Category: Field Diaries (Page 3 of 3)

Seal Team Kickoff | Field Diaries – Weddell Seal Team

February 29, 2016 / Allison Cusick

Welcome to Field Diaries – Reflections of Life in the Field

Field diaries, or subjective reflections, are just as informative and useful as objective research field notes and serve as an important avenue in outreach connecting scientists and science to the public.

This week Woman Scientist is featuring anecdotes about field life from the perspectives of Kaitlin Macdonald and Erika Nunlist, two team members with the Weddell Seal Population Study (2015) based out of Erebus Bay, Antarctica.

Kaitlin Macdonald is a current M.S. student at Montana State University and has worked on research projects since 2012. She joined the Weddell seal project in 2014 and is now in her 2nd year being advised by Jay Rotella, Robert Garrott and the project’s co-leader with Terrill Paterson for the field crew. She holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies, a B.S. in Economics and has also done field work with mountain ungulates and small mammals..

Erika Nunlist graduated in 2015 from Montana State University with a B.S. in Conservation Biology & Ecology and a Minor in GIS. She has worked as a wildlife technician on Sandhill cranes, Long-billed curlews, small mammals, mountain goats, and sage grouse and is exceptionally excited for her first year on ‘the ice’ researching Weddell seals.

The Ross Sea is one of the few pristine marine environments remaining on this planet. One of the most productive areas of the Southern Ocean is located in Erebus Bay and hosts the most southernly population of breeding mammals in the world, the Weddell seal. Over 20,586 marked individuals have been intensively studied since 1968 and provide an excellent opportunity to study the links between environmental conditions and demographic processes in the Antarctic.

The Weddell Seal Field Team has a huge job during the busy pupping season. Crew members work long days, traveling far and wide over the sea ice looking for seals. Researchers tag, weigh and re-weigh pups and adult seals as well as take genetic samples for analysis back in the lab.

To put the season in perspective here are a few statistics from Kaitlin:

Set 18 miles of flagged road on the sea ice.
Tagged over 650 Weddell seal pups in our study area.
Tagged 6 pups at White Island.
Enrolled 173 pups in the mass study.
Weighed a total of 69,708 lbs. worth of pups.
Deployed and collected 122 temperature logging tags.
Counted 1,444 tagged animals in our largest survey.
Have photogrammetry mass assessment projects for
40 Weddell females.

Luckily for us, the scientists sneak extra time out of their busy day to capture photographs and videos which document the research and their experiences.

We begin this Field Diaries Series 1 with an entry from Kaitlin Macdonald.

Enjoy!

If you would like to help support this project, head on over to their campaign on Experiment! They only have 10 days left to reach their goal!

Dec. 8, 2015

Howdy!

Well this is my first and probably only update from Antarctica. We have had a hell of a season so far and we still have a week left. I had the honor of helping the PhD student on the project Terrill lead the best Antarctic crew to date. Photo courtesy of our advisor Jay who came down with the other PI on the project Bob to help us tag pups for a few weeks.

I guess we will start at the beginning. We were pretty lucky with flights to the ice, we were only delayed 1 day in New Zealand and we arrived on a beautiful clear evening.

We were in McMurdo for the first week going through trainings compiling gear and preparing for our field season. Last year I was in bed well before the sun would dip down to the horizon, this year I was able to see a few sunsets before the sun stopped dropping down to the horizon. Pictured below is the Royal Society Range.

One of our trainings was crevasse rescue. We do this training because we have aggregations of seals on either side of the base of the Erebus Glacier tongue. This is a weird grey area for us to travel in, it’s technically not glacier but it is an area that doesn’t break out with the sea ice resulting in larger cracks and is more prone to calving and ice falls. We do the training as an extra precaution for entering this area. In our training pictured below we had to pull our instructor out of a crevasse he had rappelled into earlier, using a pulley system and snow anchors.

Early in the season there were large congregations of seals at the ice edge. We spent an afternoon surveying these seals to make sure there were not a large number of females with pups we were missing. While we were at the ice edge we saw a storm petrel fishing and a group of emperor penguins swimming along the edge. They look surprisingly like loons in the water.

This year we have seen many more penguins around camp, it seems this might be due to the ice edge being much closer. These guys were walking through camp one evening. We have started seeing snow petrels as well, which is quite exciting considering we didn’t see any last year.

We had such an incredible season. We had a record number of pups born and tagged in our study area. The old record was 608 and I think to date we have tagged 658. It is likely this spike in pup numbers could be a strong cohort of seals reaching reproductive age and having pups of their own. We have also weighed a record number of pups (69,708 lbs) and have had great success taking photos of moms, which is awesome news for my thesis!

During the second half of our season we do surveys of our study area every 5 days. This involves checking tags of every seal you encounter writing them in a field notebook and inputting them in a hand held computer. This is no small feat when you have 1600 seals and 6 people. When you have co-workers like Erika who can survey with a smile it makes the task immensely easier.

The pups are rapidly transitioning from the awkward molting period, which I liken to middle school to fully molted and weaned. The little lady on the right had already made it out to the open water and was lounging in the pack ice.

Speaking of records, we may have come close to breaking a record number of snowmobiles this year. It is nearly unavoidable down here but for some reason welds on the frames and suspension were breaking quite often. When a sled breaks in the field we have to load it onto a Siglin sled and cargo strap it down before pulling it to town. This particular instance we were out of cargo straps and improvised with bungee cords!

We have been very busy wrapping up our season. We visited both colonies on the edge of the Erebus Glacier Tongue one last time to tag any pups we may have missed.

Mandatory glamour shot of the crew!

We also made a helicopter trip out to a population of seals that are trapped at White Island by the Ross Ice Shelf. The ice shelf broke out incredibly far sometime in the 1950’s. The distance from the ice edge to White Island was short enough for seals to colonize the Island. The ice froze again and has never broken out far enough for the seals to survive the swim to open ocean or a breathing hole in the sea ice. This population shows signs of inbreeding and is quite small. We tag animals and take genetic samples at White Island twice a year. We tagged this little guy and 2 other pups, which is a lot of pups for this time of year at White Island.

We have been reminded how soon our season is coming to an end by the rapidly warming temperatures. It has been above 30 degrees for the past week or so, with some days near 40 degrees. While it feels wonderful to only wear a baselayer under our jackets the sun has not been so kind to the sea ice. Slush pools and cracks are growing daily and our camp is slowly sinking into the ice. It isn’t too alarming as the ice is melting from the top so we still have 88 inches before we hit the ocean. It does make navigating camp difficult with calf deep puddles. We set-up a path of wood blocks around camp so you don’t have to risk getting your socks wet anytime you venture out your door. In this picture Eric and Mike are navigating around the largest pool which has formed outside of our gear hut.

Well folks that is all I have for you. Thank you for reading this far, I hope it gave a small glimpse into our lives down here. Our huts are being pulled today and then we spend the rest of the week packing, cleaning and returning our gear before taking off from the ice!

-Kaitlin Macdonald

All photos obtained under B-009, Permit number: 2013-007, NSF, Antarctica

Thanks for reading!

Be sure to catch the second post in our Field Diaries Series, coming tomorrow!

If you would like to help support this project, head on over to their campaign on Experiment! They only have 10 days left to reach their goal!

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Ocean Science Floods the Ferry

October 28, 2015 / Allison Cusick

Street Smarts: Ocean Acidification from Pop-Up Science on Vimeo with Washington State Ferries, Seattle-Bainbridge Island.

Street Smarts by Pop-Up Science

Part improv, part educational outreach, Pop-Up Science Street Smarts Series are live, impromptu demonstrations by local scientists that appear in very unconventional places. They represent a new, experimental form of science education and outreach aimed at opening up “surprising scenes of science” for public interaction and discussion.

On September 13, 2015, Pop-Up Science, a Seattle-based pop-up museum, brought “ocean science to the ocean.”

Founder, Nina Arens, along with oceanographers Rachel Vander Giessen, Allison Lee, and film crew extraordinaire Alex Ellis, Darcy Moynahan and William Pierce, stormed the unsuspecting passengers of Washington State Ferries with microscopes, maps, and regional oceanographers.

“It’s easy to think of the ocean as a big vast body of empty water that doesn’t need much attention. The ocean naturally acts as Earth’s sink for carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, helping to keep the balance of carbon that has existed in the ecosystem in flux for over millions of years. But over the last 250 years, that CO2 balance has gotten really out of whack—and the ocean needs our help….We wanted to give Seattle an opportunity to learn about ocean acidification and phytoplankton so that they might consider how they can best help the Puget Sound.”

This event was a great success with passengers on the ferry and got quick press with the Bainbridge Island residents as well as tweets from the Washington State Ferries Twitter feed.

Pop-Up Science is planning for more impromptu Street Smarts events so be sure to follow them on their website, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @popupsci.

For more in-depth information on the ocean acidification issue, the science, and educational resources, check out these external websites:

Washington Ocean Acidification Center
Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems (NANOOS)
Applied Physics Laboratory – Ferries for Science

To read more about who the awesome contributors to this video were, click here and you can also check out an interview done with Nina for this website here.

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Why I Studied Parrots in Mexico

October 22, 2015 / Allison Cusick

I wanted experience. I wanted adventure. I wanted to be a field biologist.

I had gotten a taste for that life during two previous jobs I had worked: one season tracking squirrels in Eastern Washington, and one season tracking song birds in urbanized areas within Seattle. I had been filling the in-between-season field jobs baking for a friend’s start up Swedish Bakery and I found that I loved using my hands, baking, and eating my failed experiments, but it wasn’t my passion. It wasn’t field biology.

I had subscribed to a bird jobs list serve and constantly weeded through all the advertised opportunities as soon as they rolled in. There seemed to be so many out there, yet I was coming up short on ideas. Some were in states I didn’t want to live in. Some were studying animals I didn’t care to study. None seemed to be at all lucrative. At that time, age 26, I was married and that also limited my range of exploration. I felt I needed to stay ‘close to home’ for the sake of having a relationship. Requiring a wanna-be-field-biologist to limit the range of stomping ground to urban Seattle proved very tricky. Not to mention, I was born with the wanderlust bone.

If I was going to spend a couple months doing a seasonal job I might as well go big and go international! I started to look through those bird job postings that were short-term in other countries. I came upon one position in Peru. The woman wanted help during the season mist-netting birds and I thought it sounded fantastic. I applied AND interviewed. It turns out the graduate student in charge of hiring decided upon someone who already had previous extensive bird experience. I had experience mist-netting songbirds in Seattle but she wanted someone more familiar with her particular bird species.

I felt frustrated. Not to mention inadequate! It seemed that everyone wanted someone who was trained, but no one wanted to train anyone! Understandably, some projects are on tight deadlines and taking time to train people does detract from the progress of the research. I had seen workshop opportunities come through the list serve which taught the skills for bird research but those typically charged $400-500 and as a poor field-biologist-wanna-be there was no way I could afford that. What was I to do?!

Keep Looking

I came upon a job posting for field biologists to go to Mexico and study the Maroon-fronted parrot. Camping in the mountains? Learning Spanish? Hanging out with parrots? Sign me up! Only one problem… it was volunteer. So I would get no money AND I would have to pay my way there. But once in country, I wouldn’t have to pay for food or lodging. Interesting. I applied despite this not being a paid-position and was ecstatic when asked to come down for two months (if you ever want to feel worthy and needed, apply to as many volunteer gigs that ask for your money. They will always want you, naturally, and it will wash away the pain of rejections from any other opportunity you tried for and didn’t get.). This time frame would span halloween and my birthday, but I jumped on the opportunity. This was my first experience with international field biology and I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect.

How Could I Afford an Un-Paid Volunteer Position

As excited as I was, I’m honestly not sure if I would have taken the opportunity had I not been married with the financial support of my at-that-time husband. How do people make this contract field biologist thing happen when so many of the opportunities are volunteer based?! (Disclaimer: I’ve done a lot of volunteer jobs over the last 9 years since graduating undergrad, paying with my own money. Even though I agree with this man’s thoughts that volunteer wildlife “jobs” are a bit on the exploitive side, I do not regret any of them. They do count as experience on a resume and I can at least feel good knowing I’ve given back my time and dollars to help other researchers in wildlife/conservation field (its notorious for being tight on funding). I just keep telling myself that some day it will all count for something.)

None-the-less, I was feeling so stagnant and agitated not being able to gain experiences in field biology that I figured, “What the heck, I’ll just go for this even though its volunteer and hopefully I won’t be shooting myself in the foot or setting myself back career-wise.”

Off to Mexico

I didn’t know a lick of Spanish before going, so I brought a pocket dictionary and Spanish for Dummies. I also started listening to Pimsleur Spanish Language CDs from the library, which I highly recommend to anyone wanting to learn any language.

I arrived in Monterrey, Mexico, alone, with three days to kill before I met my team. The lodging I stayed in had been rented out to a Peace Corps kid and it was hot and muggy. The kind of muggy that clings to you throughout the night. The other field biologists I would be working with, Sarah Brown and el jefe Rene Valdes, had already been on the job out in the field for a month before I arrived.

We would be working on a project in Cumbres de Monterrey National Park studying the breeding behavior of the Maroon-fronted parrot (Cotorra serrana oriental (Rhynchopsitta terrisi)) run by scientists at The ITESM Campus Monterrey.

My Field Partner

Sarah and I hit it off immediately. I remember many things about our time together but there are three main stories I like to tell:

Story 1: Sarah had a passion of hunting down and eating every single junk food item we had stashed on days it was too foggy and cloudy to see any nesting cliffs. We would plug in the laptop, huddle under blankets, and eat snack bar after snack bar, cookie pack after cookie pack. Until there was no junk food left. Rationing was not in her vocabulary.

Story 2: When we were back in the city refueling from our 1-2 weeks out in the field Sarah loved watching scary movies…while eating junk food, obviously. Once, we attempted to bake a box of brownies in a skillet that we put in a brand new oven we weren’t even sure turned on. After watching this brownie slowly cook for over two hours we realized the best the oven did was reach preheat and we devoured the crusted edges and left the gooey middle. I discovered gooey brownie batter is not as delicious as cookie batter and I discovered that horror movies are really not as scary as you believed they were when you were a child.

Story 3: I suppose with all that junk food eating you won’t be surprised to hear the last story. Sarah also ran. A lot. Every. Single. Day. In fact. You have to understand that the areas of Mexico we were in only gave way to bumpy roads full of rocks and roots waiting to twist your ankle. She would put in her headphones and set off for about an hour running along these mountain roads. I thought she was crazy. At that time I wasn’t a “runner”. She kept trying to convince me that I could do it but I just shook my head no. Sure I’d go for a jog with her in the city on the pavement for a mile or two. It wasn’t until she convinced me to sign up for a 10k race with her that I started thinking maybe I could give running a try. You can never understand why a runner does the things they do until you also become a runner.

I had no idea what to expect and I hadn’t brought running shoes with me to Mexico. This didn’t stop Sarah from reeling me in. We promptly went to a shoe store and I had to use my pocket dictionary to communicate my desires to try on and purchase a pair of shoes. I walked out with a pair of Nike Pegasus Running Shoes. And socks.

The race was hard for me. Brutal. I cramped. I stalled. I held in a bit of Montezzumas revenge. Ultimately I had a blast. I was amazed at the organization of the event, and the fact that they were handing out beer at the finish line. I was also amazed that running 6 miles could feel so brutal yet rewarding.

(For your information, six years later, I am now a marathon maniac, having run multiple marathons in places such as Antarctica, Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle, 50ks, and ultra-marathons including the completion of 95 miles in 4 days. I am proud to say my race running career got its start in Mexico. I blame Sarah for all of it ;))

A Typical Day

Any field adventure has to start with a good trip to the grocery store. Shopping in a foreign language is an incredibly entertaining experience like a kid on a scavenger hunt. We lived off of ‘avena’ oatmeal, ‘aguacate’ avocado, ‘atun’ tuna, and carrots. Items that won’t perish easily. We started our meals with tasty things like shrimp ceviche, then move on to chicken dishes, and by the week’s end we were eating canned food and rice. We usually never had desserts around, as they quickly got consumed early in the week, especially on foggy days.

Our boss, Rene, knew all the nesting sights and each day we would camp together near a cluster of sites then split up during the day to individually observe a specific cliff.

We woke before sunrise. Standard practice for field biologists. We threw on warm clothes and began our 45 minute hike up the rocky desert slopes. It was important to avoid brushing up against the spines of the agave cactus as a tiny scratch could leave a wound for weeks. We reached our cliff site panting and sweating. Not only was the terrain steep, we were also at elevation which made any athletic person feel out of shape.

Sarah and I had walkie-talkies which allowed us to communicate the couple of meters we were separated. The days sometimes felt long. Some days were blistering hot, other days were freezing cold. We had come ill-prepared and went into town to purchase more warm layers.

After a 12 hour day we began our hike back down to base camp, just in time to make dinner before dark. I did my best to take that down time to study Spanish but at night there wasn’t much to do, so we would drink cup after cup of chamomile tea in an effort to put ourselves to sleep. Field days = early to bed, early to rise!

Set up before we realized our tent leaked during rainstorms

Relocation of the leaky tent, erected in its splendor within the empty cement building.

Boys, Guns, and Pecans

One day, observing a nesting cliff up a dried river bed, two young boys with guns emerged from the bushes. I was nervous. What was a gringa, attempting to tan in a sports bra, knowing no Spanish, doing in the middle of nowhere. “How is this going to go?” I worried. They seemed just as bewildered to see me there and stood next to me for 20 minutes as we awkwardly tried to communicate. I tried to explain that I was there to observando las cotteras por el institut tecnologico de Monterrey and all I could manage to understand from them was something about being afraid. Afraid of what? Oh please don’t let me be afraid of you and the guns! I gathered from the word ‘oso’ that they were chasing after bears. I didn’t even consider bears in the area! They soon left and I thought I’d remain alone. A few hours later they came back and handed me ‘un regalo’, a gift, of hand-picked pecans from their farm.

They were the best pecans I’ve ever eaten.

Mountain Folk

Since we were in the mountains we ended up staying with a number of mountain farmers. Young couples, old couples. One young girl would come visit us and we would say nothing to each other. We’d just sit in silence pantomiming a gift offering of tangerines or chamomile tea while she smiled and waved us off. One day she came to us and showed us her skills in embroidery. She had been stitching colorful parrots onto napkin cloth and wanted to sell it to us. We, being broke volunteers, had absolutely no money on us and couldn’t help her out in that way.

One of the older couples, whom we called abuelita, made us cups of chocolate milk, nescafe, stovetop beans, and to-dye-for salsa verde. We asked for her secret recipe but weren’t convinced she told us the whole secret. All she mentioned was the need to boil tomatillos. One night we watched her and realized she was adding at least a half cup of oil and a dash of salt and pepper. It all made sense then.

The Parrots

The Maroon-fronted parrot is native to Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range in Nuevo León, northeastern Mexico. There are only 2,500-3,000 in the wild and their conservation status is Endangered due to overgrazing and habitat loss. Sitting in front of one of the largest nest sites, El Taray, felt like being in the front row of the movie theater. The parrots were most active during the morning and evening, but during the middle of the day the whole flock would take off and disappear. I have no idea where they went or what they were doing. I also think GPS-collaring parrots and macaws can be expensive and difficult because they are constantly preening themselves and each other.

The goal each day was to match up a hole in the cliff (a nest sight) with its location on a marked map of the cliff (each hole had a number). We would scan back and forth with binoculars and count how many parrots we saw at each hole. Over time more voices started to echo out of the holes. Chicks! Once nesting sites were marked with chicks we watched the entrance like a hawk. Literally. The biggest threat to these chicks upon emerging is being swooped up by a Red-tailed hawk. Inevitably we would miss the event because the chicks were smart enough to wait until it was foggy to fledge. Too foggy for us to see, too foggy for the hawks to see.

Celebrations

While I was in Mexico we celebrated Halloween, and my birthday. We were in the mountains with no costumes so to make the best of it we used what we had. Sarah dressed as a caterpillar using a sleeping bag and I dressed as a trash mummy using toilet paper and garbage. For my birthday Rene and Sarah were really sweet to surprise me with a mini-cake from a delicious bakery in the city.

Yes this trip happened in 2009 and I’m just now writing about it 6 years later!

The Aftermath

When I got back to Seattle in November I started looking for jobs. By January, only “suffering” two months of unemployment, I found employment at a Seattle-based non-profit called the Institute for Systems Biology where I’ve been the last 5.5 years studying the response of algae to climate change scenarios. How did all my background in field biology ever land me a job in oceanography?! Turns out that worry about shooting myself in the foot by taking a break from lab science to do field biology worked in my favor as it was exactly that field experience that convinced my current boss I wouldn’t be just another lab tech; I was a person who actually cared about the environment.

Moral

You never know what experiences you will gain or when they will work in your favor. The important thing is that when you take a little leap and try something seemingly risky or adventurous and new, you will never regret the experience. You will never regret the time you spend outside. You will never regret wildlife. You will never regret travel. And you will never be as lucky as you are on the days you wake up surrounded by nature.

Want to see even more photos from this trip? Check them all out by clicking this link here.

Word from the author: Back in 2006 Facebook was still just a thing for college students. Blogging was also just emerging to become more mainstream. I guess that is why I never ended up writing about the time I spent on my first international field biology trip studying parrots in Mexico. Today I give you that story. Its a long one, so I hope you had enough coffee to make it through. Thanks for reading!
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Big Cat Research in Africa

September 14, 2015 / Allison Cusick

How do I even begin to tell all of the stories from 4.5 weeks observing Big Cats in Kruger National Park, South Africa?! I came back with over 68 GB of photos, videos and a mind full of memories.

Do I first tell you about the time we watched a young male leopard attempt to kill a ground hornbill and fail?

Watch the video of that surprise attack here.

Do I tell you about the white lion cub we saw fighting its brothers in the pride for a piece of freshly killed zebra?

Do I tell you about the day we followed a wild dog pack and got caught in the middle of their napping session, or about the evening we sat on the top of a hyena den watching baby hyenas explore close to their sleeping parents?

What about the morning a lioness disappeared behind a rock outcrop only to reappear with a tiny cub in her mouth.

Do I tell you about how funny long-necked giraffes look when they bend down to get a sip of water or about the absurdity of a leopard attempting to kill three porcupines stuck in a drainage tube?

How about the five bull elephants we sat ten meters from, or the bush walk we took with park rangers that brought us twenty-five meters from white rhinoceros?

I could go on! Do you see my predicament in recounting everything? I wish I could go back there and take you with me.

100% of the time that my eyes were open during that month, I reflected on how amazing it was to be able to wake up with every morning sunrise, see all of these wild animals up close and personal, camp under the starry skies, and come away with so much knowledge of African wildlife.

Every animal encounter triggered a rapid fire photo shoot followed by awe-filled observations and furious journal entry writing. This could last for hours and you never wanted to be caught on a lion kill with a full bladder!

So who were we and what were we doing down there?

We spent a full month in Kruger National Park observing the behavior of the three big cats: lion, leopard, and cheetah. Students gained hands-on experience in observational field work, animal behavior research, and conservation photography/videography.

As far as amazing educational african wildlife adventures go, the price of this trip was extremely reasonable. For a 2-week trip, participants paid $3,995 which included airfare from JFK, food, lodging, tents, and transport. There was an additional Kruger Park conservation fee of $290 and additional guided night drives or bush walks were $45 and $65, respectively. Every penny was worth this access to Nature’s african gems.

During the month of June, two groups experienced camping in the park:

Trip 1 – Four students: Marilyn, Emily, Ren, Priscilla

Trip 2 -Five students: Gabby, Burlyn, Christie, Paris, Kellen

Kruger National Park is one of the largest game reserves on the entire african continent and was established in 1926. Comparable to the size of Israel at 7,523 mi², it looks dwarfed compared to the entire country of South Africa.

For each 10-day trip, we only managed to cover the lower portion of the reserve. Every two to three nights, we would relocate camps beginning the trip at camp Berg-en-Dal, moving on to Lower Sabie, then Skukuza, Satara and finally, Pretorioskop.

Our days were spent from 6:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. sitting in an awesome Volkswagon Synchro van driving around the dusty bumpy dirt roads scanning the tall grasses, thorn-veld, or savannah for any clues of big cats.

Cars have been coming to the park for 100 years and because humans have never hunted the animals from vehicles, the animals have become habituated to the engine noise and vehicle presence. This allows tourists to get remarkably close and the animals who don’t seem to mind (until the humans start talking too loudly). Some predators have even learned to use the cars as shields in their hunting schemes.

A couple of times during the month we took morning bush walks. I was expecting every animal to be out to get us and was very surprised to witness that once we got on foot we became the top predators and every species that caught our scent fled: elephants, giraffes, rhinos, even a pack of lions! Because humans have been hunting these animals for over 2 million years, they are all very aware of the danger our recognizable human form poses.

The Nature of the Park

When I arrived, the first thing I did was gobble up all the knowledge I could about the park: the geological history, the vegetation and landscapes, the animals. Acting as co-leader for the month, I personally took on a set of responsibilities and had a lot to learn before the students showed up! I used old guide books from the park to give myself a crash course of the area.

One of the most important aspects of the park is actually it’s diverse geological makeup. The park’s main living attractions are dictated by the entire geology hidden under the vegetation.

It started long long ago, when the super continent Gondwanaland still existed, before Antarctica split off from Africa. Layers and layers of rock types were laid down through earth’s dynamic tectonic activities. As Gondwanaland broke apart, ancient rock was exposed and slowly eroded over time leaving the area as we know it today:

Due to the various type of rock and soil exposed at the surface, there is an incredible diversity of flora in this tiny slice of land. This creates unique eco-zones which dictate where you’ll most likely find certain species of animal.

Meet the Herbivores

Just like you have your favorite food preferences, so do the herbivores. Different grasses and bushes attract different types of herbivores. Impala are the chicken nugget of the park, abundant every where you turn. Others such as Kudu, Waterbuck, Cape buffalo and Wildebeest roam about following their flora of choice. I expected these prey animals to be more timid than they were but the zebra were the only species on a whole that were the most skittish.

Cape Buffalo. One of the Big Five and most dangerous to hunt.

Male Kudu. Each twist of its horn takes about 7 years to form. This Kudu is about 15 years old.

Waterbuck have distinct bulls-eye rings on their behinds. When they get stressed they release a nasty tasting hormone which deters predators from attacking.

A Typical Day

We woke at 4:45 a.m. every morning to be first to the gates. At 5:15 a.m. my alarm clock would go off and I would debate hitting snooze for two more minutes before finally getting out of the tent and making the wake-up call to the others.

With sleepy eyes, we brushed our teeth and put on our warm layers–hats and gloves–as some mornings were a chilly 47F. At 6:00 a.m. sharp, the ranger would open the doors and we’d be on our way spotlighting the road-side looking for lingering nocturnal animals.

My favorite time of day was sunrise. It always felt like you had a secret the rest of the world wasn’t yet in on.

There was never a day we went without and animal sighting. When we did find the animals, it became a photographers dream. Click click click. We’d shoot and swap lenses and duck under and above each other to get the best look at the animals.

Some days we had permits to get out of the van and investigate old bleached bones on the ground. One day we found this elephant skull and it became an excellent education opportunity to learn how one can build a story of a particular elephant’s life by looking at distinct features on the skull.

We also paid attention to how to read tracks. Through close observation one could tell the mood and direction the animal was traveling. He talked about identifying the age of the track based on erosion patterns. Below you can see the footprints of hyena, jackal and a large bird (perhaps a korhaan).

Through patient observations, we gained vast knowledge of animal behavior.

One day we spent at least three hours watching a family of hippos eat, sleep, procreate, and play in an algae covered pond. This baby hippo (pictured below) crawled out of the lagoon and actually fell asleep near this crocodile! Hippos seem to have a great understanding of respectful cohabitation, but eventually this hippo’s mom came and chased the croc back into the water.

Two types of rhino exist in the park: the white rhino (or wide-lipped) and the critically endangered black rhino (or hook-lipped). White rhinos are grazers and use their square lip to graze the grasslands. Black rhino, are browsers and use their hooked lip to browse each leaf off of thorny bushes.

This black rhino has ulcers on his skin.

White rhino gets a friend to clean out his eyelashes.

Our bush-walk ranger, Matwell, explains the size and impact of the bullets used in his protection gun.

Sadly, we saw three poached rhino bodies. Poaching is still a huge problem in the park, as I suppose there is much corruption around the issue.

We got rumor that in April alone, 28 rhinos had been poached. Kruger National Park is the most prominent target for poachers and if you want to know more about the ivory trade National Geographic did an excellent article you have to read.

Between January 2014 and 6 August 2014, the Department of Environmental Affairs announced that out of the 631 rhinos that had been killed by poachers, a shocking 408 were killed in Kruger.

Unexpected delights

I did not realize how adorable hyenas would be. Mainstream movies make them out to be vicious scavengers but it turns out they hunt 90% of what they eat and lions are more scavenger than hyenas!

We found two drainage ditches in the road that had denning families which allowed us to literally be on top of their home. Their big eyes, big ears and curious faces made them seem like they could be cuddly stuffed toys.

Baby hyenas. Only a couple weeks old Sight seeing sometimes got pretty tiring. This is how most of the students spent their day:

Blackmail! Just kidding, this was actually the day we picked them up from the airport so they were jet – lagged and sleeping on the five hour drive from Johannesburg to Kruger.

Even if some days held sparse animal sightings, we always managed to behold other goodies like this giant millipede.

Bird watching was also plentiful: Lilac-breasted roller, Cape starling, Goliath king fisher, Crested barbet, Walberg’s eagle (white morph), Saddle-billed stork, Ostrich, Lappet-faced vulture, Helmeted guinea fowl, Southern yellow bill hornbill.

My all time favorite: the critically endangered, cross between what looks like a turkey and a toucan, the largest of the hornbills: Ground hornbill. Check out those eyelashes!!

And of course, there were the Big Cats

In the one-minute clip below, you will see three lion brothers and a collared mistress. The female of this group is collared with a GPS tracker for research purposes. Keep watching until the end of the clip as that’s when you’ll see really nice shots of the female! Best when viewed in HD. Pardon the blurriness of auto-focus around second 30.

What Happens When We See the Big Cats?

We pull out maps to locate our position.

We record all pertinent observations on data sheets.

And we keep our eyes locked on the target animal!

Cheetah looks up from its kill.

In total for the month of June we had 101 lion sightings, 33 leopard sightings and 7 cheetah sightings.

The Day Comes to a Close:

Inevitably, the sunset would come earlier than we wanted and we’d catch ourselves racing back to the camp in time for the electric gates to close for the night.

We would promptly begin dinner prep.

Chat about the day’s high lights.

Photo Identify the big cats we saw and either match them up with the catalogue or enter in new individuals!

We also each took turns blogging every night. Writing a narrative gave the day’s data sheets context and flavor!

Each day was full but they all seemed to end too early. Everyone was in bed around 8:30 p.m. and rarely did we stay up past 11 p.m. We were rocked to sleep by the chirp of cicadas, the roars of lions in the distance, of hippos grunting their disputes, and of bush babies screaming their all too human-like cries.

This was a grounding and unforgettable experience. Each group bonded in their own unique ways. Colin did a great job passing on his vast knowledge, mentoring us in the ways of the wild, and I am grateful to also have had the opportunity to play a mentoring role to the young adults as well.

We were all definitely spoiled with the gems of African wildlife.

I would go back in a heartbeat.

If you would like to see more photos from the trip, visit the photo album here.

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Macaws 100 Feet Off the Ground

May 17, 2015 / Allison Cusick

In 2014 Allison Lee volunteered with the Tambopata Macaw Project lead by Dr. Donald Brightsmith and Rainforest Expeditions at the Tambopata Research Center in Peru.

Almost a year and a half later, she has finally managed to turn some of the video footage she took into time-lapse movies to share with you all. This is a glimpse into how biologists keep tabs on the growth and development of macaw chicks in the wild.

The first time-lapse video (2x-4x speed) shows Allison reaching in to a natural nesting cavity 80 feet off the ground. The 15 day old macaw chick is naked and very unstable. The time-lapse accentuates this motion and makes it look even more so but she swears she was actually slow and gentle with him!

The second time-lapse video shows Allison returning two scarlet macaw chicks, nearly ready to fledge at about 45 days, back to their artificial wooden nest 60 feet off the ground just as a downpour of rain strikes.

Now, some words from Allison:

Long long ago, in 2007 to be exact, I had heard about Tambopata Research Center through a coworker who was obsessed with birds. He had just gone on an eco-tourism trip to the jungle and suggested I do the same. I looked into the pricing and decided that spending $250/night to be whisked away deep into the Amazon Jungle was worth the adventure.

Tambopata Research Center is one of three beautiful lodges managed by Rainforest Expeditions, a Peruvian operated eco-tourism business. It is located along the Tambopata River near Puerto Maldonado in the heart of one of the world’s best ornithological hotspots for viewing macaws, parrots and other animals in the wild.

In 2008, I set off for my first visit into the jungle. It was beautiful. My inner shaman squealed at seeing all the peruvian delights and the sweeping rainforest canopy that you only see in aerial shots on nature TV. Here I was seeing it all live in person.

One evening at the lodge, a biology researcher gave the “tourists” a presentation about the Macaw Project. He explained the importance of these beautiful birds and explained the research led by Dr. Donald Brightsmith. At that moment I knew I had to find a way to come back as a volunteer scientist and get involved in jungle conservation.

…Years passed…

Fast forward five years to 2013. One day an email came to my inbox from the Ornithological Societies of North America (OSNA) listserv that I subscribed to detailing various volunteer positions available at the Tambopata Research Center working with biologists on the Macaw Project.

Macaws at TRC?! This was my long lost desire! No questions. I had to do it. The best part was, that as a volunteer you got to stay in the same lodge interacting with the wildlife at a mere $20 a day! Why did I ever come as a tourist?!

I spent three-awesome-filled weeks during the wet season mucking through flooded jungle trails, carrying a machete, swinging high in the tree tops anywhere from 40-100 feet off the ground, and handling the most gorgeous baby macaws. I also met a great group of people and even met the lovely young lady, Annie Hawkison, a biologist whose interview you can read if you click her name.

I thought the jungle would be a place I could relax and commune with nature. Quite the opposite. I was surrounded by a number of flesh eating bugs, stinging wasps and inch long ants that pack the punch of a bullet shot should you be unlucky enough to get stung. I was on edge the entire time.

Peru was generous enough to send me home with a gift; I managed to come back with parasites! Not just any parasites, but three bot fly larval parasites. You can read about that entire story here.

Bot fly larva head removed from my back. Look at those vicious hooks!

To read more about Allison Lee’s experiences doing research in the jungles of Peru see her website here.

To see more photos click here.

To read more about the project and find out how you can become a volunteer, click here.

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Oceanography Cruises: Boats and Acids

April 9, 2015 / Allison Cusick

My Easter Sunday was unusual.

Sure, I ate the traditional spiral ham for dinner, but I was at sea and my family was nowhere in sight.

I was with eight strangers aboard the R/V Clifford A Barnes cruising around the Puget Sound for six-days of research monitoring ocean acidification, referred to as OA for short.

In honor of the sea and the nature of the project, I feel I should have been eating oysters for Easter dinner!

What is this Ocean Acidification you keep talking about?

If you’ve never heard of this term, and want to know more about it (which you should want to), I will redirect you to the links found on the University of Washington’s College of the Environment’s host website. Spend some time here familiarizing yourself with the globally important terms and what it means to our environment’s health:

What is OA?

What about OA in the Pacific Northwest?

Below are some great graphics illustrating the important fluxes occurring in the environmental system. Take a good look at all the arrows and think about your personal experience with each. Images are from NOAA PMEL.

Changing Oceans, Changing Biology

It is easy to think of the ocean as a big vast body of empty water that doesn’t need much attention. Maybe you’ll think of a couple animals that live there like whales, sharks, and coral reefs. You’ll easily identify with currents and tides washing up on the beach if you’re a tide-pool lover or beach comber. The beauty of the oceans is that there is so much more than that. What most people take for granted is all of the intricate dynamic exchanges occurring between land, air, and water which perfectly tie biology, chemistry and geology together!

Currently, a lot of attention is being directed to a particular exchange: atmospheric carbon dioxide with the oceans. The carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere (yes, predominately due to human needs for fuel) is absorbing into the oceans. This absorption into the ocean is a natural process as the gases in the ocean below like to be in equilibrium with the gases in the air above. However, once that carbon dioxide gets into the water it reacts with the water molecules setting off a whole chain of chemical reactions which lowers the ocean’s pH, termed ocean acidification. This rapid change we are seeing, which has been calculated to be escalating since the time of the Industrial Era, has us concerned about the chemistry and life in the oceans.

“If carbon dioxide continues to rise unchecked, computer models show that acidification will deplete carbonate ions in much of the ocean by 2100, turning the waters corrosive for many shell-building animals.”

From The Acid Test www.nationalgeographic.com

Why are we doing this cruise? … Because oysters.

No seriously, the reason us scientists are out here monitoring the waters comes from the birth of the Blue Ribbon Panel in 2011. This was enacted because, as in Governor Christine Gregoire’s own words, “Our shellfish industry employs thousands of people, and brings in millions of dollars to our state on an annual basis. Continued success depends on healthy ocean water.” The Blue Ribbon Panel is “a panel of science and policy experts to address the effects of ocean acidification on WA’s shellfish resources.”

Science will save the oysters!

In 2013 the Blue Ribbon Panel spawned the Washington Ocean Acidification Center (WOAC, sounds like ‘whoa-wack’) . The legislature requires the Center to execute five priority actions. The cruise I am currently on exists in response to the second bullet point listed within the actions. We are not directly dealing with oysters but monitoring the health of the Puget Sound builds upon our knowledge of the areas which are pivotal for successful oyster growth and harvesting:

Establish an expanded and sustained ocean acidification monitoring network to measure trends in local acidification conditions and related biological responses. This monitoring will allow detection of local acidification conditions and increase our scientific understanding of local species responses.

Read more about progress on this priority action.

Below is a photo map of all the stations we will be visiting on this trip. The stations highlighted in pink are the specific locations my boss is interested in (more about that below). The ‘P’ indicates these are stations included in PRISM , the Puget Sound Regional Synthesis Model which sends biannual cruises within the greater Puget Sound to collect oceanographic time-series data. The network NANOOS was created as a place to hold more detailed scientific information and comprises over forty entities researching the Puget Sound as part of the ocean observing system.

All Hands on Deck – How We Sample

The contraption to the left is referred to as a CTD. This is a little package of sensors that measure Conductivity Temperature & Depth. It rides on the metal frame lined with gray Niskin bottles which we call a rosette.

The CTD comes up on deck full of sea water collected from different depths in the water column and we begin sampling for many different variables:

oxygen

dissolved inorganic carbon

nutrients

chlorophyll

RNA/DNA

Rachel is the first to crack open the Niskin and takes a sample of seawater for oxygen measurements. It is important to get the sample stored into the bottle as soon as possible to limit the amount of time the sea water from depth is exposed to the atmosphere.

These two bottles, pictured below, contain sea water from Hood Canal. Chemicals are added which grab on to the oxygen within the water and create a precipitate (the orange color). The left sample is from the surface and has more oxygen which creates more precipitate making it orange. The right sample is from depth and has less oxygen which creates less precipitate making it less orange (whitish).

Next, the plankton nets are deployed. On this cruise we run three types of tows: vertical, horizontal, & oblique.

Plankton net tows give back valuable information about the biological community of zooplankton. One species of particular interest are the pteropods, endearingly known as sea butterflies who’s shells are visibly suffering from increasing CO2 conditions:

The smooth shell of a healthy pteropod is seen at left. The pteropod in the center was exposed to elevated CO2 conditions in a laboratory, to mimic conditions researchers saw in the wild. And at right, a shell with holes and pits, also produced by laboratory conditions, corresponds to some of the most extreme damage scientists expect to see with elevated CO2. From The Seattle Times SEA CHANGE stories.

I am a research technician on this ship representing my Principal Investigator, Monica Orellana, with the Institute for Systems Biology. A portion of her research aims to understand ocean acidification effects on the phytoplankton community at a genetic level using next-generation sequencing tools. When I am not collecting my own samples, I help out collecting samples for the head technician, Rachel Vander Giessen.

Feature Woman – Physicist/Oceanographer Rachel Vander Giessen

On this cruise I would like to highlight the lady in charge: Rachel Vander Giessen. She is the technician for the head scientist, Jan Newton, and was on the ship running the science show. She has a bachelor’s degree in physics, spent time on chartered yachts as a naturalist, wanted to become a captain through the Maritime Academy, was a bartender and a barista, and is now a research technician in oceanography. She is the epitome of someone who is highly involved and doing cool shit without having a PhD. You have to read more about her in her interview (link coming soon).

Want more photos of the trip aboard the R/V Clifford A Barnes?

Click here for Spring 2015 and here for Fall 2015.

Want to know even more about Ocean Acidification? Click any of the easy-follow links listed on WOAC’s site:

20 Facts About Ocean Acidification (updated November 2013)
Ocean Acidification in the Pacific Northwest
Ocean Acidification Center Another Example of State Leading the Nation
Blue Ribbon Panel on Ocean Acidification

NANOOS/APL

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The Invisible Forest Hiding Under Water

April 3, 2015 / Allison Cusick

We’ve all gone swimming in the lakes and in the seas. We’ve all choked on that accidental gulp of water while swimming carefree.

But have we all looked under a microscope to see what these waters hold?

What you just saw were three plant-like organisms called diatoms, and the moving thing: a small larval crustacean called a nauplius. Makes you think differently about that next gulp of water you’ll take, doesn’t it?

I had previously never given much thought to the invisible marine world until I was employed to work on a project researching the effects of climate change on micro-algae, particularly the diatom Thalassiosira pseudonana.

What a beaut!

Who is this Thalassio-whatchamacallit and why should I care? Let me ask you a question:

Where does the earth’s oxygen come from? Humans, as the terrestrial beings we are, will easily shout out, “The trees!” But did you know the trees are only responsible for producing about 30% of that oxygen? The algae and phytoplankton living in the water are responsible for the other 50-70%! That is more than half!! In addition, these amazing silicified (glass) microorganisms make up the base of the food web and are responsible for 40% of the ocean’s primary productivity. What an incredible hidden forest.

I will never look at the ocean in the same way.

Phytoplankton can be identified by NASA satellites through their chlorophyll

Phytoplankton as Art

I learned of a man named Klaus Kemp, nicknamed The Diatomist, who also doesn’t look at the ocean in the same way. He sees magnificent beauty in the Invisible Forest and has spent his life mastering the Victorian art of creating kaleidoscope-like arrangements of diatoms.

I don’t think I could have the patience or attention span to do such painstaking technical arrangements under a microscope but don’t get me wrong, I do love a good microscope session attempting to photograph some of the world’s smallest organisms.

Capturing Invisible Things

The best way to collect a large abundance of phytoplankton is to do a tow with a net that has a good funnel-shaped collection cylinder called a cod end. Some nets are huge and require winches to lower into the water. Others are more manageable and can be done by hand, towed behind a row boat.

Phytoplankton can range in size from 2 – 1000 microns. What does that even look like? If you run sea water through a mesh filter that had a 333 micron weave, you could see Coscinodiscus wailesii by eye; It looks like tiny grains of sand. Does that help the visual reference at all?

Unannounced Changes

For three weeks, from March 17, 2015 until April 3, 2015, I worked up in the Pacific Northwest’s San Juan Islands at the University of Washington Friday Harbor Labs. My boss and Co. were running ocean acidification experiments on our lab strain diatom, Thalassiosira pseudonana, but we wanted to also collect the wild plankton living in the harbor. Weekly we would take the row boat out to do a tow. I attempted to photograph what I saw using only an iPhone through the microscope:

Week 1: We saw many different types of diatoms: Thalassiosira, Melosira, Coscinodiscus, Chaetoceros, Ditylum, Thalassionema, Skeletonema, Cylindrotheca, & Corethron

Week 2: The diatoms had mostly been replaced with dinoflagellates (Protoperidinium, Dinophysis) and zooplankton, such as the crustacean copepods.

Week 3: The waters were teeming with copepods and tiny little jellies: Cnidaria and Ctenophora.

Week 4: Ctenophores had disappeared and a diverse collection of diatoms and dinoflagellates floated amongst a gazillion copepods. (Diatoms: Thalassiosira, Coscinodiscus, Ditylum, Chaetoceros, Odeontella, Thalassionema, Skeletonema, Bacillaria, Cylindrotheca, Triceratium; Dinoflagellates: Ceratium, Protoperidinium.)

While I would not spend hours arranging any of these into beautiful mosaics, I would spend hours trying to photograph them as they are.

Lab Diatoms Go Wild

What experiments are we doing with these critters at the Friday Harbor Labs that we can’t do back at the Institute’s labs in Seattle? Mesocosm Experiments. Mesocosms are a bridge between controlled laboratory experiments (which use artificially made sea water) and the more variable and uncontrolled field environment (which use natural sea water coming from the harbor). In 2011 the University of Washington invested money from grants, and private donors to build an amazing Ocean Acidification Environmental Lab with pimped out coolers that have the ability to monitor and control experimental conditions.

The sea water in this area is naturally more acidic due to freshwater river run-off, coastal upwelling and anthropogenic practices. The pH of the average ocean is said to be around 8.1 reflecting the average atmospheric CO2 levels at 400ppm. The pH of the waters at Friday Harbor is 7.8 with a recorded dissolved carbon dioxide level of 650ppm. We are using this water with all its organic goodies to test how our lab strain of Diatom will respond genetically to future predicted decreases in pH (due to increases in dissolved carbon dioxide).

Thalassiosira pseudonana is an algae that creates a silica glass shell. Because of this, they do not have the same need for calcium as corals, oysters and other shellfish do. This means when carbon dioxide dissolves into the sea water, snatching up available calcium, this particular organism doesn’t seem to suffer. In fact, with increase CO2 this diatom is able to relax its carbon concentrating mechanisms, passively allowing CO2 to dissolve through its glass frustule. In the process of photosynthesis, the ability for the plant to sequester much of the increased CO2, is referred to as CO2 fertilization. To read the final publication on what we found in the laboratory experiments click the paper below:

Breathe

Next time you take a deep breath, thank these under-appreciated organisms which make up the Invisible Forest and give us the oxygen we need to survive.

Want more?

To see more photos of the entire spring trip to Friday Harbor, click here:

To see photos from a previous fall trip taken in September 2014, click here.

Photo Credits:

Hsiao-Ching Chou: Allison wearing gloves holding net; Gloved hand holding cod-end; Mesocosms.

Spiro Jamie: Allison holding smallest net.

Allison Lee: All other photos except NASA chlorophyll distribution image and TEM image of Thalassiosira pseudonana.
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Algal biologist takes a look at the whales.

March 18, 2015 / Allison Cusick

You ask me if I want to leave my day job to escape dreary Seattle and spend vacation observing whales in the sunny Bay of Loreto, Mexico?

“Ummmm DUH!!!!”

I booked my flights immediately.

You see, I actually love macrofauna but somehow I’ve managed to spend the last five years working with microfauna – algae – phytoplankton. The invisible ocean forest. Estimated to be responsible for over 50% of the Earth’s Oxygen production.

What a beauty! Glass shelled plant cell, a diatom, called Thalassiosira pseudonana.

I have learned so much about the importance of these little creatures. They are plant AND animal, and make up the base of the food chain indirectly supporting nearly all other forms of life. Pretty important little guys, in my opinion. I’ve grown very fond of them over the years. But this post isn’t about them, it’s about the whales, so let’s keep moving!

Phytoplankton are eaten by Krill.

And Krill are eaten by Baleen whales. One large family of Baleen whales includes the Rorquals (such as Blue Whales, Finback whales, Minke Whales, and Humpback Whales to name a few)!

Blue Whales happen to be the largest of the whales and also happen to be the largest animal EVER to exist on earth. You’d think to be that big you’d have to eat some pretty big food.

But they don’t. They survive solely on krill. Tiny tiny little things. HOW?! WHY!?

Luckily RadioLab answered this question and did an amazing bit on the whole cycle. You HAVE to read it here.

Kinda makes ya wanna get your hands on some of that whale poo, doesn’t it?

I spent days feasting my eyes on blue whales and humpback whales. I got to spend 5 magical seconds petting a gray whale mother and on two occasions got caught in a pod of hundreds of common dolphins leaping on the bow waves.

Magnificent Blue Whale pigmentation and the mouth of a Humpack Whale.

Allison petting the Gray Whale mother on the snout in the Pacific Ocean side of Baja. Gray Whales are baleen whales but are not part of the Rorqual family. They are the only living species in its genus and family Eschrichtius robustus.

Snapshot of some of the hundreds of common dolphins swimming under our boat.

I was there to identify visiting whales by performing marine transects above and below the water. Gathering this scientific data is important to help better understand the present environmental and biological conditions of Bay of Loreto Marine Park.

World Heritage Site

Bay of Loreto Marine Park was created and approved on July 19, 1996 and in 2005 was inscribed by the United Nation’s list as a 2,065 square kilometer protected World Heritage Site in the Sea of Cortez. There are over 800 species of marine life inhabiting the sea, many of which are currently endangered.

Because of many political dramas and lack of resources in Mexico, enforcing any rules and regulations for the park is something that still needs attention. Even with decline in fish stocks and the re-routing of the Columbia River (which used to feed the Sea of Cortez) many animals exist here and I feel so lucky that I got to see so many whales on a daily basis.

These whales travel up to 10,000 miles a year just to get to the breeding grounds! This whale is a Gray Whale on the Pacific Ocean side of Baja. Gray Whales are baleen whales but are not part of the same family as Blue Whales. They are the only living species in its genus and family Eschrichtius robustus.

We didn’t do any tagging but the ways in which we did collected data included the following:

Photographing and filming above and below water – helps identify individuals using pigmentation, fluke tears, and scars and see who returns year after year.

Collecting sound recordings using hydrophones.

Collecting data on water and air environment.

Helping update museum identification catalogs.

Collecting plankton samples for studying available micro-fauna.

Assembling skeletons and other display pieces for a small museum.

Recording whale sightings and how frequently they came to the surface to breathe became difficult once there were more than 4 whales in one area!

My micro-fauna and microscope skills came into good use once we took plankton tows of what was floating around in the water column. We used an 80 micron net which is still pretty big for collecting any phytoplankton. Back in Seattle we use 15 micron nets and I work with algae that would even slip through a 10 micron net!

Every day we kept pulling up these mysterious gel balls. At first we thought they might be fish eggs but as the days passed no vertebrate like structures developed. At one point we noticed some of them had little tentacles poking out and they squirt propelled themselves forward, so we got our hopes high that they might be Humboldt Squid eggs! I spend hours back in the museum trying to photograph these invisible mysteries.

Along with other pleasant microscopic treasures

Microscopic sea shells

copepods

As well as not so pleasant not so microscopic creatures

Definitely decaying. Perhaps a Moray Eel.

I had posted some of the mystery gel photos online and some of my more knowledgeable marine friends suggested they might actually be marine gelatinous creatures called Salps. Whats?! Salps. Barrel-shaped planktonic tunicates that moves by contracting, pumping water through its gelatinous body. Apparently salp jet propulsion is one of the most efficient in the animal kingdom. Who knew!

The verdict is still out and what exactly these gel balls are still remains a mystery!

The trip was amazing and I was privileged to hang out with such amazing creatures.

My abode and view

I forgot to mention I spent a day in a small town called Agua Verde where I also got to hold baby goats
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