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I am a Biology major at CC, and I got to come on this trip as the "resident behavioral biologist." I also get to play in the water and SCUBA dive to check out the hydrophones outside of Val and Leslie Veirs' house, here on the west side of San Juan Island.
I'm in the blue suit, "supervising" the removal of a displaced cable anchor.
I talked to Rich Osborne, one of the scientists here about my project yesterday afternoon. He had some very good, but very different ideas about what I should be focusing on, and how I should approach the problem. Mainly, he thinks that I should focus on sound an acoustic behavior, using recordings on CDs that his group has collected.
We were thinking I could learn the calls of the local S-pod resident killer whales, as categorized by John Ford (1987, and others) and then statistically analyze the patterns and variations in the various calls. He thinks I may be able to recognize emotional levels in the whales based on how they vary thier use of sound. This makes sense, and has some support from other studies.
Based on these new ideas, and the fact that there is already concrete data collected that just needs to be looked at and worked with a bit, I think I will be able to have a pretty good project. Hopefully, I will also be able to set up a pretty solid system for data analysis and future study. This way, if Val ever lets us bio kids come on the trip again, there will be some kind of ground work layed for their projects.
I still have to figure out exactly what my hypothesis is. It will most likely be along the lines of, can variation be observed in orca calls based on the amount and level of vocal activity at the time of vocalization? It looks like I will be recording the occurance and distribution of the sounds over the collection periods, and statistically analyzing that data. Fortunatly, I do not think there is very much bias in the data they have collected, either with time of day, or time of year, but I have to check on that. Rich's data sheets have been tested and should help me organize my data, but I may have to find some additional ways to reach and record my personal observational objectives.I am really excited to be here, as we are working closely with the local and world experts on orca vocalizations and related fields. We are going to at least get to meet a number of the top scientists here, and I even get to work with them on some of their equipment and in their labs.
My project is fairly closely tied to Erika and Matt's work as well. You can look at their ideas by checking out thier web pages:
Erika & Matt
With Val, as well as encouraging the biology angle of this class, I think I will be helping on a few different projects. I am helping to make a decorative speaker box for local broadcasting in front of the house, I will be snorkling and SCUBA diving to help locate, recover, and improve the current hydrophone arrays, and assisting any other projects as I can.
