by Angela Szesciorka, Vertebrate Ecology Lab
Last Monday, I bussed it to Santa Barbara then hopped a train to San Diego. One night in a hotel and an overpriced taxi ride later, and I was laying eyes on the R/V Point Sur for the first time since November 29, 2012, on it’s way back from its 17,000 mile round-trip journey to Palmer Station in Antarctica.
The majestic R/V Point Sur.
The vertebrate ecology lab’s recreation of the inside of a whale. (photo by The Moss Lander).
Tis the season for MLML Open House
By Michelle Marraffini
Invertebrate Zoology and Molecular Ecology Lab
The spring semester is buzzing with activity from classes, field trips, and preparing for Open House.
Have you ever walked inside the belly of a whale? Want to know how long turtles live or what seastars eat? This year’s Open House will answer these and so many more of your ocean questions. Be there Saturday April 20th and Sunday April 21st from 9am to 5pm. As a FREE EVENT we offer a marine adventure puppet show, education presentations by students and faculty, live touch tanks, a sea lion show, raffle and prizes, and so much more. There is so much to see you will need to come back both days!
Entry Way to MLML. Dive into Open House! April 20th and 21st
Photo by: Scott Gabara
Celebrate the return of the Grey Whales to the Monterey Bay at the Whalefest Monterey 2013 event this weekend Saturday, January 26th and Sunday, January 27th !
This event aims to bring public awareness to the marine non-profits that influence the Monterey Bay Marine Sanctuary by offering a variety of fun activities, events, and exhibits from over thirty organizations.
Our very own Pacific Shark Research Center will have a booth set up this weekend! Find us at the Causeway at Old Fisherman’s Wharf from 9am to 5pm.
The grey whale makes one of the longest annual migrations of any mammal, traveling nearly 5,000 miles from its northern feeding grounds to warmer winter calving grounds. Photo: Julian Pye
by Angela Szesciorka, Vertebrate Ecology Lab
This summer I hopped on a plane, flying 29 hours one way (via Paris — ooh la la) over a period of three days to spend nearly a month on the island of Madagascar working on my pilot study.
Madagascar, a former French colony until 1960, is the fourth largest island in the world. Don’t let it fool you. It looks so tiny next to Africa, but it has 44 percent more area than California, and boasts more than 4,800 km of coastline.
Rocky coastline in Madagascar. Photo by Angela Szesciorka.
Most of the country’s export revenue comes from textiles, fish/shellfish, vanilla, and cloves. Newer sources of income include tourism, agriculture, and extracted materials (titanium ore, chromite, coal, iron, cobalt, copper and nickel). Madagascar provides half of the world’s supply of sapphires! But with a GDP of around $20 billion, The Economist rated Madagascar as the worst economy in 2011. Most of Madagascar’s inhabitants are subsistence livers, meaning they live off of what they can grow or catch.
Local fisherman spear hunting for crabs. Photo by Angela Szesciorka.
By Stephanie Hughes, Vertebrate Ecology Lab
If marine mammals are deemed the “canary in the coal mine” for our oceans, how can we predict threats to oceans and human health if funds that support long-term monitoring of these sentinels are eliminated?
The importance of monitoring the health of marine mammals goes beyond our “good Samaritan” duties of saving the cute and cuddly. Rescue and recovery attempts don’t always result in a happy ending, even though we hope for the best outcome. Regardless, our efforts are never in vain, for even failed attempts present us with the opportunity to discover clues for how the animal lived, so we may (hopefully) reveal how and why it died. Responding to diseased, injured, distressed, and even deceased marine mammals is our gateway to unveiling what these animals, and even humans, may be up against as environmental conditions are in flux.
The Marine Mammal and Sea Turtle Stranding Response Network operates through the Vertebrate Ecology Laboratory (VEL) at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (MLML) and is a participant of the National Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program. The VEL-MLML stranding network has been in operation for over 20 years under the direction of Dr. Jim Harvey, professor and interim director of MLML. At its infancy, VEL-MLML stranding response, in collaboration with other stranding response organizations such as The Marine Mammal Center and Long Marine Laboratory, was conducted voluntarily. Students, faculty, and members of the community would volunteer for rescuing, recovering, or collecting data on live and deceased stranded marine mammals. During the early years, equipment for stranding response was limited, thereby making the sample collection and storage to support long-term research difficult, though not impossible. Volunteers often lacked proper transportation, sampling equipment, and protective gear, and many were without formal training on data or sample collection. Despite these shortcomings, dedicated volunteers would drag hundreds of pounds of dead, beached marine mammal heads, tails, flippers, etc. (yes, without latex gloves) through miles of sand dunes, then would strap their prized possession on top of their ’78 Toyota pick up, tails and flippers flapping in the wind on Highway 1 as they returned to the lab. During the early 1990s, the VEL-MLML stranding network had many willing, committed, and dedicated volunteers (still does). What it didn’t have were sufficient funds to support the infrastructure necessary for rapid, large scale, and long-term stranding response.
Looking for whales in Monterey Bay
Ok, so it’s not literally whale soup out here, but Monterey Bay has been full of humpback whales for the past few weeks. Casey Clark, a graduate student at Moss Landing Marine Labs, has been taking advantage of this opportunity to investigate migrations and feeding behavior humpback whales in this region. Each whale’s tail (known as a fluke) has a unique pattern of black and white markings and scars, which can be used to identify individual whales, much like fingerprints are used to identify humans. As part of his research, Casey has been photographing the flukes of whales encountered in the bay and referencing them to a catalog to determine when and where they have been seen in the past. Spring and summer are great times to see humpback and blue whales in Monterey bay, so keep your eyes out for a glimpse of these huge marine mammals!
Last look at a humpback whale.
(photo: KSBW, Amy Larson)
Brynn Hooton-Kaufman
by Brynn Hooton-Kaufman
It started as any good weekend day might. A good cup of coffee, a good book, and a view of the bay. I like to park my car looking out over the tidepools at Asilomar and read, letting the crashing waves add interesting sound effects to whatever scene is playing out in my current novel of choice. Knee deep in Jurassic Park, the waves were bringing to life velociraptors crashing through the forest. Intimidating and terrifying, those velociraptors. But you can’t help but admire them, and the juveniles sound pretty cute. Given the chance, I’d probably take a baby velociraptor for a pet. At least until it started stalking me around the house.
When the sounds of my empty stomach started overpowering the thundering waves, I headed home to make some lunch and get things in order for the coming week. Not two steps into the kitchen my phone buzzed, signaling the arrival of a text message. More often than not, I’d have ignored it, as hunger usually wins out in my ranking of priorities. But as all things happen for a reason, I decided to take a look, and so for once, my phone didn’t get forgotten for hours on end as it usually does.
“hey gray whale calf alive and stranded near monterey dunes colony. TMMC is headed to the scene, we may need ur help! r u available today?”
I had to read the message twice. As much as people might think all marine biologists spend hours on end with dolphins, whales, and other majestic creatures of the sea, learning their mannerisms, capable of identifying any sleek shape that might be surfacing in the bay on a giving day, I hadn’t actually even seen a whaleup close. My closest call was a pod of orcas sighted from the bow of the Point Sur during a class cruise, and I just caught a glimpse of their backs as they headed away. Usually, my most intimate experience with whales was seeing the poof of sea spray that they leave like a footprint above the water, the proof that one of the giants had just taken a great breath before submerging. I really don’t know much about whales. I study seaweed. (more…)
Tomorrow, Big Miracle will open in box offices across the nation, telling the story of the 1988 rescue of three gray whales trapped in the ice near Barrow, Alaska. Dr. Jim Harvey, MLML Director and professor (and MLML alumnus), played a significant role in the operation. Harvey, who frequently tells the story of the rescue to his grad students and now has proof of his whale-tale, sat down with us and agreed to paint the picture one more time, and fill in some of the lesser-known details.
Rescue team members Mark Fraker (left, oil company), NOAA’s Dave Withrow (center) and Jim Harvey (right, seated). (photo: Dave Withrow, NMML, NOAA)
Jim, you didn’t join the faculty at MLML until 1989, a year after the rescue operation took place? What were you doing at the time, and how did you get involved?
That’s correct; I was doing a two-year postdoc position at the National Marine Mammal Lab (NMML) in Seattle, Washington when the story was picked up in the national media. I had done a lot of work tagging gray whales in Baja, California with my advisor Bruce Mate while getting my doctorate at Oregon State University, and NMML recognized that I had experience with gray whales. My status as postdoc also meant my time was more flexible than some of the other biologists.
The scientific community originally didn’t want to interfere with the whales; generally, we try to step back and let nature work its course. However, with the whales in the national spotlight there was a lot of pressure to get involved, and since NMML had done work for years near Barrow, we were eventually asked to send biologists to help. I, along with Dave Withrow, was asked to go, with plans to tag the whales.
(photo: Jim Harvey)
Do you know why the whales were there in the first place, and how they were discovered?
These three young whales were younger and inexperienced, and the truth was, they should have begun migrating south some time earlier when the other gray whales did. They were trapped near Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost city in the US, where a big ice flow had traveled down and grounded itself, effectively blocking their path south.
The whales were found by an Eskimo on a snowmobile who was coming back from a day of hunting. The Eskimo mentioned the whales to scientist Craig George. In Alaska, the native communities hire biologists to help monitor the wildlife they harvest, conduct studies, and manage the permitting, and Craig was one of these scientists. He was interested in recording some acoustic signals from the whales, but didn’t have any equipment to do so. Craig went to a friend at one of the local TV station to see if he could borrow recording equipment, and the friend obliged, and others at the station asked if they could film upon hearing the story of the whales. I don’t think Craig knew what they were planning to broadcast, but it turned out that they showed the footage on the news, and pretty soon it went viral.
(photo: Jim Harvey)
What was it like when you arrived?
When Dave and I made it to Barrow, the town was swamped with media, scientists, environmentalists, government officials, and everyone else you could think of. There actually wasn’t even a place for Dave and I to stay. We were flown by helicopter out onto the ice where the whales were located, and given a chance to assess their condition. Unfortunately, one of the whales had recently disappeared, and was presumed to have died since there was no way for it to find another place to breathe. Possibly, loud noises had likely scared it and caused it to flee from the hole.
(photo: Jim Harvey)
The good news was, however, that the Eskimos had become very efficient at cutting through the ice. There aren’t exactly a lot of trees around Barrow, so the town didn’t have any chainsaws. A generous company actually called the town and had some sent up to help with the effort. By the time we arrived, they were able to make a ~15 by 25 foot hole in ten minutes. They would cut the ice, and then use poles to push down one end. On the other end, more poles were used to push the big chunk down and under the surrounding ice. The only problem was, the whales were too scared to leave the safety of their own reliable hole, and they weren’t moving down the path they were cutting.
Since gray whales really aren’t very good at being in ice, Dave and I assumed they were probably extremely stressed and shaken. We suggested that they cut the holes much closer to the whales, which thankfully worked. The whales became so accustomed to moving from hole to hole, that eventually, a whale would pop up as soon as the newly-cut piece of ice was moved. They actually started traveling back and forth down their line of holes, maybe enjoying a little more freedom.
(photo: Jim Harvey)
This must have taken quite a bit of time to cut so many holes toward the edge of the ice. How long were you there, and where did you stay, since Barrow was packed?
Dave and I were on site for about two weeks, and we stayed for the rest of the rescue operation. Our accommodations were actually sort of a funny story. Because of the lack of lodging, we were housed at the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory (NARL). Due to the Cold War, NARL had gained importance because of its proximity to Russia. It was a pretty top-secret place, and here we were, a couple of scientists. Well, NARL was quite a ways out of Barrow, so the only food available was from the commissary, served on a strict schedule. Somehow, our schedules seemed to be the exact opposite, and we were constantly missing all meals. As luck would have it, we discovered a Mexican restaurant in Barrow that had a limo that would come and pick you up. Dave and I spent quite a few trips riding back and forth in a limo so we could actually eat.
You mentioned tension from the Cold War, but it was a Russian icebreaker that eventually helped the whales out of the ice. How did that work out?
You’re right, there was a lot of tension from the Cold War, but the Russians did come to the rescue. The reason that we needed an icebreaker was because an ice ridge was built up against the shore, and it was far too thick to cut through. They actually considered blowing it up at one time, and took an ice expert from NOAA out to the ridge to take a look. They dropped him off by helicopter, and planned to be back in five minutes. On their way back, they found that he was being stalked by a polar bear, though he had no idea. Thankfully, they were able to get him back into the helicopter before he became a meal. In the end, they decided the icebreaker would be the best bet.
A Russian icebreaker was in the Beaufort Sea, and they were talked into helping, although there was concern because it would bring them so close to NARL and our coastline. The Russian captain and a few other crew actually ended up visiting by helicopter, and took the chance to take pictures of the scene, and shared their traditions by handing out gifts to those of us there. I can’t remember what I was given, but I remember I wasn’t able to give anything in return, because the only article I had was my jacket, and I never could have survived without it in the 10 to 20 degree below zero temperatures.
(photo: Jim Harvey)
So was the icebreaker able to reach the whales and lead them to open water?
Yes, the icebreaker was actually able to plow all the way through, up to the last hole that was carved by the research team. The ship then backed out, and it created a channel that the whales were able to follow. I wasn’t able to watch from the helicopters during this part of the rescue, but there was word that people had seen the whales in open water, and others reported seeing a pair of gray whales off of the California coast. We never ended up tagging the whales because we didn’t want to further stress them out, so we couldn’t say for sure where they ended up. But, I feel confident we gave them a good fighting chance.
(photo: Jim Harvey)
What do you think of a movie being made?
I plan to go see the film, and I’m curious to see how the story is told. I don’t think there’s any character in it that portrays the role I played. But hopefully now, my students wont think I’m spinning a yarn when I tell them about my part in the rescue.
(photo: Jim Harvey)
Humpback whale fluke (tail) damage due to collision with a boat's propeller.
Unfortunately for many marine mammals, vessels running on the water may not see the animals near the surface, and will collide with them. If you are on the water make sure to have many people viewing the water for any obstacles and wear polarized glasses to reduce the glare! The mammals swimming around will greatly appreciate it, like this Humpback whale shown here with damage to its fluke. We are all trying to use the ocean together!
This humpback appreciates us boating by at a very slow speed.
Check these birds out!
You can get up close to birds and whales at Open House without scaring them or getting wet! The Vertebrate Ecology Lab has many cool birds on display – its amazing how many different birds we have in and around Monterey Bay. And you can even take a peek at a tiny baby whale!
Make sure to see the baby whale!
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