Tag: Clara Bird

How do we study the impact of whale watching?

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

Since its start, the GEMM Lab has been interested in the effect of vessel disturbance on whales. From former student Florence’s masters project to Leila’s PhD work, this research has shown that gray whales on their foraging grounds have a behavioral response to vessel presence (Sullivan & Torres, 2018) and a physiological response to vessel noise (Lemos et al., 2022). Presently, our GRANITE project is continuing to investigate the effect of ambient noise on gray whales, with an emphasis on understanding how these effects might scale up to impact the population as a whole (Image 1).

To date, all this work has been focused on gray whales feeding off the coast of Oregon, but I’m excited to share that this is about to change! In just a few weeks, Leigh and I will be heading south for a pilot study looking at the effects of whale watching vessels on gray whale mom/calf pairs in the nursing lagoons of Baja California, Mexico.

Image 1. Infographic for the GRANITE project. Credit: Carrie Ekeroth

We are collaborating with a Fernanda Urrutia Osorio, a PhD candidate at Scripps Institute of Oceanography, to spend a week conducting fieldwork in one of the nursing lagoons. For this project we will be collecting drone footage of mom/calf pairs in both the presence and absence of whale watching vessels. Our goal is to see if we detect any differences in behavior when there are vessels around versus when there are not. Tourism regulations only allow the whale watching vessels to be on the water during specific hours, so we are hoping to use this regulated pattern of vessel presence and absence as a sort of experiment.

Image 2. A mom and calf pair.  NOAA/NMFS permit #21678.

The lagoons are a crucial place for mom/calf pairs, this is where calves nurse and grow before migration, and nursing is energetically costly for moms. So, it is important to study disturbance responses in this habitat since any change in behavior caused by vessels could affect both the calf’s energy intake and the mom’s energy expenditure. While this hasn’t yet been investigated for gray whales in the lagoons, similar studies have been carried out on other species in their nursing grounds.

Video 1. Footage of “likely nursing” behavior. NOAA/NMFS permit #21678.

We can use these past studies as blueprints for both data collection and processing. Disturbance studies such as these look for a wide variety of behavioral responses. These include (1) changes in activity budgets, meaning a change in the proportion of time spent in a behavior state, (2) changes in respiration rate, which would reflect a change in energy expenditure, (3) changes in path, which would indicate avoidance, (4) changes in inter-individual distance, and (5) changes in vocalizations. While it’s not necessarily possible to record all of these responses, a meta-analysis of research on the impact of whale watching vessels found that the most common responses were increases in the proportion of time spent travelling (a change in activity budget) and increased deviation in path, indicating an avoidance response (Senigaglia et al., 2016).

One of the key phrases in all these possible behavioral responses is “change in ___”. Without control data collected in the absence of whale watching vessels, it impossible to detect a difference. Some studies have conducted controlled exposures, using approaches with the research vessel as proxies for the whale watchers (Arranz et al., 2021; Sprogis et al., 2020), while others use the whale watching operators’ daily schedule and plan their data collection schedule around that (Sprogis et al., 2023). Just as ours will, all these studies collected data using drones to record whale behavior and made sure to collect footage before, during, and after exposure to the vessel(s).

One study focused on humpback mom/calf pairs found a decrease in the proportion of time spent resting and an increase in both respiration rate and swim speed during the exposure (Sprogis et al., 2020). Similarly, a study focused on short-finned pilot whale mom/calf pairs found a decrease in the mom’s resting time and the calf’s nursing time (Arranz et al., 2021). And, Sprogis et al.’s  study of Southern right whales found a decrease in resting behavior after the exposure, suggesting that the vessels’ affect lasted past their departure (Sprogis et al., 2023, Image 3). It is interesting that while these studies found changes in different response metrics, a common trend is that all these changes suggest an increase in energy expenditure caused by the disturbance.

However, it is important to note that these studies focused on short term responses. Long term impacts have not been thoroughly estimated yet. These studies provide many valuable insights, not only into the response of whales to whale watching, but also a look at the various methods used. As we prepare for our fieldwork, it’s useful to learn how other researchers have approached similar projects.

Image 3. Visual ethogram from Sprogis et al. 2023. This shows all the behaviors they identified from the footage.

I want to note that I don’t write this blog intending to condemn whale watching. I fully appreciate that offering the opportunity to view and interact with these incredible creatures is valuable. After all, it is one of the best parts of my job. But hopefully these disturbance studies can inform better regulations, such as minimum approach distances or maximum engine noise levels.

As these studies have done, our first step will be to establish an ethogram of behaviors (our list of defined behaviors that we will identify in the footage) using our pilot data. We can also record respiration and track line data. An additional response that I’m excited to add is the distance between the mom and her calf. Former GEMM Lab NSF REU intern Celest will be rejoining us to process the footage using the AI method she developed last summer (Image 4). As described in her blog, this method tracks a mom and calf pair across the video frames, and allows us to extract the distance between them. We look forward to adding this metric to the list and seeing what we can glean from the results.

Image 4. Example of a labelled frame from SLEAP, highlighting labels: rostrum, blowhole, dorsal, dorsal-knuckle, and tail. This labels are drawn to train the software to recognize the whales in unlabelled frames.

While we are just getting started, I am excited to see what we can learn about these whales and how best to study them. Stay tuned for updates from Baja!

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References

Arranz, P., Glarou, M., & Sprogis, K. R. (2021). Decreased resting and nursing in short-finned pilot whales when exposed to louder petrol engine noise of a hybrid whale-watch vessel. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 21195. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-00487-0

Lemos, L. S., Haxel, J. H., Olsen, A., Burnett, J. D., Smith, A., Chandler, T. E., Nieukirk, S. L., Larson, S. E., Hunt, K. E., & Torres, L. G. (2022). Effects of vessel traffic and ocean noise on gray whale stress hormones. Scientific Reports, 12(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-14510-5

Senigaglia, V., Christiansen, F., Bejder, L., Gendron, D., Lundquist, D., Noren, D., Schaffar, A., Smith, J., Williams, R., Martinez, E., Stockin, K., & Lusseau, D. (2016). Meta-analyses of whale-watching impact studies: Comparisons of cetacean responses to disturbance. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 542, 251–263. https://doi.org/10.3354/meps11497

Sprogis, K. R., Holman, D., Arranz, P., & Christiansen, F. (2023). Effects of whale-watching activities on southern right whales in Encounter Bay, South Australia. Marine Policy, 150, 105525. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2023.105525

Sprogis, K. R., Videsen, S., & Madsen, P. T. (2020). Vessel noise levels drive behavioural responses of humpback whales with implications for whale-watching. ELife, 9, e56760. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.56760

Sullivan, F. A., & Torres, L. G. (2018). Assessment of vessel disturbance to gray whales to inform sustainable ecotourism. Journal of Wildlife Management, 82(5), 896–905. https://doi.org/10.1002/jwmg.21462

Return of the whales: The GRANITE 2022 field season comes to a close

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

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been four and half months since we started the field season (check out Lisa’s blog for a recap of where we began), but as of this weekend the GRANITE project’s 8th field season has officially ended! As the gray whales wrap up their foraging season and start heading south for the winter, it’s time for us to put our gear into storage, settle into a new academic year, and start processing the data we spent so much time collecting.

The field season can be quite an intense time (40 days equaling over 255 hours on the water!), so we often don’t take a moment to reflect until the end. But this season has been nothing short of remarkable. As you may remember from past blogs, the past couple years (2020-21) have been a bit concerning, with lower whale numbers than previously observed. Since many of us started working on the project during this time, most of us were expecting another similar season. But we were wrong in the best way. From the very first day, we saw more whales than in previous years and we identified whales from our catalog that we hadn’t seen in several years.

Image 1: Collage of photos from our field season.

We identified friends – old and new!

This season we had 224 sightings of 63 individual whales. Of those 63, 51 were whales from our catalog (meaning we have seen them in a previous season). Of these 51 known whales, we only saw 20 of them last year! This observation brings up interesting questions such as, where did most of these whales forage last year? Why did they return to this area this year? And, the classic end of season question, what’s going to happen next year?

We also identified 12 whales that were not in our catalog, making them new to the GEMM lab. Two of our new whales are extra exciting because they are not just new to us but new to the population; we saw two calves this year! We were fortunate enough to observe two mom-calf pairs in July. One pair was of a “new” mom in our catalog and her calf. We nicknamed this calf “Roly-poly” because when we found this mom-calf pair, we recorded some incredible drone footage of “roly-poly” continuously performing body rolls while their mom was feeding nearby (video 1). 

Video 1: “Roly-poly” body rolling while their mom headstands. NOAA/NMFS permit #21678.

The other pair includes a known GEMM lab whale, Luna, and her calf (currently nicknamed “Lunita”). We recently found “Lunita” feeding on their own in early October (Image 2), meaning that they are now independent from its mom (for more on mom-calf behavior check out Celest’s recent blog). We’ll definitely be on the lookout for Roly-Poly and Lunita next year!

Image 2: (left) drone image of Luna and Lunita together in July and (right) drone image of Lunita on their own in October.  NOAA/NMFS permit #21678.

We flew, we scooped, we collected heaps of data!

From our previous blogs you probably know that in addition to photo-ID images, our other two most important forms of data collection are drone flights (for body condition and behavior data) and fecal samples (for hormone analysis). And this season was a success for both! 

We conducted 124 flights over 49 individual whales. The star of these flights was a local favorite Scarlett who we flew over 18 different times. These repeat samples are crucial data for us because we use them to gain insight into how an individual’s body condition changes throughout the season. We also recorded loads of behavior data, collecting footage of different foraging tactics like headstanding, side-swimming, and surfacing feeding on porcelain crab larvae (video 2)!

Video 2: Two whales surface feeding on porcelain crab larvae. NOAA/NMFS permit #21678.

We also collected 61 fecal samples from 26 individual whales (Image 3). The stars of that dataset were Soléand Peak who tied with 7 samples each. These hard-earned samples provide invaluable insight into the physiology and stress levels of these individuals and are a crucial dataset for the project.

Image 3: Photos of fecal sample collection. Left – a very heavy sample, center: Lisa and Enrico after collecting the first fecal sample of the season, right: Clara and Lisa celebrating a good fecal sample collection.

On top of all that amazing data collection we also collected acoustic data with our hydrophones, prey data from net tows, and biologging data from our tagging efforts. Our hydrophones were in the water all summer recording the sounds that the whales are exposed to, and they were successfully recovered just a few weeks ago (Image 4)! We also conducted 69 net tows to sample the prey near where the whales were feeding and identify which prey the whales might be eating (Image 5). Lastly, we had two very successful tagging weeks during which we deployed (and recovered!) a total of 9 tags, which collected over 30 hours of data (Image 6; check out Kate’s blog for more on that).

Image 4 – Photos from hydrophone recovery.
Image 5: Photos from zooplankton sampling.
Image 6: Collage of photos from our two tagging efforts this season.

Final thoughts

All in all, it’s been an incredible season. We’ve seen the return of old friends, collected lots of awesome data, and had some record-breaking days (28 whales in one day!). As we look toward the analysis phase of the year, we’re excited to dig into our eight-year dataset and work to understand what might explain the increase in whales this year.

To end on a personal note, looking through photos to put in this blog was the loveliest trip down memory lane (even though it only ended a few days ago) – I am so honored and proud to be a part of this team. The work we do is hard; we spend long hours on a small boat together and it can be a bit grueling at times. But, when I think back on this season, my first thoughts are not of the times I felt exhausted or grumpy, but of all the joy we felt together. From the incredible whale encounters to the revitalizing snacks to the off-key sing alongs, there is no other team I would rather do this work with, and I so look forward to seeing what next season brings. Stay tuned for more updates from team GRANITE!

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Grad school growing pains

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

“What if I’m wrong? What if I make a mistake?” When I began my career after completing my undergraduate degree, these questions echoed constantly in my head as the stakes were raised and my work was taken more seriously. Of course, this anxiety was not new. As a student, my worst fear had been poor performance in class. Post-undergrad, I was facing the possibility of making a mistake that could impact larger research projects and publications. 

Gaining greater responsibility and consequences is a fact of life and an intrinsic part of growing up. As I wrap up my third year of graduate school, I’ve been reflecting on how learning to take on this responsibility as a scientist has been a crucial part of my journey thus far.  

A scientist’s job is to ask, and try to answer, questions that no one knows the answer to – which is both terrifying and exciting. It feels a bit like realizing that grown-ups don’t have all the answers as a kid. Becoming comfortable with the fact that my work often involves making decisions that no one definitively can say are wrong or right has been one of my biggest challenges of grad school. The important thing to remember, I’ve learned, is that I’m not making wild guesses – I’m being trained to make the best, most informed decisions possible. And, hopefully, with more experience will come greater confidence. 

Through grad school I have learned to take on this responsibility both in the field and the lab, although each brings different experiences. In the field, the stakes can feel higher because the decisions we make affect not just the quality of the data, but the safety of the team (which is always the top priority). I felt this most acutely throughout my first summer as a drone pilot. As a pilot, I am responsible for the safety of the team, the drone, and the quality of the data. As a new pilot, I intensely felt this pressure and would come home feeling more exhausted than usual. Now, in my second field season in this role, I’ve become more comfortable and am slowly building confidence in my abilities as I gain more and more experience. 

Video 1 – Two gray whales foraging together off Newport, Oregon, USA. I recorded this footage during my first season as a pilot – a flight I’ll never forget! NOAA/NMFS permit #21678.

I have also had a similar experience in the lab. Once it’s time to work on the analysis of a project, I choose how to clean, analyze, and interpret the data. As a young scientist, every step of the process involves learning new skills and making decisions that I don’t feel entirely qualified to make.  When I started analysis for my first PhD chapter, I felt overwhelmed by deciding how to standardize my data, what kind of analysis to perform, and what indices to calculate. And, since it’s my first chapter, I felt further overwhelmed by the worry that any decision I made would become a later regret in a future part of my PhD. 

Recently, the most daunting decision has been how to standardize my data. For my first chapter, I am investigating individual specialization of gray whale foraging behavior. The results of this question are not only important for conservation, but for my subsequent work (check out these previous blogs from January 2021and April 2022 for more on this research question). While there is a wealth of literature to draw analysis inspiration from, most of these studies use discrete prey capture data, while I am working with continuous behavior data. So, to make my data points comparable to one another, I need to standardize the behavior observation time of each drone flight to account for the potential bias introduced by recording one individual for more time than another. After experiencing an internal roller coaster of having an idea, thinking it through, deciding it was terrible and restarting the cycle, I was reminded that turning to lab mates and collaborators is the best way to work through a problem.

Image 1 – Comic from phdcomics.com, source: https://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=2008

So, I had as many conversations as I could with my advisor, committee members, and peers. My thinking clarified with every conversation, and I gained confidence in the justification behind my decision. I cannot fully express the comfort that comes from hearing a trusted advisor say, “that makes ecological sense to me”. These conversations have also helped me remember that I am not alone in my worry and that I am not failing because I have these doubts.  While I may never be 100% convinced that I’ve made the right decision, I feel much better knowing that I’ve talked it through with the brilliant group of scientists around me. And as I enter an analysis-intensive phase of my PhD, I am extremely grateful to have this community around to challenge, advise, and support me. 

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

Rachel Kaplan1, Dawn Barlow2, Clara Bird3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rachel attends “Clara’s Beanbag Coding Academy”.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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What drives individual specialization?

Clara Bird, PhD Student, OSU Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab

When I wrote my first blog on individual specialization well over a year ago, I just skimmed the surface of the literature on this topic and only started to recognize the importance of studying individual specialization. The question, “is there individual specialization in the PCFG of gray whales?” is the focus of my first thesis chapter and the results will affect all my subsequent work. Therefore, the literature and concepts of individual specialization are a focus of my literature review and studies.

In my previous blog I focused on common characteristics of individuals that are similarly specialized as an underlying driver of individual specialization. While these characteristics (often attributable to age, sex, or physical traits) are important to consider, I’ve learned that the list of drivers of individual specialization is long and that many variables are dynamic. Of all the drivers I’ve learned about, competition is among the most common.

Competition is a major driver of individual specialization, and a common driver of competition is resource availability. When resource availability decreases, whether caused by increasing population density or changing environmental conditions, competition for that resource increases. As competition increases, individuals have a choice. They can choose to engage in competition, either by racing, fighting, or sharing [1], which can be costly, or they can diffuse the competition by focusing on a different resource.  This second approach would be considered niche partitioning in the prey dimension. Niche partitioning is a way for individuals to share ecological space by using different resources. Essentially, individuals can share habitat without having to engage in direct competition by pursuing different prey types [2]. 

This switch to different prey types can change the degree of individual specialization present in the population (Figure 1). But the direction of the change is not constant. If all individuals were pursuing the same prey type under low competition conditions but then switched to different alternate prey types under high competition, then individual specialization would increase (Figure 1a). This direction has been observed across a range of species including sharks [3], otters [4]–[7], dolphins [8], [9], stickleback fish [10], [11], largemouth bass [12], banded mongoose [13], fur seals [14], and baleen whales [15].

However, if individuals were pursuing different prey types under low competition conditions (maybe because of underlying differences such as age or sex) but then switched to the same alternate prey types under high competition, diet overlap would increase, and individual specialization would decrease (Figure 1b). Furthermore, an individual might not switch to an entirely new prey type but instead add prey items to its diet [16]. This diet expansion under competition would also decrease individual specialization. Fewer studies have reported this direction but it’s been found in the common bumblebee [17] and in several neotropical vertebrate species [18], [19].

Figure `1. Figure 3 from Araújo et al. 2011 [20]. Illustration of how ecological mechanisms may affect the degree of individual specialization. Arrows linking resources to individual consumers indicate resource consumption (relative thickness indicates proportional contribution). 
Horizontal arrows indicate the sign (positive or negative) of the effect on the degree of individual specialization. (a) Consumers share the same preferred resource (dark gray tangle) but have different alternative resources (white and light gray triangles). As the preferred resource becomes scarce, consumers switch to different alternatives, increasing the degree of individual specialization. (b) Alternatively, consumers have distinct preferred resources, so that as resources become scarce, individuals converge to the alternative resource (dark gray triangle), reducing diet variation.

Interestingly, its hypothesized that individual specialization driven by competition is one of the factors that facilitates the formation and existence of stable groups [21]. For example, a study on resident female dolphins in Sarasota Bay, FL, USA found that females with high spatial overlap used distinct foraging specializations [8](Figure 2). This study illustrates how partitioning prey enabled spatial and social coexistence. A study on banded mongooses reached a similar conclusion [13]. They found that specialization was highest in the biggest groups (with the most competition) and not explained by sex, age, or other inherent differences. They hypothesized that specialization increasing with competition reduced conflict and allowed the groups to remain stable. This study also highlighted the role of learning to determine an individual’s specialization.

Figure 2. A bottlenose dolphin.
Source: https://sarasotadolphin.org

Learning drives the distribution of knowledge throughout a population, which can lead to either specialization or generalization. ‘One-to-one’ learning, where one individual learns from one demonstrator, tends to promote individual specialization [21]. This form of transmission drives specialization because the individuals who learn the specialization tend to then carry on using, and eventually teaching, that specialization [6]. A common example of ‘one-to-one’ learning is vertical transmission from parent to offspring. It has been shown to transmit specializations in dolphins [22] and otters [6]. ‘One-to-one’ learning can occur outside of parent-offspring pairs; non-parent-offspring ‘one-to-one’ learning has been shown to drive specialization in banded mongooses [13](Figure 3).

However, other forms of social learning can promote more generalized foraging strategies. ‘Many-to-one’ or ‘one-to-many’ learning  can reduce the presence of specialization in species [13], [21] as can the presence of conformity in a group [23], [24].

Figure 3. A group of banded mongooses.
Source: http://socialisresearch.org/about-the-banded-mongoose-project/

The multiple drivers of specialization and their dynamic quality means that it is important to contextualize specialization. For example, a study on four species of neotropical frogs found varying degrees of specialization across multiple populations of each species [18]. The degree of specialization was dependent on a variety of drivers including predation and both intra- and inter-specific competition. Notably, the direction of the relationship between degree of specialization and each driver was species specific. This study highlights that one species may not always be more specialized than another, but that a populations’ specialization is context dependent.

Therefore, it is important to not only be aware of the degree of specialization present in a population, but to also understand its dynamics and drivers. These relationships can then be used to understand how, and why, a population may react to competition from other species, predators, and changes in resource availability [20].  A population’s specialization can also affect the specialization of other populations and community dynamics [25], therefore, it’s important to consider and study individual specialization on both the population and community level. I am excited to start using our incredible six-year dataset to start investigating these questions for PCFG gray whales, so stay tuned for results!

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References

[1]       M. Taborsky, M. A. Cant, and J. Komdeur, The Evolution of Social Behaviour. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. doi: 10.1017/9780511894794.

[2]       E. R. Pianka, “Niche Overlap and Diffuse Competition,” vol. 71, no. 5, pp. 2141–2145, 1974.

[3]       P. Matich et al., “Ecological niche partitioning within a large predator guild in a nutrient-limited estuary,” Limnol. Oceanogr., vol. 62, no. 3, pp. 934–953, 2017, doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/lno.10477.

[4]       S. D. Newsome et al., “The interaction of intraspecific competition and habitat on individual diet specialization: a near range-wide examination of sea otters,” Oecologia, vol. 178, no. 1, pp. 45–59, May 2015, doi: 10.1007/s00442-015-3223-8.

[5]       M. T. Tinker, G. Bentall, and J. A. Estes, “Food limitation leads to behavioral diversification and dietary specialization in sea otters,” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., vol. 105, no. 2, pp. 560–565, Jan. 2008, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0709263105.

[6]       M. T. Tinker, M. Mangel, and J. A. Estes, “Learning to be different: acquired skills, social learning, frequency dependence, and environmental variation can cause behaviourally mediated foraging specializations,” Evol. Ecol. Res., vol. 11, pp. 841–869, 2009.

[7]       M. T. Tinker et al., “Structure and mechanism of diet specialisation: testing models of individual variation in resource use with sea otters,” Ecol. Lett., vol. 15, no. 5, pp. 475–483, 2012, doi: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2012.01760.x.

[8]       S. Rossman et al., “Foraging habits in a generalist predator: Sex and age influence habitat selection and resource use among bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus),” Mar. Mammal Sci., vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 155–168, 2015, doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/mms.12143.

[9]       L. G. Torres, “A kaleidoscope of mammal , bird and fish : habitat use patterns of top predators and their prey in Florida Bay,” vol. 375, pp. 289–304, 2009, doi: 10.3354/meps07743.

[10]     M. S. Araújo et al., “Network Analysis Reveals Contrasting Effects of Intraspecific Competition on Individual Vs. Population Diets,” Ecology, vol. 89, no. 7, pp. 1981–1993, 2008, doi: 10.1890/07-0630.1.

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[12]     D. E. Schindler, J. R. Hodgson, and J. F. Kitchell, “Density-dependent changes in individual foraging specialization of largemouth bass,” Oecologia, vol. 110, no. 4, pp. 592–600, May 1997, doi: 10.1007/s004420050200.

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The costs and benefits of automated behavior classification

Clara Bird, PhD Student, OSU Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab

“Why don’t you just automate it?” This is a question I am frequently asked when I tell someone about my work. My thesis involves watching many hours of drone footage of gray whales and meticulously coding behaviors, and there are plenty of days when I have asked myself that very same question. Streamlining my process is certainly appealing and given how wide-spread and effective machine learning methods have become, it is a tempting option to pursue. That said, machine learning is only appropriate for certain research questions and scales, and it’s important to consider these before investing in using a new tool.

The application of machine learning methods to behavioral ecology is called computational ethology (Anderson & Perona, 2014). To identify behaviors from videos, the model tracks individuals across video frames and identifies patterns of movement that form a behavior. This concept is similar to the way we identify a whale as traveling if it’s moving in a straight line and as foraging if it’s swimming in circles within a small area (Mayo & Marx, 1990, check out this blog to learn more). The level of behavioral detail that the model is able to track  depends on the chosen method (Figure 1, Pereira et al., 2020). These methods range from tracking each animal as a simple single point (called a centroid) to tracking the animal’s body positioning in 3D (this method is called pose estimation), which range from providing less detailed to more detailed behavior definitions. For example, tracking an individual as a centroid could be used to classify traveling and foraging behaviors, while pose estimation could identify specific foraging tactics. 

Figure 1. Figure from Pereira et al. (2020) illustrating the different methods of animal behavior tracking that are possible using machine learning.

Pose estimation involves training the machine learning algorithm to track individual anatomical features of an individual (e.g., the head, legs, and tail of a rat), meaning that it can define behaviors in great detail. A behavior state could be defined as a combination of the angle between the tail and the head, and the stride length. 

For example, Mearns et al. (2020) used pose estimation to study how zebrafish larvae in a lab captured their prey. They tracked the tail movements of individual larvae when presented with prey and classified these movements into separate behaviors that allowed them to associate specific behaviors with prey capture (Figure 2). The authors found that these behaviors occurred in a specific sequence, that the behaviors kept the prey within the larvae’s line of sight, and that the sequence was triggered by visual cues.  In fact, when they removed the visual cue of the prey, the larvae terminated the behavior sequence, meaning that the larvae are continually choosing to do each behavior in the sequence, rather than the sequence being one long behavior event that is triggered only by the initial visual cue. This study is a good example of the applicability of machine learning models for questions aimed at kinematics and fine-scale movements. Pose estimation has also been used to study the role of facial expression and body language in rat social communication (Ebbesen & Froemke, 2021). 

Figure 2. Excerpt from figure 1 of Mearns et al. (2020) illustrating (A) the camera set up for their experiment, (B) how the model tracked the eye angles and tail of the larvae fish, (C) the kinematics extracted from the footage. In panel (C) the top plot shows how the eyes converged on the same object (the prey) during prey capture event, the middle plot shows when the tail was curved to the left or the right, and the bottom plot shows the angle of the tail tip relative to the body.

While previous machine learning methods to track animal movements required individuals to be physically marked, the current methods can perform markerless tracking (Pereira et al., 2020). This improvement has broadened the kinds of studies that are possible. For example, Bozek et al., (2021) developed a model that tracked individuals throughout an entire honeybee colony and showed that certain individual behaviors were spatially distributed within the colony (Figure 3). Machine learning enabled the researchers to track over 1000 individual bees over several months, a task that would be infeasible for someone to do by hand. 

Figure 3. Excerpt from figure 1 of Bozek et al., (2021) showing how individual bees and their trajectories were tracked.

These studies highlight that the potential benefits of using machine learning when studying fine scale behaviors (like kinematics) or when tracking large groups of individuals. Furthermore, once it’s trained, the model can process large quantities of data in a standardized way to free up time for the scientists to focus on other tasks.

While machine learning is an exciting and enticing tool, automating behavior detection via machine learning could be its own PhD dissertation. Like most things in life, there are costs and benefits to using this technique. It is a technically difficult tool, and while applications exist to make it more accessible, knowledge of the computer science behind it is necessary to apply it effectively and correctly. Secondly, it can be tedious and time consuming to create a training dataset for the model to “learn” what each behavior looks like, as this step involves manually labeling examples for the model to use. 

As I’ve mentioned in a previous blog, I came quite close to trying to study the kinematics of gray whale foraging behaviors but ultimately decided that counting fluke beats wasn’t necessary to answer my behavioral research questions. It was important to consider the scale of my questions (as described in Allison’s blog) and I think that diving into more fine-scale kinematics questions could be a fascinating follow-up to the questions I’m asking in my PhD. 

For instance, it would be interesting to quantify how gray whales use their flukes for different behavior tactics. Do gray whales in better body condition beat their flukes more frequently while headstanding? Does the size of the fluke affect how efficiently they can perform certain tactics? While these analyses would help quantify the energetic costs of different behaviors in better detail, they aren’t necessary for my broad scale questions. Consequently, taking the time to develop and train a pose estimation machine learning model is not the best use of my time.

That being said, I am interested in applying machine learning methods to a specific subset of my dataset. In social behavior, it is not only useful to quantify the behaviors exhibited by each individual but also the distance between them. For example, the distance between a mom and her calf can be indicative of the calves’ dependence on its mom (Nielsen et al., 2019). However, continuously measuring the distance between two individuals throughout a video is tedious and time intensive, so training a machine learning model could be an effective use of time. I plan to work with an intern this summer to develop a machine learning model to track the distance between pairs of gray whales in our drone footage and then relate this distance data with the manually coded behaviors to examine patterns in social behavior (Figure 4).  Stay tuned to learn more about our progress!

Figure 4. A mom and calf pair surfacing together. Image collected under NOAA/NMFS permit #21678

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References

Anderson, D. J., & Perona, P. (2014). Toward a Science of Computational Ethology. Neuron, 84(1), 18–31. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2014.09.005

Bozek, K., Hebert, L., Portugal, Y., Mikheyev, A. S., & Stephens, G. J. (2021). Markerless tracking of an entire honey bee colony. Nature Communications, 12(1), 1733. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21769-1

Ebbesen, C. L., & Froemke, R. C. (2021). Body language signals for rodent social communication. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 68, 91–106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conb.2021.01.008

Mayo, C. A., & Marx, M. K. (1990). Surface foraging behaviour of the North Atlantic right whale, Eubalaena glacialis , and associated zooplankton characteristics. Canadian Journal of Zoology, 68(10), 2214–2220. https://doi.org/10.1139/z90-308

Mearns, D. S., Donovan, J. C., Fernandes, A. M., Semmelhack, J. L., & Baier, H. (2020). Deconstructing Hunting Behavior Reveals a Tightly Coupled Stimulus-Response Loop. Current Biology, 30(1), 54-69.e9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2019.11.022

Nielsen, M., Sprogis, K., Bejder, L., Madsen, P., & Christiansen, F. (2019). Behavioural development in southern right whale calves. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 629, 219–234. https://doi.org/10.3354/meps13125

Pereira, T. D., Shaevitz, J. W., & Murthy, M. (2020). Quantifying behavior to understand the brain. Nature Neuroscience, 23(12), 1537–1549. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-020-00734-z

Of snakes and whales: How food availability and body condition affect reproduction

Clara Bird, PhD Student, OSU Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab

Over six field seasons the GEMM lab team has conducted nearly 500 drone flights over gray whales, equaling over 100 hours of footage. These hours of footage are the central dataset for my PhD dissertation, so it’s up to me to process them all. This process can be challenging, tedious, and daunting, but it is also quite fun and a privilege to be the one person who gets to watch all the footage. It’s fascinating to get to know the whales and their behaviors and pick up on patterns. It motivates me to get through this video processing step and start doing the data analysis. Recently, it’s been especially fun to notice patterns that I’ve seen mentioned in the literature. One example is adult social behavior. 

There are two categories of social behavior that I’m interested in studying: maternal behavior, defined as interactions between a mom and its calf, and general social behaviors, defined as social interactions between non-mom/calf pairs. In this blog I’ll focus on general social behaviors, but if you’re interested in maternal behavior check out this blog. General social behavior, which I’ll refer to as social behavior moving forward, includes tactile interactions and promiscuous behaviors (Torres et al. 2018; Clip 1). While gray whales in the PCFG range are primarily foraging, researchers have observed increases in social behavior towards the end of the foraging season (Stelle et al., 2008; Torres et al., 2018). We think that this indicates that the whales are starting to focus less on feeding and more on breeding. This tradeoff of foraging vs. socializing time is interesting because it comes at an energetic cost.

Clip 1. Example of social interaction between a male and female gray whale off the coast of Oregon, USA. Collected under NOAA/NMFS permit #21678

Broadly, animals need to balance the energetic demands of survival with those of reproduction. They need to reproduce to pass on their genes, but reproduction is energetically demanding, and animals also need to survive and grow to be able to reproduce. The decision to reproduce is costly because reproduction requires energetic investment and time investment since animals do not forage (gaining energy) when they are socializing. Consequently, only animals with sufficient energy reserves (i.e., body condition) to invest in reproduction actually engage in reproduction. Given these costs associated with reproduction, we expect to see a relationship between social behavior and body condition (Green, 2001) with mainly animals in good body condition engaging in social behavior because these animals have sufficient reserves to sustain the cost. Furthermore, since body condition is an indicator of foraging success and prey availability, environmental conditions can also affect social behavior and reproduction through this pathway. 

Rahman et al. (2014) used a lab experiment to study the relationship between nutritional stress and male guppy courtship behavior (Figure 1). In their experiment they tested for the effects of both decreased diet quantity and quality on the frequency of male courtship behaviors. Rahman et al (2014) found that individuals in the low-quantity group were significantly smaller than those in the high-quality group and that diet quantity had a significant effect on the frequency of courtship behaviors. Males fed a low-quantity diet performed fewer courtship behaviors. Interestingly, there was no significant effect of diet quality on courtships behavior, although there was some evidence of an interaction effect, which suggests that within the low-quantity group, males fed with high-quality food performed more courtship behaviors that those fed with low-quality food. This study is interesting because it shows how foraging success (diet quantity and quality) can affect courting behavior. 

Figure 1. A guppy (Rahman et al., 2013)

However, guppies are not the ideal species for comparison to gray whales because gray whales and guppies have quite different life history traits. A more fitting comparison would be with an example species with more in common with gray whales, such as viviparous capital breeders. Viviparous animals develop the embryo inside the body and give live birth. Capital breeders forage to build energy reserves and then rely on those energy reserves during reproduction. Surprisingly, I found asp vipers to be a good example species for comparison to gray whales.

Asp vipers (Figure 2) are viviparous snakes who are considered capital breeders because they forage prior to hibernation, and then begin reproduction immediately following hibernation without additional foraging. Naulleau & Bonnet (1996) conducted a field study on female asp vipers to determine if there was a difference in body condition at the start of the breeding season between females who reproduced or not during that season. To do this they marked individuals and measured their body condition at the start of the breeding season and then recaptured those individuals at the end of the breeding season and recorded whether the individual had reproduced. Interestingly, they found that there was a strongly significant difference in body condition between females that did and did not reproduce. In fact, they discovered that no female below a certain body condition value reproduced, meaning that they found a body condition threshold for reproduction. 

Figure 2. An asp viper

Additionally, a study on water pythons found that their body condition threshold for reproduction shifted over time in response to prey availability (Madsen & Shine, 1999). These authors found that females lowered their threshold after several consecutive years of poor prey availability. These studies are really exciting to me because they address questions that the GRANITE project team is interested in tackling.

Understanding the relationship between body condition and reproduction in gray whales is an important puzzle piece for our work. The aim of the GRANITE project is to understand how the effects of stressors on individual whales scales up to population level impacts (read Lisa’s blog to learn more). Reproduction rates play a big role in population dynamics, so it is important to understand what factors affect reproduction. Since we’re studying these whales on their foraging grounds, assessing body condition provides an important link between foraging behavior and reproduction. 

For example, if an individual’s response to a stressor is to forage less, that may lead to poorer body condition, meaning that they may be less likely to reproduce. While reduced reproduction in one individual may not have a big effect on the population, the same response from multiple individuals could impact the population’s dynamics (i.e., increasing or decreasing abundance). Understanding these different relationships between behavior, body condition, and reproduction rates is a big undertaking, but it’s exciting to be a member of the GRANITE team as this strong group of scientists works to bring together different data streams to work on this big picture question. We’re all deep into data processing right now so stay tuned over the next few years to learn more about gray whale social behavior and to find out if fat whales are more social than skinny whales. 

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References

Green, A. J. (2001). Mass/Length Residuals: Measures of Body Condition or Generators of Spurious Results? Ecology, 82(5), 1473–1483. https://doi.org/10.1890/0012-9658(2001)082[1473:MLRMOB]2.0.CO;2

Madsen, T., & Shine, R. (1999). The adjustment of reproductive threshold to prey abundance in a capital breeder. Journal of Animal Ecology, 68(3), 571–580. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2656.1999.00306.x

Naulleau, G., & Bonnet, X. (1996). Body Condition Threshold for Breeding in a Viviparous Snake. Oecologia, 107(3), 301–306.

Rahman, M. M., Kelley, J. L., & Evans, J. P. (2013). Condition-dependent expression of pre- and postcopulatory sexual traits in guppies. Ecology and Evolution, 3(7), 2197–2213. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.632

Rahman, M. M., Turchini, G. M., Gasparini, C., Norambuena, F., & Evans, J. P. (2014). The Expression of Pre- and Postcopulatory Sexually Selected Traits Reflects Levels of Dietary Stress in Guppies. PLOS ONE, 9(8), e105856. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0105856

Stelle, L. L., Megill, W. M., & Kinzel, M. R. (2008). Activity budget and diving behavior of gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) in feeding grounds off coastal British Columbia. Marine Mammal Science, 24(3), 462–478. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1748-7692.2008.00205.x

Torres, L. G., Nieukirk, S. L., Lemos, L., & Chandler, T. E. (2018). Drone up! Quantifying whale behavior from a new perspective improves observational capacity. Frontiers in Marine Science, 5(SEP). https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2018.00319

Learning the right stuff – examining social transmission in humans, monkeys, and cetaceans

Clara Bird, PhD Student, OSU Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab

The start of a new school year is always an exciting time. Like high school, it means seeing friends again and the anticipation of preparing to learn something new. Even now, as a grad student less focused on coursework, the start of the academic year involves setting project timelines and goals, most of which include learning. As I’ve been reflecting on these goals, one of my dad’s favorite sayings has been at the forefront of my mind. As an overachieving and perfectionist kid, I often got caught up in the pursuit of perfect grades, so the phrase “just learn the stuff” was my dad’s reminder to focus on what matters. Getting good grades didn’t matter if I wasn’t learning. While my younger self found the phrase rather frustrating, I have come to appreciate and find comfort in it. 

Given that my research is focused on behavioral ecology, I’ve also spent a lot of time thinking about how gray whales learn. Learning is important, but also costly. It involves an investment of energy (a physiological cost, Christie & Schrater, 2015; Jaumann et al., 2013), and an investment of time (an opportunity cost). Understanding the costs and benefits of learning can help inform conservation efforts because how an individual learns today affects the knowledge and tactics that the individual will use in the future. 

Like humans, individual animals can learn a variety of tactics in a variety of ways. In behavioral ecology we classify the different types of learning based on the teacher’s role (even though they may not be consciously teaching). For example, vertical transmission is a calf learning from its mom, and horizontal transmission is an individual learning from other conspecifics (individuals of the same species) (Sargeant & Mann, 2009). An individual must be careful when choosing who to learn from because not all strategies will be equally efficient. So, it stands to reason than an individual should choose to learn from a successful individual. Signals of success can include factors such as size and age. An individual’s parent is an example of success because they were able to reproduce (Barrett et al., 2017). Learning in a population can be studied by assessing which individuals are learning, who they are learning from, and which learned behaviors become the most common.

An example of such a study is Barrett et al. (2017) where researchers conducted an experiment on capuchin monkeys in Costa Rica. This study centered around the Panama ́fruit, which is extremely difficult to open and there are several documented capuchin foraging tactics for processing and consuming the fruit (Figure 1). For this study, the researchers worked with a group of monkeys who lived in a habitat where the fruit was not found, but the group included several older members who had learned Panamá fruit foraging tactics prior to joining this group. During a 75-day experiment, the researchers placed fruits near the group (while they weren’t looking) and then recorded the tactics used to process the fruit and who used each tactic. Their results showed that the most efficient tactic became the most common tactic over time, and that age-bias was a contributing factor, meaning that individuals were more like to copy older members of the group. 

Figure 1. Figure from Barrett et al. (2017) showing a capuchin monkey eating a Panamá fruit using the canine seam technique.

Social learning has also been documented in dolphin societies. A long-term study on wild bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Australia assessed how habitat characteristics and the foraging behaviors used by moms and other conspecifics affected the foraging tactics used by calves (Sargeant & Mann, 2009). Interestingly, although various factors predicted what foraging tactic was used, the dominant factor was vertical transmission where the calf used the tactic learned from its mom (Figure 2). Overall, this study highlights the importance of considering a variety of factors because behavioral diversity and learning are context dependent.

Figure 2. Figure from Sargeant & Mann (2009) showing that the probability of a calf using a tactic was higher if the mother used that tactic.

Social learning is something that I am extremely interested in studying in our study population of gray whales in Oregon. While studies on social learning for such long-lived animals require a longer study period than of the span of our current dataset, I still find it important to consider the role learning may play. One day I would love to delve into the different factors of learning by these gray whales and answer questions such as those addressed in the studies I described above. Which foraging tactics are learned? How much of a factor is vertical transmission? Considering that gray whale calves spend the first few months of the foraging season with their mothers I would expect that there is at least some degree of vertical transmission present. Furthermore, how do environmental conditions affect learning? What tactics are learned in good vs. poor years of prey availability? Does it matter which tactic is learned first? While the chances that I’ll get to address these questions in the next few years are low, I do think that investigating how tactic diversity changes across age groups could be a good place to start. As I’ve discussed in a previous blog, my first dissertation chapter will focus on quantifying the degree of individual specialization present in my study group. After reading about age-biased learning, I am curious to see if older whales, as a group, use fewer tactics and if those tactics are the most energetically efficient.

The importance of understanding learning is related to that of studying individual specialization, which can allows us to estimate how behavioral tactics might change in popularity over time and space. We could then combine this with knowledge of how tactics are related to morphology and habitat and the associated energetic costs of each tactic. This knowledge would allow us to estimate the impacts of environmental change on individuals and the population. While my dissertation research only aims to provide a few puzzle pieces in this very large and complicated gray whale ecology puzzle, I am excited to see what I find. Writing this blog has both inspired new questions and served as a good reminder to be more patient with myself because I am still, “just learning the stuff”.

Rock-solid GRANITE: Scaling the disturbance response of individual whales up to population level impacts

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

Since early May, much of the GEMM Lab has been consumed by the GRANITE project, which stands for Gray whale Response to Ambient Noise Informed by Technology and Ecology. Two weeks ago, PhD student Clara Bird discussed our field work preparations, and since May 20th we have conducted five successful days of field work (and one unsuccessful day due to fog). If you are now expecting a blog about the data we have collected so far and whales we encountered, I am sorry to disappoint you. Rather, I want to take a big step back and provide the context of the GRANITE project as a whole, explain why this project and data collection is so important, and discuss what it is that we hope to achieve with our ever-growing, multidisciplinary dataset and team.

We use the Pacific Coast Feeding Group (PCFG) of gray whales that forage off the Oregon coast as our study system to better understand the ecological and physiological response of baleen whales to multiple stressors. Our field methodology includes replicate physiological and ecological sampling of this accessible baleen whale population with synoptic measurement of multiple types of stressors. We collect fecal samples for hormone analysis, conduct drone overflights of whales to collect body condition and behavioral data, record the ambient soundscape through deployment of two hydrophones, and conduct whale photo-identification to link all data streams to each individual whale of known sex, estimated age, and reproductive status. We resample these data from multiple individuals within and between summer foraging seasons, while exposed to different potential stressors occurring at different intensities and temporal periods and durations. The hydrophones are strategically placed with one in a heavily boat-trafficked (and therefore noisy) area close to the Port of Newport, while the second is located in a relatively calm (and therefore quieter) spot near the Otter Rock Marine Reserve (Fig. 1). These hydrophones provide us with information about both natural (e.g. killer whales, wind, waves) and anthropogenic (e.g. boat traffic, seismic survey, marine construction associated with PacWave wave energy facility development) noise that may affect gray whales. During sightings with whales, we also drop GoPro cameras and sample for prey to better understand the habitats where whales forage and what they might be consuming.

Figure 1. Map of GRANITE study area from Seal Rock to Lincoln City with gray whale sightings (yellow circles) and and fecal samples collected (red triangles) from the 2020 field season. Green stars represent the two hydrophone locations. Source: L. Torres.

GEMM Lab PI Dr. Leigh Torres initiated this research project in 2015 and established partnerships with acoustician Dr. Joe Haxel and (then) PhD student Dr. Leila Lemos. Since then, the team working on this project has grown considerably to provide expertise in the various disciplines that the project integrates. Leigh is currently joined at the GRANITE helm by 4 co-PIs: Dr. Haxel, endocrinologist Dr. Kathleen Hunt, biological statistician Dr. Leslie New, and physiologist Dr. Loren Buck. Drs. Alejandro Fernandez Ajo, KC Bierlich and Enrico Pirotta are postdoctoral scholars who are working on the endocrinology, photogrammetry, and biostatistical modelling components, respectively. Finally, Clara and myself are partially funded through this project for our PhD research, with Clara focusing on the links between behavior, body condition, individualization, and habitat, while I am tackling questions about the recruitment and site fidelity of the PCFG (more about these topics below). 

Faculty Research Assistant Todd Chandler supervises PhD student Clara Bird during her maiden drone flight over a whale. Source: L. Torres.

The ultimate goal of this project is to use the PCFG as a case study to quantify baleen whale physiological response to different stressors and model the subsequent impacts on the population by implementing our long-term, replicate dataset into a framework called Population consequences of disturbance (PCoD; Fig. 2). PCoD is built upon the underlying concept that changes in behavior and/or physiology caused by disturbance (i.e. noise) affect the fitness of individuals by impacting their health and vital rates, such as survival, reproductive success, and growth rate (Pirotta et al. 2018). These impacts at the individual level may (or may not) affect the population as a whole, depending on what proportion of individuals in the population are affected by the disturbance and the intensity of the disturbance effect on each individual. The PCoD framework requires quantification of four stages: a) the physiological and/or behavioral changes that occur as a result of exposure to a stressor (i.e. noise), b) the acute effects of these physiological and/or behavioral responses on individual vital rates, and their chronic effects via individual health, c) the way in which changes in health may affect the vital rates of individuals, and d) how changes in individual vital rates may affect population dynamics (Fig. 2; Pirotta et al. 2018). While four stages may not sound like a lot, the amount and longevity of data needed to quantify each stage is immense. 

Figure 2. Conceptual framework of the population consequences of disturbance (PCoD). Letters (A-D) represent the four stages that require quantification in order for PCoD to be implemented. Each colored box represents external (ecological drivers, stressors) and internal (physiology, health, vital rates, behavior) factors that can change over time that are measured for each individual whale (dashed grey boundary line). The effects are then integrated across all individuals in the population to project their effects on the population’s dynamics. Figure and caption adapted from Pirotta et al. 2018.

The ability to detect a change in behavior or physiology often requires an understanding of what is “normal” for an individual, which we commonly refer to as a baseline. The best way to establish a baseline is to collect comprehensive data over a long time period. With our data collection efforts since 2015 of fecal samples, drone flights and photo identification, we have established useful baselines of behavioral and physiological data for PCFG gray whales. These baselines are particularly impressive since it is typically difficult to collect repeated measurements of hormones and body condition from the same individual baleen whale across multiple years. These repeated measurements are important because, like all mammals, hormones and body condition vary across life history phases (i.e., with pregnancy, injury, or age class) and across time (i.e., good or bad foraging conditions). To achieve these repeated measurements, GRANITE exploits the high degree of intra- and inter-annual site fidelity of the PCFG, their accessibility for study due to their affinity for nearshore habitat use, and the long-term sighting history of many whales that provides sex and approximate age information. Our work to-date has already established a few important baselines. We now know that the body condition of PCFG gray whales increases throughout a foraging season and can fluctuate considerably between years (Soledade Lemos et al. 2020). Furthermore, there are significant differences in body condition by reproductive state, with calves and pregnant females displaying higher body conditions (Soledade Lemos et al. 2020). Our dataset has also allowed us to validate and quantify fecal steroid and thyroid hormone metabolite concentrations, providing us with putative thresholds to identify a stressed vs. not stressed whale based on its hormone levels (Lemos et al. 2020).

PhD student Lisa Hildebrand and GRANITE co-PI Dr. Kathleen Hunt collecting a fecal sample. Source: L. Torres.

We continue to collect data to improve our understanding of baseline PCFG physiology and behavior, and to detect changes in their behavior and physiology due to disturbance events. All these data will be incorporated into a PCoD framework to scale from individual to population level understanding of impacts. However, more data is not the only thing we need to quantify each of the PCoD stages. The implementation of the PCoD framework also depends on understanding several aspects of the PCFG’s population dynamics. Specifically, we need to know whether recruitment to the PCFG population occurs internally (calves born from “PCFG mothers” return to the PCFG) or externally (immigrants from the larger Eastern North Pacific gray whale population joining the PCFG as adults). The degree of internal or external recruitment to the PCFG population should be included in the PCoD model as a parameter, as it will influence how much individual level disturbance effects impact the overall health and viability of the population. Furthermore, knowing residency times and home ranges of whales within the PCFG is essential to understand exposure durations to disturbance events. 

To assess both recruitment and residency patterns of the PCFG, I am undertaking a large photo-identification effort, which includes compiling sightings and photo data across many years, regions, and collaborators. Through this effort we aim to identify calves and their return rate to the population, the rate of new adult recruits to the population, and the spatial residency of individuals in our study system. Although photo-id is a basic, commonplace method in marine mammal science, its role is critical to tracking individuals over time to understand population dynamics (in a non-invasive manner, no less). A large portion of my PhD research will focus on the tedious yet rewarding task of photo-id data management and matching in order to address these pressing knowledge gaps on PCFG population dynamics needed to implement the PCoD model that is an ultimate goal of GRANITE. I am just beginning this journey and have already pinpointed many analytical and logistical hurdles that I need to overcome. I do not anticipate an easy path to addressing these questions, but I am extremely eager to dig into the data, reveal the patterns, and integrate the findings into our rock-solid GRANITE project.  

Funding for the GRANITE project comes from the Office of Naval Research, the Department of Energy, Oregon Sea Grant, the NOAA/NMFS Ocean Acoustics Program, and the OSU Marine Mammal Institute.

References

Lemos, L.S., Olsen, A., Smith, A., Chandler, T.E., Larson, S., Hunt, K., and L.G. Torres. 2020. Assessment of fecal steroid and thyroid hormone metabolites in eastern North Pacific gray whales. Conservation Physiology 8:coaa110.

Pirotta, E., Booth, C.G., Costa, D.P., Fleishman, E., Kraus, S.D., Lusseau, D., Moretti, D., New, L.F., Schick, R.S., Schwarz, L.K., Simmons, S.E., Thomas, L., Tyack, P.L., Weise, M.J., Wells, R.S., and J. Harwood. 2018. Understanding the population consequences of disturbance. Ecology and Evolution 8(19):9934-9946.

Soledade Lemos, L., Burnett, J.D., Chandler, T.E., Sumich, J.L., and L.G. Torres. 2020. Intra- and inter-annual variation in gray whale body condition on a foraging ground. Ecosphere 11(4):e03094.

The learning curve never stops as the GRANITE project begins its seventh field season

Clara Bird, PhD Student, OSU Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab

When I thought about what doing fieldwork would be like, before having done it myself, I imagined that it would be a challenging, but rewarding and fun experience (which it is). However, I underestimated both ends of the spectrum. I simultaneously did not expect just how hard it would be and could not imagine the thrill of working so close to whales in a beautiful place. One part that I really did not consider was the pre-season phase. Before we actually get out on the boats, we spend months preparing for the work. This prep work involves buying gear, revising and developing protocols, hiring new people, equipment maintenance and testing, and training new skills. Regardless of how many successful seasons came before a project, there are always new tasks and challenges in the preparation phase.

For example, as the GEMM Lab GRANITE project team geared up for its seventh field season, we had a few new components to prepare for. Just to remind you, the GRANITE (Gray whale Response to Ambient Noise Informed by Technology and Ecology) project’s field season typically takes place from June to mid-October of each year. Throughout this time period the field team goes out on a small RHIB (rigid hull inflatable boat), whenever the weather is good enough, to collect photo-ID data, fecal samples, and drone imagery of the Pacific Coast Feeding Group (PCFG) gray whales foraging near Newport, OR, USA. We use the data to assess the health, ecology and population dynamics of these whales, with our ultimate goal being to understand the effect of ambient noise on the population. As previous blogs have described, a typical field day involves long hours on the water looking for whales and collecting data. This year, one of our exciting new updates is that we are going out on two boats for the first part of the field season and starting our season 10 days early (our first day was May 20th). These updates are happening because a National Science Foundation funded seismic survey is being conducted within our study area starting in June. The aim of this survey is to assess geophysical structures but provides us with an opportunity to assess the effect of seismic noise on our study group by collecting data before, during, and after the survey. So, we started our season early in order to capture the “before seismic survey” data and we are using a two-boat approach to maximize our data collection ability.

While this is a cool opportunistic project, implementing the two-boat approach came with a new set of challenges. We had to find a second boat to use, buy a new set of gear for the second boat, figure out the best way to set up our gear on a boat we had not used before, and update our data processing protocols to include data collected from two boats on the same day. Using two boats also means that everyone on the core field team works every day. This core team includes Leigh (lab director/fearless leader), Todd (research assistant), Lisa (PhD student), Ale (new post-doc), and me (Clara, PhD student). Leigh and Todd are our experts in boat driving and working with whales, Todd is our experienced drone pilot, I am our newly certified drone pilot, and Lisa, Ale, and myself are boat drivers. Something I am particularly excited about this season is that Lisa, Ale, and I all have at least one field season under our belts, which means that we get to become more involved in the process. We are learning how to trailer and drive the boats, fly the drones, and handling more of the post-field work data processing. We are becoming more involved in every step of a field day from start to finish, and while it means taking on more responsibility, it feels really exciting. Throughout most of graduate school, we grow as researchers as we develop our analytical and writing skills. But it’s just as valuable to build our skillset for field work. The ocean conditions were not ideal on the first day of the field season, so we spent our first day practicing our field skills.

For our “dry run” of a field day, we went through the process of a typical day, which mostly involved a lot of learning from Leigh and Todd. Lisa practiced her trailering and launching of the boat (figure 1), Ale and Lisa practiced driving the boat, and I practiced flying the drone (figure 2). Even though we never left the bay or saw any whales, I thoroughly enjoyed our dry run. It was useful to run through our routine, without rushing, to get all the kinks out, and it also felt wonderful to be learning in a supportive environment. Practicing new skills is stressful to say the least, especially when there is expensive equipment involved, and no one wants to mess up when they’re being watched. But our group was full of support and appreciation for the challenges of learning. We cheered for successful boat launchings and dockings, and drone landings. I left that day feeling good about practicing and improving my drone piloting skills, full of gratitude for our team and excited for the season ahead.

Figure 1. Lisa (driving the truck) launching the boat.
Figure 2. Clara (seated, wearing a black jacket) landing the drone in Ale’s hands.

All the diligent prep work paid off on Saturday with a great first day (figure 3). We conducted five GoPro drops (figure 4), collected seven fecal samples from four different whales (figure 5), and flew four drone flights over three individuals including our star from last season, Sole. Combined, we collected two trifectas (photo-ID images, fecal samples, and drone footage)! Our goal is to get as many trifectas as possible because we use them to study the relationship between the drone data (body condition and behavior) and the fecal sample data (hormones). We were all exhausted after 10 hours on the water, but we were all very excited to kick-start our field season with a great day.

Figure 3. Lisa on the bow pulpit during our first sighting of the day.
Figure 4. Lisa doing a GoPro drop, she’s lowering the GoPro into the water using the line in her hands.
Figure 5. Clara and Ale collecting a fecal sample.

On Sunday, just one boat went out to collect more data from Sole after a rainy morning and I successfully flew over her from launching to landing! We have a long season ahead, but I am excited to learn and see what data we collect. Stay tuned for more updates from team GRANITE as our season progresses!