{"id":3611,"date":"2020-08-10T13:27:49","date_gmt":"2020-08-10T20:27:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/?p=3611"},"modified":"2020-08-10T13:27:54","modified_gmt":"2020-08-10T20:27:54","slug":"introducing-the-theyodelers-the-port-orford-gray-whale-foraging-ecology-team-of-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/2020\/08\/10\/introducing-the-theyodelers-the-port-orford-gray-whale-foraging-ecology-team-of-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing the Theyodelers \u2013 the Port Orford Gray Whale Foraging Ecology Team of 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By\u00a0Lisa Hildebrand<\/a>, MSc student, OSU Department of Fisheries & Wildlife, Marine Mammal Institute,\u00a0Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yodel-Ay-Ee-Ooooo! Hello from the Theyodelers, this year\u2019s Port Orford gray whale foraging ecology field team. In case you were wondering, no, we aren\u2019t hobby yodelers and we don\u2019t plan on becoming them. The team name this year actually has to be attributed to a parent of one of my interns. Shout out to Scott Holt who during the first week of the field season asked his daughter Mattea (our OSU undergraduate intern) whether using a theodolite (the instrument we use to track gray whales from our cliff site) is anything like yodeling. The name was an immediate hit with the team and so the team name discussion was closed fairly early on in the season. Now that I have explained our slightly unconventional team name, let me tell you a little about this year\u2019s team and what has been going on down here on the Oregon south coast so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you can tell from the byline, I (Lisa) am back as the project\u2019s team lead in this, the 6th<\/sup>\u00a0year\u00a0of the Port Orford gray whale research<\/a> and internship project<\/a>. Going into this year\u2019s field season with two years of experience under my belt has made me feel more confident and comfortable with diving straight back into our fine-scale research with a new team of interns. Yet, I am beginning to realize that no matter how much experience I have, there will always be unforeseeable curve balls thrown at me that I can\u2019t anticipate no matter how prepared or experienced I am. However, my knowledge and experience now certainly inform how I tackle these curve balls and hopefully allow my problem-solving to be better and quicker. I am so thrilled that Leigh and I were able to get the field season approved here in Port Orford despite the ongoing pandemic. There were many steps we had to take and protocols to write and get approved, but it was worth the work. It certainly is strange living in a place that is meant to be your home for six weeks but having to wear a face covering everywhere except your own bedroom. However, mask wearing, frequent hand washing, and disinfecting is a very small price to pay to avoid having a lapse in our gray whale data collected here in Port Orford (and minimize transmission). Doing field research amidst COVID has certainly been a big curve ball this year but, so far, I have been able to handle these added challenges pretty well, especially with a lot of help from my team. Speaking of which, time to introduce the other Theyodelers\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 1. Noah watching and waiting for whales on the cliff. When we are outside in the wind and are able to maintain a minimum 6-ft distance, we are able to remove our face coverings. Source: T. McCambridge.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

First up, we have Noah Dolinajec. Noah is a fellow graduate student who is currently doing a Master\u2019s in Marine & Lacustrine Science and Management at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Brussels, Belgium. While he is attending graduate school in Belgium, Noah is not actually from this European country. In fact, he is a Portlandian! As an Oregonian with a passion for the marine environment, Noah is no stranger to the Oregon coast and has spent quite some time exploring it in the past. Some other things about Noah: before going to college he played semi-professional ice hockey, he is a bit of a birder, and he likes to cook (he and I have been tag-teaming the team cooking this year).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 2. Mattea outside the field station holding local fisher-pup Jim.<\/em> Source: L. Hildebrand.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Next, we have Mattea Holt Colberg. As I mentioned before, Mattea is the team\u2019s OSU undergraduate intern this year. By participating in a running-start program at her high school where she took two years of college classes, Mattea entered OSU as a junior at just 18 years old! However, she has decided to somewhat extend her undergraduate career at OSU by completing a dual major in Biology and Music. She plays the piano and the violin (which she brought to Port Orford, but we have yet to be serenaded by her). Mattea has previously conducted field research on killer whales in the Salish Sea and I can tell that she is hoping for killer whales to show up in Port Orford (while not entirely ludicrous, the chance of this happening is probably very, very slim).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 3. Liz in the bow of the kayak in Tichenor Cove.<\/em> Source: L. Hildebrand.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Last but certainly not least, is Liz Kelly, our Pacific High School intern from Port Orford. Liz has lived in several different states across the country (I\u2019m talking Kentucky to Florida) and so I am really excited that she currently lives here in Oregon because she has been an absolute joy to have on the team so far. Liz brings a lot of energy and humor to the team, which we have certainly needed whenever those curve balls come flying. Besides her positivity, Liz brings a lot of determination and perseverance and seeing her work through tough situations here already has made me very proud. I really hope this internship provides Liz with the life, STEM, and communication skills she needs to help her succeed in pursuing her goals of doing wildlife research after college. As you may have read\u00a0in my last blog<\/a>, our previous high school interns have had successes in being admitted to various colleges to follow their goals, and I feel confident that Liz will be no different. When she is not here at the field station, she can probably be found taking care of and riding one of her four horses (Millie, Maricja, Miera, and Jeanie).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that I have introduced the 2020 field team, here is a short play-by-play of what we have been seeing, or perhaps more aptly, not seeing. Our whale sighting numbers have been pretty low so far and when we do see them, they seem to be foraging a little further away from our study site than I am used to seeing in past years. However, this shift in behavior is not entirely surprising to me since our zooplankton net has been coming up pretty empty at our sampling stations. While there are mysids and amphipods scattered here and there, their numbers are in the low 10s when we do our zooplankton ID lab work in the afternoons. These low counts are also reflected by the low densities I am anecdotally seeing on\u00a0our GoPro drops (Fig 4).<\/p>\n\n\n\n