{"id":5307,"date":"2023-10-02T09:21:53","date_gmt":"2023-10-02T16:21:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/?p=5307"},"modified":"2023-10-02T09:21:53","modified_gmt":"2023-10-02T16:21:53","slug":"krill-intentions-bringing-lessons-home-from-a-winter-of-fieldwork","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/2023\/10\/02\/krill-intentions-bringing-lessons-home-from-a-winter-of-fieldwork\/","title":{"rendered":"Krill Intentions: Bringing Lessons Home from a Winter of Fieldwork"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By\u00a0Rachel Kaplan<\/a>, PhD student, Oregon State University College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences and Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences,\u00a0Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hello from Palmer Station, Antarctica! I\u2019ve spent the last five months here in a kind of parallel universe to that of my normal life in Oregon. It\u2019s spring here at the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP), and since May I\u2019ve been part of a team studying Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba)<\/em> \u2013 a big change from the Oregon species I typically study, and one that has already taught me so much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am here as part of a project titled \u201cThe Omnivore\u2019s Dilemma<\/em><\/a>: The effect of autumn diet on winter physiology and condition of juvenile Antarctic krill\u201d. <\/em>Through at-sea fieldwork and experiments in the lab, we have spent this field season investigating how climate-driven changes in diet impact juvenile and adult krill health during the long polar night. Winter is a crucial time for krill survival and recruitment, and an understudied season in this remote corner of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 1. <\/em>Recently collected Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba)<\/em> await identification and measuring.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Within this field season, we have been part of two great research cruises<\/a> along the WAP, and spent the rest of the time at Palmer Station, running long-term experiments to learn how diet influences krill winter growth and development. The time has passed incredibly fast, and it\u2019s hard to believe that we\u2019ll be heading home in just a couple weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There have been so many wonderful parts to our time here. While at sea, I was constantly aware that each new bay and fjord we sampled was one of the most beautiful places I would ever have the privilege to visit. I was also surprised and thrilled by the number of whales we saw \u2013 I recorded over one hundred sightings, including humpbacks, minke, and killer whales. As consumed as I was by looking for whales during the few hours of daylight, it was also rewarding to broaden my marine mammal focus and learn about another krill predator, the crabeater seal, from a great team researching their ecology and physiology.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In between our other work, I have been processing active acoustic (echosounder) data collected during a winter 2022 cruise that visited many of the same regions of the WAP. Antarctic krill have been much more thoroughly studied than the main krill species that occur off the coast of Oregon, Euphausia pacifica<\/em> and Thysanoessa spinifera<\/em>, and it has been amazing to draw upon this large body of literature. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 2. <\/em>The active acoustic data I\u2019m working with from the Western Antarctic Peninsula, pictured here, was collected along a wiggly cruise track in 2022, giving me the opportunity to learn how to process this type of survey data and appreciate the ways in which a ship\u2019s movements translate to data analysis.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Working with a new flavor of echosounder data has presented me with puzzles that are teaching me to navigate different modes of data collection and their analytical implications, such as for the cruise track data above. I\u2019ll never take data collected along a standardized grid for granted again!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve also learned new techniques that I am excited to apply to my research in the Northern California Current (NCC) region. For example, there are two primary different ways of detecting krill swarms in echosounder data: by comparing the results of two different acoustic frequencies, and by training a computer algorithm to recognize swarms based on their dimensions and other characteristics. After trying a few different approaches with the Antarctic data this season, I developed a way to combine these techniques. In the resulting dataset, two different methods have confirmed that a given area represents krill, which gives me a lot of confidence in it. I\u2019m looking forward to applying this technique to my NCC data, and using it to assess some of my next research questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 3. <\/em>A combination of krill detection techniques selected these long krill aggregations off the coast of the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Throughout it all, the highlight of this season has been being part of an amazing field team. I\u2019m here with Kim Bernard (as a co-advised student, I refer to Kim as my \u201ckrill advisor\u201d and Leigh as my \u201cwhale advisor\u201d), and undergraduate Abby Tomita, who just started her senior year at OSU remotely from Palmer. From nights full of net tows to busy days in the lab, we\u2019ve become a well-oiled machine, and laughed a lot along the way. Working with the two of them makes me sure that we\u2019ll be able to best any difficulties that come up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, our next challenge is wrapping up our last labwork, packing up equipment and samples, and getting ready to say goodbye. Leaving this wild, remote place is always heartbreaking \u2013 you never really know if you\u2019ll be back. But there\u2019s a lot to look forward to as we journey north, too: I can\u2019t wait to hug my family and friends, eat a salad, and drive out to Newport to see the GEMM Lab. I\u2019m excited to head back to the world with everything I\u2019ve learned here, and to keep working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 4. <\/em>Kim (left), Abby (middle), and I (right) hike on the Marr Ice Piedmont during a gorgeous day off.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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By\u00a0Rachel Kaplan, PhD student, Oregon State University College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences and Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences,\u00a0Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Lab Hello from Palmer Station, Antarctica! I\u2019ve spent the last five months here in a kind of parallel universe to that of my normal life in Oregon. It\u2019s spring … Continue reading Krill Intentions: Bringing Lessons Home from a Winter of Fieldwork<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10751,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1310784],"tags":[215873,712836,1310687,5,712850],"class_list":["post-5307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antarctic-baleen-whales","tag-fieldwork","tag-krill","tag-rachel-kaplan","tag-science","tag-western-antarctic-peninsula"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10751"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5307"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5322,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5307\/revisions\/5322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}