Month: March 2016

The Curiosity of Giants!

By: Logan Pallin

As you can see Erin’s previous post, the whales have finally showed up. It has been a great last week for us on the water. We went back out to the area where we found all the whales the day before, and low and behold there were no whales around. We found roughly five more whales in the area and were greeted graciously by a young juvenile that put on an amazing displays of energetic surface behaviors.

The whale began by rapidly ascending to the surface in an attempt to thrash its fluke on the surface water. This is a behavior we classify as a peduncle throw. We proceeded several times to stay parallel with the individual in order to collect a biopsy sample, but every time we approached the whale would turn into us and proceed to swim under the boat. At one point and time, the individual proceeded to lie on its back at the surface, thrashing its fluke, allowing us to photograph the individual’s belly. From these photos, and with the help of some colleagues back in North Carolina, we were able to come to the conclusion that this was in fact a young female.

For several more minutes this whale danced at the surface around our boat, often times raising her large pectoral fins out of the water and bringing them down in a swift slap across the water’s surface. Lastly, she swam just within arms length of the stern of our zodiac and then proceeded to roll on her back and lay under us, showing us the extent of her white belly, pectoral fins, and fluke. We finally then collected our sample and drove off, leaving this curious and playful little humpback to engage her curiosity among the other wonders of this Antarctic environment.

This encounter, even when at times had Erin and I a bit nervous, really allowed us to experience the curiosity of these animals. Moreover, we witnessed the extreme finesse, care, and awareness that these animals have over their huge extremities. Never once was the boat bumped or jostled. These are in fact amazingly intelligent and beautiful creatures.

The Laurence M. Gould was back this week. It had spent the last month traveling the northern part of the peninsula with a group of soil scientists who are trying to understand the biodiversity of Antarctic soil and the ecological relationships between those organisms. Most of the station science teams left this morning and are heading back north to Punta Arenas to go back to normal civilization that lies State Side. We still have 22 days here at Station. Still lots of time to collect lots of samples and get some more great data on the whales in the area!

 

Whale there they are

Erin Pickett @ Palmer Station

Here at Palmer, we have expensive acoustic equipment that allows us to see down a hundred meters or so to the bottom of the ocean. If krill or small fish (or the occasional penguin) are beneath us, they’ll show up on our computer screen as fuzzy looking colorful patches suspended in space (or along the seafloor). This technology is kind of analogous to the weather stations we have around Palmer. We look at a computer screen or in this case, turn our marine radios to the ‘weather station’, and we get the wind speed, wind direction, temperature, humidity and air pressure all by pressing one button. So we know where we are by looking at our GPS, we know where the krill is thanks to our fishfinder, and we know what the weather is doing thanks to real-time updates on our radios.

Yesterday morning while Logan and I were taking our first few sips of coffee and looking at the latest weather forecast that is conveniently waiting in our inboxes every morning, there was a man standing on the shoreline by our boat dock. He happened to be one of my graduate advisors, and one of the most senior scientists here at Palmer Station, Bill Fraser. Bill has been studying the environment here for more than twenty seasons, since before most digital technologies. Bill was observing krill along the water’s edge. This was notable, because we have not recorded significant amounts of krill in the vicinity of Palmer Station this season.

Bill mentioned to Logan that the whales might finally arrive today.

Any great field biologist, fisherman, or surfer knows the value of constantly observing the weather, the waves and the sky to know what to expect out of the day. If we are lucky enough, we are able to do this across seasons and years and we’ll even know what to expect from large-scale climate fluctuations like El Niño. Most surfers on the west coast and Hawaii knew the winter surf season would be epic this year, just like many scientists along the Antarctic Peninsula knew it was going to be a big ice year.

Soon after Logan spoke to Bill, we got our gear together and about ten minutes after leaving station Logan spotted blows on the horizon. There were so many blows, so frequently, our first thought was that it might be a large group of killer whales. We hadn’t seen more than one or two humpbacks this month, and had never seen so many individuals at once this season at Palmer. As we approached we started seeing the tell-tale humped dorsal fins arching, and flukes raising above the water as the whales dove.

Logan and I spent the next three hours doing our best to collect biopsy samples and photographs (for photo identification) of each whale. There were nine animals in the vicinity of our boating limit and probably another handful too far away for us to get to. In the end, we collected biopsy samples from seven whales and lost our last bolt amongst a group of four animals travelling into the glare of the sun, out of our boating range as the swell and wind picked up. We attempted to use a handful of nearby Wilson’s storm petrels to guide us to the lost bolt as the birds are attracted to the tissue samples, but we did not find it.

Logan wrote a blog post earlier in the season describing our biopsy sampling procedure and what we will use these samples for: http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/ltercetaceans/2016/01/19/25-mm-sample-45-foot-whale/. In short, each 25mm long sample will allow us to conduct genetic, hormone, and dietary analyses to assess the health and status of this population of humpback whales.

After a full afternoon of whales, we returned to station exhausted and exhilarated.  Over the next month, we will be continuing to search for whales and for krill on our fish finder. In addition to our sophisticated software and instruments, from here on out I’ll take a hint from Bill and use those good ‘ole analog methods i.e. I’ll remember to walk down to the shoreline and get a feel for the conditions.

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(Research activities conducted under the National Marine Fisheries Service permit no. 14809-2)

Lichen what we’re seeing

Erin Pickett @ Palmer Station

Summer has been moving right along here at Palmer Station. While Logan and I haven’t been observing high numbers of whales, we have had the opportunity to see some awesome wildlife and beautiful scenery lately.

While we focus on top predators, there are many other scientists working here at Palmer, all of whom share a focus on studying how climate change is affecting the marine and terrestrial ecosystems in this region.  One science group is studying microorganisms (and their role in O2/CO2 cycles), another focuses on phytoplankton, one is studying an insect (the Antarctic midge), and another is studying the chemical ecology of marine macroalgae and invertebrates.

I am slowly learning about all of these projects. For example, one of the ‘buggers’ walked by our lab yesterday carrying what looked like a glass of ice water and I said “Hey! What are you doing? Are you killing your bugs?” He patiently explained that the Antarctic midge prefers freezing temperatures. Ok, that makes sense. By the way, the Antarctic midge is 2-6mm long and the largest land animal on the Antarctic continent.

We have science talks one night a week at Palmer. Last week after learning about the chemical ecology of the local marine invertebrates and algae, I was nearly convinced to jump ship from team whale and join team macroalgae. A big part of this might be me wanting to go diving, but still. Chuck Amsler (from UAB) gave a great talk about the research that the divers will be doing over the next month.

All in all, we haven’t seen many whales in the past two weeks, but we have found many other plants and animals to keep us entertained and asking questions.

You can learn more about the buggers project here: http://aflyonthepole.com/ and more about the Palmer LTER research components/labs here: http://pal.lternet.edu/research

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