WHEN YOU WISH UPON A DOLPHIN

by oceansadminDolphinsPosted on No Comments
Wishart the dolphin dog

This is the time of year we’re supposed to be packing up our academic lives, and heading into the field for our whale & dolphin work.  We like it.  Our dog, Wishart, loves it.  Our Scottish adventure ends 6 months from now, and while we’ll be sad to see this chapter end, we’re excited for Wishart to get back to work spotting dolphins in BC.  Actually, we need to do some research on our dog, because we’re not sure if he sees, smells or hears the dolphins, but he manages to detect them long before we do.  And he catches small, cryptic groups of dolphins {“ghost dolphins”} that try to sneak by our boat.  Wishart has one, well, let’s be kind and call it a bark, to let us know that there are dolphins around. It’s closer to throat singing than a bark, but it’s our cue that we missed something and need to pay closer attention.  Interestingly, he never makes this sound around humpback or killer whales, minke whales, Dall’s porpoise… He never gets all that excited about any of the species Rob studies.  But show him the dolphin species that Erin studies, and he comes alive.  It’s as though everything is right with the universe and he’s found exactly the task he was born to do.

We hope you get on the water this summer, and that you see all the whales & dolphins we’re missing as we spend a few more months crunching numbers and writing about what we’ve learned in the field over the last few years.  If you happen to see any dolphins, please don’t tell Wishart.

 

Dog at work

OCEAN NOISE: KEY FACTOR IN THE STATE OF THE SALISH SEA

by oceansadminAcoustics, Habitat, Human ImpactsPosted on No Comments

Larry Pynn is publishing a special, six-part series on the State of the Salish Sea.  We are happy for our work to be included.

His piece on 18 April addresses an issue that resonates with us:  using hydrophones [underwater microphones] to measure ocean noise levels, while simultaneously collecting information on whale presence.  We are a small organization, so we really like projects that accomplish two goals for the price of one.  In BC, there has been a long tradition of using hydrophones to study killer whales.  Our colleague, Dr John Ford at DFO, used hydrophones to discover that each killer whale family has its own unique dialect.  That game-changing information launched countless follow-on projects, and has been instrumental in building a case that killer whales, like humans, possess culture.

Of course, many of our colleagues along the BC and Washington coast have been using hydrophones to monitor whale habitat usage for decades.  You’re familiar with most of them (and apologies for missing anyone out).  OrcaLab’s Orca-Live project is one of the most famous, but you should also check out BeamReach, CetaceaLab, Salmon Coast Field Station, Pacific Wild, Center for Whale Research, and the Vancouver Aquarium’s WildWhales program, all of whom use hydrophones to monitor whale usage along the coast.

So what’s new?  Why is our “yet another hydrophone project” different from other studies?  

The key difference is that we are using calibrated systems to measure noise levels.  We are not just listening to whales; we are listening to the whales’ habitat.  And because sound is as important to whales as vision is to us, whale habitat is acoustic habitat.  Think of it as measuring the quality of whale habitat.  We use “pop-ups” from Cornell University’s Bioacoustics Research Program to collect a systematic sample of underwater noise levels.  And we are working with Chris Clark and his team at Cornell to quantify how these sounds might be perceived by fin, humpback and killer whales, and to predict how much of the whales’ calls may be “masked” by chronic ocean noise levels.  The work is very much still in progress.  We are trying to reduce more than 10,000 recordings to a simple take-home message, and that takes time.  But we’re very excited to see the attention that is being paid now to ocean noise as a chronic habitat-level stressor in BC, and we’re anxious for our work to play a role in protecting key habitats for whales and other marine species that rely on a quiet ocean to survive.

Thanks for a great article, Larry.  We look forward to seeing the rest of your series.

We launched our Quiet Ocean Campaign in 2011. Our goal is to put chronic ocean noise on the conservation map in BC. After all, sound is as important to whales as vision is to us.

Pink Moon

by oceansadminDolphins, Habitat, Women in SciencePosted on No Comments

“A Pink Moon is the full moon of April, named for the herb, “moss pink”, or wild ground phlox, which is one of the earliest widespread flowers of the spring. Other names for this month’s celestial body include the Full Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, and among coastal tribes the Full Fish Moon, because this was the time that the shad swam upstream to spawn. “– Farmers Almanac

Pink moon in British Columbia, Canada

 

 

During last April’s pink moon, we were miles and miles up a glacier-rimmed fjord, searching for dolphins.  If you look up Pacific white-sided dolphins in any guidebook, it will tell you that they are found in the open ocean, but something lures these dolphins into inshore waters of British Columbia.  We see these dolphins navigating through the beautifully complex Broughton Archipelago in search of food, mates and a safe place to have their calves.  The attraction must be compelling, because these waters are also home to mammal-eating killer whales.  What drives them to live in a landscape of fear?

 

Pacific white-sided dolphin with killer whale rake marks.

This year, when a big part of me feels like I should be braving the cold in our little, open boat, I’m at the computer going through the tens of thousands of photographs we collected from last year’s trip up Knight Inlet.  We are looking for identifiable dolphins to add to our photo-identification catalogue, so we can learn more about the dolphin population.  While looking for marks in dorsal fins, I was surprised to see the unmistakable signs of killer whale teeth rake marks on one of the dolphins we study.  It’s an exciting piece of information — this dolphin’s story includes the fact that he or she is a survivor of a killer whale attack.  It stayed in Knight Inlet, even after a life-threatening attack.  Our neighbor back home tells me he saw another dolphin become “prey” yesterday in Johnstone Strait.

 

I guess the lesson here is that nothing worthwhile is ever easy.  Knight Inlet is terrific dolphin habitat, but it comes with the risk that killer whales might eat you.  Having a PhD in biology for the University of St Andrews will help me to become a better advocate for dolphin conservation, but it requires me to spend so many months at the computer that all the dolphins start to blur into one big monster fin.  And tonight, as I look at the pink moon over St Andrews, my heart is in Knight Inlet, wondering what I’m missing.