Southern Residents: Data Behind the Impressions

It's that time of year again, when us whale folks start anxiously anticipating the arrival of the Southern Residents in inland waters. Sure, it's light past 8 PM again, the swallows are patrolling the island's fields, and I can take a walk without a jacket, but it won't feel like the season has really started until hearing these three words: "Many whales inbound".

This year, like last year, we're waiting longer than we used to. The days slipped off the calendar from April into May, and other than a surprise brief visit from K-Pod, there's no sign of the Southern Residents in the Salish Sea.

I recently participated in two workshops about orcas and salmon: The Whale Museum's naturalist gear-up here on San Juan Island and a joint effort by several regional organizations of an orca and salmon recovery workshop in Seattle. Finally, thankfully, it seems like some discussion about the real issues facing these whales is starting to happen. There was a lot of public attention given to potential vessel impacts on the whales as NOAA went through the process of instituting new regulations for boating around the whales. General consensus is that the real issue facing these whales is not boats, not toxins, but salmon. No fish, no blackfish. It's that simple.

Hopes were raised that real action would be taken a couple years ago when NOAA and Canada's DFO held a series of three joint workshops to discuss the potential impacts of fisheries on food availability for Southern Residents. Scientists from both sides of the border got together and presented a wealth of information about salmon, whales, and the interaction between the two. It was an impressive transboundary collaboration, but the result was a disappointing one. The scientific panel concluded at the end of the workshops that there's no evidence fisheries management will affect the number of salmon available for the Southern Residents. [Note: Many whale advocates were outraged at this conclusion, but in the panel's defense, they were asked to look at what was ultimately a very narrow question. The truth is, fisheries have been and are heavily managed, and current take from any given salmon run is a fairly small percentage of the whole, certainly a much smaller proportion of the number of fish available than used to be taking via fishing. Ceasing fishing altogether won't necessarily make the difference required to save the Southern Residents. The real issue is a broader one - there's not enough fish for anybody. Habitat restoration, at all levels of the salmon's life cycle, is what needs to happen. Still, we all hoped something positive for the whales would come out of NOAA's series of workshops, but in reality, not much has happened as a result.]

There are a couple of major conclusions I made as a result of attending and participating in the recent two orca-salmon workshops. One is that, amazingly, people just don't seem to talk to each other. The lack of communication - between salmon and whale biologists, between the US and Canada, etc. - is astounding. One would think - or at least hope - that the people doing salmon recovery and the people doing whale recovery would be working closely together. The truth is, they may not even know each other. A major comment from the salmon folks at the Seattle workshop was surprise at all the new faces in attendance. They've just never talked to the whale people before. As Jim Lichatowich, an author and retired salmon biologist, shared with us at the Friday Harbor workshop, it's worse even than that: the hatchery fish people and the wild fish people don't even communicate. It really seems like everyone is focused on their own slice of the pie and there's not much collaboration to look at the bigger picture.

A second truth that I was shocked to learn is that hatcheries are still seen by many as a major solution to our salmon problem. There's a wealth of evidence to the contrary, which I won't go into detail here, but I highly recommend Jim's book Salmon, People, Place as a good read to learn more about this and other relevant salmon issues. It really hit home when a WDFW biologist at the workshop in Seattle said, "That the jury is still out on whether or not fish farms [in Canada] have any effect on wild salmon populations." For those of you that don't gasp in outrage at this statement, I highly suggest you watch the documentary Salmon Confidential (viewable in its entirety at this link) and/or tune in to a special episode of 60 Minutes focusing on salmon farms that's airing this Sunday on CBS at 7 PM PST.

The final realization I made at the workshops is that those of us who have been around the whales for many years have many impressions of what has been changing in their behavior. The trends we've witnessed are universal across observers, but for the most part they're very anecdotal: the whales aren't here as much in the spring, there aren't as many superpods anymore, and so on. I think us naturalists are correct in our observations, the problem is, it's hard to demonstrate the truth behind these impressions without some sort of quantitative data. After giving it a lot of thought, I decided I wanted to try and put some numbers to some of these impressions. I've done some data mining in the last couple weeks, and I have the results to share with you here.

My friend and mentor Rich Osborne has always stressed to me the importance of long term data sets, and never have I agreed with that more than now. You may not realize what impact that data your collecting will have in the long term, but often the questions will come after the answers. If you have the data set, the information you can parse out of it as questions arise later is pretty amazing. The data presented here come from three such long-term data sets. The first is Bob Otis' data from Lime Kiln Lighthouse. For more than 20 years, Bob and a team of interns have collected data on whale passbys from May 20 to August 10 between the hours of 9 and 5 in a defined study area in front of the lighthouse. This collection of data, including a lot of behavioral data, is an amazing slice of what the whales were doing in one particular place over time. The second data set is The Whale Museum's Orca Master archive of whale sightings, in which they've compiled reports from many different sources into a single compendium of orca sightings in inland waters. Finally, I've also referenced the technical reports of the Pacific Salmon Commission, which date back to the 1970s. It's also worth mentioning that I know there are caveats, statistical and otherwise, to all the graphs I've made here, but I still wanted to share my first stab at quantifying these impressions of what we've seen the whales doing lately.

First of all, I wrote a blog last summer entitled "Where are the whales?" which focused on what an anomalous year last summer was for whale sightings. I summarized how much less the whales had been around to that point in the season, but I wanted to add a more complete graph here that shows how the numbers ended up for the time period of Bob's study at Lime Kiln. Clearly, the whales just weren't around last summer as much as they usually are. [For all these graphs, you can click to see a larger view.]

Number of "whale days" at Lime Kiln Lighthouse. A whale day is defined as whales being in Bob Otis' defined study area between the hours of 9 AM and 5 PM. Data were collected each year from May 20 - August 10. The red line indicates the average. Last year, with just 18 whale days, was less than half of the average.

This summarizes the summer months nicely, but what about the spring? When I used to be just a seasonal resident on San Juan Island, I remember a friend of mine telling me I just had to find a way to get up here in April, because that's what she was having some of her best whale encounters of the year. "J-Pod is on the west side almost every day!" she exclaimed. By the time I did move here full time, things had changed. I've never seen the Residents much in April. This same trend has been expressed by many - that the whales used to be here routinely in the spring, but now are spending less and less time here in April and May. To try and quantify this, I looked at how many days in the month of April residents were seen in inland waters. Curious as to whether or not this has anything to do with fish, I also looked at spring runs of Chinook salmon on the Fraser River, and graphed these numbers on the same chart.

The blue line indicates the number of days Southern Residents were seen in inland waters in the month of April, with data from The Whale Museum's Orca Master data set. The red line indicates the total escapement (the number of fish that actually return to the freshwater spawning grounds) of Fraser River spring Chinook of both the age-1.3 and age-1.2 runs combined. These abundance of each of the two stocks was estimated off graphs in the Pacific Salmon Commission technical reports. Circled in green is where I think things changed - in 2007. The whales were here a lot, but salmon numbers were at their nadir. Perhaps this is when the whales decided it wasn't worth their time to visit the Salish Sea in April anymore - after that, their visits declined sharply, and spring salmon numbers remained depressed.

Another common impression is that the whales have been more spread out than they used to be. Again, I turned to Bob's data to try and put some numbers to this. In Bob's study area is an imaginary line that extends out from the lighthouse across Haro Strait. A note is made whenever a whale crosses this imaginary line. The time that passes between the first whale and the last whale to cross is noted as the spread out time. If all the whales are in one group and cross the line together, the spread out time is zero. If J2 Granny is way up ahead of everyone else, and the rest of the pod slowly follows her north in their matrilines, the spread out time might be an hour or more. To correct for the number of whales present (because it makes sense the spread out time would be a higher for a superpod of 80 whales than when it's just the L12 sub-group present), I looked at spread out time divided by the number of whales present. I came up with an average spread out time per whale across all the passbys Bob and his interns collected data for in a year, and that average is what's graphed here.

Average spread out time per whale for passbys in front of Lime Kiln Lighthouse during Bob's study period each year. A yellow trendline has been added to the graph, showing an upward trend in spread out time over the years. A change from an average of .5 to 2.0 might not seem like much, but think of it this way: In 2003 the whales were on average half a minute apart from each other. In 2012 this average was more like two minutes per whale. That means for a group of 10 whales to pass by, the average time it took changed from 5 minutes to 20 minutes, or a 4 fold increase.

Finally, people have also been saying that the whales seem to spend more time foraging and less time socializing in the Salish Sea in recent summers. There seem to be fewer superpods, and when they do happen, they seem to be shorter in duration. This is a harder one to quantify, because even when people do define whale behavior into categories such as foraging, traveling, resting, or socializing, it's a subjective definition and also may not apply to all the whales present - e.g. most whales might be resting while one juvenile is breaching repeatedly in apparent play, or all the whales might be traveling steadily in one direction when one animal breaks off and mills in one location in apparent pursuit of prey.

When I think of superpods or other groups of highly social whales, I think of lots of surface active behaviors: breaches, tail slaps, pec fin slaps, etc. All these behaviors are defined as surface percussive behaviors in Bob's study. I calculated an average number of percussive behaviors per whale for each passby in Bob's study, and then averaged this number across all the passbys in a season to get a single number for each year.

Average number of percussive behaviors per whale across all the passbys in a season. A yellow trendline has been added to the graph, indicating a slight downward trend in the number of surface percussive behaviors over the study period. According to this trendline, twenty years ago in an average passby of 20 whales you may have expected to see about 12 surface percussive behaviors. Last year, with a passby of 20 whales, on average you would have only expected to see 4 such behaviors.

I'm excited that discussions about the changing behavior of our Southern Residents has been happening, and I hope I've been able to contribute further to those discussions here. What do you think, do these data support your own observations? What other trends have you noticed over the years in watching the Southern Residents?

Literally as I was writing this I got word that some Residents were found near Active Pass. Here's hoping that this is the beginning of a summer season with a little more "whale time" than last year!

The Signature of All Things

There have been some great bird sightings on the island lately - unfortunately most of them have not been mine! The best of the bunch is a long-eared owl that has been seen at least twice near False Bay Creek, where I do monthly bird surveys. Unfortunately numerous visits out there both during the day and at night have not turned up any owls for me, though I have seen other neat species such as western meadowlarks and a northern shrike.

Flooded pasture along False Bay Creek

Lots of Canada geese, but no long-eared owl at False Bay Creek

I did see an American kestrel (144) one afternoon as I drove home from work, which was a nice find as it's an uncommon species here on the island. It's amazing how many species were in the first 50 on my year list the last bunch of years but aren't even on my list yet, simply because all my Pacific Northwest birding this year has been exclusively in the San Juan Islands. As a result, I still don't have black-capped chickadee on my list this year!!

This afternoon I went out for a one hour walk at English Camp, hoping to find a rufous hummingbird or some other early spring migrant. Not only did I fail to find a hummingbird, I hardly saw any birds at all! Excepting the 75 bufflehead and 25 surf scoters out in the bay, I only saw/heard 40 other birds - not species, birds! It may sound like a lot to non-birders, but when you're hiking well over a mile they are few and far between. Since an hour's birding only turned up 16 species, I started turning my attention to other things, because even when the birds are scarce there's always something to investigate! This time, in part because of the book I just finished reading, I noticed there were mosses everywhere!

The book in question is The Signature of All Things, a novel by Elizabeth Gilbert (of Eat, Pray, Love fame). Set primarily in the 19th century, it follows the life of Alma Whittaker, the daughter of a famous botanist. She follows in the footsteps of her father, becoming a plant expert, and in the early part of her life is able to study specimens from all over the world in her father's gardens and greenhouses. While part of her wants to travel the world and see all the amazing trees and orchids she has grown to love in their native habitats, circumstances dictate that she is confined to her family's estate in Pennsylvania. Frustrated, she feels like she already knows every tree and flower on thier property from her childhood explorations, when she makes an interesting discovery on a boulder she has passed thousands of times.

Alma put the magnifying lens to her eye and looked again. Now the miniature forest below her gaze sprang into majestic detail. She felt her breath catch. This was a stupefying kingdom. This was the Amazon jungle as seen from the back of a harpy eagle. She rode her eye above the surprising landscape, following its paths in every direction. Here were rich, abundant valleys filled with tiny trees of braided mermaid hair and minuscule, tangled vines. Here were barely visible tributaries running through that jungle, and here was a miniature ocean in a depression at the center of the boulder, where all the water pooled.

Just across this ocean - which was half the size of Alma's shawl - she found another continent of moss altogether. On this new continent, everything was different. This corner of the boulder must receive more sunlight than the other, she surmised. Or slightly less rain? In any case, this was a new climate entirely. Here, the moss grew in mountain rangers the length of Alma's arms, in elegant, pine tree-shaped clusters of darker, more somber green. On another quadrant of the same boulder still, she found patches of infinitesimally small deserts, inhabited by some kind of study, dry, flaking moss that had the appearance of cactus. Elsewhere, she found deep, diminutive fjords - so deep that, incredibly, even now in the month of June - the mosses within were still chilled by lingering traces of winter ice. But she also found warm estuaries, miniature cathedrals, and limestone caves the size of her thumb.

Then Alma lifted her face and saw what was before her - dozens more such boulders, more than she could count, each one similarly carpeted, each one subtly different. She felt herself growing breathless. This was the entire world. This was bigger than a world. This was the firmament of the universe, as seen through one of William Herschel's mighty telescopes. This was planetary and vast. These were ancient, unexplored galaxies, rolling forth in front of her - and it was all right here!

In the book, Alma goes on to study the stories that play out in the world of mosses. That may sound like a boring task, but only when you are caught up in the fast, loud pace of day-to-day human life. In the moss world, things move much more slowly, but are no less dramatic. There are wars waged over prime territories, and she documents their advancements and retreats. There are clear winners and losers, which leads Alma to begin wondering why certain species are successful, why others are not, and what causes some mosses to succeed where others fail. Mosses, after all, are an amazingly diverse and hardy lot. They can thrive in areas where nothing else can even begin to grow, as we can still see today wherever we look:

Mosses can make a living where other plants can't - such as on wood, stone, or nowadays, pavement

As she continues her life as a bryologist, Alma does eventually get the chance to travel beyond Pennsylvania, and in the process meets an interesting cast of characters. While she wants to explain everything in terms of science, she meets others - such as artists and missionaries - that are convinced that not all the amazing things we witness can be measured and that some of the most compelling discoveries come when we leave the world of science behind.

The book is a captivating one from start to finish, as Alma is a naturalist who lives at a time when the worlds of science and religion are both starting to change drastically, and it's all due to looking carefully at the world right beneath our feet.

The San Juan Islands: A Complex History of Place Names

Last weekend, in a used bookstore here in Friday Harbor appropriately called Serendipity, my mom serendipitously found a copy of a book that I've long wanted to own: Who the Hell Was San Juan ? Published in 1982, this booklet by Doug Cardle examines the history of place names in the San Juan Islands and also provides a nice summary of the convoluted history of European exploration of these islands which has contributed to the vast array of geographical names. The book, which has long been out of print, is available via the above link on Amazon, but here's my understanding of the history:

The Coast Salish people were the original inhabitants of the region, with the Samish tribe in particular making extensive use of the San Juan Islands and its natural resources. Somewhat surprisingly considering the rest of the region, only a very few names reflect this Native American history. Lummi Island refers to one of the other regional tribes, Indian Cove on Shaw Island is a known historic fishing ground, and Smallpox Bay on San Juan Island refers to the disease that wiped out such a large portion of the native population.

Indian Cove on Shaw Island, one of the few local place names that references the Native Americans who called this area home for thousands of years before Europeans arrived

In 1592, Apostolos Valerianos of Cephalonia (a Greek better known by his Spanish moniker of Juan de Fuca) sailed the west coast of North American in search of the Northwest Passage. He marked a strait in the rough vicinity of the closest oceanic access to our inland sea, and when such a waterway was found in a similar latitude almost two hundred years later by a British expedition, it was marked on the map as Juan de Fuca's Strait, and that name has persisted.

The infamous Strait of Juan de Fuca

In 1790, of course with complete disregard for the people already here, ownership of lands in the Pacific Northwest was being disputed among the Spanish, English, and Russians. Spain, under the leadership of (take a deep breath before saying this name) Don Juan Vincente de Guemes Pacheco de Padilla Horcasitees y Aguayo, Conde de Revilla Gigedo (abbreviated by some to San Juan - though he was not in fact a saint), decided to attempt to take control of this situation by sending an expedition to figure out where the Strait of Juan de Fuca actually led. After entering the strait, they made the fateful decision to turn left rather than right, making them the first Europeans to thoroughly explore what would become known as the San Juan Islands. The verbose name of San Juan was not only the inspiration for the name of San Juan Island and of the archipelago as a whole, but provided several other place names: Padilla Bay, Guemes Island, and Orcas Island. Orcas Island - isn't that named after our local black and white marine mammals? This is what many think, but bizarrely Orcas is taken from the name "Horcasitees".

Orcas Island - NOT named for Orcinus orca

While Spain agreed to abandon their claims to any lands north of California in 1795, their earlier presence remains evident in many local place names: Lopez Island, Rosario Strait, Sucia Island, Patos Island, and many others come from the names of Spanish dignitaries or Spanish words.

Patos Island - quite literally where the Spanish saw some ducks

Two years after the Spanish "San Juan" expedition, in 1792, the famed British sailor Captain George Vancouver also made his way into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Like Juan de Fuca two centuries before him, he was also interested in finding the mythical connection between the Pacific and Atlantic known as the Northwest Passage. Instead of turning left like the Spanish, however, Vancouver turned right after entering the strait, and thus is credited with "discovering" Puget Sound. He was more interested in the major waterways than any of the islands, but some of the names listed on his charts for this region have nonetheless survived: he penned the name Cypress Island (though the trees were actually junipers) and also paid tribute to his king via the Gulf of Georgia (now known a little further north than he marked it as the Strait of Georgia).

Finally, in 1841, the US made their mark on the region via the Wilkes Expedition. One of the United States greatest but largely forgotten exploring expeditions, the Wilkes Expedition spent four years surveying Antarctica, the Pacific Islands, and the west coast of North America, including the San Juan Islands. (Another great book is Sea of Glory: America's Voyage of Discovery, The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 which details the Wilkes Expedition). Lead by Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, who was somewhat obsessed with the War of 1812, he christened these islands part of the Navy Archipelago and proceeded to name all geographic features either after members of his crew (Waldron Island, Stuart Island, Spieden Island) or after major ships and figureheads involved in the War of 1812. Some examples of the latter that have survived the test of time are Mount Constitution, the Wasp Islands, and Decatur Island.

Waldron Island, named after Thomas and/or Russell Waldron, the purser and Captain's clerk on the Wilkes expedition

 In response in part of the increased US presence in the region shown by the Wilkes Expedition, the British redoubled their efforts to survey the area we now know as the Salish Sea in the 1840s when the Hudson Bay Company moved their headquarters to Victoria. Names that came from members of the Company include Mount Finlayson, Mitchell Bay, Kellett Bluff, and Reid Rock. In 1846 the border between the US and Canada was set as the 49th parallel, but the wording left the ownership of the islands unclear, and the British presence remained the dominant one. In 1847, Captain Henry Kellett revised many of the existing charts, and in the process erased a lot of what Wilkes had done, relieving us of such names as Rodgers Island for San Juan Island, Macedonian Crescent for Lopez Sound, and Penguin Harbor for part of Bellingham Channel. Around 1860 another British surveyor, Captain George Richards, put in a lot of time detailing the local geography, naming many of the smaller islands and land features. As you'll see, he was a real creative type, but more than 100 of his place names have stuck. Some examples include Yellow Island, Cliff Island, Dot Rock, Eagle Cove, Flat Point, Steep Point, and Harbor Rock - and I don't even have to provide any explanation for how he came up with these names, because they're self-explanatory. The British also named several places after the natural resources that led them here in the first place, and so we have Cattle Point, Deer Harbor, Fisherman Bay, and the like.

Yellow Island, named by the creative Captain George Richards of the Hudson Bay Company

After a short gold rush in the nearby Fraser Valley in 1858, more Americans drifted to the San Juan Islands after failing to find their fortune. This set the stage for the San Juan Island's 15 minutes of fame when it comes to US history. Tensions were already running high between the British and Americans in 1859 when American Lyman Cutler shot a trespassing pig that belonged to British magistrate John Griffin. This was the straw that broke the camel's back and the start of the Pig War, in which both countries established encampments here on the island (hence our American Camp, English Camp, and Garrison Bay). The joint occupation continued for 13 years with the only casualty of the war being the pig. Then, for some reason that has never been made clear to me, the German Emperor of all people ruled in 1872 that the US-Canada border would be in Haro Strait instead of Rosario Strait, placing the San Juan Islands in the United States as the last land acquired by the country in the Lower 48.

View from the redoubt at American Camp, which was occupied from 1859-1872

So, that wasn't quite as concise of a history as I had intended, but I hope you found it as enlightening as I did. At the very least, it sheds some light on why we have place names both English and Spanish, some of which make total sense, and others which reference people and ships and battles that took place far from here. While I know the British in particular did some chart revisions over time, it's still interesting to me that a few names from every exploring expedition have survived. Why wouldn't the British have gotten rid of all the Spanish names entirely, for instance, or were they using their charts? It's a fascinating question to ponder, but we may never have the answers. In the meantime, I now understand a little bit more about this amazing place I call home.

Killer Whales Are Meant To Be Free

I recently finished reading the new book Death at SeaWorld: Shamu and the Dark Side of Killer Whales in Captivity, a great book documenting the reality of orcas in captivity, including many behind-the-scenes insights from former trainers. It inspired me to finish a video project that I've had on my mind to do for quite some time.

Young Monika was already quite into killer whales, and when I visited my grandfather in southern California in the late 90s I had my parents drop me off for a day at SeaWorld San Diego. I didn't attend any of the killer whale shows or see hardly any of the exhibits, but spent almost the entire day sitting right next to the killer whale enclosures, with the only break being to visit the bottlenose dolphins. I had a video camera in hand, and filmed several hours of footage. While I was excited to be that close to an orca, even at that age something about captivity didn't sit quite right with me, and it was the last time I would visit a marine aquarium that had killer whales as part of their collection. A couple years later, I would see killer whales in the wild for the first time, an event that altered the course of my life.

This short video contrasts the life of captive and wild orcas using some of that footage from my visit to SeaWorld alternating with clips from more recent years showing the Southern Residents, arguably the population of killer whales that was hit hardest by the marine capture era. Take a look, and please feel free to share if you are so inclined:

Cloud Collecting

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm,

but to add color to my sunset sky. 

- Rabindranath Tagore

A friend recently showed me a new book she got called The Cloud Collector's Handbook, and that was all it took to get me off and running looking at a whole new part of nature I've never paid too much attention to before! I ordered my own copy of the book (it's a good one!) and have spent some time every day over the last week carefully looking at the sky, learning about the varieties of clouds, how they form, and what they mean in terms of forecasting the weather.

The book starts by introducing the ten main cloud types. When I mention clouds it seems most everyone is compelled to start naming as many kinds as they remember from their early science classes. Here are a few of them that I've seen over the last few days:

Stratocumulus - one of the most common, most varied cloud types

Cumulus - the "fair-weather" cloud; forms on thermals during sunny days

Cirrus - a high cloud type formed of ice crystals, shown here in its "uncinus" form where the falling ice crystals give a comma-like appearance to the clouds

Altocumulus - mid-level patches of clouds that look like cotton balls or, in my mind, a flock of sheep

The book then goes into all the varieties or "species" of the main cloud types, including accessory clouds and other special cloud features. Here's one I'm seeing everywhere now that I know to look for it:

Undulatus - a wave-like appearance in the clouds, created by undulating (air) currents much like waves in water

I have yet to add any cloud optical effects to my "collection" since getting the book, but you can bet some photos of such things will appear on my blog in the near future now that I have a keener eye for them. The possible sights go far beyond the colorful rainbow to include features like sundogs, crepuscular rays, iridescence, and circumzenithal arcs. I can't wait!

Each moment of the year has its own beauty, 

a picture which was never before and shall never be seen again.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

My New Book! A Guide to Birds of San Juan Island

I'm excited to announce that my new book, A Guide to Birds of San Juan Island, is now available for sale. It's a project I've been working on for the last 13 months - not only the researching and the writing, but collecting the photographs, drawing the maps, doing the layout, and starting a small business in order to self publish!

Here's the description of the book:

San Juan Island is a diverse place made up of a wide variety of habitats: shorelines, farmlands, forests, and prairies. As a result, over 300 bird species have been documented here. Whether a budding nature enthusiast, an advanced birder, or somewhere in between, A Guide to Birds of San Juan Island will give you details about all of the birds that can be seen here and where to find them. Part species guide and part site guide, Monika Wieland's book will help residents and visitors alike discover more about the bird life of San Juan Island.

It has also been endorsed by two other local naturalists and authors:

“…a thorough and thoughtful account of San Juan Island birds.  Wieland’s book is a fine resource to take into the field and a valuable reference for years to come. Nicely done! “
 - Susan Vernon, author of  Rainshadow World:  A Naturalist’s Year in the San Juan Islands

"A good local field guide ranks right up there with binoculars in the birdwatcher's toolbox.  Monika Wieland's book will be a great asset to anyone exploring San Juan Island in search of birds."
-Thor Hanson, author of Feathers: the Evolution of a Natural Miracle

In addition to being available on Amazon (see the link above), it is currently available on San Juan Island at The Whale Museum, Griffin Bay Books, and Harbor Bookstore. It makes a great gift for the holidays! I hope you enjoy it!

New Animals and Emotions Book: Exultant Ark

This month a new book was released by best-selling author and biologist Jonathan Balcombe. Exultant Ark: A Pictorial Tour of Animal Pleasure contains more than 130 photographs of all types of animals engaged in pleasurable behavior surrounding play, touch, companionship, and more. I'm honored to have one of my photographs of a kelping killer whale included - orcas are very tactile creatures and the Southern Residents regularly engage in playing in the kelp, which possibly functions like something of a whale massage.

Prints of this photo available here

There are some amazing images in this book featuring mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, and others. I hope you will take a look:

What's In A Name?

What do the San Juan Islands have in common with Wilkes Land in Antarctica? Other than being surrounded by water, you might think (like I did): not much. Actually, both were explored and charted during the US Exploring Expedition between 1838-1842. This amazing excursion, led by the controversial Charles Wilkes, is largely forgotten in American History in part because of personal and national politics that kept the results from being celebrated by the nation, and in part because the focus of American citizens was turning towards the wild and relatively unknown West rather than maritime exploring expeditions like those of Captain Vancouver and Captain Cook.

I recently read a fascinating account of the "U.S. Ex. Ex.", also known as the Wilkes Expedition.

Sea of Glory: America's Voyage of Discovery is written by Nathaniel Philbrick, an American author who has won the National Book Award for his works relating to the sea. It's a history that is full of high-seas adventure and personal drama. The make a couple of treks towards Antarctica and survey many of the islands in the Pacific, but I was especially interested in this tale because towards the end of the expedition they survey the inland waters of Washington as well as the Columbia River delta, both places with which I am familiar.

More than 300 Washington place names were designated by those surveying the region during the Wilkes Expedition, and it was interesting to read the stories behind some of the people for whom local landmarks are named. The San Juan Islands were originally explored by the Spanish, hence we have names like San Juan, Lopez, and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. When Wilkes came through, they re-named everything, and modern maps reflect a mix of both the Spanish and American names. 

Here are a few of the local geographical features that were named after members of the Wilke's Expedition:

• Waldron Island ~ Thomas and Russell Waldron were two brothers on the expedition. One was a purser and the other a captain's clerk. Waldron was known as Isla Lemos by the Spanish and Shi-ish-uvey by the Lummi Indians.
• Vendovi Island ~ This is an interesting one. Vendovi was a Fijian arrested by the expedition for murdering an American sailor. As the expedition went on, he got more freedom aboard the vessels and became well-liked by the crew. He was known as a colorful character. Vendovi Island was recently purchased by the San Juan Preservation Trust.
• Stuart Island ~ Frederick Stuart was also a captain's clerk on the expedition. This island was known as Islas Moraleja by the Spanish and Qunnis (whale) by the Lummi.
• Spieden Island ~ William Spieden was a purser on the expedition. 
• Sinclair Island ~ George Sinclair was the sailing master aboard one of the expedition's vessels. Sinclair was known as Cottonwood and Urban Island by local pioneers, Isla de Ignacio by the Spanish, and Scut-las by the Lummi.
• Alden Bank ~ James Alden was a member of the US Ex. Ex. who returned in later years as part of another US Coast Survey and discovered this bank.

Luckily, not all of Wilkes' place names last. He originally named our collection of islands the Navy Archipelago. I, for one, definitely prefer San Juan Islands to that.

In doing a little extra research about these local place names, I came across another great resource. The Washington Place Names Index is a very interesting resource provided by the Tacoma Public Library. You can search for specific geographic names in the state of Wahsington and read the history behind place names.

So, what does all this have to do with Antarctica? During the US Ex. Ex.'s surveys of Antarctica, they discovered and names 1500 miles of shoreline that are now known collectively as Wilkes Land. Names like Spieden and Waldron are well-known by San Juan Islanders, and those that (like me) didn't know about this portion of American history may be surprised to know that along the Antarctic coastline are places like Cape Waldron and Cape Spieden, named after the same people for whom our local landmarks are named.

I generally focus on natural history on my blog, but part of fully understanding a place is learning about the human history, as well. I really enjoyed reading about the Wilkes Expedition, particularly as it related to the San Juan Islands, and feel like it gave me a new appreciation for part of our local history.

Bothell Harris's Sparrow

On our way down to Seattle for a short trip, we had time to make a quick jaunt over to nearby Bothell, Washington to look for a Harris's sparrow that has been reported there. The Harris's sparrow is a species normally confined to the middle part of North America, and only occasionally wandering east or west to either coast. Interestingly, several have been reported in Oregon and Washington this winter. I've seen the species once before, back in 2004 in North Dakota.

The stakeout site was a small wetlands near a school district building right in the middle of an urban area. Upon arriving, we met a fellow birder who has spent a lot of time observing the sparrow. He gave us some tips on where it normally appeared, and we decided to spend some time walking up and down the short dike by the wetlands to see what we could see.

I was amazed by the number of bird species utilizing this little city pond. I immediately saw quite a few sparrow species, including song, white-crowned, and this golden-crowned:

There was also a flock of house sparrows, and this male was collecting nesting material:

The bushes were full of activity, owing in part to the presence of a couple of feeders along the dike. Red-winged blackbirds spotted towhees, bushtits, and black-capped chickadees all were making use of the feeders. Here's one of the chickadees:

The wetlands were comparatively quiet, although one double-crested cormorant, a pair of bufflehead, and a pair of gadwall were hanging out there. A Canada goose snoozed in the nearby reeds, and a small flock of mallards flew overhead. A kingfisher chattered here and there, and a handful of violet-green swallows swooped about. I was excited to find my first barn swallow (145) among them. I was listening to a marsh wren singing out of sight when another small bird caught my attention. It turned out to be a male common yellowthroat (146)! Usually this species attracts attention with its witchity-witchity-witch song, and I was surprised to find my first one of the year by sight and not by call. It was too quick for a photo, but one of the two myrtle warblers I saw was a little more cooperative:

At this point a little over half an hour had passed, and while I had found 20 species at this little marsh site, I hadn't spotted the Harris's sparrow. That's when I noticed the local birder motioning to me from the other end of the dike. I hurried down there and sure enough, saw the Harris's sparrow (147) for about 30 seconds before it disappeared into the brush again:

It may seem odd to go out of my way and spend all that time just to get a glimpse of a sparrow. I was excited to see this species that is rare to me and rare to the area, but as is often the case the unusual bird wasn't the only highlight of my trip to twitch this bird. A lot of people don't fully understand bird listers like myself, who try to see as many species as we can in a day, a year, or a lifetime. This day, however was a perfect example of why I list. The incentive of seeing a new species brought me to a neat little habitat I never would have visited otherwise, and I spent 45 minutes in the sunshine enjoying a mixture of common and newly returned spring species. The sentiment behind my enjoyment of bird listing was summarized perfectly by renowned birder Kenn Kaufman in Kingbird Highway, his account of going for a year list record while hitch-hiking across the United States as a 19 year-old in 1973:

The list total isn't important, but the birds themselves are important. Every bird you see. So the list is just a frivolous incentive for birding, but the birding itself is worthwhile. It's like a trip where the destination doesn't have any significance except for the fact that it makes you travel. The journey is what counts.

Photography: Taking It Up A Notch

Despite doing a lot of photography since 2005, I've never had any formal photography training. I've never taken a class, and the books that I've read have never stuck with me enough so that I felt like I really understood my camera and how it works. I've taken a lot of great photographs over the years, but they have all been taken with some or all of my camera's settings on auto. I've always known that I could take my photography to the next level if I learned to really utilize my camera's manual functions, and I've finally found a tool that is helping me to do just that.

At Powell's Books in Portland last year I picked up a copy of Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson, and I was intrigued. I should have bought it right then, but I thought it might be just like other photography books I've picked up over the years: not really all that helpful. However, it stayed in the back of my mind until a couple of weeks ago when I finally bought it. It's probably the best investment in my photography I've made to date. After reading just the first chapter, I was comfortably shooting with my camera on manual for the first time.

It's possible to take great advantage of light and composition with your camera on auto, but using your manual settings gives you far more creative control over your images. I had always more or less understood shutter speed, but after reading the chapter in this book about aperture I was ready to go out in the field and experiment with getting correct exposures while manually setting aperture. One of things I learned is demonstrated in these two images. For the above photo, I isolated the grass by intentionally making the background fuzzy. In the photo below, by adjusting the aperture, I was able to get everything from the foreground to the distant background in focus.

I am now confidently shooting with all of my camera's settings on manual, and plan to leave my camera in manual mode most if not all the time. I look forward to exploring my new found understanding of photography and making more creative images while having full control of my exposure settings. I will as always continue to post photos here on my blog as I learn more and continue experimenting!

This book is far more understandable than other photography books I've read, as Peterson's great analogies of how the camera works and what the different settings mean are memorable. They stick with me in the field in a way that other photography advice I've read has not. I highly recommend this book to all you photographers out there that want to improve your own photos! Click the link below to read more about this fantastic book, and if you purchase through this link you'll also be helping to support this blog.

Operation Orca

I recently finished reading Operation Orca by Daniel Francis and Gil Hewlett, a book that documents the stories of Springer (A73) and Luna (L98).

For those of you unfamiliar with the story, Springer and Luna are two young whales that got separated from their pods in the early 2000s. Springer, from A-Pod of the Northern Resident Community, likely got separated when her mother died, and ended up off Vashon Island near Seattle. Luna, from L-Pod of the Southern Resident Community, was an even more unusual situation because his mother was still alive. However, he ended up alone in Nootka Sound off the west end of Vancouver Island. It was crazy that both these situations happened so close together, because never before had a young resident orca been seen away from its pod. In resident pods, offspring stay in their mother's pod for their entire life. Mom and calf are usually inseparable for the first couple of years, as shown in this photo of another L-Pod mom and calf:

The book follows the plight of both whales, first focusing on Springer who was relocated back to her home range and successfully reunited with her pod. Then, the story turns to Luna, who ended up caught in a web of political drama that stood at a stalemate so long that he eventually met his tragic end. The authors do a nice job of contrasting the two stories, showing how in one case so many different groups with different interests (both US and Canadian government agencies, NGOs, tribal communities, aquariums, etc.) overcame their differences to help a whale in trouble, and in another case got so caught up in their disagreements that they failed to do anything at all.

I highly recommend this book if you're unfamiliar with the stories of Springer and Luna, but even if you followed along as their sagas unfolded you will probably learn something from this book. Not only does it go behind the scenes into a lot of the issues surrounding both whales, but the first few chapters are dedicated to an enlightening history of human relationships with the local whales.

For example, a story I found particularly heart-wrenching was from when the Vancouver Aquarium wanted to make a life-size orca sculpture for its entry hallway, and director Murray Newman wanted to kill one in order to make an accurate model. He set up a team near East Point in 1964 in the Canadian Gulf Islands, an area we often cruise by on our summer whale-watching trips. In July, they finally got a chance to use their harpoon gun and hit a whale in the back. The whale, supported by two pod members at the surface, didn't die, and they realized they could take the whale alive, so transported it to Vancouver. The whale was dubbed Moby Doll, a name that demonstrates how little was understood about killer whales at the time - Moby Doll was actually a male.

It's hard to believe that just 40 years ago, killer whales were known as "public enemy number one" in the ocean, and hardly anything was known about them. Undoubtedly, coming from East Point in July, Moby Doll came from the Southern Resident community. His succcessful capture would forever change the world's view of killer whales. People began to realize how intelligent and social they were, and as such began not to fear them or shoot them on sight. However, people also began to realize their value, and the marine capture era begun.

If you're interested in learning the history of how we as a society went from fearing and hating killer whales to having such concern over the future of these two orphaned calves, then Operation Orca is definitely a book for you.

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.

What's your eternal moment?

"The air becomes still. We become quiet. Together, we witness a sight that few people ever see: we are surrounded by killer whales...Conventional teachings suggest that eternity is something that starts after death, and then goes on - well, forever. But I know that it is this moment that is eternal. One wave moves in a certain manner while that particular killer whale rises above the water and catches one ray of light against the flash of its singular fin, and I stand here on this particular boat, late in the afternoon of this certain day, with these people who have traveled distances near and far to stand here and be captured with me in this moment, which is gone before I blink and which will continue always to exist." ~Ernestine Hayes, in Blonde Indian

This quote was in a magazine I read today, and when I read it aloud I was told it sounds like something I could have written. It certainly rings true for me. I think I'll have to check out the novel that it comes from.

Then again, who knows?

Now I'm reading Naturalist by the great scientist and ant specialist E.O. Wilson. He is one of those people I mentioned yesterday, the most successful type of scientist who keeps that deeply engrained passion while doing groundbreaking science. In fact, he even says he doesn't want to define that core curiosity for fear that defining it might make it disappear. Reading about his memories of growing up in the deep south, keeping detailed notes of his ant findings that 50 years later still provided a source of insightful data in his research,it gives me hope that a true naturalist at heart can still find a way to be a "good" scientist in today's field so dominated by genetic labs and biotechnology.

"For the obsessed and ambitious, the only strategy is to probe in all directions and learn where one's abilities are exceptional, where mediocre, where poor, then fashion tactics and protheses to achieve the best possible result. And never give up hope that the fates will allow some unexpected breakthroughs...The advice I give to students in science is to move laterally up and down and peer all around. If you have the will, there is a discipline in which you can succeed...Be a hunter and explorer, not a problem solver." ~E.O. Wilson

It inspires me and gives me hope. It makes me feel like I can still be a scientist if what I really want to do is go out there and observe and explore.

My thesis adivsor has been urging me to retool a paper for publication. I think it will be a project for this fall. Am I meant to be a scientist, or not? Do I have to define myself, do I have to choose?

Like me and orcas

"I was transfixed. As I now recall it, there was only one sensation in my head: pure elation mixed with amazement at such perfection...I remember thinking, with what was left of my consciousness, that I wanted no part of the science of beavers and otters; I wanted never to know how they performed their marvels; I wished for no news about the physiology of their breathing, the coordination of their muscles, their vision, their endocrine systems, their digestive tracts. I hoped never to have to think of them as collections of cells. All I asked for was the full hairy complexity, then in front of my eyes, of whole, intact beavers and otters in motion." ~ Lewis Thomas

I've been reading Lewis Thomas' "notes of a biology watcher" in his book The Medusa and the Snail. You may know him better from his book The Lives of a Cell, but his way with words and his wit is at its best in this collection of essays, where he explores all sorts of biological wonders.

This passage really jumped out at me, since it reflects exactly how I feel while I'm watching orcas. My heart pounds and I'm in total awe of the animals before me, and I care nothing about physiological processes or theories of animal behavior or chains of chemical reactions. More and more, as I question whether I really want to be a full-fledged scientist, I realize that many of those who are doing research have become blinded against that raw passion that draws so many of us to the field of biology in the first place.

Several instances from last summer come to mind: I was sitting on a research boat while Grace (L2) was swimming along beside us. You could look right down into the water and see her whole body gliding effortlessly along, so rare to have such an extended view of them swimming underwater, then she turned on a dime and disappeared the other direction. All the scientists were uninterested since it wasn't an opportunity to collect data, some were not even looking. I was in a classroom listening to a lecture that had a title that led me to believe we would be talking about boat-vessel interactions, but instead we were talking about cylindrical versus spherical sound propagation models. Had these people ever even seen the whales interacting with boats? I was on the rocks at the lighthouse while the whales were passing by, and a researcher wanted to talk about how I tell the difference between two different vocalizations. His back was to the whales swimming a hundred yards behind him! I didn't want to answer his questions, I just wanted to watch the whales.

I know it's very possible to both be a scientist and maintain the passion and intrigue that got you interested in the first place - the best scientists succeed at doing both - but I also see how easy it is to get so wrapped up in that science that the pure amazement of the natural world can get lost in it all. I still don't know what my true calling is, but it's starting to feel like what is considered good, hard science is far removed from what really matters to me about the orcas, continuing to understand them better, sharing their magnificence with others, and helping to make sure they're around for a long time to come. Ultimately, science always comes down to observation, and I feel like that's when I always learn the most about the whales: when I'm observing them, just taking it all in.

From Ichthyosaurs to Orcas

I just finished reading Neptune's Ark: From Ichthyosaurs to Orcas by David Rains Wallace. In this book, Wallace follows the evolution of life as it adapts to land, and then as it returns to the sea in the form of marine mammals. Artfully combining personal observations with descriptions of fossil evidence and stories of the quirky scientists who discovered them, Wallace discusses current theories about ancestors for all extant marine mammals, including sea lions, seals, walruses, baleen whales, toothed whales and dolphins, sirenians, otters, and the polar bear. Focusing primarily on the west coast of North America, he also discusses other marine mammals that had their heyday here millions of years ago, such as the oyster eating bear-like creature Kolponomos, or Enaliarctos, the earliest known pinniped that perplexes scientists by creating an evolutionary gap before the next pinniped in the fossil record. The narrative is bookended by examining the mysterious narrative of the otherwise reliable naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller (after whom the Steller sea lion is named), who described in detail observations of a "sea ape" in the eastern north Pacific that have never been substantiated by modern science. An engaging read, this was the first book I've ever read where as soon as I finished the last page, I wanted to flip back to page 1 and start all over again, since it contains so much thought-provoking information I couldn't absorb it all the first time.

The above picture is of course one of our current marine mammal inhabitants of the west coast, K12. Orcas are a relative newcomer on the evolutionary scene, even in terms of other cetaceans. According to Wallace, orcas may have displaced belugas and other toothed whales from the more temperate regions of the Pacific during the Pliocene.