Current Projects – Page 18 – Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Laboratory

Whale mAPP Goes Global!

By Courtney Hann

The Whale mAPP team of Lei Lani Stelle, Melo King of Smallmelo Geographic Information Services, and me (Courtney Hann) has been busy recruiting ocean enthusiasts and applying for grants to fund volunteer-suggested Whale mAPP revisions. As a refresher, Whale mAPP is an Android-based mobile application that can be used by anyone to record marine mammal (whale, dolphins, porpoises, pinniped) sightings around the world. It is easy to sign up as a beta tester on the Whale mAPP website, www.whalemapp.org, and use the mobile app on your personal device to help scientists and conservationists learn more about marine mammals.

What is most spectacular is that the app has truly gone global! We now have over 100 users and are getting a couple new user requests each week! These volunteers have been busy at work this summer, recording thousands of marine mammal sightings during the summer months. Sightings have streamed in from the U.S. West Coast, Hawaiian, Japanese, and Russian waters, the Caribbean, the middle of the Southern Ocean, and the Greenland Sea. You can click on any sighting on the web map to see details about what species were recorded, how many were seen, what their behavior was like, the weather conditions that day, and other notes.

This map shows global marine mammal sightings recorded by Whale mAPP volunteers. The blue whale tale icons represent whale sightings, the pink dolphin icons represent dolphin or porpoise sightings, and the orange seal icon represents a seal, sea lion, or sea otter sighting. Data recorded during each sighting include the location (automatic), the species, the weather and sea conditions, the number of individuals, and a five-star confidence rating (http://www.whalemapp.org/map/#/, CEBCO, DeLorme | Melodi King, MS GIS Program – Cohort 21, University of Redlands).

If we zoom into my particular study area of Southeast Alaska, we see that volunteers are still doing a superb job at recording the abundant number of marine mammals in the area.

Zoomed in image of the northeast Pacific, showing marine mammal sightings recorded this summer in Alaska, Southeast Alaska, British Columbia, and Washington (http://www.whalemapp.org/map/#/, CEBCO, DeLorme | Melodi King, MS GIS Program – Cohort 21, University of Redlands).

Initial funding through the California Coastal Commission Whale Tail grant facilitated the creation of the Whale mAPP project, while current funding from the Hatfield Marine Science Center’s Mamie Markham Research Award that I received this Spring 2015 is funding the top two revisions requested by our users:
(1) Enable the user to edit observations during a trip and after a trip has ended. This revision is huge, was requested by almost every user I spoke to in Southeast Alaska, and was shown very evidently in our survey results.
(2) Add site-specific animal behavior and descriptions to Whale mAPP. For Southeast Alaska, this means adding the famous bubble-net feeding behavior to our list, as well as important descriptions of how to identify, recognize, and understand marine mammal behaviors.
In addition to the above two revisions, a few other revisions will be completed by Smallmelo Geographic Information Services this winter. These revisions include improving world-wide coverage of region-specific species lists, creating tools for validating the quality of the data, enabling data downloads directly from the website (www.whalemapp.org), and including the beta-tested “marine mammal fun facts” into the global application.

All of these incredible accomplishments and progress toward a successful, educational, fun, and data-generating marine mammal citizen science project could not have happened without Dr. Lei Lani’s open mind toward incorporating more people, including me, into her Whale mAPP project. Whale mAPP represents a new age of scientists, one of collaboration across disciplines (ecology, statistics, coding, education, and more!), and one that over-steps previous boundaries to re-define science. I hope that my participation with Whale mAPP and future citizen science projects will inspire individuals to know and feel that they can be scientists and that we can inspire the world to work together for the common good of our oceans.

Not Everyday is Gray (just most of them)

As Amanda explains quite nicely in her previous blog post, research is not always glamorous, and we don’t always see the species we’ve come out to the field to study. However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other cool species out there to spot! Here are some common (and uncommon) visitors to some of our research sites this summer.

Also, if you continue to the bottom, we’ve included some cool videos of (1) gray whale sharking behaviour, (2) Gray whale swimming (top down full body view), and what it looks and sounds like when we’re doing one of our close-in focal follows. Enjoy!

A very unexpected, but very welcome visitor! Spotted off Boiler Bay August 10. — A very unexpected, but very welcome visitor! Blue Whale spotted off Boiler Bay August 10.

Often in pairs, we've started seeing more of these lately as they come back north from the breeding grounds further south. — Often in pairs, we’ve started seeing more of these California sea lions lately as they come back north from the breeding grounds further south.

fluffy crow — A young crow fluffs up in the breeze

Humpback Whale which has been hanging out around Depoe Bay for the past two weeks. Its split dorsal fin makes it easy to recognize! Notice the darker color than the grays we usually see.

Spotted at Graveyard Point — A Great Egret spotted at Graveyard Point

Long Billed Curlew — A long billed curlew drops by for a visit

This chick waits patiently for parents to bring a meal

We see the Osprey mutliple times a day in Port Orford as there are a couple of nesting pairs with chicks to feed. — We see the Osprey multiple times a day in Port Orford as there are a couple of nesting pairs with chicks to feed.

Our Oystercatchers at Boiler Bay have also successfully fledged a pair of chicks while we've been watching! — Our Oystercatchers at Boiler Bay have also successfully fledged a pair of chicks while we’ve been watching!

There are at least two pairs of Peregrines with chicks in Port Orford as well. This one brings home a catch! (possibly murre or guillemot chick?)

If you remember a few weeks ago, we shared photos of gray whale “sharking” behaviour. Well, now we have video! Enjoy:

Here’s what it looks like from the top of Graveyard Bluff when a whale swims by below us!

We get really excited by this behavior because its positive proof that the whales are successfully foraging!

and here is a fluke!

We’ll be back soon with more updates from Port Orford.

Fair winds,

Florence & the rest of Team Ro”buff”stus

An insight into what Marine Mammal Observing is really like!

By Amanda Holdman

It’s August of 2015. That means I have exactly 2.5 months left until my field season and data collection for my masters comes to a close. At the end of October, I will have collected exactly 2 years of visual data on marine mammal distributions off of the coast of Newport, Oregon.

This is a bittersweet moment for me. Currently, I am on a 7 hour flight to Scotland to do some initial data analysis on my collected observations, with the help of a workshop offered by the University of St. Andrews. My first time abroad has me pretty restless with excitement on the plane, but with a 9 hour time change, some good rest will be key to being successful at the workshop. As I try to close my eyes, and picture what the next two weeks of what I like to call “Intensive Distance Sampling Summer School” will be like, the stranger next to me inevitably begins to make small talk, beginning with

“So what do you do?”

I usually tend to answer this question in two different ways. When I’m in my science community, I have no hesitation giving my 3 minute elevator speech on what I have been researching for the past year. However, when I’m making small talk with anyone I tend to just say

“I’m a master’s student studying marine mammals”

And that’s about all you need to say to get everyone’s attention around you! With a little more detail, I explain that I run transects to collect visual observation data of marine mammals to assist with understanding their patterns in distribution and habitat use. This explanation is always followed up with:

“Man, you’ve got the coolest job ever! What’s it like doing this all the time?”

Again most of the time I get this question, I’m usually conversing with people visiting the west coast hoping to see a large gray whale on vacation; or young children who haven’t yet figured out that marine biology isn’t just about dolphins and pretty coral reefs – but it’s still good to inspire them! Just last week even, I ran into someone on the beach that told me his daughter thinks I’m a rock star for teaching her that you can research the sounds that whales, dolphins, and seals make. (His daughter attended Marine Science Day back in April, and I showed her some recordings of sounds – but I’ll carry this compliment with me for a long time)

But when people ask me how awesome my job is, I tend to keep the morale up and I usually answer

“yep, it’s pretty awesome. I love it! ”

But to be honest, sometimes… it isn’t.

For me, there are four components that equate to a great day of fieldwork: ocean conditions, marine mammals, the boat itself, and equipment (hydrophones, GPS, CTD, camera, etc.)

So in reality…

“The flow of research season goes a lot like this: whales are present, but ocean is impossible; or ocean is calm but the whales are gone; or both whales and ocean are good but the boat breaks down; or everything is working but the rain last night brought in some fog and ruined the visibility” (From Hawaii’s Humpbacks: Unveiling the Mysteries)

AND EVEN on the rare chance that everything goes right – observing marine mammals is hard and uncomfortable – 14 hours of standing with back pain, squinting into the sun until you see one part of the water that looks a little different than the others. I mean really there isn’t much on earth that’s more enormous than the ocean.

This sounds like a lot of negativity, but I am in Scotland currently to resolve some of these minor setbacks we encountered during field collection. Using a statistics program called DISTANCE, we can take into account environmental conditions, sea state, observer bias, etc. When we combine all of these factors together we create a detection function or a ratio of the animals we saw, compared to those we missed. Eventually we end up with an abundance estimate of how many animals are in our study area.

Analyzing the results of my observations this week has provided me with the realization that my time on a boat is coming to an end. In my two years of fieldwork collection, marine mammal observing has molded me into the type of person that has what it takes to do this kind of research: dedicated, tolerant to pain, boredom, and frustration, and most importantly passionate about what I am doing.

Passion is definitely a prerequisite for the life of a GEMM student. Graduate school gives you the chance to be reflective and the time to carefully wade through information. I’ve always had a strong desire to learn, and when I get to combine that with my personal interests, it turns out graduate school can be quite the rewarding initiative.

It’s easy to be discouraged sometimes, especially in an intense and competitive environment like scientific research. I can assure you though, even on our unlucky days, when we’ve swallowed all of the truths about the difficulties of what we do and we’re frustrated enough to give up, our luck turns – usually right when we need it to.

I think the BBC Zoologist, Mark Carwardine, knows just how I feel in saying, “There are few things more rewarding than seeing the worlds’s largest animal in its natural habitat!

Thanks for reading!

We need all the “Kelp” we can get!

Hello from Hatfield Marine Science Center! This is Justin bringing you the latest and greatest in Gray Whale news. But first, let me fill you folks in with some info about me. I am an undergraduate student, transitioning into my senior year, with Oregon State University’s Fisheries and Wildlife Department. In addition to my major, I am also minoring in statistics; crazy right? I have hopes and dreams of working in Marine Ecology, and I believe working on this Gray Whale project is a fine start! Which means, this summer, I have had the fortunate opportunity to work alongside the lovely Florence van Tulder, the mastermind behind the project, as well as Cricket and Sarah, the other two charismatic interns.

Our team name is derived from the scientific name of the gray whale: E. robustus, and the colorful "buff" scarves you can see us wearing on most days. — Our team name is derived from the scientific name of the gray whale: E. robustus, and the colorful “buff” scarves you can see us wearing on most days. (Left to right: Sarah, Florence, Cricket, Justin)

As we were wrapping up our two week stint in Port Orford, We observed the Gray Whales exhibiting some interesting behavior; they seemed to move from kelp patch to kelp patch, almost as if they were searching for something. What could be hiding under the luscious stands of Nereocystis luetkeana, otherwise known as bull kelp? Well, with the presence of defecation ( whale droppings) left behind from diving whales near many of the floating kelp patches, one culprit came to mind- mysid shrimp. Mysid shrimp are believed to be a primary prey source of the Gray whales.

Calmly approaching the kelp, this whale takes his time to observe his surroundings

Naturally, my curiosity got the best me and I ended up spending hours on end conducting literature searches and looking for bathymetry maps, thanks to Florence. All joking aside, I asked Florence if we could use our fancy Theodolite to assess or roughly map the distribution of the kelp patches. We would create polygonal shapes of the kelp on a map and observe how the whales move with respect to the kelp. The idea being, to get a better of picture of the relationship between the whales and the kelp, if any relationship exists at all. It is still a work in progress, due to our survey sites getting all kinds of “fogged” up. When the kinks are worked out and we have some useful visual data, we will post an awesome photo.

A quick breather before heading down into the depths near the kelp. (it's even heart shaped!) — A quick breather before heading down into the depths near the kelp. (it’s even heart shaped!)

This large white tailed beauty bounced between kelp patches like a pinball!

Port Orford didn’t just bring us sweet whales, it brought the heat! Temperatures were up to almost the nineties the last week in July! We beat the heat with plenty of hydration and sun block and the predicable wind patterns became a savior on those sweltering days giving us temporary relief. The heat seemed to tease out other critters as well. We saw a variety of birds, from turkey vultures, Peregrine Falcons, Ospreys, Bald Eagles, and even Egrets! In the water we saw baby Harbor seals, and some bonus River Otters.

This is our "tripod" of river otters! — This is our “tripod” of river otters!

In more recent news, August 8^th marked our first full month of surveying between our two whale hotspots. However, the term “hotspot” doesn’t always seem to be fitting. This past week has been a tough one for the team and I up in Boiler Bay due to less than optimal weather conditions and our survey site has been exposed to an abnormal cycle of fog. Our friendly “neighborhood” grays have been a bit sparse, and yet, we have had Humpback Whales grace us with their presence and these whales have been spotted during several survey days this week! ( In the tradition of opportunistic data, we even tracked one of them.)

The track-line for whale 118 - a humpback who has been hanging out near Boiler Bay all week. — The track-line for whale 118 – a humpback who has been hanging out near Boiler Bay all week.

This summer has been very fun because not only do we get to watch whales every day, but when we are in Boiler Bay, we have the opportunity to meet fascinating people from all over the world! The positive support for the project coming from the community is quite a nice touch to our days in the field. If you are ever in the neighborhood, stop by and say hello, maybe share a whale’s tale or two!

Gray whales do not "fluke" very often, so its always a treat when we get a picture of one! — Gray whales do not “fluke” very often, so its always a treat when we get a picture of one!

Gray Whale Goofs

Hello there! Florence here, signing in from Newport. We had a fantastic trip south to Port Orford, and tracked another 53 whales bringing our season total up to 117 so far! This morning, we were back out at Boiler Bay and spent 5 hours staring at empty water – in keeping with the theme of this post, field work does not always go as planned.

Our two study areas couldn’t be more different. At the Boiler Bay State Wayside, we are approximately 18 meters off the water. In Port Orford, we are perched on the side of a 63 meter tall cliff. This extra height greatly increases our range and accuracy as well as changing the angle of our photography and the type of photo analysis we can do. We’re quite excited to have a top down view of our whales, because the photos we are capturing will allow us to use certain photogrammetry techniques to measure the length and girth of the individuals. With luck, when we compare the photos from the beginning of the season (now) to the end of our study (September) we may be able to see a change in the height of the post-cranial fat deposit, which would indicate a successful foraging season. Gray whales do not eat from the beginning of their southward migration, through the breeding and calving season, until they reach productive foraging grounds at the end of their northward migration. This means that all their sustenance for 6+ months is derived from their summer foraging success. Did you know that they even generate their own water through an oxidation reaction which creates ‘metabolic water’ from their blubber stores? So it will be rather fantastic if we manage to measure the change in whale body condition over the course of the summer – particularly if we are able to spot any mother-calf pairs who will have had an especially grueling journey north.

Sharking: A foraging behavior where the whale turns on its side in shallow water. The triangle of the fluke resembles a shark fin

So, while our photo database is advancing nicely, technical difficulties are to be expected when you’re in the field, and sometimes, troubleshooting takes longer than you would like it to. This evening, let me introduce you to the elusive species known as ‘the Chinese land whale.’ It is a very rare breed which spontaneously generates itself from misaligned computer files.

When the theodolite beeps as we ‘mark’ a whale, a pair of horizontal and vertical angles are getting sent from the machine to a program called ‘Pythagoras’ on the laptop. Given our starting coordinates and a few other variables, the program auto-calculates for us the latitude and longitude of that whale. While we hoped it would be a simple matter to upload these coordinates to Google Earth to visualize the tracklines, it turns out that Pythagoras stores the East/West hemisphere information in a separate column, so if we just plot the raw numbers, our whale tracks end up in the middle of a field in rural China! Hence, the rare ‘Chinese land whale’. Now that we know the trick, it is not so difficult to fix, but we were quite surprised the first time it happened!

If you dont have your hemisphere correctly labeled, you end up in China instead of Oregon. — If you don’t have your hemisphere correctly labeled, you end up in China instead of Oregon.

Of course, that is not the only thing that has gone wrong with visualizing the tracklines. When we first got to Graveyard Point survey site, it turns out that we had set our azimuth (our reference angle) the wrong direction from true north, so all our whales seemed to be foraging near the fish and chips restaurant in the middle of town.

If the azimuth is incorrectly referenced, you might end up on land instead of in the water.

After discovering that in order to rotate something 180degrees, you simply need to alter the azimuth angle by 90degrees, (we’re still not sure why this is working), the whales left the fish and chips to us and returned to the harbor. Anyways, now that we’ve figured out these glitches, we can focus on identifying individual whales, and figuring out which track-lines might be repeat visitors.

Once all the kinks got worked out - the real trackline! Dont worry, whale 60 did not go through the jetty, thats an artifact of the program wanting to draw straight lines from point a to b. more likely we simply missed a surface as it transited around the point of the jetty. — Once all the kinks got worked out – the real trackline! Dont worry, whale 60 did not go through the jetty, thats an artifact of the program wanting to draw straight lines from point a to b. more likely we simply missed a surface as it transited around the point of the jetty.

In other outreach news, the OSU media department came out to the field and interviewed us a few weeks ago (on a day that the theodolite and computer were refusing to talk to each other due to a faulty connector cable – which is always delightful when one is trying to showcase research in progress). The resulting article has been posted should you wish to take a look:

http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2015/aug/researchers-studying-oregon%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cresident-population%E2%80%9D-gray-whales

Well known for having the shortest, toughest baleen of any of the great whales, here you can see the plates in its mouth!

Until next time,

Team Ro”buff”stus

Familiar Flukes and Faces

Greetings fellow marine enthusiasts! My name is Cricket, and I am one of the interns working on Florence’s Gray Whale project! I’m preparing to graduate from Oregon State University in a couple of months with a Bachelors of Science in Biology with the marine option. Before I graduate, I wanted to get some extra experience in the field this summer, which is how I ended up here with Florence, Justin, and Sarah, having surprisingly crazy whale adventures along the Oregon coast!

Today marks the end of our first week in Port Orford. We weren’t sure what we were going to get when we switched sites, though of course we had a few fears: No whales, low visibility, bad weather, etc. Depoe Bay had been good to us so far, and we were slightly worried about the transition. In actuality, Port Orford has been amazing!

Our sampling set-up on Graveyard point - above the port of Port Orford — Our sampling set-up on Graveyard point – above the port of Port Orford

Day one was foggy, and we only visited the site briefly to figure out a good location for the theodolite. One of our sites is located on a terrifyingly high cliff, but the view is stellar. We were only there for about an hour and we saw two whales, one of which came up into the cove just beneath us. In fact, one of our concerns with this site is that the whales actually get too close to view through the theodolite. What an unexpected problem to have!

Whale 63 Titchener Cove, Port Orford. Credit: Cricket Carine

From our vantage point, we can get some incredible photos of these whales. Photo identification is a breeze if the whale decides to come into the cove closest to us. We can watch them under the water, as opposed to in Depoe Bay where we could only really observe them when they surface.

Whale 59 Surfaces in Titchener Cove, Port Orford credit: Cricket Carine

We all get particularly excited when we see the same whale more than once. In Depoe Bay, we had at least four different whales appear on multiple days. We can verify this using the photos we manage to get of the whales, and comparing them between days.

For example, in Port Orford, we spotted a whale on the 20th with a particularly large white spot on the fluke. This spot made the whale easily identifiable, so we were able to get a good focal follow (because we could track this whale amongst other whales with confidence that we were tracking the same one the entire time), which in turn allowed us to create a track line of this whale’s dive patterns. This whale happened to be whale sixty (the 60^th whale we’ve seen since the start of our data collection).

While this is a trackline of whale 82, photo ID confirms that 82,60, and 78 are all the same whale! — While this is a track-line of whale 82, photo ID confirms that 82, 60, and 78 are all the same whale! (The beginning of the track is labeled with the whale ID)

Then, days later, we spotted another whale. This was whale 78, and after a few surfaces, we realized this whale had the same white spot! We hesitantly referred to this whale as “sixty” but couldn’t be sure until we compared photos from the days before. And sure enough, it was!

I am particularly enthusiastic about our whale resights, and actively enjoy going through the photos and comparing each one to previous whales to try and identify individuals. It’s tedious, but rewarding when we can begin to learn individuals and identify them in the field. As a sort of rough guide to help us when scrounging through photo ID, I’ve put some of our good comparative photos into a google doc to use as reference. Here’s an example of some of the repeat whales we’ve seen:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KSB67m1julnk2KmH70b9u91OqDqCT4zicuqPHI7ojms/edit

Tomorrow will be day two at our second Port Orford site. Today was day one, and we managed to spot two whales, which is definitely promising. We hope we have as much luck finding and tracking whales there as we did on our cliffside!

Panorama from Humbug State Park survey site

Surveying our new Humbug site this morning

Have a nice Gray!
Cricket

A Week-Full of Whales

Hello and greetings from the sort of sunny Oregon Coast! Sarah reporting in to offer an update on Florence’s Gray Whale study now that we’re about ten days into sampling. If you’re new to our blog you can read up on the preliminary field season right here.

This little gray was incredibly frustrating to follow due to its irregular surfacing and tiny spouts that were hard to see. We affectionately named it Ninja. — This little savior came through on the day all our technology failed and cheered us up with his rainbow spouts. Thankfully, he’s a repeat visitor and though we may have missed him on the 14th, we were able to get a good focal follow on him today.

Before I get to the project though, let me introduce myself a bit further. As I said, my name’s Sarah – one of the three interns on our whale surveying team. I got my Bachelor of Science in Oceanography at the University of Washington a few years back and have since worked as a lab tech at UW’s Friday Harbor Labs and as an Americorps volunteer serving as a teacher’s aide. Eventually I plan to become a science teacher, but thought a little more field work this summer would be a nice break after two years of service.

Cricket and Justin pondering the challenges of whale watching.

Thus, I moved to Newport last week just in time to catch the first day of our main surveying season. And what a season it’s been. We’ve tracked 48 whales since I’ve arrived, averaging about six a day. Of course, those aren’t all 48 different whales. If we lose sight of a whale for longer than 20 minutes, we assume it has left our study area and pronounce it lost, and unless we can identify the next sighting as the same whale based on markings (which we’re getting pretty good at), we give it a new number to keep track. We also give whales we’ve already seen new numbers when we see them on a different day.

Table for two: these whales caused some confusion among the team as they began to forage together before we could tell the difference between the two.

You might be wondering how we can tell gray whales apart when they’re mostly, well, gray and underwater. And the short answer is we have a pretty difficult time doing so at first sight. Gray whales aren’t like orcas, whose saddle patch just behind the dorsal fin serves as a fingerprint, nor are they humpbacks, whose patterned flukes are cataloged for easy matching. Gray whales have more of a dorsal hump than a fin, followed by five or six ridges we call knuckles. They aren’t famous for showing their flukes above water either, so unless you get several views of a particular whale’s sides, dorsal, and, if you’re lucky, fluke, it’s hard to have a positive ID for the whale. The good news is, that part of our sampling equipment is a camera with a massive zoom lens, so we can take photos of most of the whales we track with the theodolite (see the previous post to learn about theodolites). From those photos (at least 400 a day) we can look at scars from barnacles and killer whales, pigmentation spots that are part of the whales’ coloring, and parasites like barnacles and amphipods to recognize whales we’ve seen before. Eventually we’ll send all the photos we take to the Cascadia Research Group in Olympia, Washington, that keeps a database of all identified gray whales.

Sitting on a clifftop photographing whales might sound more like a vacation than science, so here's some (very peliminary) data of one whale. This is Mitosis on three different days. The first day is red, second is yellow, and the third is green. — Sitting on a clifftop photographing whales might sound more like a vacation than science, so here’s some (very peliminary) data of one whale. This is Mitosis on three different days. The first day is red, second is yellow, and the third is green.

Anyways, thanks for keeping with me to the bottom of the page. It’s been a fun first week-or-so and I’m excited to be heading to our second study site in Port Orford tomorrow after surveying. We’ll be there for 15 days, so next time you hear from us, we’ll be a bit further down the coast.

Yes, we named a whale after cell replication, because look at those overlapping spots!

Best Fishes!

Sarah

Gray Whales of the Oregon Coast; Preliminary field season!

Hello all, Florence here with an update from the field! Its high time that I tell you a little bit about the rather exciting project getting started here at the GEMM lab. Concerning the foraging ecology of the Pacific Coast feeding aggregation of gray whales, and conveniently having a high potential to improve local conservation practices, my team and I are hoping to (1) document and describe fine-scale foraging behavior of gray whales, (2) assess the impact of vessel disturbance on foraging behavior, and (3) work with local communities, stakeholders, and whale watch operators to create sustainable, scientifically informed guidelines for vessel operations in the presence of gray whales.

As with many things, collaboration is the key to success, and for the past month, I have teamed up with Miche Fournet of the ORCAA lab to run a theodolite-for-marine-mammals training camp. What is a theodolite you may ask? A theodolite is a precision surveying instrument used to measure angles in the horizontal and vertical planes. You may have seen one in use by a road crew or property surveyor. The instrument has also been adapted to marine mammal work because by knowing your own altitude and position, that of a secondary point, and using the telescopic sight to focus on a whale, one is able to calculate the exact location of that whale. Do this every time the whale comes up to breathe, and pretty soon, you have a fine scale track-line of exactly where that whale has been, for how long, and what it was doing. It was quite fun to learn the tricks of the trade with Miche and her Acoustic Spyglass crew, and we wish them a successful field season with the Humpbacks up in Glacier Bay, Alaska.

Justin spots a whale while Cricket waits her turn at an early practice session

Justin and David practice with the Theodolite

Now we all know that a battle plan never survives the first engagement with the enemy, and a new scientific protocol is much the same. Spring Quarter is finished, and two of my interns, Cricket and Justin arrived here at the GEMM lab on Monday. Together, we have been field testing our new equipment, getting used to working as a team day in and day out and most of all, finding all the little kinks in the survey plans and computer program we are using to log our data. So far, we’ve seen 8 whales over the course of 4 days, improved our reflexes in scanning the horizon and “fixing” on our targets, managed to misplace a day’s worth of data in the confusion of computer programming, gotten faster at setting up all our equipment, talked with curious passer-bys and spent a lot of time staring at the blue horizon. And you know what? It’s been brilliant. This week was specifically set aside to figure out everything that could possible go wrong while there aren’t too many whales around yet. Now, we’ll be ready to hit the ground running when the real fun starts in July!

Until next time, Fair Winds!

Testing the set up at the Depoe Bay Whale Watch Center with Cricket and Justin interns extraordinaire! — Testing the set up at the Depoe Bay Whale Watch Center with Cricket and Justin: interns extraordinaire!

Seabirds eat weird things

Chicken wings, toy dinosaurs, Easter eggs, driver’s licenses, ham, broccoli, and toy cars, to name a few things. I’ve even seen a gull try to eat a live, 2 ton elephant seal (and have got the pictures to prove it!).

Recently researchers from the GEMM lab, and the Seabird Oceanography lab (SOL) at Hatfield Marine Science Center, have been collaborating with Dr. Scott Shaffer’s Avian Physiology and Ecology laboratory at San Jose State University to investigate the causes and implications of these strange eating habits.

When they aren’t scavenging off of your plate of French fries, Western gulls (Larus occidentalis) are either foraging for fish and invertebrates out at sea, or visiting the local dump to pick up dinner for the little ones. Unfortunately, during the breeding season dinner at the dump comes with the risk of bringing harmful contaminants and pathogenic microbes back to the colony. In addition to littering colonies with refuse, gulls can serve as potential vectors of disease that may affect other nearby wildlife. Seabird ecologists at OSU and SJSU are using GPS tags in order to better understand how different colonies of Western gulls along the West coast are affected by access to landfills. Over the past month, a handful of gulls at colonies in California and Oregon have been outfitted with these light weight tracking devices. The data gained from these tags will allow researchers to study the foraging ecology and habitat use patterns of these individuals. When the tags are recovered, biological samples such as blood and feathers will be collected to determine how these habitat-use patterns (and potentially, trips to the local landfill) are affecting these birds in terms of microflora and contaminant loads.

Last week I (Erin Pickett) assisted the GEMM and SOL labs in capturing a few of these birds in order to outfit them with tags. The local field site is just south of Yachats on a guano-covered rock that a small colony of Western gulls call home. Like all great fieldwork and adventures, our day began at 4:00 am (and it was raining!). About an hour later we arrived at our field site, where we assessed the ocean conditions and determined that the treacherous crossing from the mainland to the colony was passable (it was low tide). There is some great GoPro footage of a crossing the week before that consisted mostly of a current rushing over rocks and the occasional flash of a wetsuit or a yellow dry bag while two hands reached out for something stable to hold onto. When I heard about this I became even more excited about the opportunity to join in on the fun.

Leigh Torres catches Rob Suryan in action

We use waterproof tape to attach the GPS tags so that they are removed easily without disrupting the gulls feathers

Leigh Torres waits patiently for an opportunity to catch a flighty bird

Rob Suryan preparing to release a newly tagged bird

Ian Throckmorton (SOL lab) carefully places a noose mat near a nest

We spent our morning focused on two tasks. The first was to recapture the two birds who we had put tags on the previous week. Since the tags have to be small and light-weight, they can only collect data for as long as their battery lasts. However, this is long enough to log a few foraging trips and get a good idea of where the gulls are concentrating their foraging effort. Our second goal was to put tags on eight more birds. We used a combination of capture techniques, including a very long pole with a small noose on the end of it, to recapture one of our birds from last week, along with seven new birds who we deployed new tags on. By the end of the second morning the weather was nice enough to enjoy changing into a wetsuit and jumping into the water for the crossing back to shore. Now we just need to get the rest of our tags back. Wish us luck!

P.S. It’s not often that you purposely put photos of gulls in photo galleries, so I’ve taken this opportunity to find my best shots. These are a couple more of the field sites where our collaborators are working- on Southeast Farallon Island, and Ano Nuevo Island, California

Gulls fight over a fresh placenta after an elephant seal birth on Southeast Farallon Island

A juvenile gull on Southeast Farallon Island enjoys a fresh placenta after an elephant seal birth

Photo of “gull juju” found on Southeast Farallon Island. Researchers keep a box of memorabilia, or objects that gulls on the island regurgitated (photo from http://losfarallones.blogspot.com/2013/05/what-do-gulls-eat-0-false-18-pt-18-pt-0.html)

A juvenile gull striking a pose on Southeast Farallon Island, CA

A gull seizing an opportunity for a meal on Southeast Farallon Island, CA

A western gull at a different field site on Southeast Farallon Island, CA

A rainbow over a third field site on Ano Nuevo Island, California

North to the land of liquid sunshine and red-legged kittiwakes – Linking individual foraging behaviour and physiology to survival and reproductive output

My name is Rachael Orben and I am a postdoctoral scholar affiliated with both the Seabird Oceanography Lab and the GEMM Lab here at Hatfield Marine Science Center. I am writing this from Anchorage, Alaska where Abram (a Master’s student at San Jose State University) and I are just finishing gear gathering and shopping before flying on to St George Island to spend the end of May and June observing, tracking, and sampling red-legged kittiwakes.

This video is taken looking down to the beach from the top of High Bluffs, St George Island. Turn up the volume!

Just a little bit of background

Red-legged kittiwakes are endemic to the Bering Sea and most of their population nests on the cliffs on St George Island. St George is one of the Pribilof Islands located in the southeastern Bering Sea and is home to over a million nesting seabirds including auklets, cormorants, kittiwakes, murres, and puffins. The Pribilofs are also known for the large rookeries of Northern Fur Seals (http://www.afsc.noaa.gov/nmml/education/pinnipeds/northfs.php). St. George has a small Aleut community (http://www.apiai.org/tribes/st-george/) so we will be living in town and commuting by ATV and foot to the bird cliffs.

Click on the link below – Can you spot the red-legged kittiwake?

SeabirdsofPribilofs

Photo credits: Caitlin Kroeger

We would like to know how individual foraging behaviour and physiology influence reproductive success and then how these might carry over to wintering behaviour.

Tracking: We will be using GPS dataloggers (10g) and geolocation/wet-dry dataloggers (1g) to track movements and foraging behaviour of red-legged kittiwakes during incubation and overwinter.

GPS Logger from Rachel’s Kittiwake study

Physiology: When we catch birds we will take physiological samples to measure individual stress levels, mercury loads, and body condition that we can link to foraging behaviour.

Observations: We will observe the birds that we track so that we know when eggs are laid, chicks hatch and fledge so that foraging and physiology can be connected to these measures of breeding success. And next year we will return and resight these birds to measure survival.

This study is funded by the North Pacific Research Board (http://www.nprb.org/) with additional support from OceanClassrooms (http://oceanclassrooms.com/) for pre-breeding tracking. I also have been writing short blogs about project with the Seabird Youth Network aimed for middle schoolers that you can check out here: (http://seabirdyouth.org/category/kittiwake-behavior/)

Internet access will be intermittent on St George, but I hope to periodically post updates via Twitter @RachaelOrben (#OCGrants), Instagram @raorben, and the Seabird Youth Network Blog.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: