APRIL 2021
Kyra's Blog
Kyra Bankhead, undergraduate student
1 April 2021
I haven’t made much progress with my data analysis, but I have been working on a poster to present for the marine mammal conference. I figured I’d get the easy parts done before I start tackling the data analysis. So far, I have my question, hypothesis, methods, and sites. I still need to format the poster as well as add my preliminary results and conclusion. These two however revolve around organizing my data analysis.
I started formatting my data into my response variable and my many predictors. Right now, I have seals hauled-out as my response variable and Julian date, ambient noise, time of day, temperature (which I might get rid of), and tide level. Before I had tide level as a categorical variable, but I found that this is useless, so I used a program called wxtide47. With this program I’ve had to go back to every observation and match the date and time of day with the tide level in meters. Hopefully after I get this done, I can start accurately analyzing.
I’ve also been trying to visualize my data a little better by trying out different graphs. This has been difficult because it’s not easy to graph generalized linear mixed models. So instead of just making AIC tables (which I will still do), I want to also be able to visualize my results. So far few of the graphs have been useful but I’ve found that mosaic histograms are somewhat useful to compare noise level and hauled-out seals in different sites. From these graphs I can only see that the marina has much more variation in seal numbers than the waterfront and the waterfront noisier than the marina, but not much of a comparison between variables is seen. For now, I’ll keep trying out graphs to visualize my data.
Average ambient noise level recordings separated by each
site.
Number of harbor seals hauled-out at each site.
Kyra Bankhead
Grace's Blog
Grace Freeman, graduate student
1 April 2021
As a rule, I always check my last month’s blog before writing a new one. Especially now, the days all seem to blur together, and it’s easy to forget what’s happened in the intervening weeks. This month, however, the answer is not a ton. I’m basically in the stage of my grad school career where I’m focused intently on writing. I’ve completed a full draft of my thesis and reworked the message a few times. I’m finding it easier than I anticipated to tell the story after spending so many months with my head in the data. It’s a little strange to be the expert on a topic. During my undergrad and even graduate classes, there’s always been an answer key or at least a ‘right’ answer, but not this time! It feels a little like working without a safety net, but I’ve spent so long with these data and the system that I feel very confident in my understanding of the nuances.
Despite being in a writing-heavy stage of my thesis work, I’m actually writing a little less now that I was last month. That’s because I wrapped up my Science Communications Fellowship with Washington Sea Grant. I am incredibly grateful for the skills, relationships, and experience I gained in that position, and also grateful to be done. I knew the position would challenge me, and in that aspect, it did not disappoint! So now that I have 10+ extra hours a week, I’ve decided to take some time to relax. Just kidding! I decided to sign up for the last class in the graduate statistics series (Time Series Analysis) to round out my data analytics skills a bit more fully. I anticipate that this class will more than fill my time, but it will also be a nice break to the writing and editing of my thesis. Plus, Kathleen and Zoë are taking the same class, so it will offer a chance to work with my lab-mates and collaborate a bit more during my last (!!) academic quarter at Western.
Untile next month,
Grace
Kathleen's Blog
Kathleen McKeegan, graduate student
1 April 2021
It’s springtime!! The sun is shining, the days are longer, and everything is in bloom… so of course, my allergies are going crazy! The spring quarter just started and I’m excited to dive into classes again, despite the Zoom fatigue. I’m going into this quarter hopeful and determined; I have a lot that I want to accomplish before summer, but I’m excited to focus on my research and achieve my goals.
First off, I’m happy to report that my committee officially approved my thesis proposal right before spring break! I am very proud of the proposal I was able to produce, and my committee members had fantastic suggestions that will help with data analysis and thesis writing. I am very grateful to my committee and I’m excited to finally put away the thesis proposal and focus on photo identification. I learned a great deal during the proposal writing process, all of which has helped me write several proposals for funding opportunities and fellowships. Hopefully by next month, I’ll have heard back from a few more places and will have some financial support for my project. Fingers-crossed!
For this next month, I am planning to focus primarily on photo-ID and data organization. Kate and I have been diving into the database and working through the photos from our lab and from Ocean’s Initiative. We have found a few errors in the current catalog, such as incorrect IDs or misnamed files; but these small setbacks and errors, once corrected, will only help improve the process and the integrity of the work. Already, Kate is becoming an expert ID-er (is that a word?), and I am very grateful to have her on my team. We are now starting to recruit more undergraduates to join the lab next year and help with the field observations. We have an AMAZING group of undergraduates this year, many of whom are graduating in the spring. So our goal is to find strong and driven replacements to help continue the research at Whatcom Creek. Overall, this will be a busy month, but at least I get to stare at seals all day!
Holland's Blog
Holland Conwell, undergraduate student
1 April 2021
My name is Holland Conwell, and I’m the new project lead on the Salish Sea Marine Survival Project work! I’m a second-year undergraduate student—majoring in biology with a marine emphasis—and I started in the Marine Mammal Ecology Lab as a research assistant for the Whatcom Waterway harbor seal observations in September of 2019. I began observing seals for the Whatcom Creek project in the fall of 2020, and I’m currently processing pinniped scat samples for Zoë Lewis’s diet analysis project.
The Salish Sea Marine Survival Project study follows a previous project in the Marine Mammal Ecology Lab that found significant diet differences between male and female harbor seals along the Strait of Georgia, and it suggested that males may have a greater impact on salmonids than females. This project seeks to investigate such sex-specific predator impacts on prey in a larger area of interest. I’m excited to dive into even more work on harbor seals (I’m noticing a theme…), and I’m curious to see if similar differences in diet between male and female harbor seals are observed again, now within the Salish Sea. I will be jumping in on the data processing end of this project, and I’m thrilled to get to work soon!
Zoë's Blog
Zoë Lewis, graduate student
1 April 2021
Well, I was planning to travel out to Neah bay for spring break to collect scats… but on 3/20/21, I was hit by an avalanche while skiing, causing a full tear of my ACL. I’m glad I returned home safely, but this injury has made coordinating lab work much more challenging and ended my trip to the peninsula. As I approach surgery, I’ll work in the lab as much as possible, while I’m still moderately mobile (besides the occasional buckling of my knee while walking), to get ahead on scat work and sending hard part samples out for analysis. Although inconvenient, I’m hopeful that with careful planning and some hard work, the project will remain on an appropriate timeline.
Sample processing will luckily continue even when I won’t be walking… Between Holland and Maddie working on the scat cleaning and WDFW employees working on the analysis portion, the project will be on track! I’m so lucky and thankful to have all the support of my mentors and collaborators on this project. In terms of thesis proposal work, I’m looking forward to meeting with my committee next week to iron out the details and work on getting it approved.
I look forward to spending more time this quarter diving into bioenergetics modeling. Last month, I met with Eric Ward, Isaac Kaplan and Ben Nelson to discuss ecosystem modeling, and how these data I am producing can be used in new and existing models. Spending some time diving into the R code for some of these models and figuring out which will fit our study location and data set.
Kate's Blog
Kate Clayton, undergraduate student
1 April 2021
March went by way faster than I expected it to. I have spent a good portion of this month preparing for finals and finishing up classes. Spring break could not come soon enough! But I definitely could have used more than just a week to catch up on sleep. I am anxious about spring quarter, but I hope after a couple of weeks I will settle into a routine and everything will go smoothly. I think my classes are going to test me this quarter, so I hope that I am up for the challenge.
As for the lab, I have spent this month doing the same tasks as last month. I have made schedules for observations and continued with photo ID and cropping. It is a slow process, but so satisfying to make matches and start picking out the most successful hunters. I have a long way to go still but I am looking forward to it. I am also getting better at recognizing the seals’ faces which makes the process go much quicker.
I still need to double check some of the assistants cropping corrections, but other than that, everything is running smoothly with photo cropping. Kathleen and Grace have been working hard to get more November photos up on the SharePoint so that our assistants can continue working through them. I am confident we will have all of November done in the next couple months.
Kathleen and I are meeting this week to discuss our plans for the poster we will be presenting at the Marine Mammal Conference (that is being virtually hosted by our lab at Western). I have no idea what to expect, especially with everything being virtual, so I am very grateful to have her as my research partner! The conference is supposed to take place at the beginning of May so it will sneak up on us before we know it. I hope to get our poster together in the next few weeks, so we don’t have to do anything last minute.
I got rejected from both my scholarship and my internship at Wolf Hollow Wildlife Rehabilitation Center this month. I told myself it was for the best, but it was a bit of a disappointment and put me into a slum during dead week. Luckily, Alejandro encouraged me to apply for a NASA research scholarship right after we heard the news. I put my application together rapidly (with a lot of help from Kathleen and Alejandro) and submitted it at the last minute, thinking it was a shot in the dark and nothing would come of it. After all, how does harbor seal predation relate to NASA? Somehow, I lucked out and got the scholarship which will allow me to stay in Bellingham over the summer and continue Kathleen and I’s research. I am really looking forward to the summer now!
Bobbie's Blog
Bobbie Buzzell, graduate student
1 April 2021
Spring has sprung! I am so thrilled to be in the final stretch of graduate school. In some ways it is hard to believe, but in other ways I know I am ready for the next steps. The tinge of sadness lingers as I mentally prepare for what’s to come (entering into the next phase of my career is in the works). I knew from the start 2 years would quickly come and go, but with a final thesis manuscript in the works, the end is becoming more real.
March ended with spring break, but I would say the only break I really had was from my teaching assistantship. I stayed fairly busy with revising my thesis and taking a field trip out to Neah Bay to collect fish specimens for the food habits specialist. Bill had tasked me with collecting a good representation of sculpins from the study area that have been observed in river otter diet. There are several fish taxa that are not 100% identified (e.g., able to identify to genus level, but not the species level). Having these extra specimens will ensure these unknowns are identified as correctly as possible.
With the start of spring and encroaching end of graduate school, I can’t afford to give in to “senioritis”. On top of my thesis manuscript, I need to refine my seminar presentation, two additional, shorter oral presentations for my grant agency and a conference, an article, and a poster which will be used on multiple platforms. Challenging steps lie ahead, but the end is in sight.