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The OVAL project has the potential to gather more data about Orca's in roughly a half-kilometer range then any other prior research teams have been able to do. With all the equipment running properly we will be able to calculate the position of Orca vocalizations and focus a camera on their position. We place 8 hydrophones along the coast averaging about 40 meters off shore. The shore faces west, and the most northern hydrophone is about 200 meters from the most southern hydrophone. The video camera sits on a small bluff about 5 meters above the water. By videoing the whale activities we are able to correlate actions with sounds and hopefully learn more about the language that the southern Puget sound Orca's use.
As a member of the OVAL team I have the role of making a program for the OOPic (Object-Oriented Programmable Integrated Circuit). The function of the OOPic is to guide a camera mount and control the zoom and focus on the camera. The OOPic receives a signal from a computer containing the coordinates of the Orcas. The computer's program measures the time delay between when the signal was received at at least three different hydrophones and from this is able to calculate the Orca's position. This position is sent along a serial connection to the OOPic where the OOPic receives this data and from it controls the camera and mount. We are using the OOPic II because a serial connection has been added but the regular OOPic would work just as well with a similar serial connection. Other modifications to the OOPic are the addition of the MAX 483 chip, which allows us to receive and transmit digital information from the outside world. See the program for the OOPic as well as explanations and links for further information.
The OOPics
(the serial connection is screwed onto the left side and the MAX 483 chip is soldered in above the processor)
Beyond the OOPic
So beyond the OOPic what must happen to make this whole project come together? This has been both a pleasure and a pain. The largest problem has come from the hydrophones (underwater microphones) which fail during the year and must be pulled up and made to work again. The complications come from the fact that the hyrdophones are up to half a football field from the shore and 17 meters deep in water that is about 8 degrees celsius. This means multiple layers of wet suits which have been worn by Paul, Matt, Molly and Dr. Val Veirs. The divers swim out with scuba gear and follow the cables going out to the hydrophones and then bring up the ones that we have found dont work to people on a small boat we fondly think of as the put put. When the hydrophones have been fixed we then take them back out to about where they were before and drop them in there. On one of these occasions the divers were following the cables from the shore out to a couple of the deepest and farthest hydrophones and found that the cables had been severed. A possible explanation is that a boat's fishing net got tangled in the hydrophone cables and the fishers cut the cable to free the nets since it is hard to imagine how any natural occurrence would break 1/4 inch cable. The pictures below show a glimpse of what we were facing.
| Scott Veirs and myself are locating the hydrophones with the assistance of divers. |  |
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aqua-men and their helpers on shore |
Beyond OVAL
Believe it or not we don't work on this project all the time...... Well, maybe Winn does but anyway... So what are we doing when we are not localizing whales? We for the most part are eating (which means barbecue) or drinking or making bond fires on the beech.....
or we are visiting Friday Harbor research laboratories as a branch of the University of Washington where we had close encounters with a great deal of sea life from the largest barnacles on earth to the largest slugs on earth. For pictures of some of our trip to the Lab's click here.
or we are having an oyster cook out on the beach at our new friends house Kari and Doug where we went kayaking at sunset and roasted chicken and oysters in a fire afterwards. For pictures of this click here.
We also visited Canada where we have had informative tours at research facilities on Vancouver island. We learned there from Peter Ross the 3 things that are believed to be the worst for the well being of the Orca's in the Southern Puget Sound. These are:
1.) Shortage of food supply due to the decrease in salmon population because of commercialization and damming in their spawning habitats
2.) Concentration of PCB's due to chemical factories in Asia as well as from factories that were producing it 20 years ago in the Puget Sound (factories in the U.S. have not been producing the chemical since its use was banned 20 years ago).
3.) Whale watching industry seems to hinder Orca's because the high frequency of motors in small boats interferes with their echo location which is their main source of information.
For pictures of our Canada trip click here. In Canada we camped the first night in Nanaimo and had a night on the town the second night when we stayed at a hotel in Victoria.
The last Sunday we made a dinner for all of us including Val, Leslie and Ken where we ate chicken and cheese enchiladas and had many pies for dessert. See the results here and get a recipe.
Sunset at the headquarters for OVAL
