Tag Archives: Robert E. Malouf Marine Studies Scholar

Thar She Blows!

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Hello Again Sea Grant Readers,

Michelle Fournet checking in with an update about the marine mammals of our Oregon Coast.  In my first blog entry (where I introduced myself as one of the 2013 Malouf Fellowship recipients) I told you a little about the marine mammal survey that I’m conducting along the Oregon Coast. Well I wanted to follow up with a short synopsis of what we’ve seen and who’s been along for the ride.

We’ve been conducting surveys on at least a monthly basis — more when the weather cooperates.  This may seem intermittent, but we had good the good fortune to go out quite a few times during the winter months, allowing us to conduct one of the first ever rigorous marine mammal surveys on our coast during that season. We’re looking for signs of all marine mammals, but I’m particularly interested in odontocete species (dolphins and porpoises).  So far we’ve seen harbor porpoises on nearly every survey, we’ve seen Dall’s porpoise on many of our surveys (including one glorious bow riding event), and we’ve seen at least one species of common dolphin.

I’m interested in these species in particular because they are commonly described as sound sensitive.  Our coastal waters are home to bustling marine industry, the lifeblood of many of our coastal communities.  Vessel traffic, marine research, tourism, sustainable energy development, and more all produce noise.  Sound travels faster and further in the marine environment.  On this one hand this makes sound the ideal sensory modality for marine communication, on the other it also means the ocean is particularly vulnerable to noise pollution.  The input of anthropogenic noise, or man-made noise, may alter the behavior of marine mammal species that rely on sound to navigate, communicate, or forage.

The first step to assessing species resilience (a key tenet in the application of ecosystem based management) is knowing how much these sound sensitive species are currently overlapping with industries that produces noise, and how that overlap is likely to change as we make decisions about how to develop our ocean resources.  All of this research is firmly rooted in the answering the question: who’s there and when?

I’ve been fortunate to expand my research team over the past few months.  We have a number of volunteers from the community of Newport as well as students from OSU staffing the Elakha as she makes her coastal surveys.  In conjunction with a marine bird survey, conducted under the leadership of M.S. student Jess Porquez and her advisor Dr. Rob Suryan of the Hatfield Marine Science Center, we were able to mount a large scale training initiative to get volunteers prepared for their time on the water.

Lastly, in thanks to the Malouf Fellowship, I will be attending the Northwest Student Chapter Meeting for the Society of Marine Mammalogy this coming May.  It will be a great opportunity to present some of the work that I’m pursuing as a grad student, as well as rub elbows with other marine mammoligist students.  Meeting and collaborating with other students in the field is priceless.  We are often facing the same problems, and in collaboration can brainstorm some effective solutions.  Further, it’s always nice to spend a weekend with ocean-minded folk, watch a few whales, and talk shop.

Cheers!

Michelle

A new hat

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A few weeks ago I went to a small luncheon in Corvallis; it was there that I received, as a gift, a new hat.  It’s a blue baseball cap with the words “Oregon Sea Grant” across the front.  As you know, baseball caps are particularly well suited to a number of uses: (1) Baseball playing, (2)  Keeping the sun out of one’s eyes , and (3) Keeping the rain off of one’s face.  Tomorrow when I head out on the ocean my brand new Oregon Sea Grant baseball cap is going to take a beating… and I won’t be playing baseball.

My name is Michelle Fournet.  I’m a PhD student in Oregon State University’s department of Fisheries and Wildlife, and a proud recipient of a 2013 Robert E. Malouf Fellowship.  My lab, the Oregon State Research Collective for Applied Acoustics, or ORCAA for short, uses sound (acoustics) to study marine organisms.  My research in particular is centered around the cetacean species that inhabit Oregon’s near coastal oceans.  The order Cetacea includes whales, dolphins, and porpoise- and we have many of them here in Oregon.  How many exactly? We’re not yet sure.

Part of my PhD research is aimed at identifying what cetacean species regularly use Oregon’ near coastal ocean, and when they seem to be here.  To answer this question I’m taking a two prong approach that, at first glance, sounds a lot simpler than it really is:  I’m going to look for them and I’m going to listen for them.

I’m conducting visual surveys along Oregon’s continental shelf with a team of observers, binoculars, float coats, and cameras.  We’re hopping on board with other labs as they take cruises to collect biological and oceanographic data out of Newport Oregon.  We perch ourselves on the bow of OSU’s R/V Elakha and spot whales, dolphins, and porpoise whenever the vessel is underway- rain or shine, wind and waves, if the boat goes out we try and get on it!  We’re using a line transect sampling protocol and hope to be incorporating photo identification into the project.  Both of these methods allow us to ultimately identify what species are present and to calculate species abundance.  If we are able to sample throughout the year we can also address questions about seasonal and diel variability, ask questions about larger scale processes, and paint a more comprehensive picture of our whale, dolphin, and porpoise communities.

This is only part of the method, however.  While looking from the bow of the boat can be a very effective method for documenting mammals, porpoises and dolphins can be difficult to spot under even the best conditions.  To compliment our visual surveys we have plans to launch multiple hydro-acoustic platforms that will record oceans sounds for analysis.  Cetaceans are highly vocal.  Baleen whale species produce some of the loudest calls on the planet, that may be capable of traveling across ocean basins.  Odontocete species utilize echolocation for navigation and foraging, and produce whistles under various social situations. However, high frequency odontocete calls may only be detected in the range of meters, and low-frequency baleen whale calls may be masked by anthropogenic or ocean noise.  What we have in the wings, is a few technologies that will help us work around these problems to get clear recordings of cetacean vocalizations.

Our hope is that the combination of the two methods will yield sufficient data to form a comprehensive understanding of who is really out there.  Why do we want to know?  Well… I’d love to tell you all about it (and I’m sure I will in my next post!).  But for now, I have a rainy  boat ride to prepare for, and I need to find my hat.

Greetings!

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Greetings oceanophiles! As this is my first blog post as a Sea Grant scholar, I feel I should give a little background about myself. I am just beginning my second year as a Ph.D. student with Drs. Tawnya Peterson and Joseph Needoba at Oregon Health & Science University in Beaverton, OR. My degree track is Environmental Science and Engineering, with a focus on Estuary and Ocean Systems. I have always loved the Pacific Northwest, and am constantly amazed that I get to study it for a living.

So what am I actually doing? The goal of my research is to identify links between pH and pCO2 concentration in the water and population dynamics of harmful algal blooms (HABs) in the northern California Current system. My research specifically focuses on the marine dinoflagellate Alexandrium. This little guy is the alga that is primarily responsible for paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) events off the west coast of North America. Alexandrium produces saxitoxin, an extremely potent neurotoxin. Shellfish are filter feeders, and accumulate toxins when they feed on HAB species in the surrounding water. When there is an increased number of Alexandrium in the water (as frequently happens in the summer months), saxitoxin builds up to dangerous levels in the shellfish and can cause paralysis in humans and animals. What I want to do is discover whether there is a link between the pH/pCO2 content of the water and population dynamics and toxin production of Alexandrium.

I expect to be spending a lot of time on boats in the next few years, stalking the wild Alexandrium through the Columbia River estuary and out on the coast, but I will probably spend far more time in the lab. To that end, I am in the process of building a chemostat culture system, which will grow algae at a constant rate in a nutritionally static environment. Influx and efflux of media to and from the culture vessel are synchronized to the growth rate of the algae to maintain a constant growth rate.

 

The constant influx of fresh media and efflux of waste will ensure that the nutrient load of the culture vessel remains constant. I also designed the system to automatically monitor and control pH using a custom made pneumatic manifold that will change the pH of the culture vessel by bubbling it with CO2 gas. The monitoring will be accomplished by a Labview program that will also allow for remote monitoring of the system, and send will me alarms if/when something goes wrong. I have already finished the first iteration of the chemostat system and am in the process of working out the bugs (waste overflows, variable pump rates, etc.).

I’m excited to see where this year will take me and to see what new adventures lie in wait, both in the lab and out on the water. Tallyho!