Seabed mining permit approved in New Zealand blue whale habitat

By Dawn Barlow, MSc Student, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab

In late February, we wrapped up our 2017 blue whale survey of the South Taranaki Bight region. Upon returning to port in Wellington, Leigh and I each located our one remaining clean shirt, drank a cup of coffee, and walked into a room full of lawyers in suits where Leigh testified in front of the Environmental Protection Authority’s (EPA) Decision Making Committee. The hearing was for Trans-Tasman Resources, Ltd. (TTR)’s application for a permit to extract 50 million tons of iron sands per year from the sea floor for a 35-year period. Our reason for being there? Leigh was called as an expert witness to present our findings on blue whale distribution and ecology in the region where the proposed mining operation will be so that the potential impacts could be properly evaluated by the Decision Making Committee. Talk about seeing an immediate application of your research!

A pair of blue whales observed in February 2017 in the South Taranaki Bight.

Fast forward several months. The decision of whether or not the permit will be granted has been delayed, more evidence has been requested and considered, Leigh has testified again via skype, and the decision has been delayed yet again. It is a contentious case, and people on both sides have grown impatient, concerned, and frustrated. Finally, the date and time of the decision announcement finds me nervously refreshing my browser window until I see the outcome: the mining permit has been approved.  It was a split decision by the committee of four, with the committee chair casting the deciding vote.

A schematic of the operations of the proposed seabed mine in the South Taranaki Bight. Source: Kiwis Against Seabed Mining (kasm.org.nz).

While the Decision Making Committee was split on whether or not the permit should be approved, the constituency was not. During the hearing process, over 13,700 submissions were received, 99% of which were in opposition to the mining operation. Opposition came from Iwi (Maori tribes), commercial and recreational fishing industries, scientists, and residents of local coastal communities.

What does this mean for New Zealand, for the whales, for the ecosystem, for the future? This decision represents a landmark case that will surely set a new precedent. It is the first of its kind to be approved in New Zealand, and the first commercial scale seabed mining operation in the world. Other permit applications for seabed mines elsewhere will no doubt be submitted in the wake of the approval of TTR’s iron sands mining operation. The groups Kiwis Against Seabed Mining and Greenpeace New Zealand have announced that they will appeal the EPA’s decision in High Court, and TTR cannot begin dredging until all appeals are heard and two years of environmental monitoring have taken place.

So for the time being, life continues as usual for the blue whales. They will carry on feeding and raising their young in the South Taranaki Bight, where they already are surrounded by oil rigs, vessel traffic, and seismic airguns. In the meantime, above the water’s surface, many dedicated individuals are prepared to fight hard for environmental conservation. The blue whales will likely continue to unknowingly play a role in the decision-making process as our data demonstrate the importance of this region to their ecology, and the New Zealand public and media continue to learn about these iconic animals. The research effort I am part of has the potential to immediately and concretely influence policy decisions, and I sincerely hope that our findings will not fall on deaf ears in the appeal process. While we continue to provide biological evidence, politicians, the media, and the public need to emphasize the value of preserving biodiversity. These blue whales can be a figurehead for a more sustainable future for the region.

If you are interested in learning more, I invite you to take a minute to visit the web pages listed below.

Diving Deeper

By Taylor Mock, GEMM Lab intern

Greetings, all!

My name is Taylor Mock. Since February I have been volunteering in the GEMM Lab and am ecstatic to make my online debut as part of the team!

For many years, I had a shallow relationship with Hatfield Marine Science Center. As a Newport native, I would spend mornings and evenings glancing over at the Hatfield buildings while driving over the bridge to and from school. I was always intrigued. Sure, I would hear snippets of research from my peers about what projects their parents were involved in, but the inner workings of the complex mystified me.

Toward the end of my Freshman year in 2012 at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, my mom asked me what my summer plans were. I replied with the typical “I don’t know… Get a job?” She insisted that instead of a job I think about getting an internship; experience that will last more than a summer. I inquired through a family friend (because every person in this little community is woven together some way or another) if any internships or volunteer opportunities were available at Hatfield. She pointed me in the direction of the Environmental Protection Agency and thus began my Hatfield volunteering saga. I worked that summer, and the next, at the EPA under the direction of Ted DeWitt and Jody Stecher on denitrification studies in estuarine marshes. That summer provided me a glorious front row seat to field research and a greater understanding of my potential as a person and as a scientist. Now, this experience was marvelous, but I knew shortly after starting that my heart was elsewhere.

It was during my study abroad semester in Belize as part of my internship at the Toledo Institute for Development and Environment (TIDE) that I realized I wanted to work with marine macroorganisms. At TIDE, I engaged in radio telemetry conservation efforts tracking Hicatee (Dermatemys mawii) aquatic turtles. We would spend days on a small boat floating through canals and setting nets in hopes of capturing individuals of this small population to outfit them with radio tracking devices. These would be later used to track foraging, mating, and travel patterns in the region. It was an amazing time, to say the least. I remember waking up on my 21st birthday from my camping hammock and staring up at the lush rainforest above my head with a warm breeze across my face, followed by spending the day in the presence of these glorious creatures. It was heaven. I returned to Westmont the following term and took a Marine Mammal Eco-Physiology course and absolutely fell in love with Cetacea. Yes, I had always been captivated by this clade of beings (and truthfully when I was eight years old had a book on “How to Become a Marine Mammal Trainer”), but this was deeper. Of course, pinnipeds and otters and polar bears and manatees were enjoyable to learn about. There was something about the Cetacea though and how they migrated up and down the coast (just like me!) that I really connected with. My time learning about these animals created an intimate understanding of another group of species that developed into a rich, indescribable empathetic connection. I had to take a couple years away from scholastics and away from biology for health and wellness reasons. One day, though, a couple years after graduating and returning to Newport I rekindled with Jody from the EPA. He asked me if I would like to volunteer under Leigh Torres in the Marine Mammal Institute at HMSC. I do not think I could have possibly said no. I have been enjoying my time in the GEMM Lab ever since!

Though I am available to help anyone with any task they need, the work I do mostly centers around photogrammetry.

Using photogrammetry skills to measure gray whales in the GEMM Lab.

Photogrammetry, essentially, means geo-spatially measuring objects using photographs. What that looks like for me is taking an aerial photograph (extracted from overhead drone video footage) of a whale, running the image through a computer program called “Matlab”, taking a series of measurements from the whale (e.g., tip of the mandible to the notch of the fluke, distance between each tip of the fluke, and several measurements across the midsection of the whale). Several images of individuals are processed in order to find an average set of measurements for each whale.

Final result of the photogrammetry method on a gray whale

You might be wondering, “How can one measure the distance accurately from just a photograph?” I am glad you asked! The drones are outfitted with a barometer to measure the atmospheric pressure and, in turn, altitude. The changing altitudes are recorded in a separate program that is run simultaneously with the video footage. Thus, we have the altitudinal measurements for every millisecond of the drone’s flight. To monitor the accuracy and functionality of the barometer, calibrations are completed upon deployment and retrieval of each drone flight. To calibrate: the initial takeoff height is measured, a board of known length is thrown into the water, the drone will then rise or lower slowly above the board between 10 and 40 m, photographs of the board are then taken from varying altitudes, and are processed in Matlab.

During my time in the GEMM Lab, I have had the pleasure of completing photogrammetry assignments for both Leila on the Oregon Coast gray whale and for Dawn on the New Zealand blue whale projects. These ladies, and the other members of the GEMM Lab, have been so patient and gracious in educating me on the workings of Matlab and the video processing systems. It is a distinct honor working with them and to delight in the astounding nature of these creatures together. Each day I am struck in sheer awe of how beautiful and powerful these whales truly are. Their graceful presence and movement through the water rivals even the most skillful dancer.

Over the last 6 years, I am delighted to say that my relationship with Hatfield has become much deeper. The people and the experiences I have encountered during my time here, especially in the GEMM Lab, have been nothing short of incredible. I am sincerely grateful for this continued opportunity. It fills my soul with joy to engage in work that contributes to the well being of the ocean and its inhabitants.

Thank you, Leigh and all of the GEMM Lab members. I hope to continue volunteering with you for as long as you will have me.

The passion of a researcher

By Quince Nye, GEMM Lab Summer Intern, Pacific High School Junior

I have spent a lot of my life surrounded by nature. I like to backpack, bike, dive, and kayak in these natural environments. I also have the luck of having parents who are always planning to take me on another adventure where I get to see nature and its inhabitants in ways most people don’t get to enjoy.

Through my backyard explorations, I have begun to realize that Port Orford has an amazing ecosystem in the coves and rivers that are very tied into our community. I’ve fished and swam in these rivers, gone on kayaking tours in these coves (with a great kayak company called South Coast Tours that we partner with), and I’ve seen the life that dwells in them.

Nathan and Maggie paddle out to Mill Rocks for early morning sample collection

Growing up in a school of less than 100 kids I have learned to never reject an opportunity to be a part of something bigger and learn from that experience. So when one of my close friends told me about an OSU project (a college I’m interested in attending) that needed interns to help collect data on gray whales, and kayak almost every day, I signed up without a doubt in my mind.

The team gets some good practice tracking Buttons (Whale #3).  Left to right; Quince, Nathan, Maggie, Florence.

Fast forward a month, and I wake up at 5:20 am. I eat breakfast and get to the Port Orford Field Station. We make a plan for the operations of both the kayak team and cliff team. Today, I’m part of the cliff team, so I head up above the station to Fort Point. Florence and I set up the theodolite and computer at the lookout point and start taking half hour watch shifts searching the horizon for the spout of a gray whale.  Sometimes you see one right away, but other times it feels like the whales are actively hiding from you. These are the times I wish Maggie was here with her endless supply of Disney soundtracks to help pass the hours.

Imitating a ship’s captain, Quince points toward our whale while shouting “Mark”.

A whale spouts out at Mill Rocks and starts heading across to the jetty. Hurray, its data collection time! I try to quickly move the cross-hairs of the theodolite onto the position of the whale using a set of knobs like those on an etch-a-sketch. As you may understand, it’s not an easy task at first but I manage to do it because I’ve been practicing for three weeks. I say “Mark!” cueing Florence to click a button in the program Pythagoras on the computer to record the whale’s position.

The left hand side of Buttons – notice the scatter of white markings on the upper back.

Meanwhile, Florence sees that the whale has two white spots where the fluke meets the knuckles. Those are identifying marks of the beloved whale, Buttons. This whale has been seen here since 2016 and is a fan favorite for our on-going research program. Florence gets just as excited every time and texts her eagerly awaiting interns of previous years all about the sighting. Of course Buttons is not the only whale to have identifying marks such as scars and pigmentation marks. This is why we make sure to get photos of the whales we spot, allowing us to do photo-ID analysis on them through comparison to our database of pictures from previous years.

Quince practices CPR protocol on a training mannequin on his first day.

So far I have gained skill after skill in this internship. I got CPR certified, took a kayak training class, learned how to use a theodolite, and have spent many educational (and frustrating) hours entering data in Excel. I joined the program because I was interested in all of these things. It surprised me that I was developing a relationship with the whales I’m researching. By the end of August I’m now sure that I will also know many of the whales by name. I will probably be much better at using an etch-a-sketch, and I will have had my first taste at what being a scientist is like. What I strive for, however, is to have the same look in my eyes that appears in Florence’s whenever a familiar whale decides to browse our kelp beds.

Curiosity and Community, new ways of exploring our environment.

By Nathan Malamud, GEMM Lab summer intern, Pacific High School senior

I am someone who has lived in a small town for all his life. Pretty much everyone knows each other by their first name and my graduating class only has around 20 people. Everywhere you look you will find a farm, ranch, or cranberry bog (even our school has two bogs of their own!). Because of my small town life, I have a strong sense of community. However, I have also developed a curiosity about natural and global phenomena. I try to connect these two virtues by participating in scientific efforts that help my community. When I heard that the OSU Port Orford Field Station was offering internships, I knew right away that it would definitely be a great experience for me.

The view from our field site at Fort Point in Port Orford

Port Orford, on Oregon’s southern coast, is a town that is closely tied to the ocean. So naturally, it’s important to understand and monitor our surroundings so that our town can thrive. Last year, my Marine Science class helped me further understand the complexity of the ocean. Our first semester taught us all about marine biology, zoology, and ecology. Our second semester immersed us into oceanography, ocean geology, and ocean chemistry. During the second semester, we also took trips to our town’s marine science center and to the marine reserve near Rocky Point. I loved this course and decided to try to expand my knowledge about the subject by going to the OSU Field Station.

Our safety instructor teaches takes us through basic paddling techniques

As an intern, I am currently working with three teammates to understand the feeding behavior of gray whales – what places they like to eat zooplankton the most and why they like to eat there. This whale project helps our community by Port Orford enabling high school students to perform college-level scientific research and inquiry, as well as allowing us to learn valuable skills such as CPR, surveying using a theodolite, working with chemicals in a lab, and data processing.

We had to learn how to rescue ourselves just in case we have an accident in the boat.
We all made it back in the boat!

This internship with OSU’s GEMM Lab has taught me many new skills and given me new experiences that I have never had before. Before this internship, I had never been in a kayak. Now, I go out on the water nearly every other day! When on the water, I always try to sharpen my navigating skills. I use a GPS to pinpoint the locations of our sampling stations, and I communicate to my partner where we need to go and how we will get there.

Its very important to stretch before kayaking every morning.

Once we are there, it is my job to keep the boat close to the station location so that my partner can get accurate samples. This part is a very tricky task, because not only do I have to pay attention to the GPS to make sure we are within 10 meters of the spot, but I also have to pay attention to my surroundings. I have to look at the ocean, and figure out what direction the waves are coming from. I have to watch how external forces, like wind and currents, can cause the boat to drift far from station, and I have to correct drifting with gentle paddle strokes. This is hard, especially since the kayak is so light and easy to get pushed around by the wind. However, despite the difficulty, I have learned that it is crucial not to panic. Frustration only makes things worse. The key is to maintain a harmonic balance of concentration and zen.

I have also learned that when collecting data in the field, it’s important to observe and document as much as possible. When we are in the kayak, we have 12 stations that we try to visit every day (as long as the weather cooperates). At each station, we first use a secchi disk to test the water clarity, then lower the GoPro to film the water column and see where the zooplankton are. Sometimes we catch other interesting things on the video too, such as siphonophores (my personal favorites are jellies and salps) and rockfish.

A siphonophore
A rockfish captured with our GoPro.

Next we tow a zooplankton net through the water, and let it collect zooplankton of all shapes and sizes, from tiny mysids to skeleton shrimp. Then we proceed to the next station and repeat the process. We have to remember to label everything, and tell the GoPro camera what station we’re at so we can sort all the information correctly when we get back to the field station. At the end of the day, we log our data into a computer, and preserve half our plankton samples with ethanol, so that we can identify the species present.  The other half gets frozen for caloric content analysis by our collaborator Dr. Kim Bernard to help us understand how much zooplankton a whale needs to eat to meet its energy needs each day.

By repeating this entire process every day, we are able to look at daily changes, which also helps us to better understand why whales spend time in certain areas and not others. Be sure to check out my teammate Maggie’s blog post about some of the tools and technologies we use to track the whales!

This whale project has been, and definitely still is, a great experience for me! I have learned a lot and have worked with some amazing people. I believe that I am learning many valuable skills, and that the skills I learn will allow me to help my community.

A Little Slice of Heaven

Guest writer: Maggie O’Rourke-Liggett, GEMM Lab summer intern, Oregon State University,

One of the biggest obstacles an undergraduate can face is fulfilling the degree requirement of completing an internship or research opportunity. With almost every university and degree program requiring it for graduation and many employers requiring prior experience, the amount of pressure and competition is intense.

After being rejected from the internships I applied for earlier in the year, I heard about Dr. Leigh Torres’s research with the Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna (GEMM) Lab . I decided to email her and ask if she had any open positions. Fast-forward a few weeks and I am collaborating with Florence Sullivan, a recent masters graduate from OSU, on the logistics of my Gray Whale Foraging Behavior internship with the GEMM Lab.

 

My workstation while I conduct photo identification analysis in the field station classroom. The photos are displayed and organized in Adobe Bridge. Source: Maggie O’Rourke-Liggett

During my time with the GEMM Lab team, I have been assisting with photo identification analysis of gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus), using a theodolite and Pythagoras computer program to track their movements, collecting samples of the zooplankton they eat, and recording other oceanographic data with our time-depth recorder. This project is hoping to identify the drivers of gray whale fine-scale foraging behavior.  For instance: Why do gray whales spend more time in some areas than others?  Does the type or density of prey affect their behavior? Do the whales use static features like kelp beds to help find their food? As a senior currently studying oceanography, who desires to study whale behavior in the future, this internship is like finding a gold mine.

Nathan Malamud, our other high school intern, and I working together to set up the theodolite in backyard during a practice run. Source: Florence Sullivan

Ever since day one at Hatfield Marine Science Center, I’ve been working with people who share the same passions for marine mammals as me. Spending hours upon hours sorting thousands of pictures may seem like a painful, tedious job, but knowing my work helps others to update existing identification catalogs makes it worthwhile. Plus, who wouldn’t want to look at whales all day?! After a while, you start to recognize specific individuals based on their various pigment configurations and scars. Once you can recognize individuals, it makes the sorting go by faster and helps with recognizing individual whales in the wild faster. It’s always exciting to sort through the photos and observe from the cliff or kayak and recognize a whale from the photo identification work.

After Florence taught me how to set up and operate the theodolite, a survey tool used to track a whale’s movements, we taught a class to undergrads on how to use it. I’ll never get over how people’s faces lit up when we discussed how the instrument works and its role in the overall mission.

Quince Nye, one of our high school interns, using side strokes to stabilize the kayak while I deploy our zooplankton net over the side with a down rigger. Source: Florence Sullivan

These past two weeks at OSU’s Port Orford Field Station have been like living on a little slice of heaven. My days are filled with clear views of the coast and the sound of waves crashing serve as a backdrop on my home for the month, the bed-and-breakfast turned field station. Each morning, the sun fills my room as I gather my gear for the day and help my teammates load the truck. We spend long days on the water collecting zooplankton samples and GoPro video or on the cliff recording whale behavior through the theodolite. To anyone searching for an internship and feeling burnt out from completing application after application, don’t give up. You’ll find your slice of heaven too.

Where are the eggs? Studying red-legged kittiwakes in a time of change

By Rachael Orben, Research Associate, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Oregon State University

In late May, I returned to St. George Island, Alaska to study the foraging ecology of red-legged kittiwakes using a mix of high-tech biologging tags, physiology measurements, and observations.  The study was designed to identify differences in behavior and physiology between birds that reproduce successfully and birds that don’t and then to see how this might carry over to the winter season (and vice versa).  Things didn’t go as planned.

A red-legged kittiwake on St. George Island. Photo C. Kroeger

This was my fourth spring on the island, and like prior seasons we arrived in late May, when birds should be building nests. However, unlike previous seasons, red-legged kittiwake’s didn’t look like they had done much nest building. I was accompanied by Abram Fleishman, a superstar MS student from San Jose State who is studying the winter spatial ecology of red-legged kittiwakes in relationship to mercury concentration in their feathers.

We immediately set about recapturing birds that had carried geolocation data loggers over the winter. We wanted to catch as many as possible before eggs were laid, so that their blood samples would represent the pre-lay period. The weather was wonderful, so it wasn’t until three weeks after we arrived that we had our first day-off. It was at about this time that I finally lost my optimism and realized the majority of red-legged kittiwakes were not going to lay eggs. By late June kittiwakes are usually incubating eggs. We only saw a handful of eggs and very few of these were being incubated. Most birds didn’t even build nests, or if they did, the nest was dismantled by other birds when the nest building pair didn’t stick around to guard their pile of mud and moss.

Nests in 2016. Laying success was also low in 2016, but even if birds didn’t lay many pairs built nests.
Same cliff (and birds) without nests in 2017.

When I designed the study, I thought collecting enough data to answer my questions about successful versus failed breeders would be hard, since failed breeders would be challenging to work with and red-legged kittiwakes typically have high breeding success, meaning that sample sizes of failed breeders would be small. Instead our three seasons occurred with progressively worse breeding success and we will now have to shift the focus of our analysis to see if we can find differences between birds that laid eggs and birds that didn’t, if we have the sample sizes! With ~80% laying success in the 9 years preceding the beginning of our study in 2015, this is something I would never have expected! The egg laying failure of 2017 is unprecedented in the productivity monitoring time series collected by the Alaska Maritime Wildlife Refuge.

Seabirds are often touted as indicator species of marine health (Cairns 1988, Piatt et al 2007), and while there are always caveats and additional questions to be answered, seabirds are reliant on the ocean for food and observing their behavior and condition tells us something about how easy (or hard) it is for them to find food.

So, what do I think the red-legged kittiwakes told us this year? I think they were squawking loud and clear, that they were not able to find myctophid fishes within their foraging range to the south and west of the Pribilofs. Myctophids are small fatty mesopelagic bioluminescent fish that come to the surface at night where red-legged kittiwakes catch them.

Besides just observing the laying failure, we were able to GPS track a few birds, collect a few diet samples, catch birds for blood and feather samples, and resight banded individuals. It is these pieces of information that I will be analyzing in the coming months to try to understand why some individuals were able to lay eggs during our study years, while most were not.  These years should also help us understand what capacity red-legged kittiwakes have to cope (or not) with changes in prey availability. However, after three years, I still don’t know what a ‘good’ year looks like for red-legged kittiwakes. Fingers crossed next season is finally a decent year for this sentinel seabird of the pelagic Bering Sea.

Pre-lay foraging trips of red-legged kittiwakes in 2015.
Pre-lay foraging trips of red-legged kittiwake in 2017. Two birds were heading north when their GPS loggers stopped recording.

You can read more about our red-legged kittiwake research in a series of blog posts written for the Seabird Youth Network, a partnership between the Pribilof School District, the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, the City of St. Paul, Tanadgusix Corporation, the St. George Traditional Council, St. George Island Institute, the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, and the wider scientific community. The network creates opportunities for youth to learn about seabirds with the aim of building local capacity for the collection of long-term seabird monitoring data on the Pribilof Islands.

New and old methods in our gray whale field season 2017

By Leila Lemos, Ph.D. Student, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, OSU

On June 6th the GEMM Lab officially started the second year of fieldwork of our “Noise Physiology” Project with gray whales along the Oregon coast. To date, we have spent 14 days at sea (12 around the Newport area and 2 in Port Orford, our control area), with a total of 32:31 hrs of effort. In 29 whale sightings of approximately 40 whales we have been able to collect 6 fecal samples for hormonal analysis, to fly the drone 17 times over the whales, to deploy a GoPro 6 times for qualitative prey analysis, and to deploy a light trap 2 times for quantitative prey analysis. While this sounds good, we have only just begun, with our field season extending into October. The graph below displays the sightings and data collection by area.

Figure 1: Sightings and data collection by area and month.

We have added a couple new components to our project this year. First, we are now using a “the light trap”, as mentioned above, to capture zooplankton prey of gray whales. The light trap (Figure 2), designed by our collaborator of Kim Bernard (OSU, College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences). The light trap is composed of a water jug with a cut-out cone entrance where prey might enter the jug after being attracted by the chem lights we put in the jug. The jug is weighted down to maintain position, but swivels off the drop line by its own floats; and it’s all connected to a surface float.

Figure 2: Components of the light trap.
Source: Leila Lemos

The light trap is left overnight and recovered in the next day. Trapped prey are sieved (Figure 4), stored in properly labeled jars or Ziploc bags, and kept frozen until analysis (Figure 5 and 6) including species identification, community analysis, and caloric content.

Figure 3: Todd Chandler, our research technician, preparing the light trap to be deployed in Port Orford.
Source: Leila Lemos
Figure 4: Collected preys with our light trap being sieved for storage on June 27th.
Source: Dawn Barlow
Figure 5: Kim Bernard proud of the zooplankton sample collected in Newport on June 26th.
Source: Dawn Barlow
Figure 6: Our GEMM Lab intern Alyssa holds the prey sample collected in July 1st.
Source: Leigh Torres

The second component we have added this year is the fixed-location hydrophone (Figure 7) to record acoustic noise data over the entire summer season. Last year we used a temporarily deployed “drifting hydrophone” that only recorded noise data punctually. Because of the fixed hydrophone, this year we will be able to compare our hormone data with a wider range of acoustic data, and improve our analyses.

Figure 7: Joe Haxel, our acoustician, checking the hydrophone in July 14th that was previously deployed in Newport at the beginning of the summer season.
Source: Leila Lemos

We also made our first trip down to Port Orford, our control area, to intensively collect data over only two days (July 5th and 6th). Since Port Orford is a smaller city with reduced vessel traffic, we want to evaluate if whales observed in this area show a reduced stress response when compared to the whales that inhabit the area around Newport and Depoe Bay, where vessel traffic is higher. However, we were not able to collect any fecal sample during this trip to Port Orford, so more trips south to come!

Figure 8: Sharon Nieukirk, our acoustician, Leigh Torres, and Todd Chandler checking on RV Ruby before being lifted into the water at the port of Port Orford on July 5th.
Source: Leila Lemos
Figure 9: Our mascots Pepper and Avery didn’t get to go out in the boat with us, but they enjoyed our trip to Port Orford so much that they couldn’t stay awake on the way back to Newport.
Source: Leila Lemos and Leigh Torres

The other components we used last year such as photo identification (Figure 10), fecal samples (Figures 11 and 12), drones, and GoPros are still being put to use this year. If you want to know more about our Noise Physiology project, check here.

Figure 10: Me in our boat platform waiting for whales to appear to photograph them in July 13th.
Source: Joe Haxel
Figure 11: Joe Haxel collecting a fecal sample in Newport in July 13th.
Source: Leila Lemos
Figure 12: Fecal sample collected in Newport on July 13th.
Source: Leila Lemos

We are progressively spotting more gray whales along the Oregon coast and we will continue our field efforts and data collection until October. So, for now enjoy some photos taken during the last couple of months. Until next time!

Figure 13: Gray whale’s fluke just south of the Yaquina Lighthouse, in Newport, on July 13th.
Source: Leila Lemos
Figure 14: Gray whale breaching just north of the Yaquina Lighthouse, in Newport, on July 9th.
Source: Leila Lemos
Figure 15: Gray whale breaching in Newport, on June 6th.
Source: Leigh Torres

Getting my Feet Wet: My first Dive into Marine Science

Guest Writer: Alyssa Gomez, GEMM Lab summer intern, University of Idaho, Doris Duke Conservation Scholar

 

Upon my arrival in Newport, OR, the sand greeted my toes, the sun my skin, and the ocean my heart. I’m an Idahoan and have yearned for the ocean my whole life, only getting glimpses of it here and there while on vacation. I have savored these memories, but for the summer of 2017, I no longer need to rely on the past. I’m only a hop, skip, and a jump away from tides and salty air until August 5th. Despite how distracting the scenery here may be, there is a lot of work to be done, as I am interning in the GEMM Lab, under the supervision of Dr. Leigh Torres, in collaboration with Craig Hayslip (Whale Telemetry Group) and Kaety Jacobson (Oregon Sea Grant).

 

In the short time I am here, my goal is to find out how probable it is for a gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) to be injured to the point of scarring, and what is causing this scarring. In order to do this, I’m analyzing thousands of photos of gray whales capture in Oregon waters, which span from 2012-2016. In these thousands of images, I am identifying both anthropogenic (i.e., from fishing gear or a vessel propeller) and natural (i.e., killer whale teeth rake marks) scarring, with most focus on the anthropogenic scars. This project is collaborative, not only in terms of the data we are looking at, but in terms of who will be looking at the data. Once I’ve compiled all of the scarred whale photos, we hope to have fishermen asses the photos as well, in order to identify causes of the scars. If they believe the scars are from entanglements in fishing gear, we will ask for their opinion on the type of fishing gear that caused the scar. Hopefully, with this type of collaboration, we will be able to better understand the complex relationship between fisheries and gray whales.

Kaety Jacobson explaining the many types of gear present on vessels docked in Newport, OR.

While whale entanglement events are rare, Dungeness crab fishing gear is often involved. Dungeness crab is a very important fishery for this region, both economically and culturally, with a large commercial fleet and many recreational fishers. Dungeness crab pots are stationary on the sea floor, often placed in near shore waters and left out for many days in between drop off and pickup, and sometimes even abandoned altogether. Because gray whales, specifically the Pacific Coast Feeding Group of gray whales, feed in the same habitat as many Oregon commercial and recreational crab gear, they sometimes get entangled in the lines. Recently, there has been a great deal of discussion on this entanglement issue and how to maintain fishery profits while reducing entanglements. A working group of scientists, crab fishers, and gear experts met in Portland in March of 2017 to discuss this issue. Dr. Leigh Torres was in attendance, and thus, my project was born. Our goal is to identify the body regions most often involved, describe gear types if possible, and quantify healing rates of scars. We are hoping that this information will fill in some knowledge gaps and help us come up with effective solutions to this entanglement issue.

Kaety showing me the ins and outs of crab pots on some abandoned gear.

This seems like a big undertaking for me, as I’ve never been exposed to marine science, let alone marine mammals and all of the analysis programs, protocols, etc., that I am now using daily. There is certainly a learning curve; however, I have exactly the support and the freedom needed in order to prosper and learn in the GEMM Lab. Leigh, Florence, Dawn, Leila, and some honorary guests of this lab have been exceptionally welcoming and inviting, not to mention all others here at Hatfield.  Each day is filled with countless new opportunities, such as dock walks, necropsies, field work, meetings, and seminars.  Although I haven’t been here long, I already know that this lab is a real GEMM. I’m excited for all that is yet to come.

Leigh and I collecting a gray whale fecal sample aboard Ruby.

Life in the lab: notes from a lab meeting

By Florence Sullivan, MSc, Oregon State University

One of my favorite parts about working as a member of the GEMM lab is our monthly lab meeting. It’s a chance for everyone to share exciting news or updates about their research, discuss recent advances in our field, and of course, make the schedule for who is in charge of writing the blog each week!  Our fearless leader, Leigh, usually also has an exercise for us to complete. These have varied from writing and editing abstracts for conferences, conducting mock interviews of each other, reading and discussing relevant papers, R coding exercises, and other useful skills. Our most recent meeting featured an exciting announcement, as well as a really interesting discussion of the latest International Whaling Commission (IWC) reports of the scientific committee (SC) that I felt might be interesting to share with our readers.

First, the good news – Six GEMM lab members submitted abstracts to the 2017 Society of Marine Mammalogy Conference, and all six were accepted for either a speed talk or an oral presentation! We are very proud and excited to present our research and support each other at the conference in October.

And now, a little science history:

The IWC was originally formed as a management body, to regulate the global catch of great whales. However, it never had much legal power to enforce its edicts, and was largely ineffective in its task.  By 1986 whale populations had been decimated to such low numbers by commercial whaling efforts that a worldwide moratorium on harvest was imposed. The SC of the IWC meets on an annual basis, and is made up of leading experts in the field who give advice and recommendations to the commission.  If you are interested in seeing reports from over the years, follow this link to the IWC Archive.  The reports presented by the various sub committees of the Scientific Committee are dense, packed full of interesting information, but also contain lots of procedural minutiae.  Therefore, for this lab meeting, each of us took one of the 2017 Annexes, and summarized it for the group.

Alyssa and Dawn reviewed Annex J: Report of the working group on non-deliberate human induced mortality of cetaceans.  The report shared new data about scarring rates of bowhead whales in the Bering Sea, notably, that 2.4% of the population will acquire a new scar each year, and that by the time an individual is 25 years old, it has a 40% chance of being scarred from a human derived interaction. The study noted that advances in drone technology may be an effective tool to assess scarring rates in whale populations, but emphasized that it is important to examine stranded carcasses to ground truth the rates we are able to capture from aerial and boat based photography.  The discussion then turned to the section about ship strikes, where we learned that in a comparison of fresh scars on humpback whales, and rates of voluntarily reported ship strikes, collisions were vastly under reported. Here it was noted that injuries that did not cause visible trauma could still be lethal to cetaceans, and that even moderate speed collisions can cause non-immediate lethal injury.

Leila walked us through Annex K: Report of the standing working group on environmental concerns. This subcommittee was the first one formed by the SC, and their report touched on issues such as bioaccumulation of heavy metals in whales, global oil spill emergency response training, harmful algal blooms (HABs), marine debris, diseases of concern, strandings and related mortality, noise, climate change, loss of arctic sea ice, and models of cetacean reaction to these impacts.

A few notes of particular interest:

-PCBs and other toxins are known to accumulate in killer whales, but this report discussed high levels of lead and cadmium in gray whales, leading to the question of what might be the source – sediment deposits? Fish?

-Lots of research has been done on the outfall of HABs involving domoic acid; now there is a need for research on other types of HABs

-A website has been created to increase surveillance, diagnosis and risk management of cetacean diseases, and is currently being refined: https://cdoc.iwc.int

-Changing climate is prompting distribution shifts in a number of species, putting animals at risk of interactions with shipping lanes, and increasing contact with invasive species.

-Models of cetacean bioenergetics have found that being entangled has energy costs equivalent to migration or pregnancy. Another model found that naval noise increased the metabolic rate of individuals by 30%. Models are becoming more and more accurate and complex every year, and each new one helps provide a framework to begin to assess cumulative impacts of human-cetacean interactions.

To wrap things up, I gave a brief overview of Annex N: Report of the subcommittee on whalewatching. This report gave quick updates on a number of different whale watching research projects around the world:

-Humpback whales in Hawaii change their swim speed and dive time when they encounter vessels.

-Endangered humpbacks in the Arabian Sea may need management intervention because there have been minimal advances in standards and attitudes by whale watching outfits or recreational boaters in Oman.

-Increased interactions and close encounters may be eroding the protective social barriers between bottlenose dolphins and the public.  The committee emphasizes that cetacean habituation to humans is a serious conservation cause of concern.

After research updates, the document then details a review from the working group on swim-with-whale operations. They emphasize the need for a global database, and note that the Convention on Migratory Species and the World Cetacean Alliance are both conducting reviews of this section of the whale watching industry and that a collaboration could be beneficial. Finally, this committee often gives feedback to ongoing projects and local management efforts, but is not convinced that their recommendations are being put into practice.

As one reads this litany of issues that face cetaceans in the modern world, it can be quite disheartening. However, reports like these keep researchers up to date on the current state of knowledge, areas of concern, and questions that need answering.  They help us set our priorities and determine which piece of the puzzle we are capable of tackling.  For more on some of the projects that our lab has under taken to help tackle these issues, check out Leila’s work on stress in gray whales, Dawn’s work looking at blue whales in New Zealand, Solene’s work on humpback habitat selection, or my work on vessel interactions. Individually, it’s easy to feel small, but when you look through the archives of the IWC, and realize how far we’ve come from extractive management to active conservation, you realize that every little project adds to those before it, and together, we can make a difference.

 

 

 

Finding the edge: Preliminary insights into blue whale habitat selection in New Zealand

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

I was fortunate enough to spend the Austral summer in the field, and so while the winter rain poured down on Oregon I found myself on the water with the sun and wind on my face, looking for blue whales in New Zealand. This spring I switched gears and spent time taking courses to build my analytical toolbox. In a course on technical writing and communication, I was challenged to present my research using only pictures and words with no written text, and to succinctly summarize the importance of my research in an introduction to a technical paper. I attended weekly seminars to learn about the diverse array of marine science being conducted at Oregon State University and beyond. I also took a course entitled “Advanced Spatial Statistics and Geographic Information Science”. In this skill-building course, we were given the opportunity to work with our own data. Even though my primary objective was to expand the tools in my toolbox, I was excited to explore preliminary results and possible insight into blue whale habitat selection in my study area, the South Taranaki Bight region (STB) of New Zealand (Figure 1).

Figure 1. A map of New Zealand, with the South Taranaki Bight (STB) region delineated by the black box. Farewell Spit is denoted by a star, and Kahurangi point is denoted by an X.

Despite the recent documentation of a foraging ground in the STB, blue whale distribution remains poorly understood in New Zealand. The STB is New Zealand’s most industrially active marine region, and the site of active oil and gas extraction and exploration, busy shipping traffic, and proposed seabed mining. This potential space-use conflict between endangered whales and industry warrants further investigation into the spatial and temporal extent of blue whale habitat in the region. One of my research objectives is to investigate the relationship between blue whales and their environment, and ultimately to build a model that can predict blue whale presence based on physical and biological oceanographic features. For this spring term, the question I asked was:

Is the number of blue whales present in an area correlated with remotely-sensed sea surface temperature and chlorophyll-a concentration?

For the purposes of this exploration, I used data from our 2017 survey of the STB. This meant importing our ship’s track and our blue whale sighting locations into ArcGIS, so that the data went from looking like this:

… to this:

The next step was to get remote-sensed images for sea surface temperature (SST) and chlorophyll-a (chl-a) concentration. I downloaded monthly averages from the NASA Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS aqua) website for the month of February 2017 at 4 km2 resolution, when our survey took place. Now, my images looked something more like this:

But, I can’t say anything reliable about the relationships between blue whales and their environment in the places we did not survey.  So next I extracted just the portions of my remote-sensed images where we conducted survey effort. Now my maps looked more like this one:

The above map shows SST along our ship’s track, and the locations where we found whales. Just looking at this plot, it seems like the blue whales were observed in both warmer and colder waters, not exclusively in one or the other. There is a productive plume of cold, upwelled water in the STB that is generated off of Kahurangi point and curves around Farewell Spit and into the bight (Figure 1). Most of the whales we saw appear to be near that plume. But how can I find the edges of this upwelled plume? Well, I can look at the amount of change in SST and chl-a across a spatial area. The places where warm and cold water meet can be found by assessing the amount of variability—the standard deviation—in the temperature of the water. In ArcGIS, I calculated the deviation in SST and chl-a concentration across the surrounding 20 km2 for each 4 km2 cell.

Now, how do I tie all of these qualitative visual assessments together to produce a quantitative result? With a statistical model! This next step gives me the opportunity to flex some other analytical muscles, and practice using another computational tool: R. I used a generalized additive model (GAM) to investigate the relationships between the number of blue whales observed in each 4 km2 cell our ship surveyed and the remote-sensed variables. The model can be written like this:

Number of blue whales ~ SST + chl-a + sd(SST) + sd(chl-a)

In other words, are SST, chl-a concentration, deviation in SST, and deviation in chl-a concentration correlated with the number of blue whales observed within each 4 km2 cell on my map?

This model found that the most important predictor was the deviation in SST. In other words, these New Zealand blue whales may be seeking the edges of the upwelling plume, honing in on places where warm and cold water meet. Thinking back on the time I spent in the field, we often saw feeding blue whales diving along lines of mixing water masses where the water column was filled with aggregations of krill, blue whale prey. Studies of marine mammals in other parts of the world have also found that eddies and oceanic fronts—edges between warm and cold water masses—are important habitat features where productivity is increased due to mixing of water masses. The same may be true for these New Zealand blue whales.

These preliminary findings emphasize the benefit of having both presence and absence data. The analysis I have presented here is certainly strengthened by having environmental measurements for locations where we did not see whales. This is comforting, considering the feelings of impatience generated by days on the water spent like this with no whales to be seen:

Moving forward, I will include the blue whale sighting data from our 2014 and 2016 surveys as well. As I think about what would make this model more robust, it would be interesting to see if the patterns become clearer when I incorporate behavior into the model—if I look at whales that are foraging and traveling separately, are the results different? I hope to explore the importance of the upwelling plume in more detail—does the distance from the edge of the upwelling plume matter? And finally, I want to adjust the spatial and temporal scales of my analysis—do patterns shift or become clearer if I don’t use monthly averages, or if I change the grid cell sizes on my maps?

I feel more confident in my growing toolbox, and look forward to improving this model in the coming months! Stay tuned.