Tag: Marine Mammals

How will upwelling ecosystems fare in a changing climate?

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

Global climate change is affecting all aspects of life on earth. The oceans are not exempt from these impacts. On the contrary, marine species and ecosystems are experiencing significant impacts of climate change at faster rates and greater magnitudes than on land1,2, with cascading effects across trophic levels, impacting human communities that depend on healthy ocean ecosystems3.

In the lobby of the Gladys Valley Marine Studies building that we are privileged to work in here at the Hatfield Marine Science Center, a poem hangs on the wall: “The North Pacific Is Misbehaving”, by Duncan Berry. I read it often, each time moved by how he articulates both the scientific curiosity and the personal emotion that are intertwined in researchers whose work is dedicated to understanding the oceans on a rapidly changing planet. We seek to uncover truths about the watery places we love that capture our fascination; truths that are sometimes beautiful, sometimes puzzling, sometimes heartbreaking. Observations conducted with scientific rigor do not preclude complex human feelings of helplessness, determination, and hope.

Figure 1. Poem by Duncan Berry, entitled, “The North Pacific is Misbehaving”.

Here on the Oregon Coast, we are perched on the edge of a bountiful upwelling ecosystem. Upwelling is the process by which winds drive a net movement of surface water offshore, which is replaced by cold, nutrient-rich water. When this water full of nutrients meets the sunlight of the photic zone, large phytoplankton blooms occur that sustain high densities of forage species like zooplankton and fish, and yielding important feeding opportunities for predators such as marine mammals. Upwelling ecosystems, like the California Current system in our back yard that features in Duncan Berry’s poem, support over 20% of global fisheries catches despite covering an area less than 5% of the global oceans4–6. These narrow bands of ocean on the eastern boundaries of the major oceans are characterized by strong winds, cool sea surface temperatures, and high primary productivity that ultimately support thriving and productive ecosystems (Fig. 2)7.

Figure 2. Reproduced from Bograd et al. 2023. Maps showing global means in several key properties during the warm season (June through August in the Northern Hemisphere and January through March in the Southern Hemisphere). The locations of the four eastern boundary current upwelling systems (EBUSs) are shown by black outlines in each panel. (a) 10-m wind speed (colors) and vectors. (b) SST. (c) Dissolved oxygen concentrations at 200-m depth. (d) Concentration of ocean chlorophyll a. Abbreviations: BenCS, Benguela Current System; CalCS, California Current System; CanCS, Canary Current System; HumCS, Humboldt Current System; SST, sea surface temperature.

Because of their importance to human societies, eastern boundary current upwelling systems (EBUSs) have been well-studied over time. Now, scientists around the world who have dedicated their careers to understanding and describing the dynamics of upwelling systems are forced to reckon with the looming question of what will happen to these systems under climate change. The state of available information was recently synthesized in a forthcoming paper by Bograd et al. (2023). These authors find that the future of upwelling systems is uncertain, as climate change is anticipated to drive conflicting physical changes in their oceanography. Namely, alongshore winds could increase, which would yield increased upwelling. However, a poleward shift in these upwelling systems will likely lead to long-term changes in the intensity, location, and seasonality of upwelling-favorable winds, with intensification in poleward regions but weakening in equatorward areas. Another projected change is stronger temperature gradients between inshore and offshore areas, and vertically within the water column. What these various opposing forces will mean for primary productivity and species community structure remains to be seen.

While most of my prior research has centered around the importance of productive upwelling systems for supporting marine mammal feeding grounds8–10, my recent focus has shifted closer to home, to the nearshore waters less than 5 km from the coastline. Despite their ecological and economic importance, nearshore habitats remain understudied, particularly in the context of climate change. Through the recently launched EMERALD project, we are investigating spatial and temporal distribution patterns of harbor porpoises and gray whales between San Francisco Bay and the Columbia River in relation to fluctuations in key environmental drivers over the past 30 years. On a scientific level, I am thrilled to have such a rich dataset that enables asking broad questions relating to how changing environmental conditions have impacted these nearshore sentinel species. On a more personal level, I must admit some apprehension of what we will find. The excitement of detecting statistically significant northward shift in harbor porpoise distribution stands at odds with my own grappling with what that means for our planet. The oceans are changing, and sensitive species must move or adapt to persist. What does the future hold for this “wild edge of a continent of ours” that I love, as Duncan Berry describes?

Figure 4. The view from Cape Foulweather, showing the complex mosaic of nearshore habitat features. Photo: D. Barlow.

Evidence exists that the nearshore realm of the Northeast Pacific is actually decoupled from coastal upwelling processes11. Rather, these areas may be a “sweet spot” in the coastal boundary layer where headlands and rocky reefs provide more stable retention areas of productivity, distinct from the strong upwelling currents just slightly further from shore (Fig. 4). As the oceans continue to shift under the impacts of climate change, what will it mean for these critically important nearshore habitats? While they are adjacent to prominent upwelling systems, they are also physically, biologically, and ecologically distinct. Will nearshore habitats act as a refuge alongside a more rapidly changing upwelling environment, or will they be impacted in some different way? Many unanswered questions remain. I am eager to continue seeking out truth in the data, with my drive for scientific inquiry fueled by my underlying connection to this wild edge of a continent that I call home.

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References:

1.          Poloczanska, E. S. et al. Global imprint of climate change on marine life. Nat. Clim. Chang. 3, (2013).

2.          Lenoir, J. et al. Species better track climate warming in the oceans than on land. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 4, 1044–1059 (2020).

3.          Hoegh-Guldberg, O. & Bruno, J. F. The impact of climate change on the world’s marine ecosystems. Science (2010). doi:10.1126/science.1189930

4.          Mann, K. H. & Lazier, J. R. N. Dynamics of Marine Ecosystems: Biological-physical interactions in the oceans. Blackwell Scientific Publications (1996). doi:10.2307/2960585

5.          Ryther, J. Photosynthesis and fish production in the sea. Science (80-. ). 166, 72–76 (1969).

6.          Cushing, D. H. Plankton production and year-class strength in fish populations: An update of the match/mismatch hypothesis. Adv. Mar. Biol. 9, 255–334 (1990).

7.          Bograd, S. J. et al. Climate Change Impacts on Eastern Boundary Upwelling Systems. Ann. Rev. Mar. Sci. 15, 1–26 (2023).

8.          Barlow, D. R., Bernard, K. S., Escobar-Flores, P., Palacios, D. M. & Torres, L. G. Links in the trophic chain: Modeling functional relationships between in situ oceanography, krill, and blue whale distribution under different oceanographic regimes. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser. 642, 207–225 (2020).

9.          Barlow, D. R., Klinck, H., Ponirakis, D., Garvey, C. & Torres, L. G. Temporal and spatial lags between wind, coastal upwelling, and blue whale occurrence. Sci. Rep. 11, 1–10 (2021).

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

11.        Shanks, A. L. & Shearman, R. K. Paradigm lost? Cross-shelf distributions of intertidal invertebrate larvae are unaffected by upwelling or downwelling. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser. 385, 189–204 (2009).

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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Decisions, decisions: New GEMM Lab publication reveals trade-offs in prey quantity and quality in gray whale foraging

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

Obtaining enough food is crucial for predators to ensure adequate energy gain for maintenance of vital functions and support for energetically costly life history events (e.g., reproduction). Foraging involves decisions at every step of the process, including prey selection, capture, and consumption, all of which should be as efficient as possible. Making poor foraging decisions can have long-term repercussions on reproductive success and population dynamics (Harris et al. 2007, 2008, Grémillet et al. 2008), and for marine predators that rely on prey that is spatially and temporally dynamic and notoriously patchy (Hyrenbach et al. 2000), these decisions can be especially challenging. Prey abundance and density are frequently used as predictors of marine predator distribution, movement, and foraging effort, with predators often selecting highly abundant or dense prey patches (e.g., Goldbogen et al. 2011, Torres et al. 2020). However, there is increased recognition that prey quality is also an important factor to consider when assessing a predator’s ecology and habitat use (Spitz et al. 2012), and marine predators do show a preference for higher quality prey items (e.g., Haug et al. 2002, Cade et al. 2022). Moreover, negative impacts of low-quality prey on the health and breeding success of some marine mammals (Rosen & Trites 2000, Trites & Donnelly 2003) have been documented. Therefore, examining multiple prey metrics, such as prey quantity and quality, in predator ecology studies is critical.

Figure 1. Site map of the Port Orford TOPAZ/JASPER integrated projects. Blue squares represent the location of the 12 sampling stations within the 2 study sites (site boundaries demarcated with black lines). Brown dot represents the cliff-top observation site where theodolite tracking occurred.

Our integrated TOPAZ/JASPER projects in Port Orford do just this! We collect both prey quantity and quality data from a tandem research kayak, while we track Pacific Coast Feeding Group (PCFG) gray whales from shore. The prey and whale sampling overlap spatially (and often temporally within the same day). This kind of concurrent predator-prey sampling at similar scales is often logistically challenging to achieve, yet because PCFG gray whales have an affinity for nearshore, coastal habitats, it is something we have been able to achieve in Port Orford. Since 2016, a field team comprised of graduate, undergraduate, and high school students has collected data during the month of August to investigate gray whale foraging decisions relative to prey. Every day, a kayak team collects GoPro videos (to assess relative prey abundance; AKA: quantity) and zooplankton samples using a tow net (to assess prey community composition; AKA: quality through caloric content of different species) (Figure 1). At the same time, a cliff team surveys for gray whales from shore and tracks them using a theodolite, which provides us with tracklines of individual whales; We categorize each location of a whale into three broad behavior states (feeding, searching, transiting) based on movement patterns. Over the years, the various students who have participated in the TOPAZ/JASPER projects have written many blog posts, which I encourage you to read here (particularly to get more detailed information about the field methods). 

Figure 2. An example daily layer of relative prey abundance (increasing color darkness corresponds with increasing abundance) in one study site with a whale theodolite trackline recorded on the same day overlaid and color-coded by behavioral state.

Several years of data are needed to conduct a robust analysis for our ecological questions about prey choice, but after seven years, we finally had the data and I am excited to share the results, which are due to the many years of hard work from many students! Our recent paper in Marine Ecology Progress Series aimed to determine whether PCFG gray whale foraging decisions are driven by prey quantity (abundance) or quality (caloric content of species) at a scale of 20 m (which is slightly less than 2 adult gray whale body lengths). In this study, we built upon results from my previous Master’s publication, which revealed that there are significant differences in the caloric content between the six common nearshore zooplankton prey species that PCFG gray whales feed on (Hildebrand et al. 2021). Therefore, in this study we addressed the hypothesis that individual whales will select areas where the prey community is dominated by the mysid shrimp Neomysis rayii, since it is significantly higher in caloric content than the other two prey species we identified, Holmesimysis sculpta (a medium quality mysid shrimp species) and Atylus tridens (a low quality amphipod species) (Hildebrand et al. 2021). We used spatial statistics and model to make daily maps of prey abundance and quality that we compared to our whale tracks and behavior from the same day. Please read our paper for the details on our novel methods that produced a dizzying amount of prey layers, which allowed us to tease apart whether gray whales target prey quantity, quality, or a mixture of both when they forage. 

Figure 3. Figure shows the probability of gray whale foraging relative to prey abundance (color-coded by prey species). Dark grey vertical line represents the mean threshold for the H. sculpta curves (12.0); light grey vertical lines: minimum (7.2) and maximum (15.3) thresholds for the H. sculpta curves. Inflection points could not be calculated for the N. rayii curves

So, what did we find? The models proved our hypothesis wrong: foraging probability was significantly correlated with the quantity and quality of the mysid H. sculpta, which has significantly lower calories than N. rayii. This result puzzled us, until we started looking at the overall quantity of these two prey types in the study area and realized that the amount of calorically-rich N. rayii never reached a threshold where it was beneficial for gray whales to forage. But, there was a lot of H. sculpta, which likely made for an energetic gain for the whales despite not being as calorically rich as N. rayii. We determined a threshold of H. sculpta relative abundance that is required to initiate the gray whale foraging behavior, and the abundance of N. rayii never came close to this level (Figure 3). Despite not having the highest quality, H. sculpta did have the highest abundance and showed a significant positive relationship with foraging behavior, unlike the other prey items. Interestingly, whales never selected areas dominated by the low-calorie species A. tridens. These results demonstrate trade-off choices by whales for this abundant, medium-quality prey.

To our knowledge, individual baleen whale foraging decisions relative to available prey quantity and quality have not been addressed previously at this very fine-scale. Interestingly, this trade-off between prey quantity and quality has also been detected in humpback whales foraging in Antarctica at depths deeper than where the densest krill patches occur; while the whales are exploiting less dense krill patches, these krill composed of larger, gravid, higher-quality krill (Cade et al. 2022). While it is unclear how baleen whales differentiate between prey species or reproductive stages, several mechanisms have been suggested, including visual and auditory identification (Torres 2017). We assume here that gray whales, and other baleen whale species, can differentiate between prey species. Thus, our results showcase the importance of knowing the quality (such as caloric content) of prey items available to predators to understand their foraging ecology (Spitz et al. 2012). 

References

Cade DE, Kahane-Rapport SR, Wallis B, Goldbogen JA, Friedlaender AS (2022) Evidence for size-selective pre- dation by Antarctic humpback whales. Front Mar Sci 9:747788

Goldbogen JA, Calambokidis J, Oleson E, Potvin J, Pyenson ND, Schorr G, Shadwick RE (2011) Mechanics, hydrody- namics and energetics of blue whale lunge feeding: effi- ciency dependence on krill density. J Exp Biol 214:131−146

Grémillet D, Pichegru L, Kuntz G, Woakes AG, Wilkinson S, Crawford RJM, Ryan PG (2008) A junk-food hypothesis for gannets feeding on fishery waste. Proc R Soc B 275: 1149−1156

Harris MP, Beare D, Toresen R, Nøttestad L, and others (2007) A major increase in snake pipefish (Entelurus aequoreus) in northern European seas since 2003: poten- tial implications for seabird breeding success. Mar Biol 151:973−983

Harris MP, Newell M, Daunt F, Speakman JR, Wanless S (2008) Snake pipefish Entelurus aequoreus are poor food for seabirds. Ibis 150:413−415

Haug T, Lindstrøm U, Nilssen KT (2002) Variations in minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) diet and body condi- tion in response to ecosystem changes in the Barents Sea. Sarsia 87:409−422

Hildebrand L, Bernard KS, Torres LG (2021) Do gray whales count calories? Comparing energetic values of gray whale prey across two different feeding grounds in the eastern North Pacific. Front Mar Sci 8:1008

Hyrenbach KD, Forney KA, Dayton PK (2000) Marine pro- tected areas and ocean basin management. Aquat Con- serv 10:437−458

Rosen DAS, Trites AW (2000) Pollock and the decline of Steller sea lions: testing the junk-food hypothesis. Can J Zool 78:1243−1250

Spitz J, Trites AW, Becquet V, Brind’Amour A, Cherel Y, Galois R, Ridoux V (2012) Cost of living dictates what whales, dolphins and porpoises eat: the importance of prey quality on predator foraging strategies. PLOS ONE 7:e50096

Torres LG, Barlow DR, Chandler TE, Burnett JD (2020) Insight into the kinematics of blue whale surface forag- ing through drone observations and prey data. PeerJ 8: e8906

Torres LG (2017) A sense of scale: foraging cetaceans’ use of scale-dependent multimodal sensory systems. Mar Mamm Sci 33:1170−1193

Trites AW, Donnelly CP (2003) The decline of Steller sea lions Eumetopias jubatus in Alaska: a review of the nutri- tional stress hypothesis. Mammal Rev 33:3−28

Keeping up with the HALO project: Recovering Rockhopper acoustic recording units and eavesdropping on Northern right whale dolphins

Marissa Garcia, PhD Student, Cornell University, Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics

It was a June morning on the Pacific Ocean, and the R/V Pacific Storm had come to a halt on its journey back to shore. The night before, the Holistic Assessment of Living marine resources off Oregon (HALO) project team had disembarked from Newport and began the long transit to NH 65, a site 65 nautical miles offshore along the Newport Hydrographic line (NH line). Ever since the 1960s, researchers have been conducting oceanographic studies along the NH line; the HALO project seeks to add the biological dimension to these historical data collections.

We were on a mission to recover our first set of Rockhoppers that we had deployed in October 2021, just nine months earlier. The Rockhopper is an underwater passive acoustic recording unit developed by K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at Cornell University. Earlier versions of underwater recorders were optimized to record baleen whales. By contrast, the Rockhopper is designed to record both baleen whales and dolphins on longer and deeper deployments, making it apt for research endeavors such as the HALO project. Three units, deployed at NH 25, 45, and 65, continuously recorded the soundscape of the Oregon waters for six months. In June, we were headed out to sea to recover these three units, collect the acoustic data, and deploy three new units.

Figure 1: The HALO project routinely surveys the trackline spanning between NH 25 and NH 65 on the NH line. Credit: Leigh Torres.

With the ship paused, our first task was to recover the Rockhopper we had deployed at NH 65. This Rockhopper deployment at NH 65 was our deepest successful deployment to date, moored at nearly 3,000 m.

So, how does one recover an underwater recording unit that is nearly 3,000 m below the surface? When the Rockhopper was deployed, it was anchored to the seafloor with a 60 kg cast iron anchor. It seems improbable that an underwater recording unit — anchored by such heavy weights — can eventually rise to the surface, but this capability is made possible through a piece of attached equipment called the acoustic release. By sending a signal of a numbered code from a box on the boat deck through the water column to the Rockhopper, the bottom of the acoustic release will begin to spin and detach from the weights. The weights are then left on the seafloor, as the Rockhopper slowly rises to the surface, now unhindered by the weights. Since these weights are composed of iron, they will naturally erode, without additional pollution contributed to the ecosystem. At NH 65, it took approximately an hour for the Rockhopper to reach the surface.

Figure 2: A diagram of the Rockhopper mooring. Of particular importance to this blog post is the acoustic release (Edgtech PORT MFE release) and the 60 kg anchor (Source: Klinck et al., 2020).

The next challenge is finding the Rockhopper bobbing amongst the waves in the vast ocean — much like searching for a needle in a haystack. The color of the Rockhopper helps aid in this quest. It’s imperative anyone out on the boat deck wears a life jacket; if someone goes overboard while wearing a life-jacket, on-board passengers can more easily spot a bright orange spot in an otherwise blue-green ocean with white caps. The design of the Rockhopper functions similarly; the unit is contained in a bright orange hard hat, helping researchers on-board to more easily spot the device, especially in an ocean often characterized by high sea state.

We also use a Yagi antenna to listen for the VHF (Very High Frequency) signal of the recovery gear, a signal the Rockhopper emits once it’s surfaced above the waterline. Pointing the antenna toward the ocean, we can detect the signal, which will become stronger when we point antenna in the direction of the Rockhopper; once we hear that strong signal, we can recommend to the boat captain to start moving the vessel in that direction.

Figure 3: Derek Jaskula, a member of the field operations team at the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics, points the Yagi antenna to detect the signal from the surfaced Rockhopper. Credit: Marissa Garcia.

At that point, all eyes are on the water, binoculars scanning the horizon for the orange. All ears are eager for the exciting news: “I see the Rockhopper!”

Once that announcement is made, the vessel carefully inches toward the Rockhopper until it is just next to the vessel’s side. Using a hook, the Rockhopper is pulled upward and back onto the deck.

What we weren’t expecting, however, during this recovery was to have our boat surrounded by two dolphin species: Pacific white-sided dolphins (Lagenorhynchus obliquidens) and Northern right whale dolphins (Lissodelphis borealis).

One HALO team member shouted, “I see Northern right whale dolphins!”

Charged with excitement, I quickly climbed up the crow’s nest to get a birds-eye look at the ocean bubbling around us with surfacing dolphins. Surely enough, I spotted the characteristic stripe of the Pacific-white sided dolphins zooming beneath the surface, in streaks of white. But what I was even more eager to see were the Northern right whale dolphins, flipping themselves out of the water, unveiling their bright white undersides. Because they lack dorsal fins, we on-board colloquially refer to Northern right whale dolphins as “sea slugs” to describe their appearance as they surface.

Figure 4: The Northern right whale dolphin (Lissodelphis borealis) surfaces during a HALO cruise. Source: HALO Project Team Member. Permit: NOAA/NMFS permit #21678.

In my analysis of the HALO project data for my PhD, I am interested in using acoustics to describe how the distribution of dolphins and toothed whales in Oregon waters varies across space and time. One species I am especially fascinated to study in-depth is the Northern right whale dolphin. To my knowledge, only three papers to date have attempted to describe their acoustics — two of which were published in the 1970s, and the most recent of which was published fifteen years ago (Fish & Turl, 1976; Leatherwood & Walker, 1979; Rankin et al., 2007).

Leatherwood & Walker (1979) proposed that Northern right whale dolphins produced two categories of whistles: a high frequency whistle that turned into burst-pulse vocalizations, and low frequency whistles. However, Rankin et al. (2007) proposed that Northern right whale dolphins may not actually produce whistles, based on two lines of evidence. First, Rankin et al. (2007) combined visual and acoustic survey, and all vocalizations recorded were localized via beamforming methods to verify that recorded vocalizations were produced by the visually observed dolphins. The visual surveying component is key to validating the vocalizations of the species, which also hints that the HALO project’s multi-surveying approach (acoustic and visual) could help arrive at similar results. Second, the Rankin et al. (2007) explored the taxonomy of the Northern right whale dolphin to verify which vocalizations the species is likely to produce based on the vocal repertoire of its close relatives. The right whale dolphin is closely related to dolphins in the genus Lagenorhynchus — which includes white-sided dolphins — and Cephalorhynchus — which includes Hector’s dolphin. The vocal repertoire of these relatives don’t produce whistles, and instead predominantly produced pulsed sounds or clicks (Dawson, 1991; Herman & Tavolga, 1980). Northern right whale dolphins primarily produce echolocation clicks trains and burst-pulses. Although Rankin et al. (2007) claims that the Northern right whale dolphin does not produce whistles, stereotyped burst-pulse series may be unique to individuals, just as dolphin species use stereotyped signature whistles, or they may be relationally shared just as discrete calls of killer whales are.

Figure 5: The Northern right whale dolphin (Lissodelphis borealis) produces burst-pulses. There exists variation in series of burst-pulses. The units marked by (a) and (b) ultimately get replaced by the unit marked by (c). (Source: Rankin et al., 2007).

We have just finished processing the first round of acoustic data for the HALO project, and it is ready now for analysis. Already previewing an hour of data on the Rockhopper by NH 25, we identified potential Northern right whale dolphin recordings . So far, we have only visually observed Northern right whale dolphins nearby Rockhopper units placed at sites NH 65 and NH 45, so it was surprising to acoustically detect this species on the most inshore unit at NH 25. I look forward to demystifying the mystery of Northern right whale dolphin vocalizations as our research on the HALO project continues!

Figure 6: Potential Northern right whale dolphin vocalizations recorded at the Rockhopper deployed at NH 25.

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References

Dawson, S. (1991). Clicks and Communication: The Behavioural and Social Contexts of Hector’s Dolphin Vocalizations. Ethology, 88(4), 265–276. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1439-0310.1991.tb00281.x

Fish, J. F. & Turl, C. W. (1976). Acoustic Source Levels of Four Species of Small Whales.

Herman, L. M., and Tavolga, W. N. (1980). “The communication systems of cetaceans,” in Cetacean behavior: Mechanisms and functions, edited by L. M. Herman (Wiley, New York), 149–209.

Klinck, H., Winiarski, D., Mack, R. C., Tessaglia-Hymes, C. T., Ponirakis, D. W., Dugan, P. J., Jones, C., & Matsumoto, H. (2020). The Rockhopper: a compact and extensible marine autonomous passive acoustic recording system. Global Oceans 2020: Singapore – U.S. Gulf Coast, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1109/IEEECONF38699.2020.9388970

Leatherwood, S., and Walker, W. A. (1979). “The northern right whale dolphin Lissodelphis borealis Peale in the eastern North Pacific,” in Behavior of marine animals, Vol. 3: Cetaceans, edited by H. E. Winn and B. L. Olla (Plenum, New York), 85–141.

Rankin, S., Oswald, J., Barlow, J., & Lammers, M. (2007). Patterned burst-pulse vocalizations of the northern right whale dolphin, Lissodelphis borealis. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 121(2), 1213–1218. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.2404919

Putting Fitbits on whales: How tag data allows for estimating calories burned by foraging PCFG gray whales

By: Kate Colson, MSc Student, University of British Columbia, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, Marine Mammal Research Unit

Hello! My name is Kate Colson and I am a master’s student at the University of British Columbia, co-supervised by Dr. Andrew Trites of the Marine Mammal Research Unit and Dr. Leigh Torres of the GEMM Lab. As part of my thesis work, I have had the opportunity to spend the summer field season with Leigh and the GEMM Lab team. 

For my master’s I am studying the foraging energetics of Pacific Coast Feeding Group (PCFG) gray whales as part of the much larger Gray whale Response to Ambient Noise Informed by Technology and Ecology (GRANITE) project. Quantifying the energy expenditure of PCFG gray whales during foraging can help establish a baseline for how disturbance impacts the ability of this unique population to meet their energy needs. Additionally, determining how many calories are burned during different PCFG foraging behaviors might help explain why some gray whales are in better body condition than others.

To understand how much energy different PCFG foraging behaviors cost, I am using data from suction cup tags we have temporarily applied on PCFG gray whales (Figure 1). You can read more about the why the GEMM Lab started using these tags in an earlier blog here. What I want to talk about in this blog is how exactly we can use this tag data to estimate energy expenditure of PCFG gray whales. 

Figure 1. The famous “Scarlett” with a suction cup tag just attached using a carbon fiber pole (seen on far right). This minimally invasive tag has many data sensors, all of which sample at high frequencies, that can allow for an estimation of energy expenditure for different gray whale behaviors. Source: GEMM Lab; National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) permit no. 21678 

The suction cups tags used in this project have many data sensors that are useful for describing the movement of the tagged whale including accelerometers, magnetometers, gyroscopes, and pressure sensors, and all are sampling at high frequencies. For example, the accelerometer is taking 400 measurements per second! The accelerometer, magnetometer, and gyroscope take measurements in 3 dimensions along the X, Y, and Z-axes. The whale’s movement around the X-axis indicates roll (if the whale is swimming on its side), while movement around the Y-axis indicates pitch (if the whales head is oriented towards the surface or the sea floor). Changes in the whale’s movement around the Z-axis indicates if the whale is changing its swimming direction. Together, all of these sensors can describe the dive profile, body orientation, fluking behavior, and fine-scale body movements of the animal down to the second (Figure 2). This allows for the behavior of the tagged whale to be specifically described for the entirety of the tag deployment. 

Figure 2. An example of what the tag sensor data looks like. The top panels show the depth of the animal and can be used to determine the diving behavior of the whale. The middle panels show the body roll of the whale (the X axis) —a roll value close to 0 means the whale is swimming “normally” with no rotation to either side, while a higher roll value means the whale is positioned on its side. The bottom panels show the fluking behavior of the animal: each spike is the whale using its tail to propel itself through the water, with higher spikes indicating a stronger fluke stroke. Source: GEMM Lab, NMFS permit no. 21678

Although these suction cup tags are a great advancement in collecting fine-scale data, they do not have a sensor that actually measures the whale’s metabolism, or rate of calories burned by the whale. Thus, to use this fine-scale tag data as an estimate for energy expenditure, a summary metric must be calculated from the data and used as a proxy. The most common metric found in the literature is Overall Dynamic Body Acceleration (ODBA) and many papers have been published discussing the pros and cons of using ODBA as a proxy for energy expenditure (Brown et al., 2013; Gleiss et al., 2011; Halsey, 2017; Halsey et al., 2011; Wilson et al., 2020). The theory behind ODBA is that because an animal’s metabolic rate is primarily comprised of movement costs, then measuring the acceleration of the body is an effective way of determining energy expenditure. This theory might seem very abstract, but if you have ever worn a Fitbit or similar fitness tracking device to estimate how many calories you’ve burned during a workout, the same principle applies. Those fitness devices use accelerometers and other sensors, to measure the movement of your limbs and produce estimates of energy used. 

So now that we’ve established that the goal of my research is to essentially use these suction cup tags as Fitbits for PCFG gray whales, let’s look at how accelerometry data has been used to detect foraging behavior in large whales so far. Many accelerometry tagging studies have used rorquals as a focal species (see Shadwick et al. (2019) for a review). Well-known rorqual species include humpback, fin, and blue whales. These species forage by using lunges to bulk feed on dense prey patches in the water column. Foraging lunges are indicated by isolated periods of high acceleration that are easily detectable in the tag data (Figure 3; Cade et al., 2016; Izadi et al., 2022). 

Figure 3. Top image: A foraging blue whale performing a surface lunge (Photo credit: GEMM Lab). Note the dense aggregation of krill in the whale’s mouth. Bottom image: The signature acceleration signal for lunge feeding (adapted from Izadi et al., 2022). Each color represents one of the 3D axes of whale movement. The discrete periods of high acceleration represent lunges. 

However, gray whales feed very differently from rorquals. Gray whales primarily suction feed on the benthos, using their head to dig into the sediment and filter prey out of the mud using their baleen. Yet,  PCFG gray whales often perform many other foraging behaviors such as headstanding and side-swimming (Torres et al., 2018). Additionally, PCFG gray whales tend to feed in water depths that are often shallower than their body length. This shallow depth makes it difficult to isolate signals of foraging in the accelerometry data from random variation in the data and separate the tag data into periods of foraging behaviors (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Top image: A foraging PCFG gray whale rolls on its side to feed on mysid prey. Bottom image: The graph shows the accelerometry data from our suction cup tags that can be used to calculate Overall Dynamic Body Acceleration (ODBA) as a way to estimate energy expenditure. Each color represents a different axis in the 3D motion of the whale. The X-axis is the horizontal axis shows forward and backward movement of the whale, the Y-axis shows the side-to-side movement of the whale, and the Z-axis shows the up-down motion of the whale. Note how there are no clear periods of high acceleration in all 3 axes simultaneously to indicate different foraging behaviors like is apparent during lunges of rorqual whales. However, there is a pattern showing that when acceleration in the Z-axis (blue line) is positive, the X- and Y-axes (red and green lines) are negative. Source: GEMM Lab; NMSF permit no. 21678

But there is still hope! Thanks to the GEMM Lab’s previous work describing the foraging behavior of the PCFG sub-group using drone footage, and the video footage available from the suction cup tags deployed on PCFG gray whales, the body orientation calculated from the tag data can be a useful indication of foraging. Specifically, high body roll is apparent in many foraging behaviors known to be used by the PCFG, and when the tag data indicates that the PCFG gray whale is rolled onto its sides, lots of sediment (and sometimes even swarms of mysid prey) is seen in the tag video footage. Therefore, I am busy isolating these high roll events in the collected tag data to identify specific foraging events. 

My next steps after isolating all the roll events will be to use other variables such as duration of the roll event and body pitch (i.e., if the whales head is angled down), to define different foraging behaviors present in the tag data. Then, I will use the accelerometry data to quantify the energetic cost of performing these behaviors, perhaps using ODBA. Hopefully when I visit the GEMM Lab again next summer, I will be ready to share which foraging behavior leads to PCFG gray whales burning the most calories!

References: 

Brown, D. D., Kays, R., Wikelski, M., Wilson, R., & Klimley, A. P. (2013). Observing the unwatchable through acceleration logging of animal behavior. Animal Biotelemetry, 1(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1186/2050-3385-1-20

Cade, D. E., Friedlaender, A. S., Calambokidis, J., & Goldbogen, J. A. (2016). Kinematic diversity in rorqual whale feeding mechanisms. Current Biology, 26(19), 2617–2624. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.07.037

Duley, P. n.d. Fin whales feeding [photograph]. NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center Photo Gallery. https://apps-nefsc.fisheries.noaa.gov/rcb/photogallery/finback-whales.html

Gleiss, A. C., Wilson, R. P., & Shepard, E. L. C. (2011). Making overall dynamic body acceleration work: On the theory of acceleration as a proxy for energy expenditure. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 2(1), 23–33. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-210X.2010.00057.x

Halsey, L. G. (2017). Relationships grow with time: A note of caution about energy expenditure-proxy correlations, focussing on accelerometry as an example. Functional Ecology, 31(6), 1176–1183. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.12822

Halsey, L. G., Shepard, E. L. C., & Wilson, R. P. (2011). Assessing the development and application of the accelerometry technique for estimating energy expenditure. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology – A Molecular and Integrative Physiology, 158(3), 305–314. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cbpa.2010.09.002

Izadi, S., Aguilar de Soto, N., Constantine, R., & Johnson, M. (2022). Feeding tactics of resident Bryde’s whales in New Zealand. Marine Mammal Science, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/mms.12918

Shadwick, R. E., Potvin, J., & Goldbogen, J. A. (2019). Lunge feeding in rorqual whales. Physiology, 34, 409–418. https://doi.org/10.1152/physiol.00010.2019

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, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2018.00319

Wilson, R. P., Börger, L., Holton, M. D., Scantlebury, D. M., Gómez-Laich, A., Quintana, F., Rosell, F., Graf, P. M., Williams, H., Gunner, R., Hopkins, L., Marks, N., Geraldi, N. R., Duarte, C. M., Scott, R., Strano, M. S., Robotka, H., Eizaguirre, C., Fahlman, A., & Shepard, E. L. C. (2020). Estimates for energy expenditure in free-living animals using acceleration proxies: A reappraisal. Journal of Animal Ecology, 89(1), 161–172. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.13040

A Hundred and One Data Visualizations: What We Can Infer about Gray Whale Health Using Public Data

By Braden Adam Vigil, Oregon State University Undergraduate, GEMM Lab NSF REU Intern

Introduction

My name is Braden Vigil, and I am enjoying this summer with the company of Lisa Hildebrand and Dr. Leigh Torres as a National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) intern. By slicing off a manageable chunk of the GRANITE project to focus on, I’ve had the chance to explore my passion for data visualization. My excitement for biological research was instilled in me by an impactful high school biology teacher (thank you Mr. Villalobos!) and was narrowed to marine biology research after a chance visit to Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center. I’ve come all the way from Southern New Mexico to explore this passion of mine, and the REU program has been one of my first chances to get my feet wet. My advice for any students debating taking big leaps for the sake of passion is to do it – it’s scary, but I’d say there’s nothing better than living out what you want to do (and hopefully getting paid for it!). For this project, the GEMM Lab has saved me the trouble of collecting data – this summer, I’m all action. 

Where Gray Whales Are and Why It Matters

Just as you might find yourself at a grocery store to buy food or at a coffee shop catching up with an old friend, so too do whales have places to go and reasons for being there. Research concerning gray whale ecology – understanding the who, what, when, where, whys – should then have a lot to do with the “where?” and “why?” That’s what my project is about: investigating where the gray whales off the Oregon coast are, and what features of the environment are related to their presence and other aspects of the population. After all, distribution is considered the foundational unit for the biogeographical understanding of a population’s location and its interactions with other species. An example of an environmental driver may be phytoplankton and – subsequently – zooplankton abundance. It’s been shown that bottom-up trophic cascades based on primary productivity directly influence predator and prey populations in both terrestrial and marine ecosystems (Sinclair and Krebs 2002; Benoit-Bird and McManus 2012). This driver specifically could then inform something as significant as population abundance of a predator, though that’s out of the scope of my project. Instead, I’m studying how these environmental drivers, specifically sea water temperature, affects the variation of the thyroid hormone (tri-iodothyronine, T3) in gray whales, which the GEMM Lab quantifies from fecal samples that they non-invasively and opportunistically collect. In terrestrial mammals, T3 is believed to be associated with thermoregulation, yet it is unclear if T3 has the same function in baleen whales who use blubber insulation to thermoregulate. To estimate blubber insulation, we use a proxy, called body area index (BAI) collected via drone footage (Burnett et al. 2018), which you can read more about in Clara’s blog. Insights into variations in T3 hormone levels as related to changes in the environment may allow researchers to better understand thermoregulatory challenges whales face in warming oceans.

This Sounds Like a Lot of Data About the Environment, Where’s it Coming From?

Not only has the GEMM Lab relieved me of the hassle that data collection and fieldwork can be, so too has the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). Starting in 2014, the OOI has set up several buoys off the U.S. West Coast, each equipped with numerous sensors and data-collecting devices. These have been extracting data from the nearby environment since then, including aspects such as dissolved oxygen, pH, and most important to this study, sea temperature. These buoys run deep too! Some devices reach as low as 25 m, which is where we often expect to see whales foraging during surveys. For our interest, there is one specific buoy that is within the GRANITE project’s survey region, the Oregon Inshore Surface Mooring.

Figure 1. Locations of OOI buoys. Blue dots represent buoys, while the yellow dot represents our buoy of interest, the Oregon Inshore Surface Mooring. 

Expectations

The OOI has published, and continues to publish, an unbelievable amount of data. There are many things that would be interesting to investigate, but until we know how much we can bite off versus how much we can chew, we’ve narrowed it down to a few hypotheses we’re currently investigating. 

Table 1. Hypotheses and Expected Results.

A Hundred and One Data Visualizations

As fun as I find testing correlations between variables and creating satisfying looking plots, I must admit that I’m not even halfway into this project and I’ve made a LOT of plots. Plots can be an easy way to understand big datasets and observations. Since not all of the data-collecting devices on the OOI data are continuously running, I first needed to get an idea of how much data we have to work with, and how much of that data overlaps in time with our annual gray whale survey period (June 1 – October 15). Some of these preliminary plots look like Figure 2. In addition, these plots grant us an idea of how variable sea surface temperatures have been in these past few years. Marine heatwaves have occurred recently in the Pacific Ocean and off the U.S. West Coast, and it is important to know if their effects continue to linger to the present. Other, unexplained peaks might also be worth investigating. 

Figure 2. Preliminary plot comparing sea surface temperature data over time, from around June 2016 to December 2021. Straight lines between December to June each year indicates no data, as we have removed these periods from our analysis. 

The goal here is to eventually compare the variables of sea temperature to the T3 hormone levels in gray whales foraging off the Oregon coast. Before this step, it is important to decide what depth of temperature readings are most appropriate to assess. I’ve made several correlation plots of sea  temperature between varying depths of 1 m, 7 m, and 25 m. One such plot is included below (Figure 3). This plot shows variation of temperature between different depths. If there is strong variation between the depths of 1 m and 25 m, then the water column may be well stratified, meaning that gray whale response to environmental temperature may be distinct between these distances, possibly even between 1 m and 7 m. 

Figure 3. Sea surface temperature at 1 m versus 25 m in degrees Celsius, with points color coded by year. 

Conclusion

As previously described, this study plays part into the larger GRANITE project with the goal to understand and make predictions about the ecology and physiology of the gray whale population off of the U.S. West Coast. This study will investigate the significance of sea temperature on aspects of whale health – so far including BAI and T3 hormone level. I will be pursuing a stronger grasp on the variation of these relationships through ongoing analysis. My results should be used to clarify nodes and the correlation between them in the web of dynamics encircling the population. This project has given me great insight into how raw data can be turned into meaningful understandings and subsequent impacts. The public OOI data is a scattershot of many different measurements using many different devices constantly. The answers/solutions to the conservation of species threatened by the Anthropocene are out there, all that’s required is that we harness them. 

References

Benoit-Bird, K. J., & McManus, M. A. (2012). Bottom-up regulation of a pelagic community through spatial aggregations. Biology Letters, 8(5), 813–816. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2012.0232

Burnett, J. D., & Wing, M. G. (2018). A low-cost near-infrared digital camera for fire detection and monitoring. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 39(3), 741–753. https://doi.org/10.1080/01431161.2017.1385109

Sinclair, A. R. E., & Krebs, C. J. (2002). Complex numerical responses to top–down and bottom–up processes in vertebrate populations. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 357(1425), 1221–1231.https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2002.1123.

To biopsy or not to biopsy? Reflecting on the impact of research activities on marine mammals in the wild

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

This blog is motivated by the recent publication I co-authored with my former PhD supervisor in New Caledonia (Garrigue & Derville 2022). As I am about to present our study entitled “Behavioral responses of humpback whales to biopsy sampling on a breeding ground: the influence of age-class, reproductive status, social context, and repeated sampling” as part of the Society for Marine Mammalogy Seminar Editor’s Selected Series, I have been reflecting on how my research impacts the animals I study.

The overwhelming majority of marine mammal scientists around the world agree that lethal sampling of whales and other marine mammals is unnecessary to fill current knowledge gaps and deplorable in a context of global biodiversity loss and habitat degradation (e.g., Clapham et al. 2003; Cote and Favaro 2016). More so, the academic community consistently seeks to improve the ethical framework within which research on live animals is conducted. While the study of free-living marine mammals poses challenges that are quite different than laboratory experiments, these practices are nonetheless discussed and questioned by the general public, managers, and the scientists themselves.

Among the field methods used to collect data from cetaceans, biopsy sampling is perhaps one of the most common. While it is sometimes possible to skim the water to collect the dead skin that individuals may shed during surface activities, cetaceans are most often biopsied remotely, using a veterinary rifle or a crossbow (Figure 1). The devices propel an arrow or a dart towards the animals to remove a small piece of skin and blubber inside a tip. These pieces can be a few centimeters to less than a centimeter long depending on the size of the species that is targeted (e.g., smaller darts are typically used for dolphins compared to large whales). The tissues sampled in this way are essential to address many biological, ecological, and behavioral questions that can ultimately inform conservation. Yet, biopsy sampling is invasive and a few studies have investigated its potential impact on humpback whales (Cantor et al., 2010; Clapham & Mattila, 1993), among other cetaceans (see review in Noren & Mocklin, 2012).

Figure 1: Conducting biopsy sampling of a humpback whale with a crossbow (above), and sample of skin and blubber collected during biopsy sampling (below). Photo credit: Nicolas Job – Heos Marine (MARACAS expeditions 2017, New Caledonia)

When presenting biopsy sampling to the general public, who hasn’t had to answer the tricky question “but does it hurt?”? Well I wish the whale could pop its head out the water and just tell me if it did! Measuring disturbance or pain is unfortunately extremely challenging in the case of cetaceans. Sophisticated methods that rely on new technologies (hormone analysis, drone video footages etc.) are being developed by the GEMM lab and other research groups to assess the impact of human activities around whales and should allow a better understanding of acute and chronic stress in the near future.

The strength of our study that was just published in the Marine Mammal Science journal is not technology, but rather the application of very standard approach over many years of consistent field work. In New Caledonia, in the southwest Pacific, humpback whales have been monitored as part of a long-term program initiated in the mid ‘90s by Dr. Claire Garrigue. Every austral winter, when whales regroup in these warm subtropical waters to breed and nurse their calves, biopsy samples were collected on individuals of all age-classes: adults, juveniles, and calves. During each of the 2,249 biopsies conducted throughout 20 years of research, the behavioral response of individual whales was qualitatively assessed and recorded. First, the response to the boat approach was recorded (whether the whale avoided the boat or not), then the response to the biopsy immediately after the shot, which was categorized as none, weak, moderate, or strong, based on general definitions provided by Weinrich et al. 1991. We investigated the frequency of these behavioral responses according to age-class, sex, female reproductive status, and social context, as well as the sampling system and habitat. We also assessed the effect of repeated biopsy sampling over time at the individual level.

We found that humpback whales did not show observable behavioral responses in over half of the cases (58.7%). Interestingly, we also discovered that calves did not respond more than adult whales, whereas juveniles stood out as the most sensitive age-class (Figure 2). Mothers with a calf reacted more often to the boat compared to non-lactating females and males, but paradoxically had the weakest responses to the biopsy sampling itself. We interpreted this dual response as the result of individually varying baseline stress levels, with some very shy mothers actively avoiding boats and others displaying a very oblivious attitude to both the boat’s proximity and to the brief impact of the biopsy sampling.

Figure 2: Responses of humpback whales to biopsy sampling according to age-class. Sample sizes are reported on the bar plot, except for strong responses (adults: 7, juveniles: 3, calves: 2). Figure reproduced from Garrigue & Derville 2022.

Although biopsies could have stressed animals in a way that was not measurable with our simple behavioral approach, it is still reassuring to see that most whales did not show a response, which allows us to assume that the impact of the biopsy was very minimal. This sort of methodological research is needed to inform managers responsible for the delivery of research permits and for researchers themselves to keep questioning their practices.

As I was analyzing this data and writing the paper, I became more aware of the value each of these tissue samples had. In the case of biopsy sampling, I believe that the gain in knowledge is ultimately worth the cost, but we should always bear in mind that this conclusion comes from a human perspective. From when I am in the field approaching whales, to when I analyze the hard-won data in my office, I think about the ethics of our work. As a supporter of open science, my take-away message from this research journey was that we have responsibility to use and share this biological data as much as possible. We should always aim at making the most out of data, but even more so when it is acquired by working with live animals. The cost is never null, so let’s make it worth it!

Ethics statement

Research was conducted under annual permits delivered by the competent authorities of the government of New Caledonia, and the Northern Province and Southern Province of New Caledonia. This study was carried out following the marine mammal treatment guidelines of the Society for Marine Mammalogy. The data that support the findings of this study are openly available here (DataSuds repository, doi: 10.23708/QYWDPO).

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References

Cantor, M., Cachuba, T., Fernandes, L., & Engel, M. H. (2010). Behavioural reactions of wintering humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) to biopsy sampling in the western South Atlantic. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, 90(8), 1701–1711. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025315409991561

Clapham, P. J., & Mattila, D. K. (1993). Reactions of humpback whales to skin biopsy sampling on a West Indies breeding ground. Marine Mammal Science, 9(4), 382–391. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1748-7692.1993.tb00471.x

Cote, Isabelle M., and Corinna Favaro. “The scientific value of scientific whaling.” Marine Policy 74 (2016): 88-90.

Garrigue, C., & Derville, S. (2022). Behavioral responses of humpback whales to biopsy sampling on a breeding ground : the influence of age-class , reproductive status , social context , and repeated sampling. Marine Mammal Science, 38, 102–117. https://doi.org/10.1111/mms.12848

Noren, D. P., & Mocklin, J. A. (2012). Review of cetacean biopsy techniques: Factors contributing to successful sample collection and physiological and behavioral impacts. Marine Mammal Science, 28(1), 154–199. https://doi.org/10.1111/ j.1748-7692.2011.00469.x

Phillip J. Clapham, Per Berggren, Simon Childerhouse, Nancy A. Friday, Toshio Kasuya, Laurence Kell, Karl-Hermann Kock, Silvia Manzanilla-Naim, Giuseppe Notabartolo Di Sciara, William F. Perrin, Andrew J. Read, Randall R. Reeves, Emer Rogan, Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho, Tim D. Smith, Michael Stachowitsch, Barbara L. Taylor, Deborah Thiele, Paul R. Wade, Robert L. Brownell, Whaling as Science, BioScience, Volume 53, Issue 3, March 2003, Pages 210–212, https://doi.org/10.1641/0006-3568(2003)053[0210:WAS]2.0.CO;2

Weinrich, M. T., Lambertsen, R. H., Baker, C. S., Schilling, M. R., & Belt, C. R. (1991). Behavioural responses of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) in the southern gulf of Maine to biopsy sampling. Reports of the International Whaling Commission, Special Issue 13,91–97

Harbor porpoise and gray whale distribution over three decades: introducing the EMERALD project

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

Throughout the world, humans rely on coastal regions for shipping and commerce, fisheries, industrial development, and increasingly for the development of marine renewable energy such as wind and wave energy [1]. Nearshore environments, including the coastal waters of the Northern California Current (NCC), are therefore coupled social-ecological systems, at the intersection of human and biological productivity [2].

The NCC supports a diverse food web of ecologically and commercially important species [3]. The nearshore region of the NCC is further shaped by a rich mosaic of complex features including rocky reefs, kelp forests, and sloping sandy bottom substrate [4], creating habitat for numerous species of conservation interest, including invertebrates, fish, seabirds, and marine mammals [5]. Despite its importance, this realm poses significant challenges for vessel-based data collection, and therefore it remains relatively poorly monitored and understood.

The view from Cape Foulweather, showing the complex mosaic of nearshore habitat features. Photo: D. Barlow.

I am excited to introduce a new project focused on these important nearshore waters, in which we will be Examining Marine mammal Ecology through Region-wide Assessment of Long-term Data (EMERALD). Since 1992, standardized surveys have been conducted between San Francisco Bay, CA, and the Columbia River, OR, to monitor the abundance of marbled murrelets, a seabird of conservation concern. Each spring and summer, researchers have simultaneously been diligently documenting the locations of harbor porpoise and gray whale sightings—two iconic marine mammal species that rely on the nearshore waters of the NCC. This rich and extensive record is rare for marine mammal data, particularly in the challenging, turbulent nearshore environment. Furthermore, harbor porpoises are cryptic, making visual sampling particularly challenging, and gray whales can be sparsely distributed, yielding low sample sizes in the absence of long-term data collection.

Left: The survey team collecting data; Right: Marbled murrelet floating on the water.

For the EMERALD project, we will investigate spatial and temporal distribution patterns of harbor porpoises and gray whales in relation to fluctuations in key environmental drivers. The primary goals of the project are to (1) Identify persistent hotspots in harbor porpoise and gray whale sightings over time, and (2) Examine the environmental drivers of sighting hotspots through spatial and temporal analyses.

A harbor porpoise surfacing off the central Oregon coast. Photo: L. Torres.

From a first look at the data, we are already excited by some emerging patterns. In total, the dataset contains sightings of 6,763 harbor porpoise (mean 233 per year) and 530 gray whales (mean 18 per year). Preliminary data exploration reveals that harbor porpoise sightings increased in 2011-2012, predominantly between Cape Blanco, OR, and Cape Mendocino, CA. Gray whale sightings appear to follow an oscillating, cyclical pattern with peaks approximately every three years, with notable disruption of this pattern during the marine heatwave of 2014-2015. What are the drivers of sighting hotspots and spatial and temporal fluctuations in sighting rates? Time—and a quantitative analytical approach involving density estimation, timeseries analysis, and species distribution modeling—will tell.

A gray whale forages in kelp forest habitat over a nearshore rocky reef. Photo: T. Chandler.

I recently completed my PhD on the ecology and distribution of blue whales in New Zealand (for more information, see the OBSIDIAN project). Now, I am excited to apply the spatial analysis skills have been honing to a new study system and two new study species as I take on a new role in the GEMM Lab as a Postdoctoral Scholar. The EMERALD project will turn my focus to the nearshore waters close to home that I have grown to love over the past six years as a resident of coastal Oregon. The surveys I will be working with began before I was born, and I am truly fortunate to inherit such a rich dataset—a rare treat for a marine mammal biologist, and an exciting prospect for a statistical ecologist.

Dawn and Quin the dog, enjoying views of Oregon’s complex and important nearshore waters. Both are thrilled to remain in Oregon for the EMERALD project. Photo: R. Kaplan.

So, stay tuned for our findings as the project unfolds. In the meantime, I want express gratitude to Craig Strong of Crescent Coastal Research who has led the dedicated survey effort for the marbled murrelet monitoring program, without whom none of the data would exist. This project is funded by the Oregon Gray Whale License Plate funds, and we thank the gray whale license plate holders for their support of marine mammal research.

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References:

1.        Jouffray, J.-B., Blasiak, R., Norström, A. V., Österblom, H., and Nyström, M. (2020). The Blue Acceleration: The Trajectory of Human Expansion into the Ocean. One Earth 2, 43–54.

2.        Sjostrom, A.J.C., Ciannelli, L., Conway, F., and Wakefield, W.W. (2021). Gathering local ecological knowledge to augment scientific and management understanding of a living coastal resource: The case of Oregon’s nearshore groundfish trawl fishery. Mar. Policy 131, 104617.

3.        Bograd, S.J., Schroeder, I., Sarkar, N., Qiu, X., Sydeman, W.J., and Schwing, F.B. (2009). Phenology of coastal upwelling in the California Current. Geophys. Res. Lett. 36, 1–5.

4.        Romsos, G., Goldfinger, C., Robison, R., Milstein, R., Chaytor, J., and Wakefield, W. (2007). Development of a regional seafloor surficial geologic habitat map for the continental margins of Oregon and Washington, USA. Mapp. Seafloor Habitat Charact. Geol. Assoc. Canada, Spec. Pap., 219–243.

5.        Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (2016). Oregon Nearshore Strategy. Available at: https://oregonconservationstrategy.org/oregon-nearshore-strategy/ [Accessed January 10, 2022].

Reuniting with some old friends: The 8th GRANITE field season is underway

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

We are almost halfway through June which means summer has arrived! Although, here on the Oregon coast, it does not entirely feel like it. We have been swinging between hot, sunny days and cloudy, foggy, rainy days that are reminiscent of those in spring or even winter. Despite these weather pendulums, the GEMM Lab’s GRANITE project is off to a great start in its 8th field season! The field team has already ventured out onto the Pacific Ocean in our trusty RHIB Ruby on four separate days looking for gray whales and in this blog post, I am going to share what we have seen so far.

The core GRANITE field team before the May 24th “trial run”. From left to right: Leigh Torres, KC Bierlich, Clara Bird, Lisa Hildebrand, Alejandro Fernández Ajó. Source: L. Torres.

PI Leigh, PhD candidate Clara and I headed out for a “trial run” on May 24th. While the intention for the day was to make sure all our gear was running smoothly and we still remembered how to complete the many tasks associated with our field work (boat loading and trailering, drone flying and catching, poop scooping, data download, to name a few), we could not resist surveying our entire study range given the excellent conditions. It was a day that all marine field scientists hope for – low winds (< 5 kt all day) and a 3 ft swell over a long period. Despite surveying between Waldport and Depoe Bay, we only encountered one whale, but it was a whale that put a smile on each of our faces. After “just” 252 days, we reunited with Solé, the star of our GRANITE dataset, with record numbers of fecal samples and drone flights collected. This record is due to what seems to be a strong habitat or foraging tactic preference by Solé to remain in a relatively small spatial area off the Oregon coast for most of the summer, rather than traveling great swaths of the coast in search for food. Honest truth, on May 24th we found her exactly where we expected to find her. While we did not collect a fecal sample from her on that day, we did perform a drone flight, allowing us to collect a critical early feeding season data point on body condition. We hope that Solé has a summer full of mysids on the Oregon coast and that we will be seeing her often, getting rounder each time!

Our superstar whale Solé. Her identifying features are a small white line on her left side (green box) and a white dot in front of her dorsal hump on the right side (red circle). Source: GEMM Lab. Photograph captured under NOAA/NMFS permit #21678

Just a week after this trial day, we had our official start to the field season with back-to-back days on the water. On our first day, postdoc Alejandro, Clara and I were joined by St. Andrews University Research Fellow Enrico Pirotta, who is another member of the GRANITE team. Enrico’s role in the GRANITE project is to implement our long-term, replicate dataset into a framework called Population consequences of disturbance (PCoD; you can read all about it in a previous blog). We were thrilled that Enrico was able to join us on the water to get a sense for the species and system that he has spent the last several months trying to understand and model quantitatively from a computer halfway across the world. Luckily, the whales sure showed up for Enrico, as we saw a total of seven whales, all of which were known individuals to us! Several of the whales were feeding in water about 20 m deep and surfacing quite erratically, making it hard to get photos of them at times. Our on-board fish finder suggested that there was a mid-water column prey layer that was between 5-7 m thick. Given the flat, sandy substrate the whales were in, we predicted that these layers were composed of porcelain crab larvae. Luckily, we were able to confirm our hypothesis immediately by dropping a zooplankton net to collect a sample of many porcelain crab larvae. Porcelain crab larvae have some of the lowest caloric values of the nearshore zooplankton species that gray whales likely feed on (Hildebrand et al. 2021). Yet, the density of larvae in these thick layers probably made them a very profitable meal, which is likely the reason that we saw another five whales the next day feeding on porcelain crab larvae once again.

Porcelain crab larvae. Source: GEMM Lab.
A happy captain Ale! Source: GEMM Lab.
Enrico (right) and myself after collecting a large fecal sample. Source: GEMM Lab.

On our most recent field work day, we only encountered Solé, suggesting that the porcelain crab swarms had dissipated (or had been excessively munched on by gray whales), and many whales went in search for food elsewhere. We have done a number of zooplankton net tows across our study area and while we did collect a good amount of mysid shrimp already, they were all relatively small. My prediction is that once these mysids grow to a more profitable size in a few days or weeks, we will start seeing more whales again.

The GRANITE team from above, waiting & watching for whales, as we will be doing for the rest of the summer! Source: GEMM Lab.

So far we have seen nine unique individuals, flown the drone over eight of them, collected fecal samples from five individuals, conducted 10 zooplankton net tows and seven GoPro drops in just four days of field work! We are certainly off to a strong start and we are excited to continue collecting rock solid GRANITE data this summer to continue our efforts to understand gray whale ecology and physiology.

Literature cited

Hildebrand L, Bernard KS, Torres LGT. 2021. Do gray whales count calories? Comparing energetic values of gray whale prey across two different feeding grounds in the Eastern North Pacific. Frontiers in Marine Science 8. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2021.683634

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Collecting tiny yet precious krill samples associated with foraging humpbacks!

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

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