Marine Mammals – Page 19 – Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Laboratory

Looking back on a busy field season

Solène Derville, EnTroPie Lab, Institute of Research for Development, Nouméa, New Caledonia (Ph.D. student under the co-supervision of Dr. Leigh Torres)

After one month and a half in the field, I am now comfortably sitting at my desk in the Institute of Research for Development (IRD) in Nouméa and I am finally finding the time to look back on my first marine mammal field experience.

The New Caledonian South Lagoon is certainly not the worst place on earth to study whales. While some people spend hours trying to spot extremely rare and shy species living in freezing cold polar waters, I have to endure a 25°C temperature, turquoise waters and a study species desperate for attention (series of a dozen breaches are not uncommon). As with all field work, there were ups and downs but following humpback whales during the 2015 breeding season was by far the most exhilarating field experience I’ve ever had.

During the austral winter, humpback whales are thought to travel and stay in different areas of the New Caledonian Economic Exclusive Zone. Using satellite telemetry, several seamounts (e.g. Antigonia), banks (e.g. Torche bank) and shallow areas have been shown to play an important role for breeding and migrating humpback whales (Garrigue et al. In Press). However, as much as we would like to study whales in these areas, offshore field missions are logistically and financially hard to conduct. This is why most of the data on humpback whales in New Caledonian waters have been collected in coastal waters, and more specifically in the South Lagoon. Opération Cétacés, a local NGO, has been studying whales in this area for about two decades and I was lucky to participate in this year’s field season with their experienced team.

The usual day in Prony (the village that we live in during the whale season) usually starts early. We get up at about 5:30, and start by engulfing a bowl of porridge (nicknamed “globi” and considered as a highly exotic dish). By 6:30 everyone is standing in our rigid-hulled inflatable boat, listening to the weather forecast on the radio. After a 15 minute trip across the bay of Prony, two people disembark and climb to a land-based lookout, the N’Doua Cape, where they will spend the day trying to spot humpback whales and guiding the boat towards their location via VHF radio communication. The vessel-based team slowly approaches the whale groups to do photo-identification (using the unique marks on the ventral surface of the tail flukes), biopsy collection, and behavioral activity monitoring. The particular coastal geography of this study area (see previous post: Crossing Latitudes) allows us to uniquely combine land-based and boat-based surveying. These methods increase our encounter rate and allow us to collect more individual-based data. Yet, compared to a standardized boat-based surveys, our survey effort is much more complex to estimate and account for in a spatial distribution model.

This season, the number of whale encounters was particularly high. We spent 31 days at sea and observed a total of 99 groups. Using photo-identification, we documented 113 different individuals, some of which were first observed more than 15 years ago! Biopsy samples were collected from 139 different individuals and we managed to record 4h of songs performed by six different whales. Given that the size of the New Caledonian population is currently thought to be less than 1000 individuals, our sampling is not too bad!

A calf breaching out of the water on a late afternoon. No wonder humpback whales are favored by whale-watching companies, they can be very active at the surface!

These two adult whales were part of a very active competitive group of eight individuals and displayed a peculiar behavior that included gently rolling and rubbing themselves against each other.

Another great achievement of this season was the tagging of two adult humpback whales with ARGOS satellite-tracking devices. It was a thrilling experience to be part of this procedure and witness the level of concentration and experience required to place a tag on a whale. Our two individuals, one a presumed male and the other a female with calf, were respectively baptized Lutèce (the name Romans gave to Paris) and Ovalie (an old fashioned way to call rugby in France). Their tags transmitted for 15 and 20 days respectively, which was not long enough to follow their migration south towards Antarctica. Yet, both whales spent time on seamounts that are known to play an important role for humpback whales in the region. We were very interested in Ovalie’s track (map given below), as she travelled along the Loyalty ridge, a seafloor structure of great interest to us. We suspect that whales could be using this ridge as a navigational aid and/or using shallow areas (seamounts and banks) along the ridge as resting or breeding habitats. The amount of humpback whales present in this area and the eventual role played by oceanic features along the Loyalty ridge will be the subject of my future research.

But now that we have all this data, let’s get back to work! As much as I love being in the field, there comes a time when you have to sit in front of your computer and try to make sense of all this information you collected.

And that is where my collaboration with the GEMM Lab comes in! I am looking forward to visiting Newport once again in December and to start shedding a light on the ‘How’s and ‘Why’s of New Caledonian humpback whales’ space use.

Literature cited:

Garrigue, C., Clapham, P. J., Geyer, Y., Kennedy, A. S., & Zerbini, A. N. (In Press). Satellite tracking reveals novel migratory patterns and the importance of seamounts for endangered South Pacific Humpback Whales. Royal Society Open Science.

New Zealand’s mega-fauna come to Newport, Oregon.

By Olivia Hamilton, PhD Candidate, University of Auckland, New Zealand.

The week leading up to my departure from New Zealand was an emotional rollercoaster. Excited, nervous, eager, reluctant… I did not feel like the fearless adventurer that I thought I was. D-day arrived and I said my final goodbyes to my boyfriend and mother at the departure gate. Off I went on my three-month research stint at the Hatfield Marine Science Center.

Some thirty hours later I touched down in Portland. I collected my bags and headed towards the public transport area at the airport. A young man greeted me, “Would you like to catch a taxi or a shuttle, ma’am?” “A taxi please! I have no idea where I am”, I responded. He nodded and smiled. I could see the confusion all over his face… My thick kiwi accent was going to make for some challenging conversations.

After a few days in Portland acclimatizing to the different way of life in Oregon, it was time to push on to Newport. I hit a stroke of luck and was able take the scenic route with one of the girls in the GEMM lab, Rachael Orben. With only one wrong turn we made it to the Oregon coast. I was instantly hit with a sense of familiarity. The rugged coastline and temperate coastal forest resembled that of the west coast of New Zealand. However, America was not shy in reminding me of where I was with its big cars, drive-through everything, and RVs larger than some small kiwi houses.

The Oregon Coast. Photo by Olivia Hamilton.

We arrived at Hatfield Marine Science Center: the place I was to call home for the next quarter of a year.

So, what am I doing here?

In short, I have come to do computer work on the other side of the world.

Dr. Leigh Torres is on my PhD committee and I am lucky enough to have been given the opportunity to come to Newport and analyze my data under her guidance.

My PhD has a broad interest in the spatial ecology of mega-fauna in the Hauraki Gulf, New Zealand. For my study, megafauna includes whales, dolphins, sharks, rays, and seabirds. The Hauraki Gulf is adjacent to Auckland, New Zealand’s most populated city and home to one of our largest commercial ports. The Hauraki Gulf is a highly productive area, providing an ideal habitat for a number of fish species, thus supporting a number of top marine predators. As with many coastal areas, anthropogenic activities have degraded the health of the Gulf’s ecosystem. Commercial and recreational fishing, run-off from surrounding urban and rural land, boat traffic, pollution, dredging, and aquaculture are some of the main activities that threaten the Gulf and the species that inhabit it. For instance, the Nationally Endangered Bryde’s whale is a year-round resident in the Hauraki Gulf and these whales spend much of their time close to the surface, making them highly vulnerable to injury or death from ship-strikes. In spite of these threats, the Gulf supports a number of top marine predators. Therefore it is important that we uncover how these top predators are using the Gulf, in both space and time, to identify ecologically important parts of their habitat. Moreover, this study presents a unique opportunity to look at the relationships between top marine predators and their prey inhabiting a common area.

The Hauraki Gulf, New Zealand. The purple lines represent the track lines that aerial surveys were conducted along.

Common dolphins in the Hauraki Gulf. Photo by Olivia Hamilton

A Bryde’s whale, common dolphins, and some opportunistic seabirds foraging in the Hauraki Gulf. Photo by Isabella Tortora Brayda di Belvedere.

Australisian Gannets and shearwaters foraging on a bait ball in the Hauraki Gulf. Photo by Olivia Hamilton.

To collect the data needed to understand the spatial ecology of these megafauna, we conducted 22 aerial surveys over a year-long period along pre-determined track lines within the Hauraki Gulf. On each flight we had four observers that collected sightings data for cetaceans, sharks, predatory fish, prey balls, plankton, and other rare species such as manta ray. An experienced seabird observer joined us approximately once a month to identify seabirds. We collected environmental data for each sighting including Beaufort Sea State, glare, and water color.

The summary of our sightings show that common dolphins were indeed common, being the most frequent species we observed. The most frequently encountered sharks were bronze whalers, smooth hammerhead sharks, and blue sharks. Sightings of Bryde’s whales were lower than we had hoped, most likely an artifact of our survey design relative to their distribution patterns. In addition, we counted a cumulative total of 11,172 individual seabirds representing 16 species.

Summary of sightings of megafauna in the Hauraki Gulf.

My goal while here at OSU is to develop habitat models for the megafauna species to compare the drivers of their distribution patterns. But, at the moment I am in the less glamorous, but highly important, data processing and decision-making stage. I am grappling with questions like: What environmental variables affected our ability to detect which species on surveys? How do we account for this? Can we clump species that are functionally similar to increase our sample size? These questions are important to address in order to produce reliable results that reflect the megafauna species true distribution patterns.

Once these questions are addressed, we can get on to the fun stuff – the habitat modeling and interpretation of the results. I will hopefully be able to start addressing these questions soon: What environmental and biological variables are important predictors of habitat use for different taxa? Are there interactions (attraction or repulsion) between these top predators? What is driving these patterns? Predator avoidance? Competition? So many questions to ask! I am looking forward to answering these questions and reporting back.

Gray whale field work wrap-up; sea you later

Hello everyone,

Florence here with an update about the final numbers from this summer’s gray whale field season.

For folks just hearing about the project, my team of interns and I spent the summer alternating between study sites at Depoe Bay and Port Orford to conduct fine-scale focal follows of gray whales foraging in near-shore Oregon waters using a theodolite. That is to say, we gathered 10,186 ‘marks’ or ‘locations’ where whales came to the surface, and by connecting the dots, we are able to create tracklines and analyze their movement patterns. The idea is to document and describe gray whale foraging behavior in order to answer the questions: Are there patterns in how the whales use the space? Is there a relationship between foraging success and proximity to kelp beds? Do behaviors vary between individuals, location, or over time during the season?

All these tracklines are from one whale, Keyboard, visiting the same area multiple times over the course of a month. I'll break this figure down a little later in the post. Notice how the whale consistently returns to the bay just west of the port jetty — All these tracklines are from one whale, Keyboard, visiting the same area multiple times over the course of a month. I’ll break this figure down a little later in the post. Notice how the whale consistently returns to the bay just west of the port jetty

While at our study sites, we often received questions about vessel disturbance on the whale’s behavior. Over the course of the summer, we saw whales completely ignore boats, approach boats, and actively avoid boats. Therefore, we documented these vessel interactions in order to ask questions such as: Does vessel disturbance alter behavior? How close is too close? Does the potential for vessel disturbance vary depending on (1) size of motor, (2) speed of approach, (3) type of vessel, i.e. kayak, fishing boat, tour boat, (4) the number of vessels already in the area, (5) amount of time a vessel has been following a whale, (6) time of season, (7) the presence of a calf or other whales? The end goal, once the data have been analyzed, is to bring our results to local vessel operators (commercial and recreational) and work together to write reasonable, effective, and scientifically informed guidelines for vessel operations in the presence of gray whales.

And now, the numbers you’ve all been waiting for, here is the tally of our data collection this summer:

	Boiler Bay	Graveyard Point	Humbug Mountain
Whales total	80	73	28
Boats total	307	105	7
Total survey time (HH:MM:SS)	122:22:41	72:49:17	50:22:35
Total survey time with whales (HH:MM:SS)	64:47:54	80:39:57	22:59:00
Total Marks	4744	4334	1108

Table 1. Summary of survey effort for gray whale foraging ecology field season summer 2015

Whale named "Keyboard" visits graveyard head multiple times. Green track: 7.21.15, Pink track: 7.21.15, Teal track: 7.30.15. The orange polygons are approximate locations of kelp patches. — Whale named “Keyboard” visits graveyard head multiple times. Green track: 7.21.15, Pink track: 7.21.15, Teal track: 7.30.15. The orange polygons are approximate locations of kelp patches.

"Keyboard" continues to visit. Red trackline: 8.27.15, white trackline: 8.28.15, purple trackline: 8.28.15 — “Keyboard” continues to visit. Red trackline: 8.27.15, white trackline: 8.28.15, purple trackline: 8.28.15

Whale 130 foraged near Boiler Bay for 5.5 hours on Aug 12. Trying to look at the whole trackline in one go is a little complicated, so let’s break it down by hour.

This panel shows hours 4-6 of the track. Things get more complex as various vessels use the same area. Whale 130 is always in red.

So, what does this all mean? Well, the unsatisfying answer is of course: we don’t know yet. However, it is my job to find out! I will spend the fall and winter processing data, writing and running behavioral models, communicating my successes and frustrations, and finally presenting my results to the community.

The human eye is well adapted to pick out patterns. Test yourself – what trends can you see in these images? Are there areas that the whales seem to prefer over other areas? In the Port Orford images with Keyboard & our kelp patches, does our theory of a relationship between whale presence and kelp patches seem valid?

This field season would not have been possible without the help of some truly excellent people. Thank you Cricket and Justin and Sarah for making up the core of Team Ro”buff”stus. It was a pleasure working with you this summer. Thank you to guest observers and photographers Era, Steven, Diana, Cory, Kelly, Shea and Brittany for filling in when we needed extra help! Thank you to our support network down in Port Orford: Tom, Tyson and the team at the Port Orford Field Station – we appreciate the housing and warm welcome, and to Jim and Karen Auborn and the Port of Port Orford for allowing us access to such a fantastic viewing location. Thank you to Oregon State Parks for allowing us access to the field sites at Boiler Bay and Humbug. Finally, thank you to Depoe Bay Pirate Coffee Company for keeping us warm and caffeinated on many foggy, cold early mornings. This work was funded by the William and Francis McNeil Fellowship Award, the Wild Rivers Coast Alliance, and the American Cetacean Society: Oregon Chapter.

Fair winds,

Florence

Whale mAPP Goes Global!

By Courtney Hann

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not Everyday is Gray (just most of them)

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

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

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

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

fluffy crow — A young crow fluffs up in the breeze

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

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

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

This chick waits patiently for parents to bring a meal

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

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

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

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

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

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

and here is a fluke!

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

Fair winds,

Florence & the rest of Team Ro”buff”stus

We need all the “Kelp” we can get!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gray Whale Goofs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until next time,

Team Ro”buff”stus

Familiar Flukes and Faces

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Panorama from Humbug State Park survey site

Surveying our new Humbug site this morning

Have a nice Gray!
Cricket

A Week-Full of Whales

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

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

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

Cricket and Justin pondering the challenges of whale watching.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best Fishes!

Sarah

Gray Whales of the Oregon Coast; Preliminary field season!

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

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

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

Justin and David practice with the Theodolite

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

Until next time, Fair Winds!

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

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