{"id":6081,"date":"2025-08-05T09:15:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T16:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/?p=6081"},"modified":"2025-08-05T09:15:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T16:15:14","slug":"a-nautikal-journey-with-photo-id","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/2025\/08\/05\/a-nautikal-journey-with-photo-id\/","title":{"rendered":"A Nauti(k)al Journey with Photo ID\u00a0\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nautika Brown, GEMM Lab TOPAZ\/JASPER Intern, recent Lake Roosevelt high school graduate <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hi everyone! I\u2019m Nautika Brown, a recent graduate at Lake Roosevelt High School in a small town on the Colville Indian Reservation in Washington.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Growing up in beautiful Eastern Washington, I spent most all my days outside and, from the time I could swim, I was in the water. When I was little, I used to wish I was a fish so I could live underwater and swim every day of my life. And since then, I have always been fascinated by all animals that could live in and around water. This very fascination is what sparked the idea of becoming a marine biologist. Animals AND water, perfect! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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(Left): <\/em>Nautika holding a fish she caught back home in Buffalo Lake.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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(Right) <\/em>Nautika with a new type of catch (purple sea urchin) while conducting a zooplankton drop at station MR 18.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Although, as you might assume, living on a reservation surrounded by wheat fields and a few lakes, there weren\u2019t a lot of opportunities to explore my passion. Hence, when I came across a flyer for the 2025 TOPAZ\/JASPER internship just a few days before the deadline, I submitted my application as soon as I could. I was so thrilled, I couldn\u2019t imagine getting the chance to kayak with whales on the ocean! It was all I could talk about for weeks on end. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since starting my internship here in Port Orford, I have learned so many new things. During our first couple weeks at the field station, we went through a few different classes and trainings, one of them being a presentation on photo identification by GEMM Lab PhD candidate Lisa Hildebrand<\/a>. Prior to this presentation, I had no idea photos were so important in marine mammal science. During this presentation, I learned about the many different identifiers of a whale and how you can apply them when looking at photos to identify a specific individual. For example, Lisa\u2019s rule of three\u2019s: to confidently ascertain an individual\u2019s ID, at least 3 consistent characteristics between photos must be matched. At the end of this presentation, we even played a guessing game to test our new photo ID\u2019ing skills. (I did pretty well – not to brag or anything.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now with my new photo ID skills, I was excited to capture a photo of a gray whale. On our second day of training, we did spot a whale\u2014but thanks to my newly learned photo-ID skills, I quickly realized it wasn\u2019t the gray whale I was expecting. When the whale first surfaced, I noticed the lack of dorsal knuckles and its distinctly darker body\u2014clear signs it wasn\u2019t a gray whale, but a humpback whale! While it is common to see gray whales from shore along the Oregon coast as they feed in the very nearshore habitat, humpback whales are typically found in much deeper waters, further from shore. Over the last week we have seen a humpback whale within our study site across several days\u2014and we\u2019re not the only ones!  When chatting with the local fisherman pre and post kayak, a few have expressed their own excitement about seeing a humpback so close to shore as well. Throughout our conversations, the question of why a humpback would be so close to shore weighed on our minds, leading me to do my own online research.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To investigate whether these humpback sightings have been of the same individual or multiple different whales, I decided to review the photos we have captured to try and determine a match. Once I conducted a first pass of the photos, I downloaded 10 of the most clear and definite shots and compared the photos using Lisa\u2019s rule of threes. After reviewing the photos, I noticed that the humpback whale\u2019s dorsal hump resembled one from a previous sighting, but I couldn\u2019t find any other distinguishing markings on its body. While I couldn\u2019t confirm we have been observing the same humpback whale, I gained a deeper understanding of the importance of clear, high-quality photos in photo-ID work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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(Left) <\/em>Nautika getting ready to take pictures of whales with camera on our cliff site. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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(Right) <\/em>Picture of humpback whale caught on camera on our 2nd<\/sup> day of training<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

After reading a few articles about humpback whale migration through Oregon, I found a few potential reasons behind this whale\u2019s occurrence close to the shores of Port Orford. During the summer months, humpbacks travel to colder, more nutrient-dense places to feed, often near the shelf break (where the depth of the ocean suddenly gets deeper, around 200 m). Interestingly, the shelf break near Port Orford is not far from shore, and is a known hotspot for foraging humpback whales in the summer (Derville et al. 2022).  Humpback whales filter-feed on krill and small fish, so perhaps enough prey has moved into the waters near Port Orford to attract a humpback so close to shore. Another reason for this humpback to be close to shore could be the effects of climate change. As the waters warm, food distribution changes, causing multiple species, including humpbacks, to change their feeding grounds and migration routes (read more here<\/a>).  Although the humpback sightings are outside the range of our kayak zooplankton sampling stations, it would be interesting to see what prey is in the water that is keeping them around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far, I have learned the importance of photo identification in marine mammal science and the many ways it can be used. I\u2019m especially grateful for Lisa\u2019s fun and insightful presentation at the start of the season and even more surprised by how quickly I was able to put those photo-ID skills into practice. With three weeks left in the field season, I\u2019m excited to keep building on what I\u2019ve learned and to keep growing my skills. And speaking of building, I\u2019m also curious to see how my “kayak muscles” are shaping up by the end of this amazing TOPAZ\/JASPER internship!\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  (Left) <\/em>Nautika and Celest on kayak heading Mill Rocks stations. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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(Right) <\/em>Miranda and Nautika wrapping up kayak training with a celebratory team dab<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Derville, S., D.R. Barlow, C. Hayslip, and L.G. Torres, Seasonal, Annual, and Decadal Distribution of Three Rorqual Whale Species Relative to Dynamic Ocean Conditions Off Oregon, USA.<\/em> Frontiers in Marine Science, 2022. 9<\/strong>: p. 868566.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nautika Brown, GEMM Lab TOPAZ\/JASPER Intern, recent Lake Roosevelt high school graduate  Hi everyone! I\u2019m Nautika Brown, a recent graduate at Lake Roosevelt High School in a small town on the Colville Indian Reservation in Washington.   Growing up in beautiful Eastern Washington, I spent most all my days outside and, from the time I could … Continue reading A Nauti(k)al Journey with Photo ID\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14414,"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":[1],"tags":[195384,635445,835,513,155,1310839],"class_list":["post-6081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-field-work","tag-gemm-lab","tag-internship","tag-marine-mammals","tag-oregon-state-university","tag-topaz-jasper"],"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\/6081","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\/14414"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6081"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6091,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6081\/revisions\/6091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gemmlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}