Mom and baby dolphin

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 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.

Earth Hour 2012

We spent a very quiet, peaceful Earth Hour in a small village by the sea in Scotland.  Wherever you are this year, we hope you find an hour to unplug and reflect.

Check out these earth-friendly tips from the people at Bullfrog Power and some of their customers.

We've been spending way too much time in front of the computer lately. This quote from Edward Abbey reminds us why we do the work we do.

“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am — a reluctant enthusiast… a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.”

- Edward Abbey

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.

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!

The Voyager space mission included humpback whale song with other sounds representing life on Earth

Generally, humpbacks sing on their breeding grounds (in Hawaii and Mexico), and are less vocal on their feeding grounds, although they do make grunts and other calls to coordinate feeding activities.  Our Quiet Ocean Campaign involves measuring underwater noise levels to see how much of these calls could be masked by chronic noise levels from commercial shipping and other human activities.  We were thrilled to hear humpbacks, well, “singing” on BC’s north coast feeding grounds in late summer.

So.  Two things:

1.  This is a recording of humpback whales singing in Douglas Channel.  We thought you might like to hear it.  We’ve saved it in M4R format for iPhones and MP3 format for most other smart phones.  Right-click or control-click and “save as” to your computer or smart phone, and iTunes will let you convert it to a ringtone.  Every phone is different, so apologies if it’s not straightforward to use as a ringtone on other systems, but please leave a comment if you have tips for making it accessible on other systems.

DOWNLOAD RINGTONE HERE

Zack Morris wishes he had a humpback whale song ringtone for that cell phone.

2.  Ship noise has the potential to mask these sounds.  Here is an animation (made by our colleagues at Cornell) of the acoustic footprint of one large container ship transiting Vancouver Island.  In our acoustics study, we’re finding that Douglas Channel has some of the lowest levels of shipping noise in BC.  But that could all change soon if industrial development applications are approved to expand shipping activity into and out of Kitimat.  Our research is focused on measuring how much acoustic masking whales experience from current levels of ship traffic, how much more masking we could expect if shipping levels increased, and ideally, how we can make important habitats quieter for whales.

But we’ll save the lecture for next time.  For now, let us know what you think of the humpback recording.

Whale you be my Valentine? I dolphinately will! Illustration by Leafeon via Quid Pro Quo on Tumblr

Love prompts us to do brave, romantic and sometimes foolish things.  To paraphrase Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, today we’re asking ourselves:  How do I love thee, Ocean?  Let me count the ways.  We came up with 5.  On Valentine’s Day this year, here are a five healthy, sane ways to show your love for the ocean.

“They do not love that do not show their love”
Shakespeare, from Two Gentleman of Verona

1. Say No to plastics:  Marine wildlife accidentally eat and ingest plastics in the ocean, which blocks their stomachs and can cause them to starve.  Alternatively, they can get tangled in plastic, which causes them to suffer and suffocate.  Either way, it is a huge problem.  What can you do?

♥ Use re-useable grocery and shopping bags.  More and more cities and small towns are banning plastic bags.  Be ahead of the curve and pack a Chico bag or other tote everywhere you go.

♥ Sip your water from sleek, BPA-free water bottles (we love these from Kleen Kanteen) or other re-usable bottle.

♥ Straws suck! Consider going straw free when indulging in your next cocktail (it will cut down on pesky mouth wrinkles).  If you’re married to straws, channel your inner Nacho Figueras by using these Oprah-approved stainless steel straws.

2. Eat organic and local:  The killer whales we study in the Pacific Northwest are some of the most contaminated marine mammals on the planet.  No wonder they are endangered! Toxins from pesticides, antibiotics, and fertilizers used in conventional farming practices eventually find their way into our oceans, into the fish the we and the whales eat and eventually into our bodies where they cause harm.  Luckily, you can help by:

♥  Buy organic whenever you can.  If organic is not an option, stay away from the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen and focus on the Clean Fifteen.

♥ Shop at your local farmer’s markets (find yours here) and choosing minimally packaged foods when you shop!  While in Scotland, we love going to our local farm shop where we actually see the fields where our food grows!

♥ Dine out at restaurants that include local and organic menu items.  Places like Chipotle are relatively inexpensive, and check out their extraordinary commercial on factory farming.

3. Sustainable Seafood:  Bycatch in fishing nets poses one of the largest threats to the survival of whales and dolphins on the planet.  Each day, thousands of dolphins drown in fishing nets.  There are standards, but they vary worldwide, which is why it is important to make informed decisions.  At home in the Pacific Northwest, our research has shown that harbour porpoise may be at risk from bycatch in gillnet fisheries in the Salish Sea, and this warrants additional research.  Porpoise caught in hook-and-line fisheries (e.g., trolling) are unlikely to cause much marine mammal bycatch.

♥ Choose sustainable seafood with a free guide from the Vancouver Aquarium or US regional guides available for free from the Monterey Bay Aquarium

♥ Choose wild salmon, never farmed salmon

4. Buy less stuff and reduce impacts of global shipping: Noise in the ocean has increased in some areas ten-fold over the last few decades.  Why?  More than 90% of the things we buy in North America are shipped from overseas, using massive container ships that produce a lot of noise underwater.  The ocean soundscape is now dominated by the noise of these distant ships.  This is bad news for whales, dolphins, fish and other marine life that depend on sound to communicate, find mates and food.  Think about this tonight while you’re trying to hear your Valentine’s sweet nothings over dinner in a crowded restaurant.  How can you help?

♥ Buy locally made products whenever you can or join Patagonia’s Common Threads Initiative

♥ Buy gifts on Etsy

♥ Make your own gifts!  There are thousands of amazing DIY project ideas on Pinterest

♥ Check out our Quiet Ocean Campaign.  We’re working hard to keep quiet places quiet for whales and dolphins.   

5. Share the love:

♥ Tweet about this post or like it on Facebook by clicking on the sidebar.

♥ Leave a comment on our website to share more ideas for showing your ocean love.

♥ Subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated on ocean issues by entering your email address in the box in the upper right corner of this page.

♥ Make a tax-deductible donation to support our research, conservation and education initiatives to protect whales, dolphins, sharks and other marine life.  Or, donate frequent-flyer points to Aeroplan’s Charitable Pooling Account for Oceans Initiative. This helps us cut the cost of doing the work we do.  Thanks for your support!  We wish you and your loved ones a very Happy Valentine’s Day!