MAIACETUS: 2009

Friday, December 11, 2009

Back from Scotland and Ireland and then yesterday...a sunny, calm day with Transients off the Victoria Waterfront

So things have been quiet on Maiacetus lately...but that is because I was away for the past couple of months; I was travelling on the East coast of Canada and Scotland and Ireland. On October 9th I flew to Quebec City to attend the 18th Biennial Conference on the Biology Of Marine Mammals (see Whale Nerds Unite blog posts about the Whale Nerds whale watching in the St Lawrence and the conference).

After attending the conference I continued my travels in Eastern Canada by visiting family in New Brunswick and my sister who is studying at Concordia in Montreal. Then on November 2nd I flew from Montreal to Edinburgh, Scotland where I travelled, with my parents, from Edinburgh to St Andrews (where I did the Research Masters in Marine Mammal Science course in 2007/08) to Inverness to Plockton (near the Isle of Skye) to Glasgow and then on to Ireland where we visited Dublin and Ireland. It was a great trip and so nice to be enjoying Scotland without the stresses of the masters course!

On Loch Ness...searching for the Loch Ness Monster!

Beautiful Loch Ness lighting!

This coming Wednesday I will be off again to work as a Marine Mammal Observer for a seismic survey in the Gulf of Mexico. This will be a 5 week rotation and while onboard the ship I will be responsible for ensuring there are no marine mammals near the seismic airguns before they are turned on and while they are firing and to inform operators when they can turn them on again once whales have left the safety zone. Since I leave so soon again I was really hoping to see some killer whales, even from the Victoria shore, before departing and yesterday I was very lucky to do so!

Image showing how seismic surveys work (image source)

In the morning I received a report by Mark Malleson that some Transient "mammal eating' killer whales were approaching the Victoria waterfront. I quickly made my way to the shoreline where, along with some other keen whale watchers, I spent over an hour in the cold trying to track down the animals.

Unfortunately, we didn't see them from shore but Mark, who had sailed with his dad to fuel their sailboat in the Victoria Harbour, generously offered me to join them for the ride back to the Royal Victoria Yacht Club. I quickly made my way to the fuel dock and we were soon on our way out of the harbour. Not even 20 minutes after we left the dock Mark spotted fins in the distance and the group of elusive Transients was found! In addition to re-sighting those animals another vessel was on the water and reported another group of Transients to the south of us. After a few looks at the first group we decided to head to the southerly group but picked up a third group en route! Shortly after we left the southerly group Ken Balcomb, of the Center For Whale Research (who both Mark and I have worked with) came out on the Center's vessel and proceeded to do some photo-ID under permit.

Above 2 photos: what a bad day to be out...sunny and calm!

Mark at the helm

(Photo Mark Malleson)

Transients with Victoria Waterfront in background (photo Ken Balcomb, Center For Whale Research)

(Photo Mark Malleson)

Transients passing south of Trial Island (Photo Mark Malleson)

Eastbound (photo Ken Balcomb, Center For Whale Research)

Interestingly one of the calves we sighted was gray/white and likely has Chediak-Higashi syndrome; an inherited syndrome resulting in partial albinism (learn more in Transients: mammal hunting killer whales, Ford and Ellis 1999) (photo Ken Balcomb, Center For Whale Research)

Above 2 photos: the awesome sunset (Mark Malleson)

Great winter lighting!

Mark and his dad deciding what to do next

Above 2 photos: more sunset shots!

Me, happy about such a great sighting!

Heading in to the yacht club for a hot drink!

It was a great day on the water! After looking at his photos at home (I didn't have my camera :-( Mark identified the T68s and T137A along with some others whose IDs have not been confirmed yet. How lucky to be out with so many Transients on a calm and sunny winter day!

Saturday, October 24, 2009

October 11 to 16th, 2009 At the 18th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals

Monday October 12 was the first official day of the 18th Biennial conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals at the Quebec conference centre…and myself and my Whale Nerds friends were very excited to be attending. There were many pre-conference workshops over the weekend and we all participated. I went to the workshop on Ecological Modelling for Marine Mammalogists and Mer, Nat and Jax went to the Global Warming and Arctic Marine Mammals workshop.

The welcoming sign at the conference in the Quebec Conference Centre

At the Ecological Modelling workshop there were talks on topics including: the basics of the ecological modelling of marine mammals, modelling with presence only data i.e. from ‘platforms of opportunity’ such as whale watching boats and ferries, recent work on movement studies using tags and the challenges associated with ecological modelling of marine mammals.

The following describes the workshop from the SMM website:

“There is tremendous interest in applying statistical modeling techniques to the quantitative assessment of marine mammal distribution and habitat use, and our workshop seeks to explore both traditional and the latest methodologies. Our goal is to bring together practitioners that can share their experience with various approaches to ecological modeling by addressing topics ranging from collecting data, selecting the appropriate model, evaluating the model's results, and applying those results in a management scenario.”

And Mer, Nat and Jax learned about the following at the Global Warming and Marine Mammals workshop:

“Knowing how polar ecosystems change with global warming will help to develop strategies for conservation and species management. A reference collection of samples from the complete food web is being developed to build a model of trophic interactions from marine mammals down to nutrients and phytoplankton.

This symposium is relevant to the Society of Marine Mammal Mammalogy's 18th biannual conference. Participants will present and review research results and progress from 2007 and 2008 field activities and discuss how to organize research findings into collaborative science capable of providing an adaptive assessment of climate change effects on Arctic marine ecosystems.”

Here we are at the conference: Me, Jax, Mer and Nat

After a weekend of workshops the conference began Monday October 12 and ran until Friday October 16th. There were many many talks on a variety of topics including: Biologging (tagging) and New Technology, Genetics, Communication, Ecology, Management and Law, Behavioral Ecology, Passive Acoustics, Evolution and Systematics, Conservation, Noise Effects, Physiology, Habitat preference, Genetics, Population Monitoring and Abundance, Distribution among many more.

Most days there were also plenary sessions which included the following talks:

“A purview of marine mammal molecular ecology and the prospects for conservation genomics in the 21st century” – David W. Coltman
“Combining evolutionary and ecological approaches to make sense of pelagic ecosystems from phytoplankton to whales” – by Victor Smatecek
“Big habitats, big studies: Lessons learned from international cooperative studies of wide-ranging large whales” – David Mattila
“The Calvin Project, Endangered Species Recovery Through Education” – William McWeeney, Meredith Houghton and Madison Koos
“F.G. Wood Award Winner: Determination of steroid hormones in whale blow: It is possible” – Carolyn Hogg

In addition to a multitude of talks during the week the daily poster sessions included over 800 posters of marine mammal research all over the world. We were all very inspired by this week full of thought provoking and inspiring presentations and it gave us many ideas to take home with us...I am now more motivated to pursue a PhD project over the next year!

During this week we also enjoyed some of the sights of Quebec City including a "ghost" tour of the Old Town (which is given by a ghost rather than being about ghosts!) a couple of nights at the pub (we enjoyed Saint Alexandre) and wandering around the Old Town.

Here are some pictures of highlights from our stay!

The lovely private room four of us shared at the Hostel International in Quebec City. It was only 500 m from the conference centre with great staff, facilities and breakfast included