The T19s

The setting for our whale encounter this afternoon was perfect: sunny skies, and right in front of Patos lighthouse and Mt. Baker in the distance:

At first the four whales we were with (T18, T19, male T19B, and T19C) were being typical transients: two or three short breaths at the surface, a dive of more than five minutes, than another surfacing in a completely unpredictable location. Before this summer, I really hadn't seen transients all that often, but over the last month it seems like they're everywhere. I had never witnessed a kill before this year, either, but as we spotted some splashing on the surface of the water it became apparent that I was about to witness my third kill of the summer. Male T19B was in pursuit of a harbor porpoise. Can you see the porpoise in both photos below? It looks so tiny!

Suddenly the splashing stopped and all the whales were down for another longer dive, and I presume this is when the kill actually happened, because when they came up again they were engaging in another typical transient behavior, what I call the "celebration" after a kill. I don't know if they're really celebrating, but it certainly seems like it as they breach, tail slap, and spyhop almost every time after feeding. Then, after another longer dive and just before we had to leave, they surprised us by surfacing right off our starboard side! We had mostly been 200-300 yards away from them, and this was the closest I had ever seen a transient. This female is T19:

Another female (either T18 or T19C) surfaced right behind T19, and Ivan confirmed what we had heard from another boat just beside us - she was carrying something (a piece of porpoise flesh?!) in her mouth. You can't really see it in the photo below, but I can imagine there being something (more of a grayish color) in the front of her mouth just under the surface of the water. I'll tell myself you can see it in the photo because I know it was there! What strikes me about this photo though is that you can see her rib cage! Probably not a good sign....


Another fantastic transient encounter!! And better yet, the word is residents are on their way back in from the ocean right now!

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.

Red-breasted nuthatch

All three resident pods have been out west to the open ocean for the last few days. At no time this summer have they taken when of their "long" (6+ days) trips out, its mostly just been 3-4 day trips. So hopefully they'll be back soon! It is September, and this time of year the whales often travel all together, so when they do come back it will probably be another superpod!

This does give me the chance to share another photo I took recently, of a red-breasted nuthatch. I was waiting for the whales to come by (what else?) a couple of weeks ago and reading a book when this little bird flitted down to the tree just feet away from me. I had a chance to slowly grab me camera and take a few photos before it continued on its way again. This one is my favorite.

Harbor Seal Curiosity

We've been having problems with our plumbing here at the marina, and my goal over the last two days has been to fix it. I won't drag you through the miserable details of my hours of work, multiple trips to the hardware store, and tears of frustration, but in an effort to focus on the positive side of things, I wanted to post about a harbor seal that came to check out my handiwork. While I was figuring out a way to maneuver hoses under the dock, there were a lot of hoses, boat hooks, ropes, fenders, and hands in the water. As I was securing a hose, a harbor seal surfaced right between the dock and the boat next to me, startling me so much I nearly fell in the water. I can only assume that he/she was coming over to see what all the commotion was about, since its only a few times a year I see seals right in the marina, and rarer still that they're actually in a slip with the boats! We both scared each other, because the seal quickly flipped over and dove again. It was a very cool experience that (almost) made all the hard work worth it - at least I finally, triumphantly, fixed the plumbing, too.

The above picture is of course of Popeye, Friday Harbor's resident harbor seal (blind in her left eye) that takes fish from people off the main dock. She left for a few weeks last month and did return at least once with her pup, making it two years in a row that she's given birth. Unlike resident whales, who stay with their mom their entire life, harbor seals have five short weeks of nursing before they're weaned. Popeye has never been a big fan of her pups hanging around the marina for very long - this definitely seems to be her "turf" here. The harbor seal that startled me while I was working with the hoses could easily have been the one in the photo, though - that's how close I was!

Sea star mating, salmon sniffing, and killer whale body temperature

One of the things I love about being a naturalist is being stumped when someone asks me a question I don't know the answer to. It pushes me to further my understanding of the natural world, because the first thing I always do when I get home is find the answer to the question. Here are a couple of my favorites from so far this year.

How do you tell a male and female sea star apart?
This one was interesting, because I didn't even know if there were male and female sea stars, or if a single organism could produce both eggs and sperm. It turns out, though, that individual sea stars do have a gender. Unfortunately, the only way you can tell them apart is by analyzing their gonads (which are internal, by the way), or - and this is the method I prefer - stand around and wait until they release their gametes! Another interesting tidbit I picked up is that some sea stars can also reproduce asexually - one arm will split off and regenerate into a complete separate organism.

How do salmon know which streams to return to when they spawn?
I knew the answer to this question was by using their sense of smell, but when pressed for further details I realized I didn't know very much. Based on local soil type and vegetation, each stream has its own chemical composition which results in a distinct smell. Baby salmon imprint on this olfactory cue - this means that the smell they are following is neither inherited (they imprint on it soon after hatching), nor is it influenced by other cues from other streams they pick up while migrating to the ocean (the imprinting window is a very short one). When the activation of sex hormones induces the salmon to spawn, they recall this olfactory cue from their long-term memory. When researching this I also learned that "smoltification" is a word, meaning the metamorphosis of a young salmon into a smolt, which includes developing preadaptations for life in salt water.

What is the body temperature of a killer whale?
It's not too often someone stumps me with a killer whale question, but here was one I definitely should have known the answer to and didn't. The answer is between 97.5 and 100.4 degrees F. The motivation for this question was a curiosity as to how killer whales stay warm in the frigid local waters. While I knew their layer of blubber (3-4 inches thick) played a role, it turns out there are other mechanisms that help as well:

• Since killer whales have decreased limb size, they have less surface area exposed to the external environment compared to their land counterparts. This allows them to contain more of their heat in the core of their body.
• They also have a higher metabolic rate than land mammals, which generates heat.
• Breathing is a quick way to lose body heat, and since they breathe less frequently than land mammals they lose less heat that way.
• The arteries in their external limbs such as flippers, flukes, and fins are surrounded by veins. This allows outgoing blood from the heart to transfer some of their heat to blood on the way back to the heart, rather than lose all its heat to the environment.
• Finally, when a whale dives, less blood is circulated to the body surface, which conserves heat as well.

It's really amazing how many adaptations contribute to thermoregulation of cetaceans, and I can honestly say this is one area that we have a much greater understanding of due to marine parks where these things can be studied with much more ease in captive animals. This information on orca thermoregulation was all taken from Sea World's website.

Crafty Cormorants

As I was heading off-island this weekend, I spotted some pelagic cormorants roosting in the pilings at the Anacortes ferry landing. I had seen these birds there once before, but had been unable to take a photo of them because as soon as the ferry gets all the way into its slip the view of the birds is blocked by another piling! These crafty diving seabirds have found a way to have the best of both worlds - a roof over their heads to get out of the rain (and raining it was when we pulled in to Anacortes), and a way to stay out of sight of people on the ferry. This time I was ready for them, though, and got to snap a few photos right from my car while we pulled in to the dock.