Today we deployed 3 long-term passive acoustic monitoring instruments on the shelf along the coast of Georgia. The instruments are ST600s, and they will listen for baleen whale vocalizations over the next four months. We built a custom mooring for each instrument out of a car tire, cement and rebar. This mooring design has no ropes (i.e. to connect the instruments to buoys, weights or auxiliary moorings) so that we do not add to the risk of entanglement for the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. We deployed these instruments from Skidaway's vessel the R/V Blanton, and will return at the end of the right whale calving season to collect our instruments and analyze the archived data. My colleagues and I just published a paper synthesizing a town hall discussion at the Ocean Sciences Meeting (Feb. 2022). We asked participants about the challenges, initiatives and opportunities for JEDI (justice, equity, diversity and inclusion) efforts in the field. The results were pretty interesting. Gatekeeping was identified as the number one challenge to broadening representation in the ocean sciences. We also compile a list of JEDI work that has been successful, and JEDI work that has been problematic. If you are looking for ideas on how to improve the culture in the earth sciences, take a look at some of the feedback we received during this discussion Today Lenfest hosted a webinar for managers, stakeholders, scientists and the public about our recent paper: "Redefining North Atlantic right whale habitat‐use patterns under climate change". We had over 200 participants and more great questions than we had the time to answer. The webinar recording is available here. Today we cut, heated and bent rebar, drilled holes in PVC and mixed and poured concrete into old car tires to build moorings for our three SoundTrap hydrophones. Each of these moorings should weigh about 200lb, and the car tire means the edges of the mooring are pretty soft and unlikely to scrape the side of our deployment vessel. The rebar arches may provide a modicum of protection for our instrument, and the PVC holds the instrument away from the metal pieces, reducing risk of corrosion. We sunk eye bolts into the concrete for an anchor point or for a haul line. It was sweaty, satisfying work and we are one step closer to our passive acoustic monitoring plan for this winter's right whale migration to the Southeast US. Many thanks to @dombroski_julia for real inspiration in the mooring design! Today our new paper "Redefining North Atlantic right whale habitat-use patterns under climate change" was published in Limnology and Oceanography. In this study, we use right whale sightings per unit effort and prey abundances from the EcoMon and AZMP sampling programs to understand how right whale seasonal habitat use has changed between the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. In the 2000s, prey was relatively abundant in most foraging areas and right whales were targeting favored habitats in the Bay of Fundy and Scotian Shelf. However, the 1990s and 2010s showed similar declines in prey, thus right whales foraged more diffusely, in search of ideal conditions. In the 2010s in particular, right whales used Cape Cod Bay for a longer time period in the spring, and they began using new foraging habitats in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Cape Cod Bay. Our work was funded by Lenfest Ocean Program, and they have covered the release of the study here. UofSC wrote a long feature article on Ana Bishop's time in the Honor's College, with a focus on her study on right whale reproduction, families and migratory behavior published in Frontiers in Marine Science. Ana is continuing her important work at Duke University in the Master's in Environmental Management program. We can't wait to see what Ana does next! My students in Biology of Marine Organisms (MSCI 311) spent 3 days in the field at Baruch Marine Field Lab. They ran a transect across the marsh from the waterline to the tree line and assessed elevation, vegetation, sediment composition and fiddler crab burrow density. They collected sediment cores and brought them back to the lab to quantify chlorophyll abundance using a fluorometer. Then they surveyed the marsh birds and did some play-back experiments using recorded marsh bird calls to find secretive species like the least bittern and the clapper rail. Everyone got super muddy and had a great time :) The British Broadcasting Channel just released a 6-episode podcast series called the "Song of the Right Whale". This is a fantastic program filled with great scientific content and information about right whale risks and conservation strategies. Rhod Sharp does a very thorough job interviewing many right whale scientists and managers to understand the current state of the population. Our new science bay from Teledyne arrived! This modular bay carries a hydrophone (to listen for sound in the ocean), a CTD (water temperature and salinity) and a fluorometer (phytoplankton and organic particle abundance). We delivered our bay to Skidaway Institute of Oceanography for integration into an autonomous underwater vehicle called a slocum glider. We'll be flying this glider over the winter to listen for right whales on their way to and from the southeast US calving ground. The hydrophone has real-time baleen whale detection capabilities, so the glider can send reports back to the lab that tell us what whales it heard. How exciting!! Kira, Jasmine and I traveled to West Palm Beach, FL to attend the Society of Marine Mammalogy biennial conference. Kira presented a poster on her gray whale health index, and I gave an oral presentation about the impacts of climate change on right whales. A highlight of the conference was bringing my daughter Evee to the Last of the Right Whales documentary, where she had a long chat with an ocean heroine, Dr. Sylvia Earle. |
AuthorErin Meyer-Gutbrod is an Assistant Professor at the University of South Carolina. Her lab researches human impacts to marine ecosysems. Archives
April 2024
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