I just read...

...this press release regarding the recent sonar near Haro Strait...

...and this article about sonar causing temporary deafness in dolphins...

...and this blog from the Marine Mammal Center, reporting a dead orca calf near Monterey Bay...

...which reminds me of the recent death of T44, a known transient orca. I wonder how that necropsy is going? It's quite rare to get a chance to study a transient in such detail. It wouldn't be surprising to discover that T44 was chock-full of PCBs, DDTs, and other toxins. I wonder how that will compare with the levels of toxins found in other transients and residents?

Orcas on Hydrophones? Nope, Just Sonar.

Last night, on both Lime Kiln and Orcasound hydrophones, listeners were surprised to hear some peculiar sounds. Not the sounds of orcas, or the regular shipping traffic, but the sounds of human voices and mid-frequency sonar pings. I'm listening to the recordings made by Scott Veirs of Beam Reach now and it is quite clear that these sounds are not a part of the natural environment.

Jeanne Hyde of The Whale Museum contacted the Bellingham Coast Guard and confirmed that the Navy was doing exercises in Haro Strait. Scott Veirs recorded the sounds and created spectrograms of the human voices and sonar.

To listen to the recordings, go to the Lime Kiln or Orcasound hydrophone sites, scroll down through the archived sounds, and click on one of the most recent recordings with the words "voice" and "sonar" in the title.

Edited to add @ 4:15 pm: This story has now been covered by the San Juan Journal. Also, could the human voices be spies? Some folks, commenting Christopher Dunagan's blog, think that a numbers station could have been in use.

No Bones About It!

In my last post I mentioned that I was preparing to work with Lee Post, aka "The Boneman." This is all in relation to my job as an AmeriCorps environmental educator at the Port Townsend Marine Science Center. It has been an amazing experience so far and I can't wait to see how the rest of the week turns out!

The last two days have been spent training volunteers to measure and photograph bones from our gray whale skeleton, which is used as a teaching tool, instead of being fully articulated as an exhibit. The trainings are all in preparation for an even bigger project at the marine science center -- the articulation and exhibition of a transient orca skeleton -- and I am so grateful that I get to be here in this time and place to be involved with this hands-on project.

Cervical vertebra from a juvenile gray whale. Photo taken on my camera phone of the experimental photography set-up.

Ever since working as an educator at The Whale Museum on San Juan Island, I had wondered what it would be like to articulate a whale skeleton. I read Lee Post's books on articulation, but never dreamed I would get to do any articulating myself. And now, some years later, I'm preparing to do exactly that; I'm training volunteers and learning about articulation from Lee Post himself!

Happiness is...

...reading the new book on blue whales, Wild Blue, by Dan Bortolotti. (Preview it on Google Books here.)

...watching a slideshow on the Southern Resident orca population, put together by the folks at The Whale Museum in Friday Harbor. (Want more? See part two here.)

...getting a package with blacklight and blacklight-sensitive paint for creating a class activity on marine mammal echolocation.

...preparing to work with Lee Post -- "The Boneman" -- on a bone/skeleton articulation project.

...the anticipation of the Ways of Whales workshop on Whidbey Island at the end of this month, put on by Orca Network.

...getting another cup of coffee, which I'm off to do right now.

Doesn't take a lot to make me happy, does it?