Here’s a glimpse into the future of killer whale sound archives. Steven Ness and collaborators at the University of Victoria have created the Orchive — a suite of open-source, web-based tools for listening to and annotating the recordings of northern resident orcas made by Paul and Helena Spong at OrcaLab. Using Ruby on Rails and Flash, the Orchive enables citizen scientists to visually browse spectrograms, listen to the 1.3 years of recordings, read through scanned logbook pages, and examine existing annotations. By logging in, you can contribute to the cataloging effort by annotating the recordings, associating a recording with a logbook page, and defining the start time of a recording.
This is a giant leap forward! I can see a big niche for such tools in the analysis of data archived from the growing network of cabled ocean observing systems. An upcoming challenge will be to develop similar tools for analysis of real-time data, like those obtained from the Salish Sea Hydrophone Network.
Good national news is rolling in about 5 new southern resident whales and no deaths in 2009, plus one new baby thus far in 2010. Howard, Ken, and Brad allude to looking for correlations or explanations in chinook salmon abundance:
It sounds simplistic, Garrett said, but “the way that we can tag the population fluctuations is directly from the chinook runs.”
Taken as a whole, the runs in the region have held steady over at least the past two years, he said.
It’s not that simple, said Brad Hanson, a wildlife biologist with the federal Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. He said that for much of the year, little is known about what salmon stocks the whales eat and where.
It’s frustrating to me that we don’t have a nice synopsis of west coast chinook populations for 2009, or at least 2008. The strongest correlation between killer whale mortality or birth indices is with 3-year running means of chinook abundance lagged 1 year relative to the KW index (Ford et al., 2009). So, we would need data from 2007-9 to compute a chinook abundance index value for 2008 that ought to explain the low mortality and high birth rate observed in KWs during 2009.
This is a brief letter from Alexandra Morton that cuts to the chase re B.C. salmon farming management. Maybe WA should move it’s pens on-shore, too? Note the connection she draws between Lake Washington sockeye collapse and diseases from B.C. pens.
Wildlife researchers have identified the key feeding area for a critically endangered population of killer whales near Vancouver Island and proposed the creation of a unique, miniature conservation zone for the few square kilometres encompassing the animals’ favourite seafood restaurant.
The international team of scientists, including University of British Columbia biologist Rob Williams and colleagues from Britain and the U.S., spent four months in the summer of 2006 painstakingly monitoring the movements of a three-pod population of killer whales in waters off B.C. and Washington state that numbers just 87 individuals — so few that every animal has been identified from distinctive markings.
The researchers found the whales were about three times more likely to feast on Chinook salmon — their preferred meal — in a narrow coastal strip south of Washington’s San Juan Island than anywhere else in their summer range.
In an article published in the latest issue of the journal Animal Conservation, the scientists propose strict protections on this whale-dining “hot spot,” arguing that the no go zone is small enough to establish a practical system for diverting all boat traffic but large enough to guarantee the whales unfettered feeding.
“Protecting even small patches of water can provide conservation benefits, as long as we choose the spots wisely,” said lead researcher Erin Ashe, a biologist at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews, in a summary of the study.
On December 8th the NEPTUNE Canada cabled ocean observing system started pouring data on to the Internet. This opens the door for John Ford and his collaborators to listen for killer whales on the outer coast of southwest Vancouver Island. The Naxys hydrophone is sensitive to 5Hz-65kHz and is located in Folger Passage at 95m depth (see map at right) just outside Barkley Sound near Bamfield, Canada.
It’s unclear whether or not the audio stream will make it to land in real-time. There is a comment on the web site that suggests that the hydrophone was to go live on December 8th, but I could find no live or archived data. The following quote from the associated Coastal Marine Ecosystem project page suggests the signals may initially go only as far as Bamfield Marine Station where vessels might be able to respond to acquire photos for species identification:
“The underwater acoustic signal from the Folger Passage Node will be streamed live to the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre and hopefully the internet so that students and marine mammal researchers will be able to listen for their species of interest. The archived broadband acoustic signal will also be freely available for more advanced analyses.”
[Update 12/17: the fall-winter 2010 VENUS newsletter states that they are providing data from multiple hydrophones that they are comparing. “Working to improve the VENUS hydrophone system, our team re-configured the 170m-deep array in the Strait of Georgia. We deployed one of our original hydrophones, the Burns CR100, alongside two new ones — a High Tech HTI-99-HF and a Reson 4032T. We are testing the performance of these hydrophones to assess their long-term stability and acoustic character (sensitivity and response). Each hydrophone has its own web page with audio and spectrograms updated every 5 minutes. Already, we have detected hundreds of ships and ferries, and environmental noise associated with wind, rain and even thunder. Check out near real time audio at www.venus.uvic.ca.” Here are direct links to the data archives 3 types of hydrophones: #1: HTI | #2: Burns | #3: Reson.]
[Update 10/12/2010: It appears that the Burns and Reson are still working nicely, while the HTI is functional but generating a signal with interference when the Burns has it’s automatic gain on (noted on June 10, 2010). Also, there is a link to a multimedia archive (download requires registration), but the temporal coverage is very sporadic and generally out-dated.]
[Update 10/03/2011: VENUS has a new hydrophone player that’s pretty cool, but it’s really annoying how their links keep breaking and it’s unclear how often they really have near-real-time data available. Today I checked again because the southern residents may have gone north last night, but the “most recent” data was from a couple days ago — 10/1/11. Here’s a bit of info about the hydrophone data processing.]
There is appears to be some history of security concerns voiced by the U.S. and Canadian Navies. For example, in a November, 2005 IEEE post about Neptune, author Peter Fairley reported:
In the category of unintended consequences are tensions between NEPTUNE and VENUS management and the Canadian and U.S. navies. What concerns the militaries is the possibility that their foes will employ publicly available data from the systems’ sophisticated hydrophones to identify vessels and track their comings and goings. (Canada’s entire Pacific fleet docks at Vancouver Island, just west of Victoria, while a group of U.S. nuclear submarines calls nearby Puget Sound, Wash., home.)
The VENUS organizers granted the Canadian military the power to squelch VENUS’s acoustic data whenever the navy deems national security to be at risk. That worries some NEPTUNE researchers. “For observatories expecting to have a 24/7 feed, that could be very disruptive to the science,” says Benoît Pirenne, the assistant director of information technology for NEPTUNE Canada, who is designing NEPTUNE’s data and control system.
Such concerns are also alluded to in one slide of a PDF presentation by Svein Vagel (S8_S10_Vagle). He suggests that the concerns were met by giving the Navy an on/off switch and storing no data locally (presumably because someone might use a sub or dredge to steal the instruments from 170 or 270m depths). [Update 12/17: see first comment from Dwight Evans, content manager for NEPTUNE Canada web site, confirming that the Navies are filtering the hydrophone signals.]
Other NEPTUNE Canada nodes also have hydrophones. Pictured at left is the arm of the Canadian remotely operated vehicle ROPOS holding a Naxys hydrophone on a stand that was deployed 10m from the Barkley Head instrument platform (in background). A instrument spreadsheet indicates another hydrophone was placed 14m from the Barkely Canyon axis node. These nodes are located on the outer shelf at the latitude of Cape Flattery, so could provide a nice complement to the Neah Bay hydrophone as we try to understand when/how the southern residents leave the Strait of Juan de Fuca and head south down the WA coast.
Jim Cummings of the Acoustic Ecology Institute has posted another great synopsis of an important new bioacoustics paper that has big implications for southern resident killer whales. After defining a new bioacoustic metric “effective listening area” (which is MUCH more intuitive than “active space”), the authors clarify how slight increases in ambient noise can have big impacts for animals that need to listen to sounds that are normally barely audible.
The authors note analyses of transportation noise impacts often assert that a 3dB increase in noise – a barely perceptual change – has “negligible” effects, whereas in fact this increased noise reduces the listening area of animals by 30%. A 10dB increase in background noise (likely within a few hundred meters of a road or wind farm, or as a private plane passes nearby) reduces listening area by 90%.
We know that most commercial ships and recreational boats raise the ambient noise levels near killer whales by 20-30dB for periods of ~30 or 3 minutes, respectively, as the vessels and whales pass by each other. Clearly it is time to articulate in what common situations the southern residents need to perceive barely audible signals — like distant inter-pod communication signals or echolocation returns from prey — and to model the reduction in listening area during typical noise exposures. This paper suggests the results may be disconcerting even though southern residents are keystone predators (though one has to wonder if transients appreciate the advantage of the acoustic cloak a noisy freighter offers when trying to pick off a resident calf).
Scientific literature reference: Barber, Crooks, Fristrup. The costs of chronic noise exposure for terrestrial organisms. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 2010.
Technorati Tags: noise, noise pollution
Ron Hirschi, a local marine naturalist, is reporting Humbolt squid being caught on salmon gear in the central Strait of Juan de Fuca. Will they come all they way in in 2010?
11.30.09
Recreational salmon fishers are now catching them as far east as Sekiu in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Watch for further reports as they invade the (now officially named) Salish Sea (aka Puget Sound, Hood Canal, Admiralty Inlet, etc).
Catches of the big squid are on standard salmon gear – cut plug and whole herring trolled or mooched. This is all much to the culinary delight of local fishers.
Ron Hirschi
Squid Watcher, Marrowstone Island, Washington State
The photo demonstrates that they are swimming in a habitat where they could decimate orca prey (salmon) or become orca prey themselves. There is some sparse evidence that residents orcas eat eight-armed squid. One squid beak has been observed in the stomach of a stranded transient killer whale. And offshore orcas in the Pacific are thought to feed on squid in addition to sharks.
This article by Chris Dunagan states that the Humbolt squid are known to move with schools of Coho and consume both forage fish and salmon smolts. It will be very interesting to observe the net effect of the squid on the Salish Sea ecosystem.
I was most impressed by this underwater photograph taken by Ingrid Visser of a New Zealand killer whale pursuing a mako shark. The associated article from the Daily Mail describes hunting techniques that smack of likely Southern Resident tactics: collaborative herding and stunning blows from the flukes. I wonder: does she have recordings of the vocalization and echolocation that occurs during these attacks?
There are some great observations and quotes in the liveblog of Matthey Preusch during the Nov 23, 2009, Salmon Court. This first one suggests a slight of hand or an ignorance of the primary findings of the Bright Future report — that we do not necessarily have to choose between spilling water for salmon in the summer months and spewing carbon dioxide from more fossil-fueled power plants.
Now the judge is questioning the government of [on] the substance of the supplemental plan, such as why the government won’t continue to spill extra water over power-producing dams even though court-ordered spill has been shown to help fish.
The spills “look like they worked,” said Redden. “Why change them?”
“Your honor, that comes with a cost,” answered Howell, attorney for the government. “And I’m not talking about financial cost. I’m talking about carbon. The more we spill, the more we are going to have to offset that with natural gas and coal.”
The bright future scenario includes replacement of the dam’s 1 GW mean annual power supply with salmon-and-orca-friendly clean energy, NOT new or re-powered of coal and gas power plants. This is perhaps the most damning indication that the government is not thinking clearly about the fundamental “change we need” (and the southern residents and salmon need) here in the Pacific Northwest.
Personally, I believe with compelling public education about what values are really at stake, we can exceed the assumptions about potential conservation. As usual, no one wants to talk about the projected growth of energy demand (1.7%/yr) and its connections to population/economic growth and consumer/conservation ethics.
Also very noteworthy was Lubchenko’s statement that she stands “100% behind the science” in the Biop. As a marine scientist, I am eager to see just what she is behind. Thankfully, we may ultimately get the chance if we are to believe the statement by Howell, lead attorney for the government, who:
offered in an exchange with Judge Redden earlier this morning to make public documents from the administration’s review of the science behind the Bush-era salmon plan.
That’s something the government’s critics have been asking for for some time.
Notes from a talk by Bob Pitman on Antarctic orcas, Nov. 18, 2009 – hosted by ACS Puget Sound
The classroom at the Phinney Neighborhood Center in Seattle was filled wall to wall with people eager to hear about the four (3 for sure, 1 probable) types of orcas he’s found that stalk and forage in and around the ice floes and pack ice (there’s a difference) in Antarctica. I don’t think anyone was disappointed. The entire hour-long presentation was non-stop with amazing stories and discoveries, vivid observations and some incredible images of divergent cultures of orcas at work and play.
It was like watching a lecture by a 19th century anthropologist just back from a scientific expedition deep in the Amazon jungle, enthralling the audience with incredible tales of outlandish natives and their curious customs. That’s how exotic these A, B, C and, possibly, D orca types are, and how startling are the discoveries over the past several years by Pitman, his colleague John Durban and their team in the bright, cold Antarctic summer.
Caveat: These notes are by no means comprehensive, and I invite anyone else who was there or has anything to add, to do so.
Beginning in 2000 Pitman has conducted field studies on Antarctic orcas, and has consistently proposed multiple species, or at least “ecotypes” occuring sympatrically (found in the same habitat). Some of his published works include:
To set the stage for this travelogue to Antarctica, Pitman first described the different ecotypes (orcatypes?) documented in the Pacific NW to establish his frame of reference, because our familiar residents, transients and offshores were the first to be researched in the mid-1970s and remain the best known orcas in the world. He said mammal-eating transients are probably a different species than fish-eating residents and that we should look for a paper he will co-author to describe the transient species soon. He also tantalizingly mentioned that there may be up to five species of orcas worldwide.
In Mitochondrial sequence divergence among Antarctic killer whale ecotypes is consistent with multiple species, Pitman writes:
“Type A has the typical black and white coloration; it inhabits ice-free waters and appears to prey mainly on cetaceans, particularly Antarctic minke whales. Type B is grey, black and white, with a larger eyepatch and a distinct dorsal cape; it forages in pack ice and feeds on pinnipeds. Type C is similar to type B in appearance but with a narrow, oblique eyepatch; it is most frequently encountered in dense pack ice where it specializes on fishes.”
That dorsal cape on Types B and C would be the envy of any hot rod pin-striper, sweeping along the upper torso starting in front of the blowhole and arcing into the saddle patch (see Uko Gorter’s detailed illustrations in the same paper). Besides this striking coloration in Types B and C, the body size differences are substantial: Type C males average only 18.3 feet, with the largest male at 20 feet. Type A males average nearly 24 feet, and the largest was 29.5 feet, 50% larger than Type C. Type B is smaller than Type A but larger than Type C.
But it’s the degree of dietary specialization by each type that is most astounding. Type C, for instance, feeds almost exclusively on toothfish, which can exceed 440 pounds, and reach a length up to 7.5 feet, though most are less than half that size. Unfortunately legal and illegal fisheries target toothfish, reducing their numbers each year, and according to The Antarctica Project, “It is common practice in the illegal fishery to dynamite Sperm and Killer whales when they are discovered in the area where the fishing takes place.”
The incredible forethought and teamwork shown by Type B as they take down Weddell seals was the subject of most of the presentation. They feast almost exclusively on Weddell seals, while completely ignoring leopard seals and crabeater seals, both very abundant in the same waters.
Pitman recounted some amazing stories of careful planning and execution as Type B orcas captured, drowned and devoured the seals. Numerous photos and descriptions showed Type B orcas seeking Weddell seals by spyhopping repeatedly en masse around the ice, then rushing at the floes abreast to toss a wave over the flat ice, either washing the seal off the ice or breaking up the ice until not enough is left to keep the seal safe from the orcas’ toothy grasp. The middle of the wave often peaked in a frothy breaker aimed directly at the seal. On several occasions crabeater seals were washed off ice floes, then left alone when the mistaken identity was realized. In at least one instance, the whales neatly skinned a seal with incisions along the neck and midsection, then the skin was pulled off the carcass by at least two orcas. Pitman also documented Type B orcas taking an elephant seal and a minke, but never a leopard seal or crabeater seal.
The audience was then treated to lengthy discussion and photos of yet another type, even more bizarre than the others, which Pitman calls “Type D,” which have large bodies, tiny, slanted eyepatches and bulbous heads, and are the least documented. Pitman was tentative about naming them as another type, but he has amassed a collection of photos and field reports about them in just the past few years. Satellite tags have recorded Type D traveling 150 nautical miles per day for ten days. It’s usually said that orcas can travel up to 100 miles a day, but apparently that will now have to be revised upward. In the Q&A, Pitman clarified that no fighting was seen among any of the orca types; and that they always share food.
Last season and this season’s fieldwork is conducted partly in cooperation with a BBC crew filming a special to be called: “Frozen Planet” which will effectively announce these incredible orca types to the wider public. I know I’ll be watching for it.
I went away curious about the taxonomic thicket that might ensue when transient orcas are proposed as a separate species. I wonder how far that might go, since theoretically every genetically distinct orca community could then be considered a separate species. Is it possible that the paradigm and taxonomy from biology are insufficient to describe the “ecotypes” that are found around the world? If Rendell and Whitehead are right in Culture in Whales and Dolphins, orcas have independently evolved cultural capabilities without parallel except in humans. Would designating mammal-eaters and fish-eaters as separate species be analogous to describing isolated human societies as separate species? In some cases interbreeding may have become impossible, but for most combinations of sympatric communities it’s possible, but virtually never done.
In discussions of orcas, and possibly sperm whales, humpbacks, pilot whales, and others, might cetology find it useful to borrow some of the concepts and terminology from anthropology and sociology? I wonder if the various orca types and communities could be described as “cultures” rather than “ecotypes” for instance? Just wonderin.’
