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Today we split into four groups and covered various part of our study site.
Survey group 2 – from left: Tessa, Louise, Paul & Lawrence
It is warm (around 4 degrees) and the bears are still about. We tracked them and wolves on almost every group. Backwards only, we hasten to add 😉 , so everyone is safely back at base.
At the end of the day we enter the data collected into the computer and Tomáš, our scientist, downloads our trip data into Google Earth to visualise our survey routes and waypoints of things we have found, such as tracks of wolf, lynx and bear, as well as their prey such as wild boar, roe and red deer, and more. As each survey group recounts their walk and findings, we also create a permanent record of the expedition’s main findings through colour-coded pins on a map, so that everyone can see the expedition’s progress and achievements at any time. The study site is divided into 24 coded 2.5 x 2.5 km cells and what we find in each cell, and how often we have surveyed it, is recorded by pins. The de-brief is shown below, as well as an explanation of our cell methodology (also used on our Tien Shan and many other terrestrial expeditions). The manual that the methodology video below refers to is available here.
Day two is the last training day of the expedition. And what a day it was. Within a gentle stroll of around 6 km up to picturesque Blatná lake, we found wolf tracks twice, lynx tracks of large, medium and small animals (we presume a family), as well as otter tracks by the side of a brook. Not bad at all for our first day out in the field and of course excellent training for recognising and recording tracks.
Team 1 arrived safely at the Švošov expedition base and just as they did, Slovakian carnival celebrations interrupted.
These celebrations are about chasing out winter and welcoming spring, being merrily disruptive to passers-by and a whole lot more besides. And as you can see on the video, the snow has indeed gone for now.
So after dancing and merrymaking and having to drink cherry schnaps before our cars were allowed to pass, there was lunch, introductions, lectures, dinner and going to bed. Welcome to Slovakia and the 2016 wolf, lynx and bear expedition to Veľká Fatra National Park.
After everyone met up at base yesterday, we went for dinner at a local restaurant. It started snowing and snowed through the night, so now everything is white.
Today we are setting up, so all the equipment is unpacked and being sorted, GPSs are being reset, the menu is being sorted, snow shoes and poles made ready, etc.
Paul is meeting group 1 at 09:00 at Bratislava train station. He’ll be in the main hall, which is not very large, so look for a group of people. You have his mobile number, if there is a problem.
Paul and Phil left England at 06:00 yesterday on he Dover to Dunkirk ferry.
Ferry ride
Last night was spent in Linz, Austria after a 1,400 km drive though Belgium and Germany. Today we will arrive at the expedition base in Švošov and meet up with Matthias, Tomas and Noro this afternoon to prepare the expedition kit and set up the base. Paul will meet the slot 1 expeditioners in Bratislava on Saturday morning and we are all looking forward to an interesting, fun and productive expedition.
It’s snowing on the higher ground, but not in the valleys (see this webcam). The forecast (lower down on the webcam site) is for sunshine and sub-zero weather.
We have started our journeys to Slovakia and so it is time for our Slovakia expedition diary 2016 to start too. Our executive director Matthias Hammer is the advance party with most of the equipment. He arrived in Slovakia yesterday and is now in the Carpathians. As you can see, there is a bit of snow, but warm weather and rain is forecast for the next few days, so we may be tracking in the mud, in the valley bottom at least, rather than in the snow. We’ll keep you updated on the weather.
Expedition leader Paul Franklin and his assistant Phil Markey are starting from the UK tomorrow on a drive that will take them three days. We all meet up at our base in Švošov on Thursday, where our expedition scientists Tomáš Hulík will also join us. Yesterday Tomáš joked that because of the warm weather, the bears might be awake… 😉
We’ll be in touch from there with more information on weather, work, plans, etc.
Lisa Steiner’s report from the San Francisco marine mammals conference
Every two years, the Society for Marine Mammalogy hosts a conference. Over 2,000 scientists that study whales, dolphins, seals, sea lions, sea otters and polar bears descend on whichever city holds the conference. The last conference I attended was in Quebec City, Canada, where I presented results on male sperm whales that matched between the Azores and Norway. This year, I was presenting a poster on twelve female sperm whales and a calf that have been seen in both the Azores and the Canaries, as well as a match between the Azores and Madeira and also a single match between Madeira and the Canaries. I was also co-author on two other posters, one on humpback whales and the other on blue whale photo-identification.
Lisa Steiner at her poster
The conference gives people studying marine mammals around the world a chance to see what is being done elsewhere in the world. There is not a lot of time to rest. There are five talks going on at the same time for most of the day and a couple of selected speakers have their own slot. This year saw the introduction of the 5 minute speed talk, which was challenging for both the presenters and the listeners, especially if the audience wanted to change rooms for the next talk!
On Saturday, before the official start of the conference, there was a workshop just on sperm whales. We had short presentations on all aspects of sperm whale biology & behaviour. I gave a short three minute presentation on the photo-identification work that Biosphere Expeditions and I are doing in the Azores.
Some highlights of the sperm whale session were:
There is not a lot of genetic diversity between oceans, and this may be due to a bottleneck in the population around 80,000 years ago, when the squid populations also crashed.
Male sperm whales in Alaska have learned how to take sable fish off the long lines. It seems that there are around ten offenders and the researchers are working on ways to help the fishermen avoid this loss or these whales specifically. Some of the males were tagged with satellite transmitters and a few of them went as far south as Baja, Mexico still heading south when the transmissions stopped.
Russian illegal whaling may have changed the structural groups of females in the Pacific by decimating the stocks. Females in the Pacific groups are not always related, whereas in the Atlantic they generally are. This was caused by individuals forming new groups in the Pacific.
There are some juvenile male sperm whales that lived close to a navy test site in the Bahamas for a couple of years, before they moved on to another unknown destination. I am hoping to get those flukes for matching to the Azores catalogue. The female sperm whales in the Bahamas sensibly stay in the north of the archipelago, away from the navy test site and there does not appear to be mixing between the groups seen in the Bahamas and Dominica.
A couple of invited squid biologists gave us a bit of a different perspective on the whales as ferocious squid predators.
And in the last presentation of the day, it was shown that the theory that sperm whales change the density of the spermaceti to help them dive and surface is not accurate.
Some highlights of the rest of the conference:
Whales benefit the environment by recycling nutrients. In the case of sperm whales they catch their prey in deep waters, but defecate at the surface, re-releasing all those nutrients, which would otherwise be lost to the depths. Blue whales in the Antarctic drive the whole ecosystem by recycling nutrients and making them more accessible for the krill to use.
Climate change is not good news for polar bears and probably walrus too, because they depend on the sea ice to hunt, but grey whales could benefit as new feeding grounds open up, which have previously been covered in ice. This lack of ice could also lead to grey whales re-populating the Atlantic Ocean, where they have been extinct for many years. But the fossil record shows that there may have been several re-colonisations over the years as ice ages came and went.
Fin whales are mostly right handed lungers. Out of 800 lunges, only three or four went to the left.
A long term photo-ID study in Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park has 46 individuals with a sighting history of more than 30 years. Something I am aiming for with the Azores sperm whales.
And speaking of Humpback Whale IDs. There has been a match made between a humpback whale that was seen during the 2008 Azores expedition and then again in Norway in 2012, near Tromsø! This is the second match made with a whale actually seen during an expedition. The other match was first seen in Norway on 20 March 2010 and then in the Azores on 5May 2010.
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The humpback whales that we see in the Azores are most likely travelling from the Cape Verde Islands up to feeding grounds around Iceland and Norway or back down to the breeding grounds; although to date we have not had any matches to Iceland. We have eight Azores matches to the Cape Verdes and now eight matches to Norway as well. The whales can use the waters around the Azores as a pit stop from the breeding to feeding grounds, since most of them have not been feeding for a few months while on the breeding grounds. So far we have not had any matches to the Caribbean population of humpbacks, which is more numerous than the Cape Verde population, although this may be down to low numbers of identifications in the Azores.
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The flukes in the North Atlantic Humpback Whale Catalogue are constantly being reviewed, especially with hard to match individuals, since the computer assisted matching is not always perfect.
And speaking of computer-assisted matching, I think we will be trialling a new matching system, Flukebook, during the 2016 expedition alongside Europhlukes. Flukebook is a new online matching system that shows a lot of promise. It uses six different algorithms for the matching and has machine learning too, as well as being able to plot the sightings with Google Earth. The biggest drawback will be if catalogues that I currently match to, do not join Flukebook. Only time will tell.
After the conference I had a couple of days down in Monterey Bay, looking for grey whales, since I had never seen one. The mission was a success, I saw over 20 different grey whales and around 30 humpbacks. Unfortunately none of the “friendly” behaviour from the greys – they were just migrating on their way to the breeding lagoons, where you can get the “friendlies”. No acrobatics from the humpback whales either, but I did get some fluke ID pics, which I will send off to the Pacific Humpback Whale Catalogue at Cascadia Research.
I would like to thank the Friends of Biosphere Expeditions, as well as my parents, for making my attendance at these conferences possible through their support. And thank you to all the expedition participants that make this work possible.
Divers rediscover Eden for coral reefs in the face of climate change
The waters of the world’s tropical coral reefs are warming and getting more acidic in the face of increased C02 concentration. Reefs in most parts of the world are dying from such stress and it appears that the ability for coral reefs to recover from periodic El Nino events is being diminished – because of increasing frequency of warming, pollution, increased sedimentation and disease. However, the corals of the Musandam in northern Oman are currently an exception. Here reefs are extremely healthy, covering the shallow waters of the mountainous peninsula with extreme variety of growth forms from massive 400 year old 4m high ‘boulder’ coral to the delicate yet important branching and ‘bushy’ corals. Coral cover regularly exceeds 70% in nearshore embayments
Elsewhere in the world, corals have been reduced to rubble, their once great carbonate structures being eroded by boring sponges and worms, whilst successive warming events and overfishing of herbivores has resulted in massive plant growth, suffocating what’s left of corals, and attracting opportunistic algae. The majority of Jamaica’s once spectacular reefs have been turned from ‘coral’ to ‘algal’.
Dr Jean-Luc Solandt, Reef Check Course Director of the region said: ‘The past six years of Biosphere Expeditions surveys confirm the vitality and resilience of this area. At a time when we’re seeing the degradation of the world’s most diverse marine habitats, relied on by 100s of millions of people for food, Musandam is withstanding the current temperature hikes. Our survey findings offer hope that there are some areas of the world that can withstand such environmental change.’
The temperature of the surrounding waters differs considerably from that of the Gulf of Arabia. Musandam lies at the entrance of the gulf and is enriched by cool deep waters of the Gulf of Oman to the east. The current exchange between the waters of the gulf flowing over the reefs allow for currents to wash the reefs with clear waters, whilst the cooler water from the east prevents catastrophic climate effects. Furthermore, some of the corals have been seen to harbour temperature resistant algae, allowing greater resistance to bleaching.
Whilst Musandams coral reefs are faring well, the fisheries of the area are being exploited at ever increasing effort. The most important commercial fish species of the reefs – grouper (hammour) are only ever recorded at 50 cm in size at very few more isolated sites. We recommend the development of an MPAs and minimum landing sizes for grouper to achieve a sustainable fishery, though none of this will change if it doesn’t have the support of the community. Jenan Alasfoor from the Environment Society of Oman, a scholar on this year’s expedition, knows too well that before any changes in fishing practices occur, full consultations with the local communities need to be undertaken.
Our first dive survey went smoothly – reef sharks and an eagle ray spotted off transect – then we sailed to Faq al Asad (the jaw of the lion), a stunning site of crystal clear water, amazing rock formations, even dolphins! We ate our lunch and went for a snorkel to assess the reef, then kitted up as usual. The teams dived in and the invertebrate teams began to lay the transect. As they reached the end of the 10 0m and turned around to swim back to the start of the tape a freak current swept through the bay. The teams struggled back to find that the boat had completely swung on its anchor, one of the SMB’s marking the start of the transect had been swept away and air was running low. All was not lost, though, as we reeled the tapes back in and still had time to sail further round the peninsula with a pod of Arabian humpback dolphins at our bow, to a site aptly named “pray for calm.” It worked, and we managed to complete our survey just before dusk.
Not to be thwarted by the elements, we returned to Faq al Asad the following morning very early and collected the data we had missed the day before, then headed to Khayl Island for a glorious survey dive, complete with shipwreck. The site was so interesting we decided to stay for a night dive and explored the ancient porites mounds with their banded coral shrimp and moray eel inhabitants, with turtles, cuttlefish, giant porcupine fish and squid in the mix.After a scientific wrap-up from Jean-Luc, we moored away from any civilisation and spent our last peaceful night under the stars.
A big thank you to everyone for all your hard work and attentiveness. It’s been a steep learning curve, so much to take in, both in and out of water, and your diligence in collecting the data, even in adverse conditions – swarms of jelly fish and flies – was much appreciated. This expedition has confirmed for us that the reefs here in Musandam really are resilient to the ravages of climate change, and offer an insight into another type of hardier reef that can withstand very significant temperature fluctuations. It may not be as colourful, or as varied as traditional coral reefs, but it has a much healthier future than most!
Thank you also to Patrick for your retrieval skills – masks, fins, SMBs, plastic bags and even a cushion that got knocked overboard during a dawn yoga session! Thank you to the crew, who offered continuous support and demonstrated great expertise in getting us right where we wanted to be. Thank you all for your sense of curiosit, and enthusiasm for getting the work done. It was a pleasure working with you! I hope you continue Reef Checking now you have your certification and look forward to meeting you again on another Biosphere Expeditions project.
Biosphere Expeditions: blogs from the frontline of wildlife conservation and the fight for a more sustainable planet 