Hello, my name is Matthew Ayres and I am a senior Biology student from Colorado College. I am one of the few lucky non-physics students that had the privilege of being a part of the project here on San Juan Island. I am here conducting a study with my partner Erika involving Orca call identification, with a focus on their vocal tendencies with respect to the presence of boats. I am also here to do whatever nessecary to help further progress with the OVAL project. This ranges from helping with the scuba diving (along with Molly) in order to maintain the array and retrieve broken hydrophones, to doing work in the shop (non-electronics) with the construction of the improved hydrophone stands.

There are a variety of boats going through the strait of Juan de Fuca which do you think is most whale friendly?

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The project that I completed involved the classification of orca calls and communication with a focus on finding a correlation between calls made with and without the presence of boats. This is possible, but also requires a complete data base nessecary for an acurate assesment. My partner and I first had to start back in Colorado with ear training to learn the different Southern Resident calls that have been categorized by Jon Ford and the Center For Whale Research. From this step we have gone through the very slow process of sorting through the entire past year's (season) recordings and analyzing them to provide an accurate count of calls. From this, the information was broken down into categories of calls with and without boats. We then took this data and broke it into 1-60 minute"pass bys" for each set of calls. The goal is to find particular calls that have a correlation to the presence of boats, using percentages, to give us a little more of a glimpse into interpeting the meaning of some Orca vocalization.

Some quality shop time building the new hydrophone stands along with playing in the water, what a group effort!

Click to view Erika and Molly's web pages

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