We have come to the end of the second leg and field season for our SOCAL-10 project. In a word it was amazing. We attached 62 tags of six different types to 44 individuals of 9 marine mammal species. We also conducted 28 complete sound exposure experiments with individuals of 4 species, including two (Risso's dolphin and Cuvier's beaked whale) that had never been previously tested. We had a number of other firsts in this project as well, and demonstrated that our somewhat lighter mode of operation than previous related studies can be effective, at least in the areas where we were operating and for the species we were testing. Clearly we were very fortunate in the weather and number of animals present during this study. What we were doing is quite difficult and many things have to go right for it to be successful. We had the right tools and some outstanding people, but we did have fortune on our side most of the time as well. Future studies may not necesssarily experience the same rates of tagging or species diversity.
Over the next few months we will be pulling all of the results together into a project report that should be available late in the year or early in 2010. There will be postings on this blog and also the SOCAL-10 website www.sea-inc.net/SOCAL10. Additional information will also be made available there and announced here intermittently and project team members will be speaking in various venues about the project in the coming months. The SEA blog will begin to include some postings on other subjects in the interim; comments, questions, and suggestions are always welcome, including queries about how things are coming with the SOCAL-10 data analysis and SOCAL-11 planning.
There is no way to sufficiently thank or acknowledge all those responsibel for the accomplishments we managed in the project. Suffice it to say we had an incredible team of devoted, talented, and fun people who came together to be a part of something very special. Thank you everyone - you know who you are.
Photo credit: B. Southall
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