This weekend was homecoming at Duke, and the place was crawling with alums, young and old. Some were back for football, others to see old friends, and a special group of alumni were back to catch up on what is new and exciting at Duke – so that they can spread details back within their networks at home. These are the folks who come to participate in the Duke Alumni Leadership weekend, and it was my great pleasure to meet some of them and tell them all about our new iPad app – Cachalot.
About 65 people signed up for a session on Teaching Innovation at Duke. This session was essentially a panel discussion designed to provide an overview of how Duke is changing the landscape of university teaching, and they got an excellent overview of several interesting developments.
The panelists were:
- Dr. Mohamed Noor – Professor of Biology
- Dr. Cary Moskovitz – Assistant Professor of the Practice in Writing and Director, Writing in the Disciplines
- Dr. David Johnston – Research Scientist, Duke Marine Lab
- Dr. Lynne O’Brien – Director of Academic Technology and Instructional Services for Perkins Library at Duke University
- Ann Prybylowski – undergrad student of Dr. Noor
The panel discussion was moderated by esteemed alumni volunteer, Forever Duke Award winner, DAA Executive Board Member, and parent of 3 Duke students – Julie Ferguson.
It was a great meeting. Dr Noor provided details on how he has revamped one of the intro biology courses, and Dr Moscovitz provided an excellent overview of the Duke Reader program. Ann Prybylowski attested to the quality of Dr. Boors revamp. Lynne O’Brien gave the roundup and provided a great overview of the five areas of teaching innovation at Duke: open access, multimedia, mobility, active learning and new technology. Lots of fantastic discussion about the future of teaching and how can technology assist followed. Questions addressed included:
- Do today’s students, as plugged into technology as they are, really process information differently?
- What do you see in the future of learning in the classroom?
- What motivates faculty to adopt new technologies in their teaching?
- What if students don’t have the latest technology? How can they participate in these new teaching and learning strategies?
I got to talk a bit about digital textbooks and costs incurred by students, and focused some discussion about students using smartphones and tablets in class spontaneously, e.g. to augment ongoing discussions etc. In terms of our Cachalot app, I was really happy to talk more about creating customized textbooks for specialized courses and how we’ve used iPads in teaching down here at the Marine Lab. People really enjoyed the cachalot demo, and I think we’ll see a few more downloads after this!
Thanks to Jennifer Copeland at the Duke Alumni Association for coordinating the event.
The link to details on the event are here.
I’m finally back at the Duke Marine lab, after a series of adventures in Massachusetts that don’t really need dwelling on. It’s great to be back – seeing family, friends and getting on with things that have been waiting for some attention for a bit.
Andrew Westgate loves the Long Eddy!
The Long Eddy field season was a fantastic success. We got two tags out, which may seem like a small number to many. Keep in mind however, we were tagging fin whales at their most erratic – as they exploit discrete patches of prey within an island wake system. This is truly a great success, and paves the way for future proposals. We’ve surveyed the wake extensively now with the echo sounder system, providing essential baseline data on how the “middle” portion of the food web coalesces and dissipates each tidal cycle. We’ve also captured the physical properties of the water column within the Long Eddy with CTD casts.
I’d like to finish up by thanking the field team: Julia Burrows, Jerry Moxley, TJ Young and Susan Heaslip. Ari and I are really grateful for your help with the project.
I’d also like to thank Heather Koopman, Rob Ronconi and Andrew Westgate from the GMWSRS for their boat skills and logistical help – we could not have done it without them.
We also could not have done it without the help of Ken Ingersoll and his big truck. Thanks Ken!
When we’ve had a look at the data we’ll post a roundup for this year as well, stay tuned.
Phocoena surveying the Long Eddy
The weather was great from Tuesday through Friday, calm seas, light wind, and sun, but then took a turn for the worse to more typical Grand Manan weather…wind and fog. It was blowing a good 25 knots on Saturday, keeping us onshore, but Sunday morning, we awoke to no wind and fog. These conditions weren’t good for the tagging boat because they need calm weather and clear skies to spot whales, but the prey mapping boat can operate in fog since what we are looking for is all below the ocean’s surface. We decided to make the most of the weather and head out to calibrate the echosounder. We went to a more protected area on the eastern side of Grand Manan and tied up our boat. We then hung a perfectly rounded sphere of known sound backscattering strength under each frequency of the echosounder (38 and 120 kHz). We moved the sphere around attempting to cover the entire beam of the echosounder and recorded data during this process.
Here’s an image of the final product. Red dots are where the values for backscattering strength of the sphere are above expectations, and blue dots are values below expectations. The green dots are those closest to the center axis.
Things went surprisingly smoothly during the calibration, in large part because TJ and I had done a practice calibration at the dock the day before. Of course, the day wouldn’t have been complete without some type of echosounder malfunction. Just as we were finishing up calibration of the 120 kHz echosounder, the program decided to crash and we had to redo the calibration. We did prevail in the end though, completing a quick second calibration just as the fog had burned off.
The tagging team met us out on the water and began to search for whales during flood tide in the afternoon. We (prey sampling team) began to run line transects. In the eddy Conditions weren’t as nice as they were the week prior, and it was quite challenging to deploy the towfish (that’s what we call the device we with the echosounder in it, see the picture of it on the deck of the boat) as we were rocking and rolling broadside to the chop in our small boat. We managed to survey three lines before we called it a day. The tagging boat was unsuccessful in finding a fin whale, and only saw two minke whales and a handful of porpoise all afternoon. We do always have bird sightings, and the Greater Shearwater is the most common bird we see while we are sampling in the eddy.
Our lack of fin whale sightings was a reminder that despite working in a very predictable system (regular tides, prey aggregations, and marine mammal predators), unlike physics, animals are unpredictable and are not always around when you expect them to be.
I would have to say what might be the most exciting thing that happened all day was when we got a call on the radio that Jerry, our new whale tagger, had unintentionally taken a swim in the cold waters of the Bay of Fundy. According to Jerry, he was trying to rescue a baby harbor porpoise who was stuck in a bucket, all the while fighting off a killer whale who was trying to have the porpoise calf for diner…but we all know what really happened. He was in fact doing a good deed by collecting trash from the Bay – a bucket. The bucket, to his surprise, was filled with water and was heavier than he expected and simply pulled him over the side. He did manage to hang onto the boat, so was able to swing himself back in fairly quickly, but not before his self-inflating life jacket went off.
We wrapped up the evening with a delicious dinner with old and new friends at the Grand Manan Whale and Seabird Research Station. Stories were told of when our advisors (Dave Johnston, Heather Koopman, and Andrew Westgate) were graduate students patrolling the herring weirs for trapped harbor porpoise and drinks were shared among many. All in all, just another day of fieldwork in the Long Eddy….with many new stories in the making.
Grand Manan and the Long Eddy
The Long Eddy, situated on the northern tip of Grand Manan Island, is a beautiful and stimulating place, full of animals and energy. In a short span of minutes the ocean can change from glassy flat to boiling with upwellings and chop. A calm scene with a lone slowly-rolling porpoise changes into a cacophony of life – from krill to fin whales – in mere minutes. The predictable nature of the system, driven by unchanging physics, has long led people to this place for sustenance, scenery and science.
Let’s start with sustenance; it usually comes first. Indigenous peoples in the Bay of Fundy knew a lot about the Long Eddy and how it worked – it provided predictable access to an important resource – porpoises. In the late 1800s, porpoises were extremely valuable in the new currency-based economy faced by the Passamaquoddy Indians living on and near Grand Manan. Their meat was consumed and traded, but they were hunted mainly because the little animals were so rich in valuable oil. This oil was useful for light and lubrication, and mainland Passmaquoddy tribe members would canoe across to Grand Manan from the Campobello Island region to hunt porpoises in the Long Eddy and render them for oil on Indian Beach, a rocky beach on the northwest side of the island. These hunts were executed from canoes with spears and primitive rifles, and C.C. Ward published an excellent article in the October 1880 issue of Scribner’s Monthly that describes the process. The image at left illustrates the hunt being conducted in the Long Eddy, and those familiar with the island will recognize the Bishop headland in the background, with Fish Head rising out of the fog in the backdrop.
“Where are we going now, Sebatis?”
“Goin’ away long eddy, off northern head.”
“Is that a good place for porpoises?”
“Sartin; always on rips very good place; you see, plenty mackerals, herrin’s, and all kinds fishes in eddies and rips; very good feedin’-ground for porpusis, you see.”
The eddies or rips alluded to by Sebatis were caused by the obstruction offered by projecting headlands to the ebb and flow of the tide…
C.C.Ward-1880
The Passamaquoddy knew how the Long Eddy worked, perhaps best illustrated by this quote from the Ward 1880 paper, relating a discussion between Sebatis, a Passamaquoddy tribe member and the author:
“Where are we going now, Sebatis? ”
Goin’ away long eddy, off northern head.”
“Is that a good place for porpoises?”
“Sartin; always on rips very good place; you see, plenty mackerals, herrin’s, and all kinds fishes in eddies and rips; very good feedin’-ground for porpusis, you see.”
The eddies or rips alluded to by Sebatis were caused by the obstruction offered by projecting headlands to the ebb and flow of the tide…
A fin whale cruises the Long Eddy
Let’s move on to scenery. Whale watching is now a lucrative world-wide industry that champions the non-consumptive use of cetaceans. The industry focuses on the aesthetic value of whales, channeling John Muir’s original visions of the value of nature. Whale-watching is an important industry on Grand Manan and in other coastal communities in the lower Bay of Fundy, with several operators taking people offshore to see right whales, humpback whales, fin whales, minke whales, ubiquitous harbor porpoises and other big, beautiful ocean creatures. Several operators frequent the Long Eddy, some from Grand Manan and others from communities in Passamaquoddy Bay. Much like the original Passamaquoddy peoples crossing from the mainland to Grand Manan to hunt porpoises, mainland whale-watchers speed across the Grand Manan Channel in catamarans and zodiacs to watch porpoises, minke whales and fin whales dive and lunge amidst the aggregations of herring and krill, as shearwaters and other seabirds look on. Speaking from experience, it doesn’t get old. The magnitude of life in the Long Eddy is incredible, and aesthetically speaking, there are very few places on earth that can match it.
The Long Eddy swirls behind Grand Manan, captured from space by RADARSAT synthetic aperture radar
How about science? The Long Eddy is controlled by tides, constrained by eternal physics. As a marine scientist and field biologist who studies marine mammals, a place like the Long Eddy is extremely compelling. The system sets up and dissipates twice a day, everyday – a predictable system so prominent that you can see it from space. Can you think of many places where you are guaranteed to see 200 harbor porpoises, 5 minke whales and 2 fin whales all within a 5 km square box twice a day? In the late summer and fall, this is routine for the Long Eddy. Because it is predictable, and a short ride from the wharf, the Long Eddy is ideal for studies addressing questions of ecosystem organization and progression at fine scales, from tides to top predators. By combining visual observations with advanced telemetry and prey mapping, we can see how tidal energy helps entire food webs assemble and dissipate, and elucidate how predators and prey act and react amidst the tidal energies in the Long Eddy. We know only the basics of how the Long Eddy works, and there is much more to learn.
It’s been years since I’ve been fortunate enough to pass by the time on a flood tide in the Long Eddy, and it feels great to be back. I don’t need it for sustenance, but the scenery and science are a fine tonic.
I swear I looked down the long length of our 25-foot tag pole for what felt like minutes. The delicately positioned DTAG had disappeared from the end of the pole and the fin whale we had been chasing was descending below the water’s surface. Turning slowing, I holler back to the expectant eyes of the others on the boats and yell “Tag on, Garth.” I barely heard Dave, our intrepid PI and tag boat driver, yell back “Tag on, Wayne.”
They say you will never forget your first whale. But I swear I hardly remembered it. In the end, it was all a blur. But what I know was that I laid the DTAG squarely and firmly on the fin whale’s dorsal ridge, right in front of the dorsal fin. The team now had its second deployment of the DTAG onto a fin whale of the season. And, personally, it was exhilarating and instinctual.
Stepping back, the day had been fantastic thus far. Visually, the Long Eddy—the oceanographic feature off the northern end of Isle Gran Manan that we are studying—was going off: gulls and shearwaters bickering back and forth over easy forage; northern gannets elegantly dive-bombing prey from the shallow depths; harbor porpoises playing with the boats as if they were dolphins on a bow wave. Our prey mapping team was radioing in good news at every turn. To top it all, there were a few individual fin whales we had sighted throughout the study area. Time to lay the tag on.
There had already been a few hours of delicate dancing: the whale would surface, we would chase, the whale would descend, and we would wait for another surfacing. The courtship had grown old. But from the moment Dave gunned the engines, I knew we must make this one different. The animal was on opposite side of a seabird aggregation foraging on a shallow prey layer—the bobbing birds already too full of krill and herring. We had already missed one opportunity to tag, we had to make this one different. I spent most of the approach attempting to conjure more tag pole from my hands. The whale was just too far away… until it wasn’t. And that’s when I straight laid my first tag on a whale.
Tag on, Garth.
Today we sailed out to the Long Eddy and were greeted by unnaturally glassy and smooth seas, warm temperatures, and a clear blue sky. Sounds like a great day for research, doesn’t it? Hah! Let’s hear about what went on before we come to conclusions, yeah?
The Balaena, the appropriately-named tagging boat, spent a good chunk of their time around two distinct fin whales, one of which was the same individual tagged yesterday. The DTAG went on the pole and the team poised for a tagging attempt at multiple points throughout the day. However, the whales kept evading the boat and swam particularly fast to avoid being tagged–it was as if they knew we were coming! The whales certainly made our job hard as we could never predict where they would be next time we saw them surface. The boat got real close to the whale twice, but ultimately today was a no-go–the tag boat came back in just after high tide and called it a day. Some good news though: the tag boat saw their first Atlantic puffins today! They were quite cute and surprisingly awkward while in the water.
On the prey-mapping boat, the Phocoena, we took advantage of the calm seas and conducted two great line transects that had no electrical noise and showed a thick krill layer throughout. However, our luck quickly ran out as the adaptor to the computer charger failed to work, and the noise came back soon after. We pulled back to the harbour prematurely and did some more troubleshooting by doing every single combination possible with the wires, battery chargers, inverters, and more electronic stuff I don’t really know the name of. Couple of revelations today: the charger to the laptop cannot be anywhere close to any of the echosounder equipment and the batteries! What that means is that we have to run the echosounder with the laptop on battery power, because the noise is inherently linked with the charger. Well, as they say, the better the quality of data collected, the better the dissertation will be! So, we’ll try testing the limits of the computer’s battery life tomorrow and see what happens.
Overall, yet another learning experience, but I think we all benefited from it in some way or another! Nothing like a good reality check to get you back on track, right?
