the scientist that I want to be, have all led me to ask a new set of questions: What did humans know in the past about whale distributions along the Oregon coast? What lost knowledge can be reclaimed from history?

As I started reading about historical Indigenous whale use in Oregon, I was struck by how little we know today, and how this learning process became a multidisciplinary treasure hunt. Clues as to how Indigenous groups interacted with whales along the Oregon coast lie in oral histories, myths, journals, and archaeological artifacts.

Much of what I read hinged on the question: did Indigenous tribes in Oregon historically hunt whales? Many signs point to yes, but it’s a surprisingly tricky question to answer conclusively. Marine systems and animals, including seals and whales, remain an important part of cultures in the Pacific Northwest today – but historically, documentation of hunting whales in Oregon has been limited. Whale bones have been found in coastal middens, and written accounts describe opportunistic harvests of beached whales. However, people have long believed that only a few North American tribes outside of the Arctic regularly hunted whales.

But in 2007, archaeologists Robert Losey and Dongya Yang found an artifact that started to shift this narrative. While studying a collection of tools housed at the Smithsonian Institution, they discovered the tip of a harpoon lodged in a whale flipper bone. This artifact came from the Partee site, which was inhabited around AD 300-1150 and is located near present-day Seaside, Oregon.

A gray whale ulna with cut marks found at the Partee site (Wellman, et al. 2017).

Through DNA testing, Losey and Yang determined that the harpoon was made of elk bone, and that the elk was not only harvested locally, but also used locally. This new piece of evidence suggested that whaling did in fact take place at the Partee site, likely by the Tillamook or Clatsop tribes that utilized this area.

Several years later, this discovery inspired Smithsonian Museum of Natural History archaeologist Torben Rick and University of Oregon PhD student Hannah Wellman to comb through the rest of the animal remains in the Smithsonian’s collection from northwest Oregon. Rick and Wellman scrutinized 187 whale bones for signs of hunting or processing, and found that about a quarter of the marks they inspected could have come from either hunting or the opportunistic harvest of stranded whales. They examined tools from the midden as well, and found that they were more suited to hunting animals, like seals and sea lions, or fishing.

However, Wellman and Rick also used DNA testing to identify which whale species were represented in the midden – and the DNA analyses suggested a different story. Genetic results revealed that the majority of whale bones in the midden came from gray whales, a third from humpback whales, and a few from orca and minke. Modern gray whale stranding events are not uncommon, and so it follows logically that these bones could have simply come from people harvesting beached whales. However, humpback strandings are rare – suggesting that such a large proportion of humpback bones in the midden is likely evidence of people actively hunting humpback whales.

Percentage of whale species identified at the Partee site and percentage of species in the modern stranding record for the Oregon Coast (Wellman, et al. 2017).

These results shed new light on whale harvesting practices at the Partee Site, and, like so much research, they suggest a new set of questions. What does the fact that there were orca, minke, gray, and humpback whales off the Oregon coast 900 years ago tell us about the history of this ecosystem? Could artifacts that have not yet been found provide more conclusive evidence of hunting? What would it mean if these artifacts are found one day, or if they are never found?

As this fascinating research continues, I hope that new discoveries will continue to deepen our understanding of historic Indigenous whaling practices in Oregon – and that this information can find a place in contemporary conversations. Indigenous whaling rights are both a contemporary and contentious issue in the Pacific Northwest, and the way that humans learn about the past has much to do with how we shape the present.

What we learn about the past can also change how we understand this ecosystem today, and provide new context as we try to understand the impacts of climate change on whale populations in Oregon. I’m interested in how learning more about historical Indigenous whaling practices could provide more information about whale population baselines, ideas for management strategies, and a new lens on the importance of whales in the Pacific Northwest. Even if we can’t fully reclaim lost knowledge from history, maybe we can still read enough clues to help us see both the past and present more fully.

Sources:

Braun, Ashley. “New Research Offers a Wider View on Indigenous North American Whaling.” Hakai Magazine, November 2016, www.hakaimagazine.com/news/new-research-offers-wider-view-indigenous-north-american-whaling/.

Eligon, John. “A Native Tribe Wants to Resume Whaling. Whale Defenders Are Divided.” New York Times, November 2019.

Hannah P. Wellman, Torben C. Rick, Antonia T. Rodrigues & Dongya Y. Yang (2017) Evaluating Ancient Whale Exploitation on the Northern Oregon Coast Through Ancient DNA and Zooarchaeological Analysis, The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, 12:2, 255-275, DOI: 10.1080/15564894.2016.1172382

Losey, R., & Yang, D. (2007). Opportunistic Whale Hunting on the Southern Northwest Coast: Ancient DNA, Artifact, and Ethnographic Evidence. American Antiquity, 72(4), 657-676. doi:10.2307/25470439

Sanchez, Gabriel (2014). Conference paper: Cetacean Hunting at the Par-Tee site (35CLT20)?: Ethnographic, Artifact and Blood Residue Analysis Investigation.

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