MARCH 2021
Kyra's Blog
Kyra Bankhead, undergraduate student
1 March 2021
I have taken Professor Zinkgraf’s suggestions on forming a stepwise regression model. In my first construct I used julian date, temperature (in degrees Fahrenheit), mean noise level, tide level and month. After running the forward stepwise regression test, the predictors that were chosen were mean noise level, julian date, and temperature. After talking with Alejandro, I will change a few of my predictors to ones that might predict seal haul-out numbers better. These predictors will include some of the same variables such as julian date, mean noise level and tide level. The predictors I will add/replace from the others will be time of day and weather. Unfortunately, weather and tide level are categorical data and R is not working well with either of them. This means that I either need to tweak R in order to analyze both variables, or I need to change them to continuous. For weather, I could change it to temperature, but this will not include what type of weather. I could change the type of weather to the level of sun though my own categorial class data as well. As far as tide level, I would need to copy down all of the tide levels in feet throughout the year, but this would take a lot of time. I will work on categorical data for now and hope for the best.
Kyra Bankhead
Grace's Blog
Grace Freeman, graduate student
1 March 2021
It’s been another busy month in the Marine Mammal Ecology Lab!
With the creek quieting down, one of our ‘frequent flyers’ has returned! This particular seal, whom we call 0012, has visited the creek every year since the start of the study in 2011. What makes 0012 unique is that she is the only individual who consistently visits during the “off season”, she and has never been seen with a prey item. Typically, she appears at about half of our observations from January to October, and then when the run starts in November, she disappears only to return in the New Year. I suspect 0012 is a female since she apparently doesn’t prey on the adult salmonids who run during November and December. We also don’t know anything about her life when not at Whatcom Creek, but my guess is that she’s a “local” who lives close to the creek and finds a new place to frequent when her preferred hangout gets too busy in the fall. Then she returns to the site after the run when the crowd has moved on and she can have the entire creek to herself.
In addition to conducting observations, the undergraduates are working on cropping and prepping the data photos so the managers can ID the individuals pictured. In glancing through some of the folders, I’ve already noticed a continuation of another pattern in individual behavior. One seal, whom we call 0039, is another ‘frequent flyer’ at the creek, but exhibits behavior that is very much in contrast to that of 0012. To start, I suspect 0039 is male because male harbor seals prefer large, pelagic prey such as adult salmon. He’s visited the creek during the adult salmon every year since 2013, and he is an exceptionally skilled hunter. There were a few times this fall when I observed him swimming high in the falls and capturing fish that may be unreachable for the other, less skilled hunters at the creek. On at least a few occasions, I’ve seen him capture a fish, eat the especially tasty part (the belly) and discard the rest. Despite not visiting as frequently as 0012, 0039 has certainly had a bigger impact on the salmon population at Whatcom Creek!
This brings me to my thesis: It’s been really exciting to learn more about my seals and get to know their behavior and hunting outcomes. Recently, I’ve been working on the best way to visually represent and explain my findings. I am currently working on a graph that shows the variability in the number of total visits recorded by an individual seal and the number of visits during which we saw that seal with a fish (foraging success). As you can see, 0012 and 0039 are two of the extremes, so my task now is to characterize and describe the trends and outliers for all the individuals observed at the creek.
Kate's Blog
Kate Clayton, undergraduate student
1 March 2021
February has been a whirlwind of a month! School seemed to sneak up on me this month, so (sadly) I had to spend a good portion of my time focusing on that and less working in the lab.
Nearly all of our undergrad assistants are trained in photo cropping which is wonderful! I have spent a bit of time going back and checking over their photos to make sure they get the naming correct. I have also been checking in one-on-one with students to help them understand the tedious naming format. They are all doing amazing! Grace, Kathleen, and I are all so grateful for all their help. We couldn’t do what we do without them.
Observations at the creek are still pretty dead. Instead of frantically trying to enter data like we were in the Fall, students are now more focused on trying to battle the weather and boredom, haha. More importantly, everything is running smoothly, which is fantastic.
I have gotten to make a couple of the last schedules (which we have had to do by hand now due to a glitch in the code we were using). I honestly have been enjoying it immensely and I am even looking forward to making the next schedule. I think the mundane, easy, almost mind-numbing tasks are a nice break from the constant new material introduced in school.
Our assistants have made a ton of progress with cropping, in fact, they ran out of photos this week! Grace and Kathleen are now working hard to get some more folders up so that we can get through November. At the rate that the students are moving, we will be done with November before we know it. We will need to find something to occupy them if we run out of photos. Hopefully they will last us for another couple months.
I got a chance to start cropping and IDing photos taken by Ocean’s Initiative in the last week which is very exciting. I didn’t realize how much I missed the puzzle of IDing seals! It is so satisfying when you make a match. Working on these photos has been my escape/break from actual schoolwork and I am so grateful to have something fun to work on like this. I hope my future job(s) are as fun and fulfilling as the work we are doing now. It also feels awesome to finally start working on the project Kathleen and I have been planning for so long.
Alejandro and I haven’t heard much back from the scholarship committee yet, but we are optimistic to hear something in the next few weeks. Hopefully by the next blog, I will have more to share on this. I also applied to my Wolf Hollow Wildlife internship this month. Hopefully I will hear from them too by the next blog.
I think that covers the chaos of February…until next month!
Bobbie's Blog
Bobbie Buzzell, graduate student
1 March 2021
Another month, another draft. Thesis writing has required a lot of self-discipline on my part, but I’ve noticed that as long as I can get to the keyboard, the writing can flow pretty naturally. The ideas are present, I just need to put the nose to the grindstone. It’s easy to become distracted by other responsibilities of graduate school, including my teaching assistantship (I am also a lab instructor for biology 101) which does absorb a significant amount of my time with grading, student emails, and weekly preparation for Zoom classes.
The discussion section of my thesis has been the primary focus of my writing this month. In short, I’m describing possible explanations for why green crab occurred in so few scats during the study period. In truth it’s most likely a combination of biological (presence of other available prey) and physical (habitat type) factors. Luckily, my thesis was able to examine all prey which provided further insight into why green crab was consumed less frequently, but this information can also become disorganized when trying to unravel the complexities of river otter diet.
Zoë's Blog
Zoë Lewis, graduate student
1 March 2021
I ended my February 1st blog with “Until next time, you’ll find me in the basement, washing scats”. This statement has held true. Besides a few midterms and proposal drafts, scat cleaning has been my day to day for the past 4 weeks. With 90+ Steller sea lion scats and 42 harbor seal scats collected, I am so lucky to have the help of Holland and Maddie to get through all of my samples! We have all started to fall into a processing rhythm, taking turns with the nastiest scats and collaborating on a scat cleaning playlist (crucial to keeping a high morale!).
When people ask what I do and I mention that I clean scat, the follow up question goes something like: “Well, okay, what does that look like? What are you looking for?”. So, I figured I would give a quick run down. As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, scat collection and analysis is a really unique, noninvasive tactic to monitor the diet of an animal. In my study, I’m using this tactic to quantify the amount that Harbor Seals and Steller sea lions are consuming Chinook salmon, or other salmonid species through DNA and hard parts analysis. Before data can even be collected, I need to separate these two components. To extract DNA, I add ethanol to each scat and mix each scat individually, until there are no clumps left. Hard parts, which are mostly prey bones, need to be separated out with a strainer and cleaned (with lots of soap and water). Then, I send the bones to a contractor, who can measure and identify the bones. I also send the DNA to a contractor, who can sequence all of the DNA in the scat. Using this sequence, the contractor can then identify the presence of different fish species DNA within the scat.
Another frequently asked question: “What is the most interesting thing you have found in a scat?”. A few things immediately come to mind: a cephalopod (likely squid or octopus) beak, some glitter, fish scales and a few fish eyeball lenses. In some ways, cleaning the hard parts has become my favorite, although most tedious, aspect of scat cleaning. Basically, it’s just a really messy, and slightly stinky, treasure hunt.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the methods of my study, as I listen to podcasts and scrub bones with toothbrushes. Scat is a very useful tool, however there are some limitations I must consider when drawing conclusions from my scat analysis! Just a couple of things I’ve had to think about in the past few weeks:
- 1) Is it harder to extract DNA if a scat is submerged in sea water?
- 2) Can we collect the scats in ZipLoc bags without them leaking?
- 3) If the scat fills up the entire container, how can I add ethanol to the scat without making a mess, and a bunch of dishes?
So, I have a feeling my next few weeks are going to look pretty similar. Overall, I love the combination of reading papers, writing my proposal, and working in the lab. I’m never bored, that’s for sure. To further add to my list of skills I’ve already developed in graduate school, I learned how to hook up a washing machine in the lab to help me clean the hard parts!
Kathleen's Blog
Kathleen McKeegan, graduate student
1 March 2021
In my last blog post, I mentioned three goals that I wanted to accomplish in February. Although this quarter has been a bit of a whirlwind, I can happily say that I’ve made significant headway on all of my goals. My proposal is on its final stage of editing and I am hoping to have a committee meeting sometime in the next two weeks to approve it. The proposal writing process has been a great learning experience and I feel really confident about my project now that I’ve had time to sit, think, plan, and write. Hopefully by next month, I’ll have everything approved and I’ll be focusing on photo ID and data analysis.
My second goal from last month was to get some ID work completed. Luckily, I have an AMAZING team of undergraduates who have been cropping and naming photos like crazy. I am so fortunate to have such a dedicated team helping on this time consuming portion of the project. Kate, my amazing partner-in-crime, has begun some photo cropping and ID work on the set of photos from Ocean’s Initiative as well, which is awesome. We have a lot of work left to do, but we’re starting to make some headway, which is very exciting!
My last goal was to apply for several funding opportunities. Although I still intend to apply to more places, I have successfully completed two important funding proposals that, if awarded, would not only help fund my summer but also the remainder of my project. I know that these grants and awards are very competitive, but it was an incredible learning experience to simply put together a proposal and apply. And besides, you don’t get the funding you don’t apply to!
For this next month, I am planning to simply expand on my goals from February. I will continue working on photo-ID, begin organizing and sorting some of the data, and apply to more funding opportunities. Things are moving along really well, and the days are getting longer which is helping with the monotony of virtual learning. Hopefully I’ll have even more to report next month!