Category: Oceanography

Palmer Long-term Ecological Research Program: Rise of the Megafauna

[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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Long Eddy finished, for now…

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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Just another day of fieldwork in the Long Eddy….

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…
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The Long Eddy: Sustenance, Scenery and Science

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…
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You never forget your first (…whale)

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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A great day for research?

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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Tag On!

[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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In the Long Eddy…

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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Busy spring break!

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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Return to the Long Eddy!

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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Getting going with desktop climate modeling

[dropcap4 color=”green”]O[/dropcap4]ver the past 26 hours my 8-core monster Mac Pro has been crunching numbers like never before. I’ve had it running a public domain climate modeling software package called EdGCM. This package, created by scientists at Columbia University, is based on a research-grade global circulation model produced by NASA called GISS II and has…
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