Written by: Alexandria Hahn Edited by: Amy Whitt The XBT, or expendable bathythermograph, is a device which records temperature as a function of depth. This essentially allows those analyzing the data to determine how fast sound can travel in the water at different depths, which is really important on our expedition because we are studying […]
LADC-GEMM 2017 Survey: #8 Two for the Price of One!
June 14, 2017 Written by: Alexandria Hahn Edited by: Amy Whitt On Wednesday, we had a fairly large sighting comprised of dolphins. Through the “big eyes”, Danielle was seeing a group of bottlenose dolphins. She was able to confirm this because they were being very playful and spyhopping (bringing their heads up out of the […]
LADC-GEMM 2017 Survey: #7 Pilot Whales!
June 13, 2017 Written by: Alexandria Hahn Edited by: Amy Whitt On Tuesday, I had a personal sighting…and it also happened to be our first pilot whale sighting of the cruise! At first glance, what I thought I saw was a group of dolphins, and Amy said that the female pilot whale dorsal fins can […]
LADC-GEMM 2017 Survey: #6 Timing is Everything
June 10-12, 2017 Written by: Alexandria Hahn Edited by: Amy Whitt In the early hours of Saturday morning, I was asleep and I wish that I hadn’t been! The few scientists and crew members who were awake witnessed around five Clymene dolphins riding the bow of our ship. I had been told that it was […]
LADC-GEMM 2017 Survey: #4 Do You See What I Hear?
Written by: Amy Whitt Our research team simultaneously listens and looks for marine mammals using acoustic and visual survey methods. We use the hydrophone (underwater microphone) array towed by the ASV to collect real-time data on underwater sounds. While the acousticians from Seiche Limited analyze these data to identify the sounds of marine mammals underwater, […]