Dolphin Internships - Summary of the week 3rd - 9th March (By Stefanie)
March 3, Monday
BDRI researchers have been collecting acoustical data for the past three years. Now, it is time to analyze the whistles that have been recorded. For this step of bioacoustics, we began going through all the days with whistles and entering the data into a new notebook. The course notebooks are used as references for the sighting information.
March 4, Tuesday
This morning we went to sea on a fishery boat. Unfortunately, the weather was not ideal for data collection. We did have a sighting early on, a brief 25 minutes of intermittent dolphin observation. Then the wind picked up and conditions deteriorated. The highest winds we clocked measured 20.8 m/s. Needless to say, the afternoon was spent in the lab.
March 5, Wednesday
The weather conditions have not improved, so we worked on the whistle collection in the lab again. We counted whistles and recorded acoustical data in the new notebook.
March 6, Thursday
Today we continued with the whistle project since a strong storm lingered over Golfo Aranci all day. Since last night, the rain continued on and off. In the lab, we counted and recorded seconds, minutes and whistles. Occasionally, we listened to recordings to detect more whistles that had not been located.
March 7, Friday
This morning’s lab work included photo ID and whistle collection. Since the weather improved overnight and held out during the morning, we went to sea in the afternoon.
The sea was still amazingly calm, especially compared to yesterday when even the trawlers didn’t go out. Visibility improved as well. With such great conditions, we had 3 great, continuous sightings.
March 8, Saturday
Since the mechanic is coming tomorrow morning, we did our house cleaning today. After lunch we all went on a field trip to the other coast to the tide pools. Rock climbing and collecting species, we lost track of time. Eventually, we did make it make to the base house for some lab work – more whistle detection and recording.
March 9, Sunday
We met the Oblia mechanic at the harbor this morning to go on a trial run of the Spartana. After working on the boats until lunch, we had free time the rest of the day.
