SEA Blog

START SOCAL-11 leg II and NEW BLOG SITE!!!

Hi everyone -- two important things to announce here. 

First, we are all aboard the R/V Truth (below) and our sister sailing ship with towed passive acoustics ready to go for the second leg of SOCAL-11 starting tomorrow at dawn.  While it looks like it will be a little windy to start tomorrow, it should be coming down and the longer range forecast looks quite good.  We will be focusing on offshore species like beaked whales and Risso's dolphins if the conditions allow, as well as mysticetes (blue and fin whales) in deeper water areas.  If we get well offshore and without internet acces, it may be a few days before you hear about our progress at the start of this second phase of our project.

 

If you do want to keep track of us through the SEA blog as we report progress on SOCAL-11 from the field, please realize we have made some changes to the location and nature of the blog.  From here on out, please find the SEA blog (and SOCAL-11 blog for the next two weeks) at: http://www.sea-inc.net/blog.  If you subscribe to the SEA blog, you will need to re-subscribe within our new site, which you can do at: http://www.sea-inc.net/feed/rss. 

Finally, we have re-configured the SOCAL-BRS site a little bit with a new landing page and sub-pages for both SOCAL-10 and SOCAL-11 -- please go to www.socal-brs.org.  Thanks for all the interest and support from so many people on this project.  I hope you like the changes and improvements we have made to the blog and website.  We continue to believe that openness and transparency are absolutely essential elements of a responsible research program and we hope you enjoy and learn some things from the material we attempt to try and share in a generally understandable way. 

 

BOEMRE releases workshop report on status of acoustic mitigation and monitoring

Related to the overall effort and progress mentioned in the last post, here is some information on a meeting I attended on acoustic monitoring technologies:

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, Gulf of Mexico Region, announces the availability of a new study report titled: Status and Applications of Acoustic Mitigation and Monitoring Systems for Marine Mammals: Workshop Proceedings (OCS Study BOEMRE 2011-002).

This report releases the proceedings of a November 2009 workshop that explored the capabilities and limitations of using passive and active acoustic systems to monitor and help mitigate adverse impacts of marine mammals in offshore environments.

This publication and technical summary are available for download on the BOEMRE website at http://www.gomr.boemre.gov/homepg/whatsnew/techann/techann.html.

To find additional BOEMRE studies, visit the Environmental Studies Program Information System (ESPIS) . All completed ESP reports are available on-line as full electronic pdf documents, including images and graphics. Technical summaries of over 700 BOEMRE-sponsored environmental research projects, as well as full pdf documents of over 2,000 research reports, are available for online full text search.

If you have any questions about the Workshop Proceedings, please contact Tre Glenn at [email protected].

Special AGU Session: Acoustical Applications for Ocean Observing Systems

Hello everyone.

I wanted me to call to your attention a Special Session at the 2012 AGU Ocean Sciences Meeting in Salt Lake City (http://www.sgmeet.com/osm2012/special_sessions13.asp).  This session continues a number of ongoing efforts, including the International Quiet Ocean Experiment meeting held at UNESCO in Paris last week I attended, regarding the integration of acoustic monitoring capabilities into ocean observing systems.

171: Acoustical Applications for Ocean Observing Systems

Organizers: Bruce Howe, University of Hawaii at Manoa, [email protected]; Sue Moore, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, [email protected]; Brandon Southall, Southall Environmental Associates, Inc., [email protected]

The oceans are largely transparent to sound, hence oceanographic, biological, and signal processing acoustic techniques are primary tools for ocean observation and engineering. The opportunities and value of acoustical observations and techniques within the integrated ocean observing systems are boundless, yet incorporation of these techniques within these systems has been opportunistic and ad hoc. Both regional and international coordination of acoustical applications is essential.  Common passive or active acoustical systems can serve several multidisciplinary scientific and educational purposes, using the power and communications capabilities provided by the observing systems. The costs of acoustical components can be minimized by taking advantage of ongoing implementation and maintenance activities of the ocean observing systems. The enormous challenges of planning, implementing and data management specific to acoustics must be faced to bring acoustical tools to fruition for ocean observing systems. This topical session solicits papers relating to any of the wide-ranging applications of acoustics within the observing systems: engineering, biological, or remote sensing. One aim is to identify common acoustical elements shared by several disciplines, hence to identify those elements that may have priority for immediate deployment. Papers addressing “Data Management and Communications; “ (DMAC) issues are particularly encouraged. (12, 13, 16)

End SOCAL-11 Leg I

We have come to the end of the first leg of SOCAL-11.  We worked offshore the last two days based on the forecast of light winds and calm seas, but this didn't entirely materialize.  We worked up by Santa Barbara Island in relatively low winds but moderate swell, looking and listening for beaked whales in deepwater canyons.  By noon the winds had come up enough to eliminate chances for locating and tagging beaked whales and we switched gears to try for more coastal species in the lee of the northern Channel Islands.  We didn't find them there, but yesterday we found several groups of fin whales, Risso's dolphins, and sighted two beaked whales.  The fog came in though, and it started raining a little, and despite hours of trying with different groups, we didn't manage to tag on our last day.

Nevertheless, the first leg of SOCAL was quite productive, with a total of 22 tags attached to 20 individual marine mammals (blue whales and Risso's dolphins), and 14 total controlled experiments conducted, each with detailed focal observations and monitoring before, during, and after sound transmissions.  I will be posting some additional details and images on our first leg in the coming weeks, and the planning for the second leg starting next month.  Thanks so much for all the people following our progress and for all the feedback.

Brandon Southall, Chief Scientist on behalf of SOCAL-11 team

 

Close...but no cigar

Well our offshore weather forecast didn't really pan out yesterday but we came close on a few priority species today.  We worked up from Catalina by Santa Barbara Island yesterday and had very good weather in the morning and searched for about 8 hours for beaked whales in workable weather, but as we got into the Santa Cruz Basin the wind picked up on top of the swell and other than a few fin whale sightings it was a wash of a day. 

This morning we woke up in the shaddow of a massive cliff under misty fog on the south side of Santa Cruz Island and it was calm.  This area to the south of the northern Channel Islands is relatively sheltered from the prevailaing winds from the northwest and also offers deep water fairly close to shore.  Within an hour we had a group of 5 fin whales with an offshore blue mixed in, some foraging Risso's dolphins and two likely beaked whale sightings.  For a time we had hopes of tagging multiple individuals and a mixed-species CEE in deep water, but ultimately we got in close on the fins a few times but no cigar with them or the blue, the Risso's had neonates in the group meaning we had to pass them up, we never saw the Risso's again.  Heading back to Santa Barbara at the end of Leg I and I will put up a little summary of our accomplishments when we are back in.

Closer on fins...finally good offshore weather

We've had some pretty good conditions in deeper water the last few days and have had success finding baleen whales in deeper water and have spent a lot of time searching for beaked whales as well.  From the picture below you can see the calm conditions we have had in 800-1000m kinds of water.  This has been great in terms of focusing on some key species in areas more like where they might be more likely to encounter real sonar.  For today and tomorrow (our last day of the first leg), we hope to have this weather in 1500m canyons way offshore where we would expect to be more likely to find the deep-diving beaked whales that are an important species in this study.  You can also see in this picture the safety helmets we have been using when tagging large whales. 
   

 

We spent last night on Catalina, but didn't really see it as we arrived after dark and left before sunrise, although we did watch masses of schooling flish flying around being chased by sea lions by our lights.  Kind of an aquatic fireworks display.  We will be out of touch working in the Channel Islands today and tomorrow so this may be the last posting before we finish tomorrow night.  Hopefully the offshore forecasts will ring true.  As we are pulling away from Catalina with bottlenose dolphins flipping out in our quarterwake it looks pretty smooth out here...

 

SOCAL BRS team at work

Hey everyone.  We've been working hard out here for the first 10 days of SOCAL-11, but we have also been having a little fun along the way and thought we would share a few photos from our team (including Cuidado the lucky gator) and places we have been.

 

 

 

   

 

Trying for beakers...got offshore blues

We had good weather offshore today and we tried for most of the day well offshore in good visibility species looking for beaked whales.  We surveyed fairly large areas of offshore banks and basins looking and listening, but didn't have any luck.  We came across several small groups and single blue and fin whales offshore and an aggregation feeding up on the shelf and by the end of the day we found a small group of blue whales feeding in quite deep water well offshore. 

The photo to the right shows a tag on the left side of a blue whale collecting data about the movement and sounds received (and made) by the animal (J. Calambokidis, Cascadia Research, collected under NMFS permit #14534).

We are still aiming for beaked whales and hope to have good conditions tomorrow morning out from San Diego.  However, we are quite interested in testing the differences in responses of marine mammals in the various kinds of habitats in which they live and are exposed to human sounds.  Today's CEE with offshore blue whales was very useful in that regard.

Working offshore

We've had fairly good to excellent seas offshore the past few days and have put in some time trying to work some of our more difficult/less common species like beaked whales and sperm whales.  In some of these offshore areas we might expect to find Risso's dolphins or fin whales as well.  Yesterday we had a number of likely detections of beaked whales with a few brief surface series, but these were single individuals and despite some concerted efforts we didn't manage to tag one. 

We have continued to maintain our mode of flexibility, though and later in the day yesterday as conditions deteriorated offshore we worked back in to nice waters and tagged two blue whales and successfully completed a CEE.  We are a little more than halfway through our first leg here -- 14 tags on blue whales with 8 CEEs and the 1 Risso's tag and CEE.  We'll be trying to work offshore again today -- with a little more fog on us than was the case in the below evening shot of beautiful Dana Point.

Tag and CEE on a Risso's Dolphin

Yesterday we attched one of the new generation DTags on a Risso's dolphin for almost nine hours and conducted a perfect CEE.  This was the longest successful attachment to date with the new version tags on offshore odontocetes and the first on a Risso's.  Below is a shot of the tag riding on the back of the animal who was in a group of about 20 that we followed most of the day.

 

Rissos dolphins are among our focal species for SOCAL-11 experiments.  We conducted one CEE on this species last year in SOCAL-10 and have been hoping for more this year.  This species has also proven somewhat difficult to tag in the past and our tags on last year were for just a few hours, so to get a nine hour deployment spanning several different behavioral modes was pretty exciting.  The tag came off late into the evening, but quite close to our anchorage and we made a beautiful late night ride in very calm seas and a red-yellow moon out to safely retrieve it.