Fifty Shades of Grey

by oceansadminDolphins, Women in SciencePosted on No Comments

It rains a lot in the rainforest.  Even when the rain lets up, photographing grey dolphins swimming through grey water under a grey sky has its challenges.  Our camera is often pushed to its limits.  Out in the snow, rain, mist or fog falls in our little open boat, we dream of sunnier habitat.  They do have dolphins in Mexico, after all.  But, the dolphins we study here in British Columbia, Pacific white-sided dolphins, have decided this is home.  And, while it’s true, they do have closely-related cousins in Mexico, we suspect these dolphins are homebodies.

We’re glad they like it here.  Although we travel a lot for work, we’re homebodies too.  The thousands of photos we take are helping us figure out where these dolphins call home.  With each photograph of each individual dolphin, we have a data point that can help us tell the dolphins’ stories.  The more times we capture an individual on film, the more times it enters our catalogue, and skipping over some math, that tells us how well the dolphin population is doing.  Do they need protection or is the population doing just fine without our help?  It also gives us clues about dolphin movement and whether they remain inshore or go exploring in pelagic waters.

Thanks to the generous support of contributors to the Beyond Miles Aeroplan Program, all the wonderful supporters from our Dolphinpalooza fundraising campaign, and a lot of friends at home, we are conducting another field season this August.  We’re pretty anxious to get home, and see what’s changed since the last time we saw the dolphins.

WHEN YOU WISH UPON A DOLPHIN

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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

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.

A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

by oceansadminDolphins, WhalesPosted on No Comments
Please check out our Pinterest boards

 

Maybe it’s a sign that we’re spending too much time in front of our computers these days, but it’s been fun to post some of our favourite whale & dolphin pictures on Pinterest.  Pinterest is a wildly popular and addictive website that allows you to pin, post & share photographs.  It has allowed us to reminisce about some of our favourite days on the water, and daydream about the projects we’re doing next.  Fair warning:  we have plenty of dolphin material to work with.  Erin and her friends are going through 10,000 dolphin photographs now to assemble a catalogue of mugshots of individual dolphins for her PhD project.

Please check out our Pinterest boards if you want to see more about the whales and dolphins we study, and the products that make field work a little more fun.