The Gods Must Be Crazy

July 28, 2009

A day to remember my mom, Judy. She died 3 years ago on this day. It's a date I will never ever forget, because it's the day my entire life changed. I now think of my life as "before my mom died" and "after". It's a very distinct line in the proverbial sand - July 28, 2006. The "after" is very different from the "before", in many many ways. Not that different is bad, it's just that so many things have changed. Sometimes it seems like 10 minutes ago that I found out mom died, other times 10 years. But inevitably, always right around the end of July for the last couple years I get blue, want to spend more time with my family, and miss my mom. It's such a strange feeling, in the middle of summer, to be so sad. It's usually bright and sunny, lots of fun activities are planned, but yet there's an underlying heartache that won't go away. Compound that with my pending birthday in early August (and my mom's, that we used to celebrate together), and it's like turning on the blender of my emotions.

But now, we have a reason to reflect on the amazing cycle of life. Out of this very sad, memorable day comes a reason once again to be happy and celebrate. My newest nephew, Liam Christopher, was born on the exact same day, 3 years after my mom left us for the next world. The significance of this is so deep that I haven't fully comprehended it yet. I won't let myself, I don't think, until I am able to be with Jill and Liam and Frankie and the rest of my family. All I can say is that the Gods (or at least my mom and her mom, both together and watching us and laughing conspiratorially) are crazy. Crazy in a way that's right on.

Spotted at Astoria Sunday Market

Ah, nothing like a tranquil Sunday morning, sun's out, music is playing, people are milling all around the downtown part of Astoria, talking with friends, picking up local produce, checking out the "quaint" watercolors of Oregon coast scenes...And WHAM! I spot this booth, curiously set up across the street from the end of the market, but nonetheless inviting some interested locals...

Gotta love a town that embraces all freedoms in this country...even if I don't agree with them...

Springing into Summer

Just a picture to entice visitors to visit me on the Oregon Coast!

Whoa, I can't believe it's already June. Let's see...what have been up to as the time has been flying by?

Well, a lot of work. Being a marine biologist and all, my "busy" season is spring and summer --- when birds are nesting, fish are spawning, animals are migrating, the ocean is upwelling and plankton are blooming...You get the idea. And the weather improves! Always a bonus when your job requirements include "spend 30-40 days at sea every year".

So after my last stint at sea chasing killer whales in March, I was out at it again for 8 days at the end of May. Not necessarily the chasing whales part, but still on a big boat on the ocean! Substitute NOAA cushy research cruise ship with the Canadian fishing vessel the R/V Frosti, and viola! I'm fishing for salmon! It was my first time on a *real, live fishing boat* (cue oohs and aahs). Okay, I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm a dork. But ever since I turned down a job offer to work as a fisheries observer in Alaska circa 1999 (post-WWU biology degree in hand), I've wondered what I missed. It was very cool to be on a working fishing vessel - and quite a contrast to the NOAA ships. For one, the crew (there's only 4) work extremely hard, even when they're chartered by us to fish at certain locations. They call our cruises with them "vacation". But they're still up sunrise to sunset, sometimes longer. We worked transect lines that run East-West off Washington and Oregon about 20-30 miles offshore in search of the elusive Pacific salmon. And boy did we find them!! There are about 7 stations on each transect line, where we stop the boat, take water samples for chrolophyll, plankton, and temperature, and lower a CTD (conductivity-temperature-depth) instrument to the seafloor to get a record of what is going on at every point of the ocean directly below our boat. Once we have done all of this, we put a trawl in the water and tow it for 30 minutes at the surface, catching salmon and many other fish species. It was very fun for me to see so many fish up close and personal - species like black rockfish, anchovy, sardine, herring, dogfish, and of course salmon!!



P.S. something else "springing" into summer! Whoa, my favorite succulent plant sprung a 2-foot stalk!? It's now dying, it spent all it's energy on spreading it's seeds to my rug...

Top 10 pics from my research cruise

***Not that I have to tell you, but please don't use these for "unauthorized" purposes...

And...I'm back!

Can you believe it? I can't...it seems like it went by so fast. I'm a bit disappointed, to be honest. I generally relish going to sea so that I can "tune out" and disconnect for awhile - catch up on books I've been meaning to read, write in my journal, reflect on life... I did get some of this accomplished, but I think the fact that the cruise was a mere 3 weeks prevented me from fully embracing this - oh and the fact that we had virtually 24-hr access to the internet! D'Oh! But this did keep the "inbox" from overflowing...

Anyhoo, I am now back on dry land. Well, I should just say land. Arguable about it's dryness (although today was a very nice sunny day on the Oregon coast!).

The cruise was very successful for all - we had numerous sightings of killer whales! Primarily along the Washington coast, but we did venture south into Oregon waters for a bit, too. And to top it off, the mammal scientists were able to locate a number of transient (mammal-eating) killer whales, in addition to the resident (salmon-eating) whales. We even got to see a pod of transients kill a sea lion! At one point the sea lion was hiding under the stern of our ship!

But, I digress. As I am now a seabird biologist, I must focus on the success of this aspect of the cruise. And success, we had! I had a great team of birders with me - Ryan and Terry are true birders (I'm a mere mortal) and I learned a lot from them. Ryan, at the tender age of 24, has virtually memorized the Sibley Guide to Birds - a feat I doubt I'll ever master - even if required in some intro to birds class I never took.

Anyhoo, with these two birders, our eagle eyes spotted some veeery interesting and rare birds on the survey transects. In particular, over 100 Parakeet Auklets! These small alcids (see link) are not very common at all in Washington waters, so to see so many was quite remarkable. Remarkable enough that I am now tasked (with some colleagues) with writing a scientific paper about our sightings. And the cool thing is that not much is known about these birds after they disperse from their breeding colonies in Alaska. We have a whole suite of oceanographic data (sea-surface temperature, salinity, depth, prey) to examine and see if there are any correlations to where we saw the birds. Other rare birds we saw include Manx Shearwater, Tufted and Horned Puffins, Northern Fulmars (my personal fav!), and the ubiquitous Common Murre and Sooty Shearwater.

I'm now back on terra firma, prepping for a busy field season messing about in boats!

Click here for a link to see the highlights from PODS 2009...

And...I'm off!

After returning from Japan, I'm jumping right into the busy field season. First up, a 3-week research cruise along the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California. I was supposed to depart a mere 5 days after returning from Japan, but thankfully the cruise was delayed. I now depart March 23 and will return April 9.

The cruise is with NOAA on the Research Vessel (R/V) McArthur II. The main goal of the cruise is to find the Southern Resident Killer Whales. By "find" I mean use big eyes (huge binoculars mounted on a stand) to search the ocean for these animals. The researchers have spotters on shore keeping an eye for the whales, but it may be a crap shoot. Why, do you ask, are we plying the mighty Pacific for a small group of whales? Well, these whales are part of a small population of killer (orca) whales that are very common ("resident") in the San Juan Islands during summertime (remember my old whale watching gig? Same whales...). They feed exclusively on salmon, and thus tend to follow salmon runs. They also recently were listed as an endangered species. Thus, a lot of money and effort is going into describing every aspect of their ecology to determine why the population is declining, especially in the winter months when they are not in the San Juan Islands. Hence, we are going to be collecting as much data as possible about the habitat they are found in, their diet, behavior, etc. while at-sea (assuming we locate them).

Where do I come in, you ask? Well, I will part of the seabird team, recording all of the seabirds we sight along the way. This gives us a better idea of the species composition of seabirds in March along the coast, as well as abundance and location. We can identify "hot-spots" for seabirds - areas of high productivity, a lot of prey, etc. One of the main seabirds I study, Sooty Shearwaters, migrate to the West Coast from New Zealand in late spring and summer. I'm hoping I will actually get to document their arrival to the West Coast on this cruise. They generally migrate within days of each other, and they are one of the most abundant seabirds in the Pacific Ocean. Millions of them are common in the spring/summer. If we're lucky, we'll go from seeing zero shearwaters, to 10's and 100's per day, to 1,000's! It will be pretty cool...

Stay tuned for updates!

Sea otter at mouth of Columbia River!

Sea otter - Copyright Bryant Austin

On Thursday, March 12, 2009, my boss, Jen Zamon and I were doing a monthly survey of seabirds and marine mammals from the North Head Lighthouse in Cape Disappointment State Park on the coast of Washington, just north of the Columbia River.

As I swung the scope through our survey area, I saw an animal floating on it's back, rubbing it's face and body, rolling along. I immediately thought "That's a sea otter", but at the same time thought "No way, they're so rare here, I must be seeing a river otter". But I kept the scope focused on the animal and saw it's lighter colored head, broad and fuzzy, the grooming and rolling behavior and knew it was a sea otter. My boss confirmed it and we documented as much about it's location, behavior and any other observations that we could. Unfortunately we didn't get any good pictures of the animal through the scope, but nonetheless, very exciting!

This sighting may be the first one in this area since 1913!

Read about it here:

http://www.dailyastorian.com/Main.asp?SectionID=2&ArticleID=59218