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No calibration today

Well, because of the wind and the inevitable waves that resulted we couldn’t do any calibration today. Elliot (in charge of this portion of the project) said it will just have to wait until tomorrow. Even though he is staying on the Foster, he will be transported to the Auk daily to do the prey mapping. Hopefully there is better weather on Monday, the first official day of the cruise, and we can get it done before anything too exciting happens.

I did learn a little about echosounders today and the process of prey mapping, but since it is better explained by someone who actually knows what they are doing, here is more information taken from the 2010 blog:

The acoustic echosounder is towed through the water a little beneath the surface as the ship moves around. The echosounders send out short pulses (or pings like on a submarine in a WWII movie) and then record the echoes that come back to the instrument. This is the same technology that governs how a fish finder or depth sounder on a boat works. However ours are a bit higher tech and can provide us some additional information.  If there are enough copepods in the water column, then we can see their echoes on our screeen and can tell (in some cases) how many animals there are (number of animals per cubic meter) and where they’re at (near the surface, near the bottom, or moving from one spot to another). -Joe

Welcome to Scituate, Massachusetts

I arrived in lovely Scituate, Massachusetts today to work with NOAA and the National Marine Sanctuaries for a week on their two-week research project.

The mission: describe underwater behavior of humpback whales.

The method: attach digital recording tags (DTAGs) to humpback whales to record audio, pitch, roll, heading and depth and Crittercams to record video.

The location: Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary and Jeffreys Ledge.

The boats: the R/V Nancy Foster and her two RHIBS: the Balena and the Luna, the R/V Auk, the S/V Song of the Whale.

The obstacle: not so simple a task.

DTAGs are amazing little devices that attach to a whale with suction cups, and provided they aren’t knocked off can provide hours of valuable data (more information).To get one on however requires some skilled driving in a RHIB (rigid-hulled inflatable boat) and some skilled use of a giant pole with the tag on the end. The same goes for attaching the Crittercams, which can actually show us what goes on when these whales are underwater, and from their point of view (more information). Aside from tagging, we will also be doing some prey mapping to better understand the feeding behavior as well. That part will be done with the help of the Auk, the vessel I will be working on. Tomorrow I get to help calibrate the echosounder and learn about how it works, so more on that soon!

Scituate and Cape Cod Bay

Image taken from Google Maps