I’m finally back at the Duke Marine lab, after a series of adventures in Massachusetts that don’t really need dwelling on. It’s great to be back – seeing family, friends and getting on with things that have been waiting for some attention for a bit. [photo size=’small’ align=’right’ title=’Andrew Westgate loves the Long Eddy!’ link=’http://superpod.ml.duke.edu/johnston/files/2011/09/NauticalWestgate.jpg’…
Read more
The weather was great from Tuesday through Friday, calm seas, light wind, and sun, but then took a turn for the worse to more typical Grand Manan weather…wind and fog. It was blowing a good 25 knots on Saturday, keeping us onshore, but Sunday morning, we awoke to no wind and fog. These conditions weren’t…
Read more
The Long Eddy, situated on the northern tip of Grand Manan Island, is a beautiful and stimulating place, full of animals and energy. In a short span of minutes the ocean can change from glassy flat to boiling with upwellings and chop. A calm scene with a lone slowly-rolling porpoise changes into a cacophony of…
Read more
I swear I looked down the long length of our 25-foot tag pole for what felt like minutes. The delicately positioned DTAG had disappeared from the end of the pole and the fin whale we had been chasing was descending below the water’s surface. Turning slowing, I holler back to the expectant eyes of the…
Read more
Today we sailed out to the Long Eddy and were greeted by unnaturally glassy and smooth seas, warm temperatures, and a clear blue sky. Sounds like a great day for research, doesn’t it? Hah! Let’s hear about what went on before we come to conclusions, yeah? The Balaena, the appropriately-named tagging boat, spent a good chunk…
Read more
[photo size=’medium’ title=’We tagged this whale!’ align=’right’ link=’http://superpod.ml.duke.edu/johnston/files/2011/08/taggedfin_ASF.jpg’ icon=’zoom’ lightbox=’image’]http://superpod.ml.duke.edu/johnston/files/2011/08/taggedfin_ASF.jpg[/photo]After about 10 yrs or so from when we first thought about doing it, today we put out a DTAG on a fin whale in the Long Eddy. It’s been a long time coming, and we are really happy to have cracked that nut. Today was…
Read more
The field team was able to get back out on the water today after the post-tropical storm formerly known as Hurricane Irene blew threw eastern Canada. Amazingly, the seas laid down from storm conditions surprisingly quickly and we had beautiful at-sea conditions for sighting and tagging whales as well as mapping the patches of prey…
Read more
We’re up here in the Bay of Fundy to collect data for my dissertation research project. My advisor, Dave Johnston, conducted his dissertation research in the same location 10 or so years ago and we are following up on his work taking advantage of new technology that has become available to us since then. We’re…
Read more
We’ve embarked on our field season in the Bay of Fundy, seeking to tag fin whales as they exploit prey aggregations in an island wake system on the northern tip of Grand Manan Island. [photo size=’medium’ align=’left’ link=’http://superpod.ml.duke.edu/johnston/files/2011/08/FinLongEddy.jpg’ icon=’zoom’ lightbox=’image’]http://superpod.ml.duke.edu/johnston/files/2011/08/FinLongEddy.jpg[/photo] We’re only just getting started, and have had to hunker down for a day and…
Read more
Great news! The National Geographic Society is going to fund a short field season studying the foraging ecology of fin whales in the Long Eddy, an island wake system in the Bay of Fundy. This is a great opportunity for us to get back to Fundy. This island wake system supports a variety of top…
Read more