San Juan Island Beached Birds: Then and Now

I went down to Fourth of July Beach to do a COASST survey this afternoon. I've been conducting these surveys for almost two years here in the San Juan Islands, but have yet to find a beached bird on my beach. In general, beached bird numbers for the San Juan Islands are very low, probably the lowest of anywhere COASST surveys along the west coast of North America.

The other day I came across an article that mentioned beached bird surveys that were conducted on San Juan Island in 1989 through the Department of Fish and Wildlife's Adopt-A-Beach Program. They reported finding a whopping 69 birds on San Juan beaches over the course of 10 surveys, which was the highest number reported in the state. The second highest was 32 birds found in Grays Harbor. Curious, I e-mailed COASST to see if they had any insight into what was going on and/or what has changed.

It turns out they have the old Adopt-A-Beach data in their office and they took a look at the San Juan 1989 surveys, and they were kind enough to share some of what they found with me. A single survey on Jackson Beach in August of that year had 11 common murres, 7 rhinoceros auklets, a California gull, and a tufted puffin. Another survey around that time noted that many of the birds were very decomposed and that the gill net fishery was open at that time. The COASST folks concluded that the  use of gill nets probably had something to do with the spike in beached bird numbers.

Fishing is more restricted now than it was in the 80s, but it still goes on. Last year during August I found a dead common murre on South Beach, which also coincided with a fishery opening, though it was mostly purse seiners on the water at that time. I recall others reporting murre carcasses out on the water and requesting reports to try an monitor affects of the fishery on bird populations. It's a stark reminder of one of the many ways human activity influences marine bird populations.

But today, there were no dead birds on my beach, so I paid attention to the live ones. In the brambles near the trail to the beach I saw a fox sparrow, as well as several song sparrows. The trees in the field across from the parking area held a trio of American robins and a northern flicker. Out in Griffin Bay were about 40 bufflehead, 20 surf scoters, 7 double-crested cormorants, 6 horned grebes, and 5 common loons. In the lagoon were 11 mallards, a pair of American wigeon, and a single male gadwall.

It's hard for me to be at the south end of the island and not head over to South Beach and Cattle Point to see what's going on bird-wise, especially with potential for the white-winged scoters, long-tailed ducks, and Pacific loons that have still eluded me for a tally on the year list. South Beach was quiet, but there was a bit more activity at Cattle Point today.

A flock of about 35 red-winged blackbirds provided a constant soundtrack for my visit there. There were about 8 red-breasted mergansers patrolling the shoreline, and a single horned grebe, a single pelagic cormorant, and a few more surf scoters out in the channel. I could see about a dozen or more Steller sea lions hauled out over on Whale Rocks. Goose Island was empty compared to the summer, but there were  a couple pairs of Canada geese, a few immature double-crested cormorants, and a black oystercatcher hanging out, along with the seemingly resident harbor seals that were hauled out on the north end of the island. A few other harbor seals were fishing in the currents. 

I walked down to the cove near Cape San Juan and was rewarded with finding a single black turnstone (125) to add to the year list. In the cove itself were half a dozen harlequin ducks and about ten more bufflehead. 

No photos today - too dreary and no close encounters. They're forecasting potential snow showers from tonight through the weekend, so we'll see if any of that accumulates. Next up will most likely be reports from the Great Backyard Bird Count this weekend. If you're in North America, you too can participate in this citizen science project!

"Flex": Redefining Our Understanding of the Western Gray Whale

There are so many interesting things going on in the marine science world that, in continuing with the theme of my last post, I thought I would dedicate a series of posts to some of these fascinating topics. Today: the interesting results from the recent tagging of a Western Pacific gray whale.

The Eastern Pacific gray whale that migrates from the Bering Sea in Alaska to Baja Mexico was hunted nearly to extinction, but since the whaling ban the population has recovered quite well to an estimated 20,000 animals. The Western Pacific gray whale, however, which spends the summer months feeding off of Kamchatka, remains one of the most highly endangered whale populations with only about 150 animals and seems genetically distinct from their Eastern Pacific counterparts. The population was actually considered extinct until it was re-discovered off of Russia’s Sakhalin Island in the 1970s.

It is unknown what path these Western Pacific animals take to migrate or where they go to breed, but it was assumed that they traveled south to somewhere off of China. It was essential to determine this for certain to aid in their protection, so last fall a team of Russian and American scientists set out to tag several of these animals to see where they actually go. Due to a variety of factors including bad weather they were only able to successfully deploy a single tag on October 4^th, the last day of the expedition. The tagged whale is a thirteen year-old male nicknamed Flex. The data Flex’s tag has collected so far has been a shocker.

This gray whale, instead of going south, headed east. He crossed the Bering Sea in the north Pacific, made it to the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, then crossed the Gulf of Alaska, and now has started making his way south towards the west coast of North America. In today's update, they indicate that on his current trajectory he is likely to bypass Vancouver Island of BC and, if he continues, reach the west coast of North America somewhere around central Oregon. The tag hasn't broadcast for a couple of days, but they're hoping that's just due to weather (there was another data gap a bit earlier due to high seas) and not that the tag has fallen off.

“It’s got everyone scratching their heads,” said John Calambokidis at the Ways of Whales workshop last weekend.

Oregon State University, the home base for Bruce Mate who led the tagging operations, releases new maps of the whale’s travels every Monday. Keep tabs via press releases on Flex's progress here. This week's map can be seen here. Bruce Mate estimated that if Flex continued traveling south, he would reach Oregon by mid-February. If he's going all the way to Baja he wouldn’t arrive until many of the single animals have already started their northbound migration.

Tagging whales can lead to profound discoveries, such as seems to be the case with this gray whale. Another example that occurred last year was shared by Brad Hanson at the Ways of Whales workshop where he shared the track of an Alaskan resident killer whale. The data points colletced from a single tagged whale completely redefined the range of Alaskan residents, as this one male went all the way over to Kodiak.

It’s amazing to me how little we still know about whales. I understand that some people are resistant to tagging for its invasiveness, but the data gathered as a result of satellite tagging not only has the potential to be astounding, re-shaping our understanding of entire populations of whales, but also can be a key component in determining their ranges, defining their critical habitats, and hence protecting them and ensuring their long-term survival.

V4: A Universal Killer Whale Call?

The Ways of Whales workshop today was successful, with over 100 people in attendance. There were some great talks: Brad Hanson talked about satellite tagging, John Calambokidis talked about new insights into North Pacific baleen whale stocks, a former Sea World trainer gave her views on last year’s tragic death of a trainer, and Suzanne Chisholm shared a project she is working on about the dolphin captures in Taiji. The lecture I gave was about killer whale acoustics, including some background on call usage and also tips for listeners on how to figure out which pod they are listening to when they hear the whales on the streaming hydrophones at www.orcasound.net.

One other bit of information I shared was about a study I got to participate in last year that resulted in a paper that was just published by Nicola Rehn and colleagues in a natural science journal journal*. When I was contacted by a colleague of mine, Andy Foote, last year, he asked me to listen to several dozen orca calls and place them into categories based on how I thought they should be defined.

After I went through all of the calls and organized them into call types, he told me what the study was about: they believe that there is an orca call, that they’ve termed V4, which is universal across not only different killer whale populations, but different killer whale ecotypes (resident, transient, offshore). Indeed, I had placed all of the proposed V4 calls into the same category, even though they came from five different populations of whales: the Southern Residents, the Northern Residents, the Kamchatka Residents, the Pacific offshores, and the Bering Sea transients. Eight other independent observers came up with similar classifications, justifying the researchers’ belief that this may be a universal call type.

This finding is interesting for two reasons. First of all, it’s the first demonstration of an overlap of call types between different populations of orcas that until now were believed to have completely distinct dialects. Second of all, the calls are primarily recorded in high excitement states, regardless of the population the call came from. For the residents and offshores, the call occurred in social situations, and for the transients, the call was recorded after the group had made a kill. The evidence points to this being an innate, universal call type that is highly variable but still categorizable – much like human laughter or crying.

The V4 call is often heard among Southern Residents and was termed S10 in the 1980s by John Ford. I’ve always described this call to others as sounding like the whales are laughing, and it turns out this may not be so far off! Here’s a sample of the call so you know what to listen for if you’re tuning in to the hydrophones:

*More information can be found in the paper: Rehn et al (2011). “Cross-cultural and cross-ecotype production of a killer whale ‘excitement’ call suggests universality”. Naturwissenschaften. (98):1-6.

Satellite Tagging of Southern Resident Killer Whales

With the endangered listing of the Southern Resident population of killer whales they have received even more attention from researchers to fill in the gaps in our knowledge about them and ensure they receive adequate protection. One of the first issues to come up was vessel regulations regarding boater behavior around the whales. There was a public comment period about this issue that received much attention, and a hearing in Friday Harbor back in October 2009. Originally we expected the new regulations to be announced for the 2010 whale-watching season, but the announcement was postponed and I imagine we will find out what NOAA has decided before the 2011 season is set to begin. Now, there is a public comment period open in regards to another issue: satellite tagging the Southern Resident Killer Whales.

Many people are surprised to learn that we don't know where this population of whales spends its time for much of the winter months. While their daily movements are monitored closely while they're in inland waters, as soon as they head out to the Pacific Ocean sightings are scarce with weeks or even months passing between encounters. We know the whales range over much of the outer coast from northern British Columbia to Monterey, California, but how far offshore they go, where their important feeding areas are, and how often they frequent different regions is for the most part unknown. It is important to learn where these whales are in the winter so the area designated as their critical habitat can be defined to give them more protection.

While long-term satellite tags have been used more widely on large cetaceans, a relatively non-invasive long-term tag for smaller cetaceans is a fairly new technological advancement. Suction cup tags have been placed on Southern Residents, but they typically stay on for a matter of hours rather than weeks. Recently satellite tags have been used more widely on small cetaceans, but there has been a hesitation before using them on this endangered group of whales to learn more about the risks involved. Earlier this year, Brad Hanson, one of the lead cetacean researchers in the region, applied for an amendment to his permit from NOAA that would allow him to deploy six satellite tags on Southern Residents.

This has raised several concerns about the public administration of whale populations. One of the biggest concerns people have is about the wounds caused by the tags, which contain a pair of titanium darts that embed more than 2.5 inches into the skin. The tags eventually fall off (11 transient killer whales have been tagged on the west coast since 2008, and the tags transmitted for anywhere from 16-94 days), but can leave open wounds and scars as evidenced by follow-up monitoring. Such wounds are potentially an entry point for disease, and with a population of fewer than 90 animals, the loss of even one animal is a huge impact.

It's important, I think, to consider that these animals receive similar injuries to their fins and bodies in their everyday life. This wound on the dorsal fin of K21 Cappuccino, as seen earlier in 2010, looks just as bad or worse than some of the post-tagging wounds:

I had to think long and hard about this issue, but I believe that the benefits of learning where these whales spend time in the winter outweighs the risk of tagging. Here's a copy of the public comments I submitted with some more details of my thoughts:

I support the proposed satellite tagging of Southern Resident killer whales as a means to gather important data that is currently lacking, particularly when it comes to designating the winter portion of the critical habitat for this endangered population of orcas. I understand this is the most feasible method to gather this data, and respect all of the precautions that are being taken. I think it is especially important to deploy the tags at the appropriate time of year to get the required data, and to monitor the tagged whales’ health to the best ability possible, both of which were indicated in the proposal. However, after reading the amendment request I found myself with the following questions:

1. Will the number of tags to be deployed (6) provide sufficient data to begin designating critical habitat for these whales? Satellite tag data was key in designating the critical habitat of Hawaii’s false killer whales, but 23 satellite tags were deployed on that population.

2. The request states: “The only alternative method for obtaining information on offshore movements is through boat-based photo-identification, which is severely limited in scope by sea conditions and range of small vessels.” At the Marine Naturalist’s Gear –Down in Friday Harbor on November 5, 2010 I learned from a talk given by Candice Emmons that acoustic detection of Southern Residents has been attempted via remote hydrophones along the outer coast since 2005 in addition to these boat-based surveys. What information has been learned through this technique and why isn’t this a sufficient method to determine the winter range of the Southern Residents?

3. When you are dealing with a small population size, which individuals will be targeted for potentially invasive research is a key issue. Even though the short- and long-term impacts of satellite tagging are deemed minimal, implanting tags is not a zero-risk operation and the appropriate individuals should be selected for deployment. I have questions regarding the individuals that are listed as candidates for tagging in Table 2. While post-reproductive females no longer play a direct role in increasing population size, they play a cultural role of undetermined importance to the community as a whole. With the loss of several of these older females in recent years, I would propose that the targeted females are of post-reproductive age, but perhaps not older than the age of 70 given the unknown importance of this small segment of the population. I have also heard that some of these older females have not been successfully biopsied or suction cup tagged, and if this is the case they may not be the most approachable whales for satellite tag deployment. Additionally, I think post-reproductive age females under 70 that have never been seen with a calf (such as K40) and reproductive age females that have not been seen with a calf for a decade or more should be the highest ranked candidates for tagging. Given the small population size and the limited number of breeding age males, I would also propose that no more than one male per pod be tagged.

4. Finally, I don’t feel that sufficient justification was given for the increase in suction cup tag deployment from 10 to 20. While the data gathered from these tags is interesting, this research is invasive and it has not been demonstrated here as being critical to filling the data gaps in our knowledge of this endangered population of whales. Unless such justification occurs, I don’t believe it is necessary to increase this type of tagging.

If you have your own thoughts or opinions on this issue I strongly encourage you to send in your own comments. You can read the federal register for the proposed amendment here. The modification request can be read in more detail on NOAA's site here, where under attachments you can also download a pdf of the amendment proposal (the second of the three downloads) submitted by Brad Hanson, which I found to be the most informative read. The public comment period is open until December 23rd, and you can submit your comments via e-mail to NMFS.Pr1Comments@noaa.gov. They request that you include File No. 781-1824 in the subject line.

This December 10th article in the Victoria Times Colonist and this December 5th article in the Kitsap Sun also provide you with some more good information.

J33 ~ Keet

Since several people have been wondering about the status of J33 Keet, I thought I would post something here on my blog. 

The Center for Whale Research is the official population census organization for the Southern Resident Killer Whales. They publish official population counts twice a year - once in the middle of the summer and once at the end of the calendar year, based on the last sighting of each pod. It is believed that J33 Keet, a male born in 1996 to J16 Slick, is missing, but he has not officially been listed as missing and probably won't be until the end of the year. Because I defer to the Center for Whale Research for official census information, Keet was not included in my Day of the Dead post earlier this month.

J33 ~ Keet in August 2009

If Keet has passed away, it is indeed a tragic loss. Along with L73 Flash and L74 Saanich that would make him the third young male orca that has passed away this year, which is certainly a cause for concern. I find myself especially shocked and saddened when a J-Pod whale passes away. Not only do I in most cases know them better as a family group because they spend more time in inland waters, but in the time I've known them they've always seemed like the most resilient pod. I've been closely following this population of whales since the year 2000, and in that time the only two J-Pod whales have passed away: newborn calf J43 in 2007 and adult female J11 Blossom in 2008. This means every other J-Pod calf born in the last decade (ten of them) has survived, a remarkable ratio, and only a single adult whale has died.

Let's hope Keet is not in fact missing. If he is, let's hope this year is just an anomaly with the loss of three adult and sub-adult males, and not symptomatic of a greater problem as the loss of all the males in the late 1990s was. Regardless of the reason, Keet will be missed.

Record Fraser River Sockeye Salmon Run

Salmon are the lifeblood of the Pacific Northwest coastal ecosystems, and with some runs having declined as much as 90% or more in the last 50 years their recovery is a central conservation issue in the region. Salmon politics are controversial, since many competing interests come into play: commercial fishing, recreational fishing, Native fishing, fish farms, hydroelectric dams, agriculture, development, logging - all play a role in altering salmon populations and their habitats.

This year, after several seasons of extensive fishery closures due to record low numbers, the Fraser River in southern British Columbia is experiencing a huge sockeye salmon return unlike any other since 1913. The International Pacific Salmon Commission is now estimating a total run of 34,546,000 fish! Compare that to last year's dismal run of barely over 1,000,000 fish and you'll get an idea of how amazing these numbers are. It seems they keep increasing the number every few days as more and more fish come back.

A huge run like this is obviously good news for everyone. Fisherman are having  a field day, though some are trouble meeting their high quotas as the facilities just don't exist anymore to handle and process such a bounty. It's certainly good for all salmon-eating predators in the ecosystem, though just how good it is for our  fish-eating Southern Resident orcas is up for debate. The vast majority of these whales' diet is salmon, but past research shows they preferentially feed on Chinook salmon. They have been around a lot this summer, leaving inland waters less than normal, so one has to wonder if they are taking advantage of the sockeye feast. Best of all, the salmon returns this year prove that our oceans and rivers are still capable of supporting this many fish when conditions are right - a hopeful sign for the future and the long-term recovery of all five of our salmon species.

Unfortunately, many are quick to take credit and/or shed blame as a result of these great salmon numbers. The Departments of Fisheries and Oceans in Canada are claiming this as a conservation victory, and all the parties mentioned above as having a negative impact on salmon populations are using this statistic as proof that they aren't the culprit for the decades of low salmon numbers. Even 34 million is a fraction of what this ecosystem used to support - regular returns of over 100 million fish before the dawn of the commercial fishing age. The fact of the matter is, one great year does not undo the last century of damage done to local salmon populations, and the fact that nobody saw this coming points out that despite the best population estimates science currently has to offer there are great gaping holes in our understanding of what influences salmon returns. Last year, they predicted more than 10 million fish to return, and less than 1.5 million did. This year, they predicted  about 11.4 million sockeye, and now the numbers are triple that. Even in retrospect, nobody seems able to offer a complete explanation as to why so many salmon returned this year compared to others.

So while I meet this historic salmon year with a sense of cautious optimism, to me it points out yet again just how little we understand nature. Hopefully everyone will enjoy the abundant salmon this year, a reminder of the "good old days" for all of our west coast rivers, and a taste of what the future could hold if we renew our efforts to conserve one of our region's most valuable natural resources: the wild Pacific salmon.

Birds: On Name Changes and Species Splits

One difficult aspect of keeping bird records of any sort is that the species periodically change. My recent additions to my year list have reflected this confusion! Part of the complication comes from birds changing names, such as the long-tailed duck (139), which used to be referred to as the oldsquaw until 2000. This is fairly manageable when record-keeping, and you eventually get used to the new nomenclature. But what about when species merge or split? Then you can have birds added or subtracted to your life list just based on the decision of the International Ornithological Congress - what some refer to as "armchair ticks".

I won't go into too much detail here about what biologists refer to as the "species problem", but the gist of it is that when taking into consideration things such as geographic distribution, interbreeding, hybridization, etc. it can be very difficult to define what exactly a species is. That fact of the matter is, of course, that evolution is a constantly occurring process, so the term "species" tries to put into definite categories populations that are always in flux, either merging or splitting over the grander scale of time. When it comes to marine mammals, for example, we are likely seeing the beginnings of speciation when it comes to transient and resident orcas - right now they are both very morphologically similar, but if their distinct behaviors keep them from genetically intermixing over time they will diverge more and more from one another.

So how does this fit into my year bird list? Well, the powers that be just decided to resplit the yellow-rumped warbler (which is number 61 on my year list) into four separate species! They originally merged the myrtle warbler and Audubon's warbler into the yellow-rumped warbler in 1973, but have decided to split them again based on several new studies that demonstrate the two different morphs do not interbreed. To deal with this, I have decided to make #61 on the year list the myrtle warbler, the morph I posted a picture of here when I saw it in January. While birding yesterday while off-island for the day in Seattle, I saw the Audubon's version of the former yellow-rumped warbler, so I will make that the next tick on my list (140). Follow all that? :)

Okay, back to the bird sightings! I finally got to check out Union Bay Natural Area near Seattle, a place I have long read about as a great place to bird. It is known affectionately as Montlake Fill, or simply "The Fill", since it was the city dump for Seattle from 1926 to 1965 before it was cleaned up and restored in 1971. It is now a premier urban birding site right in the middle of the city. While I failed to spot any of the recent goodies like a mountain bluebird, I did get a few nice photo ops, like of this female red-winged blackbird perched on a cattail:

All the expected waterfowl species were present, but this was probably the closest and best look I've ever had of a male cinnamon teal:

A jogger who noticed we were birding was also kind enough to point out this impressive bushtit nest:

Then today while out on the water, we saw an impressive flock of about 1000 Bonaparte's gulls (141), a bird that has always been its own species and has always been called the Bonaparte's gull! While we often see flocks of these gulls in winter plumage in the autumn, they are less frequently spotted on their way north in the spring, but these guys were all decked out in their sharp breeding plumage including a black hood. A good find!

Hearing in Marine Mammals

Today was the annual Marine Naturalists' Gear-Down, an end-of-season lecture series hosted by The Whale Museum. While there was a lot of great information shared, I thought I would focus this post on one interesting fact I learned and have since been pondering (and reading about further in a marine mammal biology textbook).

Our first speaker was talking about the adaptations required by marine animals to deal with the conditions of oceanic life. He made an interesting point when talking about hearing underwater. Evolutionarily speaking, animals originally had ears designed for hearing in the water, but as animals moved to land there had to be changes in the structure of the ear to deal with hearing in air. Humans, like all terrestrial mammals, have air in the middle ear, which makes us great at hearing sounds transmitted through the air. If, however, we have our heads underwater, our hearing is impaired due to impedance mismatch, which basically happens when sound switches from one medium to another. When sound going through the water encounters the air in our middle ear, it impairs our ability to hear it clearly or determine which direction its coming from.

Marine mammals evolved from terrestrial mammals, so their ears still have the basic structure designed for hearing in the air. How, then, have they adapted to hear so well underwater? They've had to find a way to overcome the impedance mismatch caused by the air/fluid barrier.

Toothed whales spend all their time underwater and have "solved" this problem by receiving sounds directly to their inner ear not through their external ear canal but through the fatty tissue of their lower jaw, which conducts sound in a similar manner to water. But what about pinnipeds, which need to hear both in the air and underwater?

This harbor seal pup is adept at hearing in the air and underwater, due to a very interesting adapation

It's theorized that most pinnipeds primarily receive underwater sound through bone conduction, which means that sound reaches the inner ear by resonating through the bones in the skull. Some human hearing aids actually make use of bone conduction. This process isn't very well understood in pinnipeds, since orienting the direction of the sound must still be difficult. These pinnipeds then hear sound in air via the typical pathway through their external ear canal.

Different pinniped species have different hearing abilities in air/water depending on their life history. Elephant seals have sharper underwater hearing, whereas sea lions have better hearing in the air. Harbor seals, however, get the best of both worlds. As our speaker shared today, harbor seals actually have a mechanism to fill part of their middle ear with blood (a fluid which transmits sound more like water than air) when they are underwater to better receive sound. When they are at the surface, this blood drains, restoring the air to the middle ear and allowing them to hear better in the air. Since harbor seals use the external ear canal to hear underwater instead of bone conduction, they have better underwater directional sensitivity than other pinnipeds.

The biologist in me is fascinated by this kind of thing....

2018 Update: I continue to get inquiries about this post years later! Unfortunately I don't recall who the speaker was, but did find this reference in the book Sensory Ecology (pages 271-272) that describes this theorized mechanism a bit further:

https://books.google.com/books?id=6lTxBwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=sensory+ecology&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjC9ai_wI3aAhUUwGMKHc9XBWgQ6AEILzAB#v=onepage&q=harbor%20seal%20blood&f=false

Albatross/Killer Whale Interaction At Sea

A recent study examining images retrieved from a digital camera attached to the back of an albatross made a remarkable find: albatrosses may follow killer whales in the open ocean in hopes of scavenging scraps of food. In addition to photographs, the camera also records temperature, so sharp drops in temperature often indicate the albatross is in the water feeding. Such temperature dips are associated with the whale photographs, which leads the researchers to speculate that whale-following may be an effective foraging tactic.

You can read more details and see a remarkable image showing albatrosses soaring behind a surfacing orca at this Wired Science article. Also, here's the link to the peer-reviewed journal article about this finding.

How cool!!

All About Stellers

On Earth Day was The Whale Museum's annual marine naturalist gear-up, a day-long series of lectures that provides continuing education for working marine naturalists. One of the most informative talks this year was Candian biologist Peter Olesiuk talking about Steller sea lions.

(Note: While Steller sea lions are in fact stellar, their name comes from Georg Wilhelm Steller, a zoologist and explorer who is the namesake for several northwest critters including the Steller's Jay and Steller's Eider in addition to the sea lion. The misspelling of StellAr sea lion is a pet peeve of mine....)

There are two distinct populations of Steller sea lions: a western population that inhabits the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands, and an eastern population that is found from SE Alaska/British Columbia south to California. While the western population is endangered and has experienced declines of as much as 70%, the eastern population is actually doing quite well, and has rebounded to historic levels after being hunted in the 1940s-1960s in an attempt to "control" fisheries for human purposes.

There are 14 breeding rookeries for the eastern population of Stellers, where males begin congregating in May to establish territories for when the females arrive in June. The animals will stay at the rookeries until August or later before dispersing for the winter. Males will lose up to 450 pounds while defending a breeding territory, a time in which they may stay put up to two months without leaving for food or water. In the San Juan Islands, we pretty much see only male sea lions and only in the winter; they're in this area when they've dispersed from rookeries to "beef up" over the non-breeding season. Females tend to do a lot of oceanic feeding during this time, but locally we have several "bull sites" where we see the males in the winter:

Once such bull site is Race Rocks, west of Victoria, BC. This foggy photo of males hauled out was taken last September.

Steller sea lions weren't seen often in the Salish Sea until the 1960s, when the population began to rebound from the hunting that had decemated it. Since the 1990s, their population has been booming, growing at a rate of more than 7% a year. The current population estimate is 18,250 Steller sea lions in British Columbia alone, compared to the low of 5,000 in the 1960s. Harbor seals have also been experiencing a population boom, and the high abundance of pinnipeds has likely been the reason for increased transient (marine mammal feeding) killer whale sightings in recent years.

A male Steller sea lion requires more than 60 pounds of food a day, or about ten times that of a harbor seal. Their top prey item is Pacific herring, but they also feed substantially on sandlance, salmon, dogfish, polluck, rockfish, and halibut.

Another bull site in BC is the Bell Chain Islets, pictured above in October 2007.

I first heard of Olesiuk due to some of his published work on killer whale population dynamics, although his current work focuses on sea lion population models. He shared the result of an interesting exercise he did determining, based on body mass, mortality, and productivity, how many transient killer whales ("Ts") the current population of Steller sea lions could sustainably support.

Remarkably, he found BC Stellers would only be able to support 26 Ts. If he included the whole eastern population of Stellers, this number jumped to 77 Ts, but still well below the current transient whale population of 200-250 whales. Of course, Ts feed on more than just Stellers - in fact, harbor seals and porpoises probably make up a larger proportion of their diet. To account for some of this, his final calculation included all Pacific northwest sea lions and harbor seals, which the model estimated would support about 300 Ts, closer to what we actually see. This little exercise is really interesting because it demostrates that a relatively small number of whales could have a huge impact on Steller sea lion populations, even if the population seems to be doing very well. As an undergrad, I got really into this sort of thing in my population biology class, where as an independent project I used Olesiuk's models to develop a population model for the Southern Resident killer whales.

Both Steller and California sea lions brave the harsh wave action at the Sea Lion Caves near Florence, Oregon, as shown here in January 2008. While most of the Steller breeding sites are in southeast Alaska and BC, there are a few in Oregon and northern California. Interestingly enough, there are no breeding sites in Washington.

Orca Prey Sharing and Aerial Photogrammetry

There were two talks at the Transboundary Workshop that really stood out to me. The first was a talk by John Ford, someone I was especially excited to see because he really pioneered killer whale acoustics, the field where I've done my research. This DFO scientist didn't talk about acoustics this time, though, but rather resident killer whale prey specialization on Chinook salmon.

We all know the whales prefer Chinook, but the extent to which they do is really phenomenal. At times, sockeye salmon will outnumber Chinook salmon 1000:1 in areas where the whales are foraging, yet there is virtually no evidence that the whales ever feed on sockeye. Chinook are probably preferred not only for their superior lipid content, but because they are abundant in nearshore waters year-round, whereas many other species are only abundant during brief seasonal migrations. (Young adult Chinook stay in nearshore waters while they grow, whereas other salmonid species go far offshore, outside of the resident orca's normal range.)

Whatever the reason, their preference for Chinook has really become a cultural one. Another cultural behavior the whales engage in is prey sharing, where one fish will be divided up among two or more whales. I knew this occurred, but Ford suggested in his talk that it may be occurring more often than we realized. He also had some absolutely stunning still images taken from underwater video footage they've recorded of the whales engaging in prey sharing. Imagine three whales all facing each other underwater, pulling apart a large silver fish and dividing it up among their family members. Moms will share fish they catch with their offspring, Ford explained, but juveniles will share fish with their mothers and other siblings, too.

Realizing that prey sharing may in fact occur on a regular basis, I figure that some of the circling behavior I see from the whales sometimes may actually be prey sharing in action. The whales are sometimes spread out in what looks like foraging when suddenly you'll see a momentary aggregation like this one - now I know what's probably going on:

Prey sharing in action?

The other talk I was really impressed by was John Durban from the Center for Whale Research, who talked about new research started last summer with the goal of assessing killer whale size and body condition. Basically, they photograph the whales from a helicopter, and knowing their altitude and the focal length of their lens allows them to scale their photographs and measure the size of the whales in the photo. This simple but elegant concept is known as aerial photogrammetry.

Okay, the above photo wasn't taken from a helicopter, but from the top of Lime Kiln Lighthouse, which is the closest to an aerial view I've had of the whales. But I would love to see them from the air!

In September of last year they ran 10 flights and were able to photograph 69 of the Southern Residents. From their photographs, they made three measurements of each individual - length, breadth (width just behind the dorsal fin), and head width (width near the blowhole - important because a malnourished whale often appears thin in this area, and it is believed that some of the 7 whales lost last year were malnourished).

The longest whale was not in fact J1 Ruffles, as many people believe. It was another adult male, L41 Mega, who measured in at just under 24 feet. The range for male whales was 21-24 feet, while the range for females was 18-21 feet. This puts our local killer whales in the mid-size range for killer whales worldwide. For instance, Antarctic orcas are smaller, whereas local transient orcas are larger. The largest killer whale every documented was 32-foot male of the coast of Japan.

The largest of the Southern Resident Killer Whales: L41 Mega.

The largest head width in proportion to body size came in the calves, specifically K42, which is a good sign that we have some robust youngsters out there! On the other hand, the smallest head width belonged to K14 Lea, the mother of K42, likely because she has a decreased body condition due to the energetic costs of keeping her calf well-nourished. The female with the next smallest head was L67 Splash, a female who was lost last year, supporting the theory that she was malnourished before she died.

This research technique has been used on cetaceans in other places, but there is really a unique opportunity here because it's the only place where you can do this on whales of known age and gender. Of course there is variation in measurements between different whales (ie, not all the females are the same size), so it would be difficult to say "a whale with head width less than X is malnourished". However, there is potential to gather longitudinal information on individual whales in this population. This means that over time, they may be able to assess the body conditions of each specific whale compared to data from that whale gathered in previous years. Cool stuff!

Eagle Watch

After hearing some reports of a potential golden eagle sighting off the south end of the island, Jason and I decided to head out and investigate this morning. There are lots of erroneous reports out there about how relatively common golden eagles are in the San Juan Islands. The fact is, after 8 years of intermittent birding here, I have yet to see one. Birding in the San Juan Islands, a great book, talks about 5 known breeding pairs in the county, but that was in 1987. The authors mention that experienced birders feel the species was in a local decline at that time, and I wonder if they are really still here at all.

Juvenile bald eagles can easily be mistaken for golden eagles because they don't yet have their white head and tail. These juvies have white "arm pits", often with a lot of other white mottling on their underside, unlike the distinct white "elbows" of juvenile golden eagles. Adult golden eagles have no white on them at all, and feature a tawny wash of feathers over their head and neck that gives them their name. Another way to tell golden and bald eagles apart is by their wings in flight. Bald eagles soar with very flat wings, while golden eagles tend to hold their wings in a slight dihedral.

We sure didn't see any goldens, but we saw a TON of bald eagles, both adults and juveniles. They seemed to be just about everywhere. We easily saw more than 20 eagles this morning. Many of the adults are starting to pair off and we saw some aerial courtship behavior.

This was one of the only perched eagles we saw, as all the others seemed to be enjoying the strong winds in flight. It looks like a young adult, since its plumage still looks a little mottled as it loses its juvenile plumage. Bald eagles don't get their white head and tail until they reach sexual maturity in their fourth year.


Here's one of the three eagles that was soaring above the one perched in the tree:


I've heard a lot about the bald eagle nest surveys that have been conducted in the San Juan Islands over the last four decades, but had never actually seen the hard data. I know the eagles were historically numerous here, but experienced the population crash all bald eagles in the lower 48 did when DDT became such a problem and the species was listed as endangered. After protection, both the national and local population recovered, and bald eagle recovery was such a success story that they were delisted from the Endangered Species Act in June of 2007. I had heard that more recent surveys revealed 100-200 active nests in San Juan County, but that's a pretty broad range so I decided to investigate a little further.

A little web search turned up the WDFW Washington State Status Report for the Bald Eagle that was published in 2001. Scanning through it for information pertitent to the San Juans, I uncovered some interesting facts backed by published data.

Most of the early Washington eagle nest surveys focused on the San Juan Islands, and aerial nest surveys were conducted from 1962-1980. The 1962 survey monitored only 5 nests, though its unclear whether or not these were all the nests they could locate or just the ones they chose to watch. The peak number of nests monitored was 60 in 1978. In 1980, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) intiated statewide eagle nest surveys. The last survey they provide information on in this report was conducted in 1995. At this time, there were 817 eagle nests in Washington State, 102 of which were in San Juan County. Compare this to the 1950s, when there were only 412 nesting pairs in the lower 48.

A few other studies focused specifically on eagles in San Juan County. They found that in the county, active nests occur within an average of 4-5 miles of each other, something people often ask about. In a prey analysis at 67 nests in the San Juans and Puget Sound, they found that 67% of prey items were birds. This surprises me, as I thought they would mostly be feeding on fish, the prey item that comes in second at 19%. The list is finished out with 6.8% mollusks and crustaceans (!!!) and only 6% mammals.

Its cool to find some more concrete information on the local eagle population. They must still be doing some type of population monitoring, so I'll be on the look out for anything more up-to-date. In the meantime, I'll let you know if I see any golden eagles!

Northern Grasshopper

This past summer, this beautiful grasshopper held still long enough for me to take some cool macro shots. She (I learned you can tell male and female grasshoppers apart by the shape of the base of their abdomen) was perched on a bench, basking in the sun, something grasshoppers apparently like to do. By scouring through internet grasshopper field guides, I determined which of the hundreds of North American grasshopper species she is: she's a member of Melanoplus borealis, a species whose scientific name translates directly into their common name, Northern Grasshopper.

The Northern Grasshopper inhabits much of the northern United States, dipping down a bit in the central US, as well as occurring across a large portion of Canada. The bright red hind tibiae (lower portion of hind legs) are one of the characteristic field marks. I like this labeled sketch of grasshopper anatomy. I do a lot of bird identification, but it's always interesting and challenging to try and identify a species of a genus or family I'm unfamiliar with, whether it be a tree, insect, flower, or mammal. Some of my favorite labs in my college biology courses dealt with taxonomy and using or developing identification keys to narrow down species IDs. The true biologist and naturalist in me emerges, since thinking about species variation and taxonomy raises questions not only about evolution and species diversification and the processes that cause speciation to occur, but also about how we see and classify the world around us.

This grasshopper is just another one of the many inhabitants of the Mar Vista grasslands. The petition to preserve Mar Vista is only 19 signatures shy of our goal of 500, so please sign if you haven't already and encourage your friends to sign today so progress on protecting this special property can be made!

Porpoise Tails

Recently I was reading the Audubon Society's guide to Marine Mammals of the World, one of my favorite texts covering basic details of all cetacean species. From this I learned that you can supposedly tell the difference between male and female Dall's porpoise by the shape of their tails. The tail flukes on a female are relatively straight across, whereas the tail flukes on a male become convex along the trailing edge as they reach sexual maturity. Adult tails of both gender s have varying amounts of white "frosting" along the edges of the otherwise black flukes. Juveniles, by contrast, have uniformly gray tails that are concave along the trailing edge.

How cool! I decided to go through my photos of Dall's porpoises to see if I could spot some differences between males and females. This photo to the right seemingly shows an adult female. The tail is black with white frosting and the trailing edge is more or less straight across.

However, as I went through my photos, it looks like I only have pictures of female Dall's. This is entirely possible, since I have a fairly small set of photos where the tail shape is distinguishable, so maybe they just all happened to be females. This got me wondering, though: do females for some reason tend to bow-ride more? Or do males and females really not look all that different?

The graphic in the Marine Mammals of the World book is very distinct, but maybe it isn't that clear in wild animals. As I was researching this question further, I came across this paper, which suggests that while animals with convex tails are nearly always males, both males and females have straight tails, and little is known about how reliable this feature is at determining the age and sex class of wild animals. There are, however, other more reliable sexually dimorphic traits, such as the slope of the dorsal fin and the size of the hump in the caudal peduncle (tail stock) that gives the porpoise the look of having a "broken tail" when diving.

I thought that I should be able to differentiate between the sexes, then, using dorsal fin slant, so I went back through my porpoise photos. Unfortunately, whenever you're close enough to a Dall's porpoise to get a decent photo, they are usually speed-swimming as they bowride on the boat. This causes them to kick up a huge "rooster tail" splash, so your view of the dorsal fin is often limited, as you can see in the photo at right. where it is completley obscured by teh splash. Not exactly the best view. I guess that means I have a new challenge: photographing Dall's porpoise dorsal fins. In the meantime, as far as telling the two genders apart in the field, it's back to the drawing board.

Brad Hanson Lecture

Brad Hanson's lecture tonight at The Whale Museum was full of all kinds of thought-provoking information about killer whales. He's another one of those scientists that inspired me, in part because while his work is biologically interesting in terms of animal behavior and evolutionary biology it is equally important in terms of conservation. Some of his many projects include collecting fecal samples, prey samples, and tissue biopsies of the Southern Residents.

One brand new project involves putting state-of-the-art tags on transients. As you may or may not know, there haven't been many successful attempts at putting a long-term tag onto a relatively small cetacean (into which killer whales fall - large cetaceans are like blue and humpback whales) because there hasn't been any technology that's small enough to involve a non-invasive attachment mechanism. For instance, when two transients were tagged in the 1970s, it involved attaching a tag via surgically bolting through the dorsal fin - the whale that still survives today still shows distinctive scars from the incident, which occurred while he was in a net pen. However, a new miniature dart tag has been developed that can stay on for more than two months and causes only minimal tissue damage, and over the last couple of days three transients have been tagged locally.


The best part is, we can follow the progress of these whales as they post updates on their research website. The above map is taken from the Cascadia Research site, showing the progress of T30A during the first day and a half after being tagged. Amazingly, these tags don't use GPS technology, but rather Doppler shift, so as it sends a signal to a NOAA weather satellite, the satellite can estimate the position of the signal.

And for you biologists out there, here's another interesting tidbit I learned at the lecture: worldwide, killer whales are very similar genetically. Since you find unique populations of killer whales everywhere in the world in terms of foraging and social structure, you'd expect genetically distinct populations. However, that's not the case....for instance, the Northern Residents and Southern Residents only have a 1 base pair difference! This suggests that one of two things are the case. Either 1) There was a recent global genetic bottleneck for killer whales, and all the "speciation" we've seen between the different ecotypes is a relatively recent and relatively quick occurrence, or 2) these populations actually interbreed. Either one would be a huge change in the current belief about killer whale life history and evolution!!