Protocol for using iTag This week, I finished tagging the images taken by the eBee using iTag. The next step was to write a protocol for taking the photographs and turning them into data so others can do it as well. It is pretty exciting to be doing this because I was the first person…
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Grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) are found on both shores of the North Atlantic. They feed a variety of fish, mostly benthic or demersal species. During the winter months, female grey seals in Nova Scotia haul out on beaches such as Hay and Saddle Islands to start pupping. Females usually give birth about a day after coming…
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This week had a lot going on. While continuing to work on the acoustic research paper, work began on the population counts of grey seals on Hay and Saddle Island. I am utilizing a program called iTag to count the adult grey seals and the pups. This program allows me to place a marker on…
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First off, a little bit about me: My name is Lauren Arona. I am a rising senior at Wittenberg University majoring in biology and minoring in marine science. I am the president of the Marine Science Club, active in the Outdoors Club and a member of Alpha Delta Pi sorority. This summer I have the…
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I’m happy to announce that we have now opened a new visualization facility for our research group – the Coastal and Ocean Visualization Environment. The details on the facility are here. This system is primarily designed to help visualize and analyze the large geospatial datasets we generate through telemetry projects, but also useful for other…
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Demi Fox, Julia Goss, Liza Hoos and I are proud to announce that our Lesson Plan called “A Sea of Sound” has been published in the new ALA Editions e-book, “Tablet Computers in School Libraries and Classrooms.” According to an American Library Association press release, the book “speaks directly to librarians and educators working with…
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Happy to report that I survived the first running of my Coursera MOOC: Marine Megafauna | An Introduction to Marine Science and Conservation. The course finished officially on April 6 with having 14,221 total learners signed up. Of these over 8000 watched lectures and over 4000 submitted quizzes and writing assignments. At the end of the class…
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On March 6, 2014, I was extremely honored to be called one of “3 Women Changing the World through Technology” by Skype in association with International Women’s Day. Tim Lucas wrote in a news release for Duke University Nicholas School News , “Marine Lab PhD student Heather Heenehan has been honored as one of three…
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I’m happy to announce the publication of the first quantitative abundance estimate for spinner dolphins on the Kona Coast of Hawaii Island. This work, led by Julian Tyne and part of the joint Duke/Murdoch SAPPHIRE project provides managers much needed information for managing human effects on this species in Hawaii. This newly identified stock of…
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Today Zach Siders published a paper in PLOS ONE on his work studying the distribution and dive behavior of basking sharks in the Bay of Fundy, based on records from opportunistic surveys and tour operators. This work provides the first details on the distribution of these elusive animals in the waters of eastern Canada and…
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Yesterday we launched Coastal Walkabout, a new open access citizen science initiative which utilises smart phone technology and social media to engage and motivate local communities to gather scientific observations within coastal and estuarine environments in Western Australia. This projects sits at the intersection of 3 of the things I hold dear: technology, open access…
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It has been a busy couple of weeks for the Johnston Lab, with the ‘publication’ of two products that have arisen from student projects in the Nicholas School’s Masters of Environmental Management Program. These two products (described in greater detail below) are at nearly opposite ends of the publication spectrum – one is a scientific…
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A new iPad app that has been in the works for the past year is now available on the iTunes App Store! Whether you are planning a trip to the Hawaiian Islands or just want to learn more about the charismatic mammals that call the coastal waters of Hawai‘i home, The Nai‘a Guide can demonstrate…
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Quite a week on the water in Chatham, MA on Cape Cod! To list some of the accomplishments: the first live-captures (on our first attempt no less) of gray seals in the US; coordinated deployments of multiple GPS tags on adult US gray seals; a massive sampling effort to collect data for both field participants…
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Duke recently announced the next set of online courses that it will offer to the world through the Coursera system, and I’m excited and honored to be one of the next faculty to offer a course through this mechanism. In the spring the of 2014, I will be teaching Marine Megafauna: An introduction to marine…
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Our tagged gray seal—Bronx—has been busy in the inshore and offshore waters around Cape Cod these past six months as he continues to carry our GPS tag that pings back location, dive, behavior, and oceanographic data. Over the 155 days (just over 5 months and counting) of successful relocation and data transmission, the mobile-enabled GPS…
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More great news on the heels of our return from the deep south, Heather Heenehan has just published an Endpaper piece in Natural History magazine about her work on spinner dolphin acoustics as part of our SAPPHIRE project in Hawaii. I’m really excited about this, because it’s a great example of how our research team…
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[su_nt_image source=”http://superpod.ml.duke.edu/johnston/files/2013/02/2013-01-16-LTERBLOGDWJ-2013-01-17-DWJ-IMG_0415.jpg” width=”one_third”] Zach Swaim and I have just returned from a 6-week excursion to the deep south, to further incorporate and expand marine mammals studies into the epic Palmer Long-term Ecological Research (LTER) Program during its annual cruise along the Western Antarctic Peninsula. Through a combination of visual surveys, biopsy sampling and opportunistic acoustic…
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On the evening of September 29th, 2012 I was honored to stand on a stage with other Duke researchers to showcase new developments in the realm of “water” science to about 800 donors as Duke officially launched it’s new development campaign entitled Duke Forward. “Water” is a pretty broad topic, and it was great to…
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On September 15, 2012, a grey seal – named Bronx – was released from West Dennis Beach on Cape Cod with a tag on it’s back. After about 10 days cruising along the shores of Cape Cod, the seal hauled out between Chatham and Monomoy and delivered the first bundles of information about it’s movements…
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We recently released a novel website focused on the evolution of science and management of spinner dolphins in Hawaii – the Norris to Now Timeline. The website takes the form of an interactive chronicle of some (clearly not all!) of the scientific, managerial and cultural events that have shaped our understanding of spinner dolphins in…
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Coastal spinner dolphins in Hawaii, and elsewhere in the world, rely on sheltered bays for rest. These inshore locations provide an opportunity for dolphins to recover energetically and cognitively during daylight hours after extended nighttime foraging bouts, while minimizing predation risk. This behavioral trait often beings them into close contact with humans involved in dolphin-based…
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We’ve just got a new paper published in Endangered Species Research that provides the first estimates of humpback whale density in the late fall/early winter in the waters of the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP). This work was conducted as part of the NSF-funded MISHAP project (PIs Nowacek and Friedlaender). The paper is available here:http://www.int-res.com/articles/esr_oa/n018p063.pdf [photo…
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[photo size=’small’ align=’right’]http://superpod.ml.duke.edu/johnston/files/2012/05/dugongfeature.jpg[/photo]We’ve made some tracks on this trip so far – after leaving Perth we flew to Exmouth to see the whale shark festival and do some aerial survey work, drove down to Coral Bay to meet with Frazer McGregor and his mantas, and then motored back to Exmouth for a boat trip out…
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[photo size=’small’ align=’right’]http://superpod.ml.duke.edu/johnston/files/2012/07/cachaloticon.jpg[/photo]There is a great news story on Nature.com today, in their Careers section, that helps describe the evolving landscape of digital textbooks. Nature is in the game big-time, after having released their Principles of Biology textbook, an online and interactive offering that is accessed via a subscription. The author of the article, Roberta…
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In about a week, we will be embarking on a project along the coast of Northwestern Australia, one of the last great marine wilderness regions on earth. This remote location spans over 20 degrees of latitude and hosts organisms that represent some of the most primitive (e.g. Stromatolites) to the most derived (e.g. whale sharks)…
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[photo size=’small’ align=’right’ link=’http://superpod.ml.duke.edu/johnston/files/2012/04/DEimage_preview.jpg’ icon=’zoom’ lightbox=’image’ ]http://superpod.ml.duke.edu/johnston/files/2012/04/DEimage_preview.jpg[/photo]The Spring 2012 issue of Duke Environment Magazine is out, and there are two articles that cover work done in the Johnston Lab. The first is the lead story in the research section portion of the magazine (called the Log), and is a recap of the work we published…
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Here’s an update on the Scientists with Stories Project, (SwS) -a collaboration to create intensive training workshops and professional exhibition opportunities for PhD students affiliated with the Duke University Marine Laboratory (DUML) and the UNCʼs Institute of Marine Sciences (IMS). Applications are now available for the SwS digital media workshop and for small grants for media projects available…
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I’m really excited about where things are going with Cachalot, our digital textbook for Marine Megafauna here at Duke. This project has grown out of an incredible effort of students and colleagues who all have contributed so much. This month Cachalot is featured in a story about novel digital textbooks Scientific American, available in the…
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[photo size=’medium’ align=’right’]http://superpod.ml.duke.edu/johnston/files/2012/01/Seal-26th007.jpg[/photo]It’s been 13 days since our paper about changing sea ice conditions in breeding regions of harp seals was published in PLoS ONE. It has been incredibly interesting to watch the story propagate through the worlds media channels, both traditional and online. As a scientist, I’m increasingly interested in how science is portrayed to…
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Today we published a paper on the effects of climate change on pagophilic seals in the North Atlantic in the open access journal PLoS ONE. The paper is available to everyone, free of charge here: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0029158 This paper is the third in a series of studies published by my lab that examine the effects of climate…
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There is much to be said about initiative, and the Scientists with Stories Project (SwS) is an excellent example of the best kind of initiative in academia – a bottom-up process driven entirely by students, for students. The Scientists with Stories project is the creation of an enterprising group of graduate students at Duke and…
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This morning I did an interview with Brittany Edney from Time Warner Cable’s News 14 – a 24 hour cable news channel that services all of North Carolina. Brittany was really interested in the motivation behind developing the Cachalot digital textbook app and how we managed to deliver it at it’s extremely compelling price-point (free!).…
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Our lab has several abstracts accepted for presentation at the upcoming 19th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals. The conference is being held in Tampa, FL during November 28 to December 2, 2011. The theme of the conference is: “Cumulative effects of threats to marine mammals: Challenges to animals, scientists, and managers.” The…
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This weekend was homecoming at Duke, and the place was crawling with alums, young and old. Some were back for football, others to see old friends, and a special group of alumni were back to catch up on what is new and exciting at Duke – so that they can spread details back within their…
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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’…
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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…
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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…
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[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…
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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…
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Spring break at Duke is pretty much over, and it has been a busy time. Without classes to teach and with most of our research group at the Bio-logging conference in Hobart, Tasmania, it has been a great time to get some writing done. This week we polished off two papers on sea ice and…
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Hi folks, Heather Heenehan here. I’m a Duke CEM student working with the Johnston lab. For the past year I have been involved in the SAPPHIRE Project – Spinner Dolphin Acoustics, Population Parameters and Human Impacts Research. This project, based in Hawaii, is a joint effort between Duke University and Murdoch University. As the project…
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Our lab just got word that two abstracts have been accepted for oral presentations at the upcoming International Marine Conservation Congress (IMCC) this May in Victoria, BC. I will be giving a talk that summarizes our work on harp seals and sea ice in the North Atlantic and T.J. Young will be speaking about his…
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For the past year or so we have been slowly redeveloping the content of our Marine Megafauna course for mobile devices. More and more, we see students using their phones and tablets to access information in and out of class, and my colleagues and I at DUML are working towards the creation of a application…
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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…
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[dropcap4 color=”green”]I[/dropcap4]t’s official, we are now the proud owners of a new (at least to us) small boat for our work in Hawaii. The boat, which is currently without a name, is a 22 foot fibreglass vessel built by C-Dory, a Washington state company. She’s an odd looking boat for Hawaii in some ways, but…
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[dropcap4 color=”green”]W[/dropcap4]e got great news this week as our predator synthesis paper for the Southern Ocean GLOBEC project was fully accepted for publication in the journal Deep Sea Research. This paper compiles location data for 4 key krill predators (humpbacks, minkes, Adelie penguins and crabeater seals) in Marguerite Bay and develops ecological niche models (ENMs)…
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[dropcap4 color=”green”]W[/dropcap4]elcome to the website for the Johnston lab, part of the Marine Conservation Ecology group in the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke Marine Lab. Here you will find details on our specific projects and the poeple that are working on them, as well as details on collaborative projects in our group. In general,…
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