our boat on july 2nd...taken from whale watch

 

POP UP BUOYS! and more.

So, about 3 years ago I was on board the boat for our very first pop-up buoy deployment...little did I know that it would be going towards my future masters work.

On Thursday, Chris Tremblay, Toby Stephenson, our summer interns Kelsey and Kathryn, and I set out to deploy 5 more buoys. These are autonomous acoustic recording buoys which we're sending down to the bottom of the Gulf of Maine for a few months...retrievable by sending an acoustic signal to the buoy that will cause it to electrify a wire that corrodes when a voltage is applied to it, breaking the buoy from it's anchor. These will be picked up in October hopefully, at which point a new set will be deployed. I hope to have these in all winter. If all goes well, i should have tons of acoustic data to work with. I'll hopefully be looking at North Atlantic right whales, and their seasonality in the Gulf of Maine.

We deployed 4 buoys around Mount Desert Rock and one in the "right whale hole" just south of the rock.

A 6th buoy will be deployed this week from a much larger boat...we'll be taking it out to Jordan Basin.

After the deployment, we realized it was still very earlier in the day, so we decided to head over to Schoodic Ridge to try and find the fin whales that the whale watch boats had told us about. Success!

The 4th of July began for me with a stranding call. Rosie is out of town until the 9th. It was way up in Perry, ME (2.5 hours north of here) but it sounded urgent (reported bleeding from several wounds) so I decided to head up there. I called Kelsey, and Lauren (Whale Watch intern) to see if they would come with me. We picked up the seal, and began the transit South to meet up with a Maine DMR volunteer in Rockland who would drive the rest of the way. Sadly, the pup died in transit.

I did however get to watch some fireworks from a pretty little sea wall on campus, overlooking Bar Harbor. So not a terrible day overall.

last picture dump for today...memorial seal

more of the memorial day seal

memorial day weekend seal

more rock opening 2009

more pics from the rock opening 2009

these are way late, sorry
getting the boards off the keepers house at MDR this season

weather!!!!

just to clarify, the cool boat trip and mount desert rock trip from last week sadly were canceled due to the insanely rainy/foggy/disgusting weather we've had for about a month now. waiting for summer to actually happen this year!!!

more from acadia w/ mike

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"In the end we will conserve only what we love. We love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught." -Baba Dioum,1968
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mike's visit to acadia

mike came to visit this past weekend. such a great time. lots of really good food, and an impromptu 15-mile bike ride through the national park. then a visit to bath to see his family on sunday.

tried to locate a seal today, no luck. will be deploying our acoustic buoys on Thursday or Friday! http://www.birds.cornell.edu/brp/hardware/pop-ups