September 1, 2006
Today we headed out at 8:30am on the Astirix, the boat designated for dophin studies. Our captian, Sean Von Sommeran has over 30 years experience at sea and has been conducting research projects for the past 15 years in Monterey Bay and the Eastern Pacific. The other scientist aboard was Thomas Jefferson, ph.D. He has been studying marine mammals since 1983, and has conducted research on a variety of different species in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Africa, and Southeast Asia. We were in good company!
The survey log that we utilized for data collection was filled out each time any marine mammal was spotted. We documented time, longitude and latitude (using a hand-held GPS unit), beaufort (sea conditions), cloud cover, wind direction, species code, and species count. This became very labor intensive when multiple sightings took place in short periods of time. Marine mammals sightings today included harbor poroises, sea otters, California sea lions, an elephant seal and a humpback whale. Basically, we had sightings for every marine mammal that resides in the area except for the bottlenose dophins that we were looking for. That's field science for you.
The Humpback whale siting was of course the hit of the day. We kept track of the whale's position for about an hour. We saw multiple surfacings and a lunge feeding.
When we arrived back at the house we entered data in the database for 2 hours. We have a lecture tonight on bottlenose dolphins at 8:30. Our days are long, but full of adventure.