Leila Lemos – Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Laboratory

The final chapter: “The effects of vessel traffic and ocean noise on gray whale stress hormones”

By Leila S. Lemos, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Associate at Florida International University, former member of the GEMM Lab (Defended PhD. March 2020)

It’s been a long time since I wrote a blog post for the GEMM Lab (more than two years ago!). You may remember me as a former Ph.D. student working with gray whale body condition and hormone variation in association with ambient noise… and so much has happened since then!

After my graduation, since I have tropical blood running in my veins, I literally crossed the entire country in search of blue and sunny skies, warm weather and ocean, and of course different opportunities to continue doing research involving stressors and physiological responses in marine mammals and other marine organisms. It didn’t take me long to start a position as a postdoctoral associate with the Institute of Environment at Florida International University. I have learned so much in these past two years while mainly working with toxicology and stress biomarkers in a wide range of marine individuals including corals, oysters, fish, dolphins, and now manatees. I have started a new chapter in my life, and I am very eager to see where it takes me.

Talking about chapters… my Ph.D. thesis comprised four different chapters and I had published only the first one when I left Oregon: “Intra- and inter-annual variation in gray whale body condition on a foraging ground”. In this study we used drone-based photogrammetry to measure and compare gray whale body condition along the Oregon coast over three consecutive foraging seasons (June to October, 2016-2018). We described variations across the different demographic units, improved body condition with the progression of feeding seasons, and variations across years, with a better condition in 2016 compared to the following two years. Then in 2020, I was able to publish my second chapter entitled “Assessment of fecal steroid and thyroid hormone metabolites in eastern North Pacific gray whales”. In this study, we used gray whale fecal samples to validate and quantify four different hormone metabolite concentrations (progestins, androgens, glucocorticoids, and thyroid hormone). We reported variation in progestins and androgens by demographic unit and by year. Almost a year later, my third chapter “Stressed and slim or relaxed and chubby? A simultaneous assessment of gray whale body condition and hormone variability” was published. In this chapter, we documented a negative correlation between body condition and glucocorticoids, meaning that slim whales were more stressed than the chubby ones.

These three chapters were “relatively easy” to publish compared to my fourth chapter, which had a long and somewhat stressful process (which is funny as I am trying to report stress responses in gray whales). Changes between journals, titles, analyses, content, and focus had to be made over the past year and a half for it to be accepted for publication. However, I believe that it was worth the extra work and invested time as our research definitely became more robust after all of the feedback provided by the reviewers. This chapter, now entitled “Effects of vessel traffic and ocean noise on gray whale stress hormones” was finally published earlier this month at the Nature Scientific Reports journal, and I’ll describe it further below.

Increased human activities in the last decades have altered the marine ecosystem, leaving us with a noisier, warmer, and more contaminated ocean. The noise caused by the dramatic increase in commercial and recreational shipping and vessel traffic^1-3has been associated with negative impacts on marine wildlife populations^4,5. This is especially true for baleen whales, whose frequencies primarily used for communication, navigation, and foraging^6,7 are “masked” by the noise generated by this watercraft. Several studies have reported alterations in marine mammal behavioral states^8-11, increased group cohesion^12-14, and displacement^8,15due to this disturbance, however, just a few studies have considered their physiological responses. Examples of physiological responses reported in marine mammals include altered metabolic rate^15,16and variations in stress-related hormone (i.e., glucocorticoids) concentrations relative to vessel abundance and ambient noise^17,18. Based on this context and on the scarcity of such assessments, we attempted to determine the effects of vessel traffic and associated ambient noise, as well as potential confounding variables (i.e., body condition, age, sex, time), on gray whale fecal glucocorticoid concentrations.

In addition to the data used in my previous three chapters collected from gray whales foraging off the Oregon coast, we also collected ambient noise levels using hydrophones, vessel count data from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW), and wind data from NOAA National Data Buoy Center (NDBC). Our first finding was a positive correlation between vessel counts and underwater noise levels (Fig. 1A), likely indicating that vessel traffic is the dominant source of noise in the area. To confirm this, we also compared underwater noise levels with wind speed (Fig. 1B), but no correlations were found.

**Figure 1:** Linear correlations between noise levels (daily median root mean square [rms] sound pressure level [SPL] in dB [re 1 μPa]; 50–1000 Hz) recorded on a hydrophone deployed outside the Newport harbor entrance during June to October of 2017 and 2018 and **(A)** vessel counts in Newport and Depoe Bay, Oregon, USA, and **(B)** daily median wind speed (m/s) from an anemometer station located on South Beach, Newport, Oregon, USA (station NWPO3). Asterisk indicates significant correlations between SPL and vessel counts in both years.

We also investigated noise levels by the hour of the day (Fig. 2), and we found that noise levels peaked between 6 and 8 am most days, coinciding with the peak of vessels leaving the harbor to get to fishing grounds. Another smaller peak is seen at 12 pm, which may represent “half-day fishing charter” vessels returning to the harbor. In contrast, wind speeds (in the lower graph) peaked between 3 and 4 pm, thus confirming the absence of correlation between noise and wind and providing more evidence that noise levels are dominated by the vessel activity in the area.

**Figure 2:** Median noise levels (root mean square sound pressure levels—SPLrms) for each hour of each day recorded on a hydrophone (50–10,000 Hz) deployed outside the Newport harbor entrance during June to October of 2017 (middle plot) and 2018 (upper plot), and hourly median noise level (SPL) against hourly median wind speed (lower plot) from an anemometer station located on South Beach, Newport, Oregon, USA (station NWPO3) over the same time period.

Finally, we assessed the effects of vessel counts, month, year, sex, whale body condition, and other hormone metabolites on glucocorticoid metabolite (GCm; “stress”) concentrations. Since we are working with fecal samples, we needed to consider the whale gut transit time and go back in time to link time of exposure (vessel counts) to response (glucocorticoid concentrations). However, due to uncertainty regarding gut transit time in baleen whales, we compared different time lags between vessel counts and fecal collection. The gut transit time in large mammals is ~12 hours to 4 days^3,19,20, so we investigated the influence of vessel counts on whale “stress hormone levels” from the previous 1 to 7 days. The model with the most influential temporal scale included vessel counts from previous day, which showed a significant positive relationship with GCm (the “stress hormone level”) (Fig. 3).

**Figure 3:** The effect of vessel counts in Newport and Depoe Bay (Oregon, USA) on the day before fecal sample collection on gray whale fecal glucocorticoid metabolite (GCm) concentrations.

Thus, the “take home messages” of our study are:

The soundscape in our study area is dominated by vessel noise.
Vessel counts are strongly correlated with ambient noise levels in our study area.
Gray whale glucocorticoid levels are positively correlated with vessel counts from previous day meaning that gray whale gut transit time may occur within ~ 24 hours of the disturbance event.

These four chapters were all very important studies not only to advance the knowledge of gray whale and overall baleen whale physiology (as this group is one of the most poorly understood of all mammals given the difficulties in sample collection²¹), but also to investigate potential sources for the unusual mortality event that is currently happening (2019-present) to the Eastern North Pacific population of gray whales. Such studies can be used to guide future research and to inform population management and conservation efforts regarding minimizing the impact of anthropogenic stressors on whales.

I am very glad to be part of this project, to see such great fruits from our gray whale research, and to know that this project is still at full steam. The GEMM Lab continues to collect and analyze data for determining gray whale body condition and physiological responses in association with ambient noise (Granite, Amber and Diamond projects). The gray whales thank you for this!

Cited Literature

1. McDonald, M. A., Hildebrand, J. A. & Wiggins, S. M. Increases in deep ocean ambient noise in the Northeast Pacific west of San Nicolas Island, California. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 120, 711–718 (2006).

2. Kaplan, M. B. & Solomon, S. A coming boom in commercial shipping? The potential for rapid growth of noise from commercial ships by 2030. Mar. Policy 73, 119–121 (2016).

3. McCarthy, E. International regulation of underwater sound: establishing rules and standards to address ocean noise pollution (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004).

4. Weilgart, L. S. The impacts of anthropogenic ocean noise on cetaceans and implications for management. Can. J. Zool. 85, 1091–1116 (2007).

5. Bas, A. A. et al. Marine vessels alter the behaviour of bottlenose dolphins Tursiops truncatus in the Istanbul Strait, Turkey. Endanger. Species Res. 34, 1–14 (2017).

6. Erbe, C., Reichmuth, C., Cunningham, K., Lucke, K. & Dooling, R. Communication masking in marine mammals: a review and research strategy. Mar. Pollut. Bull. 103, 15–38 (2016).

7. Erbe, C. et al. The effects of ship noise on marine mammals: a review. Front. Mar. Sci. 6 (2019).

8. Sullivan, F. A. & Torres, L. G. Assessment of vessel disturbance to gray whales to inform sustainable ecotourism. J. Wildl. Manag. 82, 896–905 (2018).

9. Pirotta, E., Merchant, N. D., Thompson, P. M., Barton, T. R. & Lusseau, D. Quantifying the effect of boat disturbance on bottlenose dolphin foraging activity. Biol. Conserv. 181, 82–89 (2015).

10. Dans, S. L., Degrati, M., Pedraza, S. N. & Crespo, E. A. Effects of tour boats on dolphin activity examined with sensitivity analysis of Markov chains. Conserv. Biol. 26, 708–716 (2012).

11. Christiansen, F., Rasmussen, M. & Lusseau, D. Whale watching disrupts feeding activities of minke whales on a feeding ground. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser. 478, 239–251 (2013).

12. Bejder, L., Samuels, A., Whitehead, H. & Gales, N. Interpreting short-term behavioural responses to disturbance within a longitudinal perspective. Anim. Behav. 72, 1149–1158 (2006).

13. Nowacek, S. M., Wells, R. S. & Solow, A. R. Short-term effects of boat traffic on Bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus, in Sarasota Bay, Florida. Mar. Mammal. Sci. 17, 673–688 (2001).

14. Bejder, L., Dawson, S. M. & Harraway, J. A. Responses by Hector’s dolphins to boats and swimmers in Porpoise Bay, New Zealand. Mar. Mammal Sci. 15, 738–750 (1999).

15. Lusseau, D. Male and female bottlenose dolphins Tursiops spp. have different strategies to avoid interactions with tour boats in Doubtful Sound. New Zealand. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser. 257, 267–274 (2003).

16. Sprogis, K. R., Videsen, S. & Madsen, P. T. Vessel noise levels drive behavioural responses of humpback whales with implications for whale-watching. Elife 9, e56760 (2020).

17. Ayres, K. L. et al. Distinguishing the impacts of inadequate prey and vessel traffic on an endangered killer whale (Orcinus orca) population. PLoS ONE 7, e36842 (2012).

18. Rolland, R. M. et al. Evidence that ship noise increases stress in right whales. Proc. R. Soc. B Biol. Sci. 279, 2363–2368 (2012).

19. Wasser, S. K. et al. A generalized fecal glucocorticoid assay for use in a diverse array of nondomestic mammalian and avian species. Gen. Comp. Endocrinol. 120, 260–275 (2000).

20. Hunt, K. E., Trites, A. W. & Wasser, S. K. Validation of a fecal glucocorticoid assay for Steller sea lions (Eumetopias jubatus). Physiol. Behav. 80, 595–601 (2004).

21. Hunt, K. E. et al. Overcoming the challenges of studying conservation physiology in large whales: a review of available methods. Conserv. Physiol. 1, cot006–cot006 (2013).

Cooperative Fishing: Symbiotic Relationships between People and Dolphins

By: Alexa Kownacki, Ph.D. Student, OSU Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab

Human-wildlife interactions have occurred since people first inhabited the Earth. However, today, when describing human-wildlife interactions specifically in relation to dolphins, frequently we hear about ‘conflicts’. Interactions between fisheries and dolphins that lead to bycatch or depredation (stealing bait/catching from gear) are particularly common. But, symbiotic relationships with dolphin species and certain human groups can also be mutualistic, with both groups benefitting. These symbiotic relationships have been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

A depiction of Aboriginal Australians using nets to catch fish in a small inlet with the assistance of coastal dolphins. (Image source: Our Pacific Ocean)

In eastern Australia, cooperative fishing interactions occur between Aboriginal Australians and dolphins—both bottlenose dolphins and orcas. In Burleigh Heads National Park, Queensland, AUS, the dolphins are thought to help the local indigenous Kombemerri (saltwater) people hunt for fish. Indigenous stories recall men wading into the water with their spears and nets. Then, many of the men would hit the surface waters to make noises with the splashes. Underwater, this sound was amplified and then the dolphins would begin chasing the fish toward the men and their nets (Neil 2002). Aboriginal Australians, especially those in eastern Australia have an emotional and spiritual connection to both dolphins and orcas. There are widespread accounts of cooperation between indigenous people and small cetaceans on the eastern Australian coastline, which create both context and precedent for the economic and emotional objectives to contemporary human-dolphin interactions such as dolphin provisioning (Neil 2002).

Dolphins and fishermen work together in Laguna, Brazil, to catch mullet. (Image Source: Fábio Daura-Jorge)

In the coasts off of Laguna, Brazil, bottlenose dolphins and local fishermen cooperatively fish while tourists gather to watch. Previously, PhD candidate Leila Lemos wrote about these interactions in a blog post. Like many groups of socializing dolphins, these dolphins have a unique whistle to recognize each other. The waters surrounding Laguna, Brazil are murky, turbid and dark green to the point where the fisherman cannot see any of the fish in the water. As the fishermen wade into the murky waters, bottlenose dolphins chase shoals of mullet toward the shore. Then the dolphins tail slap or abruptly dive, “signaling” the fishermen to cast their nets. Research has shown that when the fishermen “work with” the dolphins, both the dolphins and the people catch more, larger fish (Roman 2013). One fisherman claims it is not worth fishing unless the dolphins are around (Roman 2013). Here, the fishermen know the dolphins based on their markings. They know which dolphins participate in the different parts of hunting as well—which dolphin initiates the tail slap, which dolphin usually circles the fish, and which drive the fish towards the coastline. After the dolphins round up and chase the fish for the fishermen and themselves, there is no “reward” from the fishermen for the dolphins—no fish tossed their way. Scientists also found there is a difference in whistle structure between cooperative and non-cooperative dolphin groups (Preston 2017).

A fisherman in Brazil throws a net after dolphins chase mullet into the shore. (Image Source: Leo Francini:Alamy Stock Photo)

Along most coastlines worldwide, humans and dolphins are competitors. Dolphins are seen as thieves who steal fish out of nets, or get caught in their gear and ruin fishing opportunities. Thus, dolphins are often unwelcome near fishing communities. Such negative interactions sometimes lead to human-caused fatalities of dolphin from gunshots or stabbings, thought to be from angry fishermen. Yet, in this same world, fishermen thank the dolphins for bringing their catch to them. Clearly, both humans and dolphins share high intelligence levels and skills in fishing. If it is a matter of two minds are better than one, then I think indigenous communities figured this equation out first: working with the dolphins, and not against, can better feed their people.

Citations:

Neil, David. (2002). Cooperative fishing interactions between Aboriginal Australians and dolphins in eastern Australia. Anthrozoos: A Multidisciplinary Journal of The Interactions of People & Animals. 15. 10.2752/089279302786992694.

Preston, Elizabeth. “Dolphins That Work with Humans to Catch Fish Have Unique Accent.” New Scientist, 2 Oct. 2017, www.newscientist.com/article/2149139-dolphins-that-work-with-humans-to-catch-fish-have-unique-accent/.

Roman, Joe. “Fishing with Dolphins: An astonishing cooperative venture in which every species wins but the fish.” Slate Magazine, 31 Jan. 2013, slate.com/technology/2013/01/fishing-with-dolphins-symbiosis-between-humans-and-marine-mammals-to-catch-more-fish.html.

PhD life: Pushing it to the extreme, and its wonders

By Leila S. Lemos, PhD candidate in Wildlife Sciences, Fisheries and Wildlife Department

I already started my countdown: 57 days until my PhD defense date! Being so close to this date brings me a lot of excitement about sharing with the community the results of the project I’ve been working on the past 4.5 years, and that I am really proud of. It also brings me lots of excitement when thinking about the new things that will come in my next phase of life. But even though I am excited, I’ve also been stressed, anxious and under depression. There is a mix of feelings rushing inside of me right now.

For those who don’t know me, I am originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I’ve been spending the last years far from my family, friends, language and culture. My favorite hobby always was to go to the beach and swim in the warm ocean. I would do that at least twice a week. Brazil is a tropical place and we can go to the beach all year round.

Me and my nephew in one of my favorite places in Brazil: Buzios, Rio de Janeiro.

Being in Oregon is really different. Oregon is gorgeous and I love it here, especially during the summer. However, the fall season brings the rain. Lots of rain, and it only stops around March. The absence of sun (and vitamin D) also contributes to depression. Even during the summer, I cannot swim in the ocean as the water is still really cold.

In addition to all of these factors, a PhD comes with classes, exams, fieldwork, research project, lots of reading and learning, manuscript writing, deadlines and great responsibilities. When you don’t have a scholarship or when it runs out (in my case), you also need to find a way to fund yourself until it finishes. Since last September I have been a teaching assistant for the university to cover my tuition and health insurance costs, and to earn a monthly stipend. The work never ends, and you always have more and more things to do.

A PhD is a full-time job, even if you are still technically a student. Actually, a PhD is a 24-hour job. Even if you are not working, you are thinking about your experiments and/or deadlines. Even if you are not awake, you are dreaming about it. You feel guilty all the time if you are doing things that are not related to your work.

But, it turns out I am not alone. The more I talk to people about the struggles, disappointments, anxiety, impostor syndrome, insomnia, depression, exhaustion of graduate school, the more I find that it is more common than I first thought. I have several friends facing the same problems right now.

I searched for some stats on this topic and I found a relatively recent study (Levecque et al. 2017) that evaluated the mental health of a sample of PhD students (N = 3659) from five different research discipline categories: sciences, biomedical sciences, applied sciences, humanities, and social sciences. PhD students were compared to other three groups: (1) highly educated individuals in the general population (N = 769), (2) highly educated employees (N = 592), and (3) higher education students (i.e., academic Bachelor, Master or Doctoral degree; N = 333). Research participants answered the web-based questionnaire that follows:

Table 1: Prevalence of common mental health problems in PhD students compared to three comparison groups.

Legend: RR: risk ratio adjusted for age and gender; CI: 95% confidence interval; GHQ2+: experienced at least two symptoms; GHQ3+: experienced at least three symptoms; GHQ4+: experienced at least four symptoms.
Source: Levecque et al. (2017)

It was alarming to me to see some of these results. Here are some of them:

A GHQ2+ score indicated psychological distress, and the prevalence was about twice as high in PhD students compared to the highly educated general population. PhD students were consistently more affected when compared to all of the other groups.
They found a significant relationship between psychological distress and the risk of having or developing a common psychiatric disorder (GHQ4+).
The odds of experiencing at least two psychological symptoms were 34% higher for female PhD students than for males.
No differences between scientific disciplines were found.

And here’s the funny thing: My PhD project researches stress in gray whales along the Oregon coast. I have been evaluating gray whale overall health by using different tools like photogrammetry, endocrinology and acoustics to monitor these individual whales. The more I read about stress and all the physiological response that occurs within the bodies of all vertebrates, the more I imagine it happening to me and all of the possible consequences. However, I do not consider myself a specialist on the theme yet, so I leave my mental health to a specialist. I have been seeing a psychiatrist and a psychologist and I have been learning that work-life balance is crucial, and it helps us maintain sanity. I have also been learning some “exercises” to help me with anxiety and impostor syndrome. This topic may not be an easy to talk about, but it is extremely important. If you are reading this and identify yourself, contact a professional who can help you. It has helped me.

Institutions should also increase their efforts to systematically map and monitor stressors and its outcomes in PhD students (Levecque et al. 2017). Identifying the problems and working towards solutions will benefit the institutions as students will do a better job.

Right now, I am just trying my best to achieve a work-life balance while I am still getting things done on time. All of my data has been analyzed and now I just need to write my chapters and prepare my defense presentation! It is hard to believe that in only 57 days I will be done.

I feel like I have succeeded in painting a grim picture of life as a PhD student. If you were thinking of going to grad school and now you have doubts about it, stop right there! Grad school is challenging, but it is not impossible. There are many things that will bring you joy in grad school like a successful fieldwork season, a successful experiment, a good grade on an exam you studied really hard for, a compliment from your advisor, a R code that is finally running correctly, or an accepted manuscript in a relevant journal.

By the way… I just had a manuscript of my first thesis chapter accepted for publication and I could not be happier:

Getting a PhD is hard, but it is also rewarding. Also, any path you take in your career will have pros and cons. What determines your success is your resilience and how you deal with the challenges that come. You may be asking if I would still do a PhD if I could go back in time, right? The answer is yes! Even though I have been facing many (personal) challenges I am really proud of my PhD project findings and am glad to be contributing to the knowledge and conservation of these amazing animals.

But please, if you see me around don’t forget:

References:

Costanza T. 2015. 10 memes relate to PhD students. Available at: https://www.siliconrepublic. com/careers/10-memes-relate-to-phd-students. Date of assess: 01/20/2020

Reddit. 2019. Made a meme for my boyfriend who’s doing his PhD. Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/9fq2pq/made_a_meme_for_my_boyfriend_whos_doing_his_phd/. Date of assess: 01/20/2020

Levecque, K., F. Anseel, A. Beuckelaer, J. V. Heyden, and L. Gisle. 2017. Work organization and mental health problems in PhD students. Research Policy 46:868–879.

GEMM Lab 2019: A Year in the Life

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

Another year has come and gone, and with the final days of 2019 upon us, it is fulfilling to look back and summarize all of the achievements in the GEMM Lab this year. So, snuggle up with your favorite holiday drink and enjoy our recap of 2019!

We wrapped up two intense but rewarding gray whale field seasons this summer. Our project investigating the health of Pacific Coast Feeding Group (PCFG) gray whales through fecal hormone and body condition sampling in the context of ocean noise went into its fourth year, while the Port Orford project where we track whales and prey at a very fine-scale celebrated its wood anniversary (five years!). The dedication and hard work of lots of people to help us collect our data meant that we were able to add a considerable amount of samples to our growing gray whale datasets. Our trusty red RHIB Ruby zipped around the Pacific and enabled us to collect 58 fecal samples, fly the drone 102 times, undertake 105 GoPro drops and record 141 gray whale sightings. Our Newport crew was a mix of full-time GEMMers (Leigh, Todd, Dawn, Leila, Clara, and myself) as well as part-time summer GEMMers (Ale, Sharon, and Cassy). Further south in Port Orford, my team of undergraduate and high school students and I had an interesting field season. We only encountered four different individuals (Buttons, Glacier, Smudge, and Primavera), however saw them repeatedly throughout the month of August, resulting in as many as 15 tracklines for one individual. Furthermore, we collected 249 GoPro drops and 248 zooplankton net samples.

Leila taking photos of gray whales from Ruby’s bow pulpit. Photo: Leigh Torres

The GEMM Lab’s fieldwork was not just restricted to gray whales. After last year’s successes aboard the NOAA ship Bell M. Shimada, Alexa and Dawn both boarded the ship again this year as marine mammal observers for the May and September cruises, respectively. They spied humpback, blue, sperm, and fin whales, as well as many dolphins and seabirds, adding to the GEMM Lab’s growing database of megafauna distribution off the Oregon coast.

Alexa observing on the R/V Shimada in May 2019, all bundled up. Image Photo: Alexa Kownacki

After winning the prestigious L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science fellowship and the inaugural Louis Herman Scholarship, GEMM Lab grad Solène Derville lead her first research cruise aboard the French R/V Alis. She and her team conducted line transect surveys and micronekton/oceanographic sampling over several seamounts to try to solve the mystery of why humpbacks hang out there. We are also very excited to announce that Solène will be returning to the GEMM Lab as a post-doc in 2020! She will be creating distribution models of whales off the coast of Oregon with the data collected by Leigh during helicopter flights with the US Coast Guard. The primary aim of this work is to identify potential whale hotspots in an effort to avoid spatial overlap with fisheries gear and reduce entanglement risk.

Solène soaking wet after spending several hours observing cetaceans and seabirds on R/V Alis. Photo: Jérôme Jambou

Switching the focus from marine mammals to seabirds, Rachael has had an extremely busy year of field work all across the globe. She island-hopped from Midway (Hawaiian Northwest island) to the Falkland Islands in the first half of the year, and is currently overwintering on South Georgia, where she will be until end of February. Rachael is tracking albatross at all three locations by tagging individual birds to understand movements relative to fishing vessels and flight energetics.

Besides several field efforts, the GEMM Lab was also busy disseminating our research and findings to various audiences. Our conferences kicked off in late February when Leigh and Rachael both flew to Kauai to present at the Pacific Seabird Group’s 46^th Annual Meeting. In the spring, Leila, Dawn, Alexa, Dom, and myself drove to Seattle where the University of Washington hosted the Northwest Student Society of Marine Mammalogy chapter meeting and we all gave talks. Additionally, the Fisheries & Wildlife grad students in the lab also presented at the department’s annual Research Advances in Fisheries, Wildlife, and Ecology conference. Later in the year, Dom and I attended the State of the Coast conference where Dom was invited to participate in a panel about the holistic approaches to management in the nearshore while I presented a poster on preliminary findings of my Master’s thesis. Most recently, the entire GEMM Lab (bar Rachael) flew to Barcelona to present at the World Marine Mammal Conference (WMMC).

GEMM Lab at the WMMC. Photo: Karen Lohman

Our science communication and outreach efforts were not just restricted to conferences though. Over the course of this year, the GEMM Lab supervised a total of 10 undergraduate and high school interns that assisted in a variety of ways (field and/or lab work, data analyses, independent projects) on a number of projects going on in the lab. Leigh and Dawn boarded the R/V Oceanus in the fall to co-lead a STEM research cruise aimed at providing high school students and teachers hands-on marine research. Dawn and I were guests on Inspiration Dissemination, a live radio show run by graduate students about graduate research going on at OSU. Our weekly blog, now in its fifth year, reached its highest viewership with a total of 14,814 views this year!

The GEMMers were once again prolific writers too! The 13 new publications in 10 scientific journals include contributions from Leigh (7), Rachael (6), Solène (2), Dawn (2), and Leila (1). Scroll down to the end of the post to see the list.

Academic milestones were also reached by several of us. Most notably and recently, Dom successfully defended his Master’s thesis this past week – congratulations Dom!! Unsurprisingly, he already has a job lined up starting in January as a Science Officer with the California Ocean Science Trust. Dom is the 6^th GEMM Lab graduate, which after just five years of the GEMM Lab existing is a huge testament to Leigh as an advisor. Leila, who is in the 4^th year of her PhD, anticipates finishing this coming March. We also had three successful research reviews – I met with my committee in late March to discuss my Master’s proposal, while Alexa and Dawn met with their committees in the summer to review their PhD proposals. All three reviews were fruitful and successful. And we want to highlight the success of a GEMM Lab grad, Florence Sullivan, who started a job in Maui with the Pacific Whale Foundation in September as a Research Analyst.

Dom during his MS seminar. Photo: Leila Lemos

Leigh was recognized for her expertise in gray whale ecology and was appointed to the IUCN Western Gray Whale Advisory Panel (WGWAP). The western gray whales are a critically endangered population. At one point in the 1960s, the population was so scarce that they were believed to have been extinct. While this concern did not prove to be the case, the population still is not doing well, which is why the IUCN formed WGWAP to provide advice on the conservation of the western gray whales. Leigh was appointed to the panel this year and traveled to Switzerland and Russia for meetings.

Clara aboard Ruby on her first day of gray whale field work in Oregon. Photo: Leigh Torres

We are excited about a new addition to the lab. Clara Bird started her MS in Wildlife Science in the Department of Fisheries & Wildlife this fall. She jumped straight into field work when she came in early September and got a taste of the Pacific. Clara joins us from the Duke University where she did her undergraduate degree and worked for the past year in their Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing Lab. Clara is digging into the gray whale drone footage collected over the last four field seasons and scrutinize them from a behavioral point of view.

If you are reading this post, we would like to say that we really appreciate your support and interest in our work! We hope you will continue to join us on our journeys in 2020. Until then, happy holidays from the GEMM Lab!

GEMM Lab at the beginning of June with some permanents GEMMs and some temporary summer GEMM helpers.

Barlow, D. R., M. Fournet, and F. Sharpe. 2019. Incorporating tides into the acoustic ecology of humpback whales. Marine Mammal Science 35:234-251.

Barlow, D. R., A. L. Pepper, and L. G. Torres. 2019. Skin deep: an assessment of New Zealand blue whale skin condition. Frontiers in Marine Science doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2019.00757.

Baylis, A. M. M., R. A. Orben, A. A. Arkhipkin, J. Barton, R. L. Brownell Jr., I. J. Staniland, and P. Brickle. 2019. Re-evaluating the population size of South American fur seals and conservation implications. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 29(11):1988-1995.

Baylis, A. M. M., M. Tierney, R. A. Orben, et al. 2019. Important at-sea areas of colonial breeding marine predators on the southern Patagonian Shelf. Scientific Reports 9:8517.

Cockerham, S., B. Lee, R. A. Orben, R. M. Suryan, L. G. Torres, P. Warzybok, R. Bradley, J. Jahncke, H. S. Young, C. Ouverney, and S. A. Shaffer. 2019. Microbial biology of the western gull (Larus occidentalis). Microbial Ecology 78:665-676.

Derville, S., L. G. Torres, R. Albertson, O. Andrews, C. S. Baker, P. Carzon, R. Constantine, M. Donoghue, C. Dutheil, A. Gannier, M. Oremus, M. M. Poole, J. Robbins, and C. Garrigue. 2019. Whales in warming water: assessing breeding habitat diversity and adaptability in Oceania’s changing climate. Global Change Biology 25(4):1466-1481.

Derville, S., L. G. Torres, R. Dodémont, V. Perard, and C. Garrigue. 2019. From land and sea, long-term data reveal persistent humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) breeding habitat in New Caledonia. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 29(10):1697-1711.

Fleischman, A. B., R. A. Orben, N. Kokubun, A. Will, R. Paredes, J. T. Ackerman, A. Takahashi, A. S. Kitaysky, and S. A. Shaffer. 2019. Wintering in the western Subantarctic Pacific increases mercury contamination of red-legged kittiwakes. Environmental Science & Technology 53(22):13398-13407.

Holdman, A. K., J. H. Haxel, H. Klinck, and L. G. Torres. 2019. Acoustic monitoring reveals the times and tides of harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) distribution off central Oregon, U.S.A. Marine Mammal Science 35:164-186.

Kroeger, C., D. E. Crocker, D. R. Thompson, L. G. Torres, P. Sagar, and S. A. Shaffer. 2019. Variation in corticosterone levels in two species of breeding albatrosses with divergent life histories: responses to body condition and drivers of foraging behavior. Physiological and Biochemical Zoology 92(2):223:238.

Loredo, S. A., R. A. Orben, R. M. Suryan, D. E. Lyons, J. Adams, and S. W. Stephensen. 2019. Spatial and temporal diving behavior of non-breeding common murres during two summers of contrasting ocean conditions. Journal of Experimental Biology and Ecology 517:13-24.

Monteiro, F., L. S. Lemos, J. Fulgêncio de Moura, R. C. C. Rocha, I. Moreira, A. P. Di Beneditto, H. A. Kehrig, I. C. A. C. Bordon, S. Siciliano, T. D. Saint’Pierre, and R. A. Hauser-Davis. 2019. Subcellular metal distributions and metallothionein associations in rough-toothed dolphins (Steno bredanensis) from southeastern Brazil. Marine Pollution Bulletin 146:263-273.

Orben, R. A., A. B. Fleischman, A. L. Borker, W. Bridgeland, A. J. Gladics, J. Porquez, P. Sanzenbacher, S. W. Stephensen, R. Swift, M. W. McKown, and R. M. Suryan. 2019. Comparing imaging, acoustics, and radar to monitor Leach’s storm-petrel colonies. PeerJ 7:e6721.

Yates, K. L., …, L. G. Torres, et al. 2019. Outstanding challenges in the transferability of ecological models. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 33(10):790-802.

Barcelona-bound! The GEMM Lab heads to the World Marine Mammal Conference

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

Every two years, an international community of scientists, managers, policy-makers, educators, and students gather to share the most current research and most pressing conservation issues facing marine mammals. This year, the World Marine Mammal Conference will take place in Barcelona, Spain from December 7-12, and the whole GEMM Lab will make their way across the Atlantic to present their latest work. The meeting is an international gathering of scientists ranging from longtime researchers who have shaped the field throughout the course of their careers to students who are just beginning to carve out a niche of their own. This year’s conference has 2,500 registered attendees from 95 different countries, 1,960 abstract submissions, and 700 accepted oral and speed talks and 1,200 posters. Needless to say, it is an incredible platform for learning, networking, and putting our work in the context of research taking place around the globe.

This will be my third time at this conference. I attended in San Francisco in 2015 as a wide-eyed undergraduate and met with Leigh, who I hoped would soon become my graduate advisor. I also presented my Masters research at the conference in Halifax in 2017. This time around, I will be presenting findings from the first two chapters of my PhD. Looking ahead to the Barcelona 2019 meeting and having some sense of what to expect, I feel butterflies rising in my stomach—a perfect mixture of the nerves that come with putting your hard work out in the world, eagerness to learn and absorb new information, and excitement to reconnect with friends and colleagues from around the world. In short, I can’t wait!

For those of you reading this blog that are unable to attend, I’d like to share an overview of what the GEMM Lab will be presenting at the conference. If you will be in Barcelona, we warmly invite you to the following posters, speed talks, and oral presentations! In order of appearance:

What do Oregon gray whales like to eat? Do individual whales have individual foraging habits? To learn more visit Lisa Hildebrand’s poster “Investigating potential gray whale individual foraging specializations within the Pacific Coast Feeding Group”. (Poster presentation, Session: Foraging Ecology – Group A, Time: Monday, 1:30-3:00pm)

Todd Chandler, Faculty Research Assistant

Did you know it is possible to measure the mechanics of how a blue whale feeds using a drone? The GEMM Lab’s all-star drone pilot Todd Chandler will present a poster titled “More than snacks: An analysis of drone observed blue whale surface lunge feeding linked with prey data”. (Poster presentation, Session: Foraging Ecology – Group A, Time: Monday, 1:30-3:00pm)

The GEMM Lab’s newest student Clara Bird will present a poster on work she conducted with the Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing lab at Duke University using new technologies and approaches to investigate scarring patterns on humpbacks. Her poster is titled “A comparison of percent dorsal scar cover between populations of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) off California and the Western Antarctic Peninsula”. (Poster presentation, Session: New Technology – Group B, Time: Tuesday, 8:30-9:45am)

Dr. Leigh Torres, Principal Investigator

GEMM Lab PI Leigh Torres will synthesize some exciting new analyses from the GEMM Lab’s gray whale physiology and ecology research off the Oregon Coast. Is it stressful to feed in a noisy coastal environment? Leigh will discuss the latest findings in her talk, “Sounds of stress: Evaluating the relationships between variable soundscapes and gray whale stress hormones”. (Oral presentation, Session: Physiology, Time: Tuesday, 11:30-11:45am)

Carrying on with exciting new findings about Oregon gray whales, Leila Lemos will present a speed talk titled “Stressed and slim or relaxed and chubby? A simultaneous assessment of gray whale body condition and hormone variability”, in which she will summarize three years of analysis of how gray whale health can be quantified, and how physiology is influenced by ocean conditions. (Speed talk, Session: Physiology, Time: Tuesday, 11:55am-12:m)

Can we predict where blue whales will be using our understanding of their environment and prey? Can this knowledge be used for effective conservation? I (Dawn Barlow) will give a presentation titled “Cloudy with a chance of whales: Forecasting blue whale occurrence based on tiered, bottom-up models to mitigate industrial impacts”, which will share our latest findings on how functional ecological relationships can be modeled in changing ocean conditions. (Oral presentation, Session: Habitat and Distribution I, Time: Wednesday, 10:15-10:30am)

Dr. Solene Derville, Post-Doctoral Scholar

The GEMM Lab’s most recent graduate Solene Derville will present work she has conducted in New Caledonia regarding humpback whale diving and movement patterns around breeding grounds. Her speed talk is titled “Whales of the deep: Horizontal and vertical movements shed light on humpback whale use of critical pelagic habitats in the western South Pacific” (Speed talk, Session: Behavioral Ecology II, Time: Wednesday, 11:35-11:40am)

Can sea otters make a comeback in Oregon after a long absence? Dom Kone takes a comprehensive look at how Oregon coast habitat could support a reintroduced sea otter population in his speed talk, “An evaluation of the ecological needs and effects of a potential sea otter reintroduction to Oregon, USA”. (Speed talk, Session: Conservation II, Time: Wednesday, 2:45-2:50pm)

Alexa Kownacki will share her latest findings on dolphin distribution relative to static and dynamic oceanographic variables in her speed talk titled “The biogeography of common bottlenose dolphins (T. truncatus) of the southwestern USA and Mexico”. (Speed talk, Session: Habitat and Distribution II, Time: Wednesday, 3:35-3:40pm)

Other members of the Marine Mammal Mnstitute who will present their work include: Scott Baker, Debbie Steel, Angie Sremba, Karen Lohman, Daniel Palacios, Bruce Mate, Ladd Irvine, and Robert Pitman. For anyone planning to attend, we look forward to seeing you there! For those who wish to stay tuned from home, keep your eye on the GEMM Lab twitter page for our updates during the conference and follow the conference hashtag #WMMC19, and look forward to future blog posts recapping the experience.

Burning it down

By Leila S. Lemos, PhD Candidate in Wildlife Sciences, Fisheries and Wildlife Department, OSU

As you might know, the GEMM Lab (Geospatial Ecology of MARINE Megafauna Laboratory) researches the marine environment, but today I am going to leave the marine ecosystem aside and I will discuss the Amazon biome. As a Brazilian, I cannot think of anything else to talk about this week than the terrifying fire that is burning down the Amazon forest in this exact minute.

For some context, the Amazon biome is known as the biome with the highest biodiversity in the world (ICMBio, 2019). It is the largest biome in Brazil, accounting for ~49% of the Brazilian territory. This biome houses the biggest tropical forest and hydrographic basin in the world. The Amazon forest also extends through eight other countries: Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guiana, French Guiana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela. To date, at least 40,000 plant species, 427 mammals, 1,300 birds, 378 reptiles, more than 400 amphibians, around 3,000 freshwater fishes, and around 100,000 invertebrate species have been described by scientists in the Amazon, comprising more than 1/3 of all fauna species on the planet (Da Silva et al. 2005, Lewinsohn and Prado 2005). And, these numbers are likely to increase; According to Patterson (2000), one new genus and eight new species of Neotropical mammals are discovered each year in the region.

I feel very connected to the Amazon as I worked as an environmental consultant and field coordinator in 2014 and 2015 (Figs. 1 and 2) along the Madeira river (or “Wood” river) in Rondonia, Brazil (Fig. 3). I monitored Amazon river dolphins (Inia geoffrensis; Fig. 4), a species considered endangered by the IUCN Red List in 2018 (Da Silva et al. 2018). The Madeira river originates in Bolivia and flows into the great Amazon river, comprising one of its main tributaries (Fig. 3).

Figure 1: Me, working along the Madeira river, Rondonia, Brazil, in 2015.
Source: Laura K. Honda, 2015.

Figure 2: Me, helping to rescue a sloth from the Madeira river, Rondonia, Brazil, in 2014.
Source: Roberta Lanziani, 2014.

Figure 3: The Amazon hydrographic basin, with the Madeira river highlighted.
Source: Wikipedia, 2019.

Here is also a video where you can see some Amazon river dolphins along the Madeira river:

Source: Leila S. Lemos, 2014; 2015.

In addition to the dolphins, I witnessed the presence of many other fauna specimens like birds (including macaws and parrots), monkeys, alligators and sloths (Fig. 5). The biodiversity of the Amazon is unquestionable.

Figure 5: Macaws (Ara chloropterus), parrots (Amazona sp.) and the Guariba monkey or brown howler (Allouatta guariba) along the Madeira river, Rondonia, Brazil.
Source: Leila S. Lemos

Other than its great biodiversity, the Amazon is known as the “lungs of the Earth”, which is an erroneous statement since plants consume as much oxygen as they produce (Malhi et al. 2008, Malhi 2019). But still, the Amazon forest is responsible for 16% of the oxygen produced by photosynthesis on land and 9% of the oxygen on the global scale (Fig. 6). This seems a small percentage, but it is still substantial, especially because the plants use carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, which accounts for a 10% reduction of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Thus, imagine if there was no Amazon rainforest. The rise in carbon dioxide would be enormous and have serious implications on the global climate, surpassing safe temperature boundaries for many regions.

Figure 6: Total photosynthesis of each major land biome. This value is multiplied by 2.67 to convert to total oxygen production. Hence total oxygen production by photosynthesis on land is around 330 Pg of oxygen per year. The Amazon (just under half of the tropical forests) is around 16% of this, around 54 Pg of oxygen per year.
Source: Malhi 2019.

Unfortunately, this scenario is not really far from us. Even though deforestation indices have fallen in the last 15 years, fire incidence associated with droughts and carbon emissions have increased (Aragão et al. 2018; Fig. 7).

Figure 7: Linear trends (2003–2015) of annual (a) deforestation rates, and (b) active fires counts in the Brazilian Amazon. Red circles indicate the analyzed drought years by Aragão et al. (2018).
Source: Aragão et al. 2018.

Since August 2019, the Amazon forest has experienced extreme fire outbreaks (Figs. 8 and 9). Around 80,000 fires occurred only in 2019. Despite 2019 not being an extreme drought year, the period of January-August 2019 is characterized by an ~80% increase in fires compared to the previous year (Wagner and Hayes 2019). The intensification of the fires has been linked to the Brazilian President’s incentive to “open the rainforest to development”. Leaving politics aside, the truth is that the majority of these fires have been set by loggers and ranchers seeking to clear land to expand the agro-cattle area (Yeung 2019).

Figure 8: The Amazon in July 28: just clouds; and in August 22: choked with smoke.
Source: NOAA, in: Wagner and Hayes, 2019.

Figure 9: Images showing some of the destruction caused by the fires in the Amazon region in 2019.
Source: Buzz Feed News 2019, Sea Mashable 2019.

Here you can see some videos showing the extension of the problem:

Video 1 – by NBC News:

Video 2 – a drone footage by The Guardian:

I consider myself lucky for the opportunity to have worked in the Amazon rainforest before these chaotic fires have destroyed so much biodiversity. The Amazon is a crucial home for countless animal and plant species, and to ~900,000 indigenous individuals that live in the region. They are all at risk of losing their homes and lives. We are all at risk of global warming.

References

Aragão LEOC, Anderson LO, Fonseca MG, Rosan TM, Vedovato LB, Wagner FH, Silva CVJ, Silva Junior CHL, Arai E, Aguiar AP, Barlow J, Berenguer E, Deeter MN, Domingues LG, Gatti L, Gloor M, Malhi Y, Marengo JA, Miller JB, Phillips OL, and Saatchi S. 2018. 21^stCentury drought-related fires counteract the decline of Amazon deforestation carbon emissions. Nature Communications 9(536):1-12.

Buzz Feed News. 2019. These Heartbreaking Photos Show The Devastation Of The Amazon Fires. Retrieved 1 September 2019 from https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/gabrielsanchez/photos-trending-devastation-amazon-wildfire

Da Silva JMC, Rylands AB, and Da Fonseca GAB. 2005. The Fate of the Amazonian Areas of Endemism. Conservation Biology 19(3):689-694.

Da Silva V, Trujillo F, Martin A, Zerbini AN, Crespo E, Aliaga-Rossel E, and Reeves R. 2018. Inia geoffrensis. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2018: e.T10831A50358152. http://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2018-2.RLTS.T10831A50358152.en. Downloaded on 27 August 2019.

ICMBio. 2019. Amazônia. Retrieved 26 August 2019 from http://www.icmbio.gov.br/portal/unidades deconservacao/biomas-brasileiros/amazonia

Lewinsohn TM, and Prado PI. 2005. How Many Species Are There in Brazil? Conservation Biology 19(3):619.

Malhi Y. 2019. does the amazon provide 20% of our oxygen? Travels in ecosystem science. Retrieved 29 August 2019 from http://www.yadvindermalhi.org/blog/does-the-amazon-provide-20-of-our-oxygen

Malhi Y., Roberts JT, Betts RA, Killeen TJ, Li W, Nobre CA. 2008. Climate Change, Deforestation, and the Fate of the Amazon. Science 319:169-172.

Patterson BD. 2000. Patterns and trends in the discovery of new Neotropical mammals. Diversity and Distributions, 6, 145-151.

Sea Mashable. 2019. The Amazon forest is burning to the ground. Here’s how it happened and what you can do to help. Retrieved 1 September 2019 from https://sea.mashable.com/culture/5813/the-amazon-forest-is-burning-to-the-ground-heres-how-it-happened-and-what-you-can-do-to-help

Wagner M, and Hayes M. 2019. Wildfires rage in the Amazon. CNN. Retrieved 26 August 2019 from https://www.cnn.com/americas/live-news/amazon-wildfire-august-2019/index.html

Wikipedia. 2019. Madeira river. Retrieved 29 August 2019 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeira_River

Yeung J. 2019. Blame humans for starting the Amazon fires, environmentalists say. CNN. Retrieved 26 August 2019 from https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/22/americas/amazon-fires-humans-intl-hnk-trnd/index.html

Current gray whale die-off: a concern or simply the circle of life?

By Leila Lemos, PhD Candidate in Wildlife Sciences, Fisheries and Wildlife Department / OSU

Examination of a dead gray whale found in Pacifica, California, in May 2019.
Source: CNN 2019.

The avalanche of news on gray whale deaths this year is everywhere. And because my PhD thesis focuses on gray whale health, I’ve been asked multiple times now why this is happening. So, I thought it was a current and important theme to explore in our blog. The first question that comes to (my) mind is: is this a sad and unusual event for the gray whales that raises concern, or is this die-off event expected and simply part of the circle of life?

At least 64 gray whales have washed-up on the West Coast of the US this year, including the states of California, Oregon and Washington. According to John Calambokidis, biologist and founder of the Cascadia Research Collective, the washed-up whales had one thing in common: all were in poor body condition, potentially due to starvation (Calambokidis in: Paris 2019). Other than looking skinny, some of the whale carcasses also presented injuries, apparently caused by ship strikes (CNN 2019).

Cascadia Research Collective examining a dead gray whale in 9 May 2019, washed up in Washington state. Cause of death was not immediately apparent but appeared consistent with nutritional stress.
Source: Cascadia Research Collective 2019.

To give some context, gray whales migrate long distances while they fast for long periods. They are known for performing the longest migration ever seen for a mammal, as they travel up to 20,000 km roundtrip every year from their breeding grounds in Baja California, Mexico, to their feeding grounds in the Bering and Chukchi seas (Calambokidis et al. 2002, Jones and Swartz 2002, Sumich 2014). Thus, a successful feeding season is critical for energy replenishment to recover from the previous migration and fasting periods, and for energy storage to support their metabolic needsduring the migration and fasting periods that follow. An unsuccessful feeding season could likely result in poor body condition, affecting individual performance in the following seasons, a phenomenon known as the carry-over effect(Harrison et al., 2011).

In addition, environmental change, such as climate variations, might impact shifts in prey availability and thus intensify energetic demands on the whales as they need to search harder and longer for food. These whales already fast for months and spend large energy reserves supporting their migrations. When they arrive at their feeding grounds, they need to start feeding. If they don’t have access to predictable food sources, their fitness is affected and they become more vulnerable to anthropogenic threats, including ship strikes, entanglement in fishery gear, and contamination.

For the past three years, I have been using drone-based photogrammetry to assess gray whale body condition along the Oregon coast, as part of my PhD project. Coincident to this current die-off event, I have observed that these whales presented good body condition in 2016, but in the past two years their condition has worsened. But these Oregon whales are feeding on different prey in different areas than the rest of the ENP that heads up to the Bering Sea to feed. So, are all gray whales suffering from the same broad scale environmental impacts? I am currently looking into environmental remote sensing data such as sea surface temperature, chlorophyll-a and upwelling index to explore associations between body condition and environmental anomalies that could be associated.

Trying to answer the question I previously mentioned “is this event worrisome or natural?”, I would estimate that this die-off is mostly due to natural patterns, mainly as a consequence of ecological patterns. This Eastern North Pacific (ENP) gray whale population is now estimated at 27,000 individuals (Calambokidis in: Paris 2019) and it has been suggested that this population is currently at its carrying capacity(K), which is estimated to be between 19,830 and 28,470 individuals (Wade and Perryman, 2002). Prey availability on their primary foraging grounds in the Bering Sea may simply not be enough to sustain this whole population.

The plot below illustrates a population in exponential growth over the years. The population reaches a point (K) that the system can no longer support. Therefore, the population declines and then fluctuates around this K point. This pattern and cycle can result in die-off events like the one we are currently witnessing with the ENP gray whale population.

Population at a carrying capacity (K)
Source: Conservation of change 2019.

According to the American biologist Paul Ehrlich: “the idea that we can just keep growing forever on a finite planet is totally imbecilic”. Resources are finite, and so are populations. We should expect die-off events like this.

Right now, we are early on the 2019 feeding season for these giant migrators. Mortality numbers are likely to increase and might even exceed previous die-off events. The last ENP gray whale die-off event occurred in the 1999-2000 season, when a total of 283 stranded whales in 1999 and 368 in 2000 were found displaying emaciated conditions (Gulland et al. 2005). This last die-off event occurred 20 years ago, and thus in my opinion, it is too soon to raise concerns about the long-term impacts on the ENP gray whale population, unless this event continues over multiple years.

References

Calambokidis, J. et al. 2002. Abundance, range and movements of a feeding aggregation of gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) from California to southeastern Alaska in 1998. Journal of Cetacean research and Management. 4, 267-276.

Cascadia Research Collective (2019, May 10). Cascadia and other Washington stranding network organizations continue to respond to growing number of dead gray whales along our coast and inside waters. Retrieved from http://www.cascadiaresearch.org/washington-state-stranding-response/cascadia-and-other-washington-stranding-networkorganizations?fbclid=Iw AR1g7zc4EOMWr_wp_x39ertvzpjOnc1zZl7DoMbBcjI1Ic_EbUx2bX8_TBw

Conservation of change (2019, May 31). Limits to Growth: the first law of sustainability. Retrieved from http://www.conservationofchange.org/limits

CNN (2019, May 15). Dead gray whales keep washing ashore in the San Francisco Bay area.Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/15/us/gray-whale-deaths-trnd-sci/index.html

Gulland, F. M. D., H. Pérez-Cortés M., J. Urbán R., L. Rojas-Bracho, G. Ylitalo, J. Weir, S. A. Norman, M. M. Muto, D. J. Rugh, C. Kreuder, and T. Rowles. 2005. Eastern North Pacific gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) unusual mortality event, 1999-2000. U. S. Dep. Commer., NOAA Tech. Memo. NMFS-AFSC-150, 33 p.

Harrison, X. A., et al., 2011. Carry-over effects as drivers of fitness differences in animals. Journal of Animal Ecology. 80, 4-18.

Jones, M. L., Swartz, S. L., Gray Whale, Eschrichtius robustus. Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals. Academic Press, San Diego, 2002, pp. 524-536.

Paris (2019, May 27). Gray Whales Wash Up On West Coast At Near-Record Levels.Retrieved from https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019/05/27/gray-whales-wash-up-record-levels

Sumich, J. L., 2014. E. robustus: The biology and human history of gray whales. Whale Cove Marine Education.

Wade, P. R., Perryman, W., An assessment of the eastern gray whale population in 2002. IWC, Vol. SC/54/BRG7 Shimonoseki, Japan, 2002, pp. 16.

Photogrammetry Insights

By Leila Lemos, PhD Candidate, Fisheries and Wildlife Department, Oregon State University

After three years of fieldwork and analyzing a large dataset, it is time to finally start compiling the results, create plots and see what the trends are. The first dataset I am analyzing is the photogrammetry data (more on our photogrammetry method here), which so far has been full of unexpected results.

Our first big expectation was to find a noticeable intra-year variation. Gray whales spend their winter in the warm waters of Baja California, Mexico, period while they are fasting. In the spring, they perform a big migration to higher latitudes. Only when they reach their summer feeding grounds, that extends from Northern California to the Bering and Chukchi seas, Alaska, do they start feeding and gaining enough calories to support their migration back to Mexico and subsequent fasting period.

Northeastern gray whale migration route along the NE Pacific Ocean.
Source: https://journeynorth.org/tm/gwhale/annual/map.html

Thus, we expected to see whales arriving along the Oregon coast with a skinny body condition that would gradually improve over the months, during the feeding season. Some exceptions are reasonable, such as a lactating mother or a debilitated individual. However, datasets can be more complex than we expect most of the times, and many variables can influence the results. Our photogrammetry dataset is no different!

In addition, I need to decide what are the best plots to display the results and how to make them. For years now I’ve been hearing about the wonders of R, but I’ve been skeptical about learning a whole new programming/coding language “just to make plots”, as I first thought. I have always used statistical programs such as SPSS or Prism to do my plots and they were so easy to work with. However, there is a lot more we can do in R than “just plots”. Also, it is not just because something seems hard that you won’t even try. We need to expose ourselves sometimes. So, I decided to give it a try (and I am proud of myself I did), and here are some of the results:

Plot 1: Body Area Index (BAI) vs Day of the Year (DOY)

In this plot, we wanted to assess the annual Body Area Index (BAI) trends that describe how skinny (low number) or fat (higher number) a whale is. BAI is a simplified version of the BMI (Body Mass Index) used for humans. If you are interested about this method we have developed at our lab in collaboration with the Aerial Information Systems Laboratory/OSU, you can read more about it in our publication.

The plots above are three versions of the same data displayed in different ways. The first plot on the left shows all the data points by year, with polynomial best fit lines, and the confidence intervals (in gray). There are many overlapping observation points, so for the middle plot I tried to “clean up the plot” by reducing the size of the points and taking out the gray confidence interval range around the lines. In the last plot on the right, I used a linear regression best fit line, instead of polynomial.

We can see a general trend that the BAI was considerably higher in 2016 (red line), when compared to the following years, which makes us question the accuracy of the dataset for that year. In 2016, we also didn’t sample in the month of July, which is causing the 2016 polynomial line to show a sharp decrease in this month (DOY: ~200-230). But it is also interesting to note that the increasing slope of the linear regression line in all three years is very similar, indicating that the whales gained weight at about the same rate in all years.

Plot 2: Body Area Index (BAI) vs Body Condition Score (BCS)

In addition to the photogrammetry method of assessing whale body condition, we have also performed a body condition scoring method for all the photos we have taken in the field (based on the method described by Bradford et al. 2012). Thus, with this second set of plots, we wanted to compare both methods of assessing whale body condition in order to evaluate when the methods agree or not, and which method would be best and in which situation. Our hypothesis was that whales with a ‘fair’ body condition would have a lower BAI than whales with a ‘good’ body condition.

The plots above illustrate two versions of the same data, with data in the left plot grouped by year, and the data in the right plot grouped by month. In general, we see that no whales were observed with a poor body condition in the last analysis months (August to October), with both methods agreeing to this fact. Additionally, there were many whales that still had a fair body condition in August and September, but less whales in the month of October, indicating that most whales gained weight over the foraging seasons and were ready to start their Southbound migration and another fasting period. This result is important information regarding monitoring and conservation issues.

However, the 2016 dataset is still a concern, since the whales appear to have considerable higher body condition (BAI) when compared to other years.

Plot 3:Temporal Body Area Index (BAI) for individual whales

In this last group of plots, we wanted to visualize BAI trends over the season (using day of year – DOY) on the x-axis) for individuals we measured more than once. Here we can see the temporal patterns for the whales “Bit”, “Clouds”, “Pearl”, “Scarback, “Pointy”, and “White Hole”.

We expected to see an overall gradual increase in body condition (BAI) over the seasons, such as what we can observe for Pointy in 2018. However, some whales decreased their condition, such as Bit in 2018. Could this trend be accurate? Furthermore, what about BAI measurements that are different from the trend, such as Scarback in 2017, where the last observation point shows a lower BAI than past observation points? In addition, we still observe a high BAI in 2016 at this individual level, when compared to the other years.

My next step will be to check the whole dataset again and search for inconsistencies. There is something causing these 2016 values to possibly be wrong and I need to find out what it is. The overall quality of the measured photogrammetry images was good and in focus, but other variables could be influencing the quality and accuracy of the measurements.

For instance, when measuring images, I often struggled with glare, water splash, water turbidity, ocean swell, and shadows, as you can see in the photos below. All of these variables caused the borders of the whale body to not be clearly visible/identifiable, which may have caused measurements to be wrong.

Examples of bad conditions for performing photogrammetry: (1) glare and water splash, (2) water turbidity, (3) ocean swell, and (4) a shadow created in one of the sides of the whale body.
Source: GEMM Lab. Taken under NMFS permit 16111 issued to John Calambokidis.

Thus, I will need to check all of these variables to identify the causes for bad measurements and “clean the dataset”. Only after this process will I be able to make these plots again to look at the trends (which will be easy since I already have my R code written!). Then I’ll move on to my next hypothesis that the BAI of individual whales varied by demographics including sex, age and reproductive state.

To carry out robust science that produces results we can trust, we can’t simply collect data, perform a basic analysis, create plots and believe everything we see. Data is often messy, especially when developing new methods like we have done here with drone based photogrammetry and the BAI. So, I need to spend some important time checking my data for accuracy and examining confounding variables that might affect the dataset. Science can be challenging, both when interpreting data or learning a new command language, but it is all worth it in the end when we produce results we know we can trust.

GEMM Lab 2018: A Year in the Life

By Dawn Barlow, PhD student, Department of Fisheries & Wildlife, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab

As 2018 draws to a close, it is gratifying to step back and appreciate the accomplishments of the past year. For all members of the GEMM Lab, 2018 has certainly been one for the books! Here are some of our highlights for your holiday enjoyment.

We conducted fieldwork to collect new data in multiple seasons, multiple hemispheres, and across oceans. For the first time, GEMM Lab members joined the Northern California Current Ecosystem cruises aboard NOAA ship Bell M. Shimada as marine mammal observers—Florence in February, Alexa in May, and me in September.

Dawn Barlow scans for marine mammals from the flying bridge of NOAA ship Bell M. Shimada. Photo: Jess O’Loughlin.

Common dolphins (Delphinus delphis). Photo: Dawn Barlow.

Alexa on-effort using binoculars to estimate the distance and bearing of a marine mammal sighted off the starboard bow. Image source: Alexa K.

An image of the NOAA ship Bell M. Shimada transiting between stations. Multiple members of the GEMM Lab conducted surveys from this NOAA vessel in 2018. (Image source: Alexa Kownacki)

Summertime in the Pacific Northwest brings the gray whales to the Oregon Coast. The drone-flying, poop-scooping, plankton-trapping team of Leigh, Todd, Leila, Joe, and Sharon took to the water for the third year to investigate the health of this gray whale population. It was a successful field season, ending with 72 fecal samples collected! Visiting students joined our experienced members to shadow the gray whale fieldwork—Julia Stepanuk and Alejandro Fernandez Ajo came from across the country to hop on board with us for a bit. Friendship and collaboration were built quickly in a little boat chasing after whale poop, bonding over peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Launching the drone. Photo by Alejandro Fernandez Ajo.

The gray whale team aboard R/V Ruby. Photo by Alejandro Fernandez Ajo.

Gray whale photo-identification. Photo by Dawn Barlow.

Another GEMM Lab team tracked the gray whales from the cliff in Port Orford. Lisa Hildebrand joined us as the GEMM Lab’s newest graduate student, and immediately led a team of interns on Oregon’s southern coast to track gray whale movements and sample their prey from a trusty research kayak.

The summer 2018 gray whale foraging ecology team, affectionately known as “team whale storm”, at the Port Orford Field Station.

Rachael observed seabirds from Yaquina Head in May and June, where the colony of common murres had the highest reproductive success in 10 years! Then she left the summertime in July to travel to the other end of the world, braving winter in the remote South Atlantic to study South American fur seals in the Falkland Islands.

Dr. Rachael Orben and Dr. Alistair Bayliss looking out towards the fur seals. Photo: Kayleigh Jones

In New Caledonia, Solene and a research team ventured to Antigonia Seamount and Orne Bank to study the use of these offshore areas by breeding humpback whales. They collected numerous biopsy samples and successfully deployed satellite tags. Solene was also selected to receive the Louis Herman research scholarship to continue studying humpback whale movement and diving behavior around seamounts.

Sorting biopsy samples during a successful expedition to study humpback whales around remote seamounts in the South Pacific.

Beyond fieldwork, our members have been busily disseminating our findings. In July, Leigh and I traveled to Wellington to present our latest findings on New Zealand blue whales to scientists, managers, politicians, industry representatives, and advocacy groups. Because of our documentation of a unique New Zealand blue whale population, which was published earlier this year, the New Zealand government has proposed to create a Marine Mammal Sanctuary for the protection of blue whales. This is quite a feat, considering blue whales were classified as only “migrant” in New Zealand waters prior to our work. Fueled by flat whites in wintery Wellington, we navigated government buildings, discussing blue whale distribution patterns, overlap with the oil and gas industry, what we now know based on our latest analyses, and what we consider to be the most pressing gaps in our knowledge.

Dr. Leigh Torres and Dawn Barlow in front of Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand following the presentation of their recent findings.

Alexa spent the summer and fall in San Diego, where she collaborated with researchers at NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center on her study of about the health of bottlenose dolphins off the California coast. Her time down south has been productive and we look forward to having her back in Oregon with us to round out the second year of her PhD program.

In the fall, Dom and Leigh participated in the first ever Oregon Sea Otter Status of Knowledge Symposium. With growing interest in a potential sea otter reintroduction, the symposium brought together a range of experts – including scientists, managers, and tribes – to discuss what we currently know about sea otters in other regions and how this knowledge could be applied to an Oregon reintroduction effort. Dom was one of many speakers at this event, and gave a well-received talk on Oregon’s previous sea otter reintroduction attempt and brief discussion on his thesis research. Over the next year, Dom not only plans to finish his thesis, but also to join an interdisciplinary research team to further investigate other social, genetic, and ecological implications of a potential sea otter reintroduction.

Sea otter mom and pup. Source: Hakai Magazine.

2018-19 OSU NRT Cohort. Source: Oregon State University.

Several GEMM Lab members reached academic milestones this year. Rachael was promoted to Assistant Professor in the spring! She now leads the Seabird Oceanography Lab, and remains involved in multiple projects studying seabirds and pinnipeds all over the world. Leila passed her PhD qualifying exams and advanced to candidacy in the spring, a major accomplishment toward completing her doctoral degree. I successfully defended my MS degree in June, and my photo was added to our wall gallery of GEMM Lab graduates. I won’t be leaving the GEMM Lab anytime soon, however, as I will be continuing my research on New Zealand blue whales as a PhD student. The GEMM Lab welcomed a new MS student in the summer—Lisa Hildebrand will be studying gray whale foraging ecology on the Oregon Coast. Welcome, Lisa! In early December, Solene successfully defended her PhD, officially becoming Dr. Derville. Congratulations to all on these milestones, and congratulations to Leigh for continuing to grow such a successful lab and guiding us all toward these accomplishments.

Dawn Barlow answers questions during her M.Sc. defense seminar.

Dr. Solene Derville and co-supervisors Dr. Claire Garrigue and Dr. Leigh Torres after a successful PhD Defense!

Perhaps you’re looking to do some reading over the holidays? The GEMM Lab has been publishing up a storm this year! The bulletin board outside our lab is overflowing with new papers. Summarizing our work and sharing our findings with the scientific community is a critical piece of what we do. The 21 new publications this year in 14 scientific journals include contributions from Leigh (13), Rachael (3), Solene (3), Leila (6), Florence (1), Amanda (1), Erin (1), Courtney (1), Theresa (1), and myself (3). Scroll down to the end of this post to see the complete list!

If you are reading this, thank you for your support of our lab, our members, and our work. Our successes come not only from our individual determination, but more importantly from our support of one another and the support of our communities. We look forward to what’s ahead in 2019. Happy holidays from the GEMM Lab!

The whole GEMM Lab (lab dogs included) gathered for an evening playing “Evolution” at Leigh’s house.

Barlow, D. R., Torres, L. G., Hodge, K. B., Steel, D., Baker, C. S., Chandler, T. E., Bott, N., Constantine, R., Double, M. C., Gill, P., Glasgow, D., Hamner, R. M., Lilley, C., Ogle, M., Olson, P. A., Peters, C., Stockin, K. A., Tessaglia-Hymes, C. T., & Klinck, H. (2018). Documentation of a New Zealand blue whale population based on multiple lines of evidence. Endangered Species Research, 36, 27-40.

Barlow, D. R., Fournet, M., & Sharpe, F. (2018). Incorporating tides into the acoustic ecology of humpback whales. Marine Mammal Science.

Baylis, A. M., Tierney, M., Orben, R. A., Staniland, I. J., & Brickle, P. (2018). Geographic variation in the foraging behaviour of South American fur seals. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 596, 233-245.

Bishop, A., Brown, C., Rehberg, M., Torres, L., & Horning, M. (2018). Juvenile Steller sea lion (Eumetopias jubatus) utilization distributions in the Gulf of Alaska. Movement ecology, 6(1), 6.

Burnett, J. D., Lemos, L., Barlow, D., Wing, M. G., Chandler, T., & Torres, L. G. (2018). Estimating morphometric attributes of baleen whales with photogrammetry from small UASs: A case study with blue and gray whales. Marine Mammal Science.

Cardoso, M. D., Lemos, L. S., Roges, E. M., de Moura, J. F., Tavares, D. C., Matias, C. A. R., … & Siciliano, S. (2018). A comprehensive survey of Aeromonas sp. and Vibrio sp. in seabirds from southeastern Brazil: outcomes for public health. Journal of applied microbiology, 124(5), 1283-1293.

Derville, S., Torres, L. G., Iovan, C., & Garrigue, C. (2018). Finding the right fit: Comparative cetacean distribution models using multiple data sources and statistical approaches. Diversity and Distributions, 24(11), 1657-1673.

Derville, S., Torres, L. G., & Garrigue, C. (2018). Social segregation of humpback whales in contrasted coastal and oceanic breeding habitats. Journal of Mammalogy, 99(1), 41-54.

Hann, C. H., Stelle, L. L., Szabo, A., & Torres, L. G. (2018). Obstacles and Opportunities of Using a Mobile App for Marine Mammal Research. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 7(5), 169.

Holdman, A. K., Haxel, J. H., Klinck, H., & Torres, L. G. (2018). Acoustic monitoring reveals the times and tides of harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) distribution off central Oregon, USA. Marine Mammal Science.

Kirchner, T., Wiley, D. N., Hazen, E. L., Parks, S. E., Torres, L. G., & Friedlaender, A. S. (2018). Hierarchical foraging movement of humpback whales relative to the structure of their prey. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 607, 237-250.

Moura, J. F., Tavares, D. C., Lemos, L. S., Acevedo-Trejos, E., Saint’Pierre, T. D., Siciliano, S., & Merico, A. (2018). Interspecific variation of essential and non-essential trace elements in sympatric seabirds. Environmental pollution, 242, 470-479.

Moura, J. F., Tavares, D. C., Lemos, L. S., Silveira, V. V. B., Siciliano, S., & Hauser-Davis, R. A. (2018). Variation in mercury concentration in juvenile Magellanic penguins during their migration path along the Southwest Atlantic Ocean. Environmental Pollution, 238, 397-403.

Orben, R. A., Kokubun, N., Fleishman, A. B., Will, A. P., Yamamoto, T., Shaffer, S. A., Takahashi, A., & Kitaysky, A. S. (2018). Persistent annual migration patterns of a specialist seabird. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 593, 231-245.

Orben, R. A., Connor, A. J., Suryan, R. M., Ozaki, K., Sato, F., & Deguchi, T. (2018). Ontogenetic changes in at-sea distributions of immature short-tailed albatrosses Phoebastria albatrus. Endangered Species Research, 35, 23-37.

Pickett, E. P., Fraser, W. R., Patterson‐Fraser, D. L., Cimino, M. A., Torres, L. G., & Friedlaender, A. S. (2018). Spatial niche partitioning may promote coexistence of Pygoscelis penguins as climate‐induced sympatry occurs. Ecology and Evolution, 8(19), 9764-9778.

Siciliano, S., Moura, J. F., Tavares, D. C., Kehrig, H. A., Hauser-Davis, R. A., Moreira, I., Lavandier, R., Lemos, L. S., & Quinete, N. S. (2018). Legacy Contamination in Estuarine Dolphin Species From the South American Coast. In Marine Mammal Ecotoxicology (pp. 95-116). Academic Press.

Sullivan, F. A., & Torres, L. G. (2018). Assessment of vessel disturbance to gray whales to inform sustainable ecotourism. The Journal of Wildlife Management, 82(5), 896-905.

Sztukowski, L. A., Cotton, P. A., Weimerskirch, H., Thompson, D. R., Torres, L. G., Sagar, P. M., Knights, A. M., Fayet, A. L., & Votier, S. C. (2018). Sex differences in individual foraging site fidelity of Campbell albatross. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 601, 227-238.

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.

Yates, K. L., Bouchet, P. J., Caley, M. J., Mengersen, K., Randin, C. F., Parnell, S., … & Sequeira, A. M. M. (2018). Outstanding challenges in the transferability of ecological models. Trends in ecology & evolution.

Scientific publishing: Impact factor, open access and citations

By Leila Lemos¹ and Rachel Ann Hauser-Davis²

¹PhD candidate, Fisheries and Wildlife Department, OSU

²PhD, CESTEH/ENSP/Fiocruz, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Scientific publishing not only communicates new knowledge, but also is a measure of each scientist’s success: the impact each scientist has on his/her field is often measured by his/her number of publications and the reputation of the journals he/she published in. Therefore, publishing in reputable journals, with a high impact factor, is often essential to get a job, promotion and tenure. So, what is an impact factor?

The impact factor (IF) was first created in the 1960’s and is a measure of a journal’s impact on science, as reflected by the yearly average number of citations to recent articles published in that journal. The IF is used to compare the impact of journals within disciplines. Journals with higher impact factors are deemed as more prestigious and of better quality than those with lower ones.

The IF of a journal for any given year is calculated as the number of citations, received in that year, of articles published in that journal during the two preceding years, divided by the total number of articles published in that journal during the two preceding years, as follows:

In recent years, open access (OA) journals have emerged, changing how we perceive publications. However, the role and significance of IF is still present, valuable and used worldwide.

Conventional (non-open access) journals cover publishing costs through access fees, such as subscriptions, site licenses or download charges, which can be paid by universities, research institutions and, sometimes, by individuals. Papers published in OA journals, on the other hand, are distributed online and free of cost. However, there are still publication costs, which are usually paid by the authors. And, open access article processing charges are not cheap, ranging from a few hundred to several thousand dollars, depending on the field (more thoughts on this theme here).

It seems imbalanced that researchers have to pay for their work to be published. They have carried out a study and have obtained results that should be shared with the community. These results should not be treated as a commercial item to be sold. Also, it ends strengthening those who have resources and weakening those who do not have, increasing the division between Northern and Southern hemispheres, and narrowing the knowledge-production system (Burgman 2018).

Thus, a free-of-charge research paper would be interesting for everyone. PeerJ is a good example of a recent OA, free of publishing costs, peer-reviewed, and scholarly journal, that was released in 2013. It’s a totally new model and pushes the boundaries. In addition, there are hybrid journals (i.e., Conservation Biology) that offer both conventional and OA modes, leaving it to the authors to decide what they prefer (Burgman 2018). In many cases, disadvantaged authors might also be able to appeal for waivers. Thus, authors who cannot pay publishing fees might still see their work getting published.

However, this is not how the publishing system typically works. Therefore, researchers need to determine where to publish based on the journal IF and focus/audience, on the different price structures and fees, and whether it is OA or not.

Researchers in general want their articles to be openly accessible for everyone, not just those who can afford to pay the journal for access, so they can increase visibility of their work. Open access can increase the impact/reach of a research paper by facilitating paper downloads, access, and use in other scientific research, which may, in turn, lead to higher citation rate (Eyesenbach 2006).

Higher citation rates would also improve researchers’ H-index: an author-level metric that measures both productivity and citation impact of a scientist or scholar, based on the scientist’s most cited papers and the number of citations that they have received in publications.

The graph below exemplifies the h-index that is based on the maximum value of h such that the given author/journal has published h papers that have each been cited at least h times. In other words, the index is designed to improve with number of publications or citations. The index can only be compared between researchers from same field, as citation conventions might differ widely among different fields.

H-index from a plot of decreasing citations for numbered papers
Source: Wikipedia

However, publishing in an OA journal might easily increase researchers’ H-index and journals’ IF. Many researchers have also considered OA as an “artificial citation enhancer”.

As with any new system, some are opposed to the establishment of the OA system, including researchers, academics, librarians, university administrators, funding agencies, government officials, publishers and editorial staff, among many others (Markin 2017). This opposition claims that OA publishing leads to financial damages to the large publishers worldwide, and, mainly, that this system may damage the peer review system in place today, leading to reduced scientific quality (such as “you pay, you publish” predatory journals that take advantage of the paid system by publishing as fast as possible, without any scientific rigor whatsoever).

However, many reputable journals, such as Elsevier, Springer, Wiley and Blackwell, now offer OA as an option for their established journals. This approach is simply another option for authors, where they may pay if they want for their paper to be available for everyone. Even if this option is available, manuscripts still go through a rigorous peer-review that occurs with both conventional and OA journals. Thus, publishing in OA should be just as rigorous.

Open access papers would be the most “scientifically ethical”, as science is aimed at society, for society, and this type of publishing furthers research reach. However, paying thousands of dollars is sometimes very complicated, as this means less money for fieldwork costs, gears, laboratory analyses, among others.

All in all, OA is a recent development that is changing scientist approach to publication. The future of scientific publication seems uncertain and likely to hold new developments in the near future.

References:

Burgman M. 2018. Open access and academic imperialism. Conservation Biology 0 (0): 1–2. DOI: 10.1111/cobi.13248.

Eysenbach G. 2006. Citation Advantage of Open Access Articles. PLoS Biology 4 (5): e157. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0040157. PMC 1459247. PMID 16683865.

Markin P. 2017. The Sustainability of Open Access Publishing Models Past a Tipping Point. Open Science. Retrieved 26 April 2017.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: