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.

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.

Happy LEAP(S) Year

by oceansadminDolphins, Populations, Women in SciencePosted on No Comments

Happy Leap(s) Year!

Here, we call it LEAPS Year, because that’s the snazzy acronym for our dolphin project:  Lagenorhynchus Ecology, Abundance and Population Status.

Mom and baby dolphin leaping in British Columbia, Canada

This time of year, our dolphin research involves a lot of time in front of the computer.  We’re training computers to screen thousands of hours of underwater recordings to detect dolphin calls in an increasingly noisy ocean.  And, learning more about how these dolphins communicate with one another.

While that set of computers is chugging away and the dolphin calls are analyzed, the rest of our team is going through more than 10,000 dolphin photographs to see if we see anyone we know.  While a lot of these dolphins look alike, some fraction of the individuals have unique natural markings that allow us to identify individuals, like mugshots or fingerprints.  (FIN-erprints?)

I know.  It sounds like Dolphin TMZ, except that this is for a good cause.  We use these photographs to develop an encounter history for hundreds of individuals, and {insert fancy math here} estimate how many dolphins there are in the population, and whether the population is going up or down.  We use that information to assess the health of the population, like a checkup at the doctor’s office, and that allows us to make recommendations about whether we need to change human activities to protect these dolphins, or if they’re doing just fine without our help.

What’s next?  Right now, we’re trying to raise funds for an intensive dolphin field season this summer.  We’re shaking out the sofa cushions and collecting frequent flyer miles  to make sure we can spend some time in the field to collect the last few photographs I need to finish my PhD on Pacific white-sided dolphin ecology.  If you’re able to help this project, or know someone who can, please get in touch.

It takes a village to do this work, and we are thrilled to be working with a team of smart, talented, eagle-eyed women.  Thanks, Christie, Marie, Nicole & Melissa!  It’s great working with you on this!

Finally, do you spend time on the water in the Salish Sea?  If you see dolphins, let us know:  http://www.seadocsociety.org/dolphin-study  If we find a match to the dolphins in our catalogue, it will tell us about movement patterns across the Canada-US border, and whether our two countries need to work more closely together to protect these dolphins and their habitat.

Happy Leap(s) Year, everyone!