Eighteen days ago I was dropped off on an island in Glacier Bay National Park with five other people, a dozen tarps, a fair amount of scientific equipment, thirteen 5-gallon water jugs, and 36 bear cans filled to the brim with food appropriate for a camp stove.  The goals: shore-based data collection on the behaviors of humpback whales and kayak-based data collection on the surface positions of harbor seals.

This fieldwork is part of my PhD research (the harbor seal part, at least), and it’s related to the hydrophone deployment I wrote about last year.  What I failed to write about more recently was that we deployed those same hydrophones in the same general area for a second year of data collection.  These hydrophones sit on the ocean floor all summer and listen to the sounds of harbor seals, humpback whales, and vessels.  The data from these hydrophones allows us to assess how noise from passing vessels affects the vocal behavior of two of Glacier Bay’s marine mammal species.  Last year there was a field team on this island collecting humpback whale behavioral data for the dissertation of my Glacier Bay counterpart, Michelle Fournet.  This year, I’ve tagged along with the humpback whale team to organize a harbor seal data collection initiative that will beef-up a chapter of my own dissertation.

The island is Strawberry Island.  It sits west of the Beardslee Island complex and has a perfect view over the area in which our hydrophones are deployed.  From the eastern point of Strawberry Island, you can see humpback whales and harbor seals, as well as Stellar sea lions, harbor porpoises, and sea otters.  And off in the distance, two black bears comb the rocky shores to the south of our camp.  The salmonberries are ripe, the forest is dense, and the views are incredible.

We’ve just returned from the first of four stints on the island.  Each stint lasts around eighteen days, then there’s a four-day break off the island in the local town of Gustavus (real showers, cell phone service, and the best Rueben money can buy).  Overall we’re off to a great start – the entire field team is trained on all the protocols and we’ve already collected some great data.  Excited to see what’s to come in stint number two!

-Leanna Matthews, PhD Candidate

A few months ago, I went to Alaska to help drop very expensive science to the bottom of the ocean.  Last week, I went back to Alaska to try and pick it back up.  “Try” is the operative word here, because often times, when you drop equipment into the ocean, you have no idea if you’ll ever see it again…

To catch up on some background info for this project, you can read my previous blog post.  But to summarize it really quickly, grad student Michelle Fournet (OSU) and I are looking at the effects of vessel noise on humpback whale and harbor seal vocalizations, respectively.  This project is all taking place in Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska.  At the end of May, we deployed four hydrophones to monitor the underwater soundscape.

I flew in to Gustavus, Alaska on a Tuesday evening with Michelle and our friend/field assistant/resident electrician David.  It was a beautiful flight.

We spent all day Wednesday prepping for the recovery of our four little hydrophone babies.  Eight foot long hydrophone babies.  100-pound hydrophone babies.  Hydrophone babies full of five months worth of acoustic recordings.  Hydrophone babies that hold the keys to both mine and Michelle’s dissertations.

In theory, we knew exactly what was going to happen during the recovery.  Each hydrophone is snuggly situated in an aluminum cage.  Each cage is connected to an acoustic release via 500 ft. of line.  The acoustic release is key – that’s how we get our hydrophones back.  When the time comes to retrieve them, we send an acoustic signal from the boat to the release.  This acoustic signal tells the release to float to the surface.  Then, once the release is spotted, we can pull it on deck, connect the attached line to a crane, and reel up the 500 ft. of line and the accompanying hydrophone.  Michelle, David, and I talked through this recovery protocol with Chris Gabriele, a biologist in Glacier Bay National Park, at least 30 times.  We were still nervous to see how it all played out.  You see, sometimes, when you send the acoustic signal to the release, it doesn’t work.  Nothing floats to the surface.  The hydrophone remains on the ocean floor, patiently waiting.

We met up with Paul and John Martin of the M/V Lite Weight (our recovery vessel) early on Thursday morning.  We arrived at our first hydrophone location about an hour later.  We sent the acoustic signal to the release.  And then we waited.  All eyes on deck scanned the water’s surface for any sign of our buoyant yellow friend.

It was about a minute later when the release was spotted!  Celebration commenced.  Hugs, laughter, a solitary joyful tear; we were all so pleased that it had worked.  We turned our attention back to the water only to realize that the release was gone.  GONE!  The tides had pulled it below the surface.  Well, now what?

Do we wait for the tides to calm down?  Do we put out grappling hooks to try and snag it?  Do we stare dismally at the water until it magically reappears?  The answer is D, all of the above.

The release was re-spotted about 45 minutes later and pulled on deck.  We still don’t know exactly why or how it returned to the surface.  It’s possible that the tides let up a bit.  It’s also possible that there were some issues with the line and it needed some extra time to sort itself out.  Whatever the case may be, we will definitely be taking extra precautions next year to ensure that this isn’t a recurring problem.

The crew of the Lite Weight worked their magic and before we knew it, the hydrophone and its cage were safely on deck.  Success!

I’ll keep this short and just tell you that despite temporarily losing 3 of our 4 releases to the whims of the tides, we had four hydrophones on the deck of the boat by 1pm.  It was an amazing feeling!  All of that science we dropped off five months ago was finally back!

The tides were a challenge – the releases weren’t supposed to disappear back underwater.  But we pulled it together and overall had a very successful recovery.  This, however, was not the end of our troubles.  There was a suite of technical issues that arose as we prepped the hydrophones to be shipped back to Oregon for data processing.  These technical issues were also challenging and unforeseen.  Luckily, the team rallied and managed to solve every challenge that came our way.  In the end, we summarized the trip by saying, “things went wrong, they weren’t our fault, but we fixed them anyway.”  It was a solid week of science.