September 2015 Seawords by Marine Option Program

Seaw rds The Marine Option Program Newsletter

September 2015

8 “ ...it is very rewarding to begin

to uncover the mysteries of cetacean communication.”

WELCOME BACK! SELECTED EVENTS FALL 2015 QUEST: A STUDENT’S PERSPECTIVE KILLER COMMUNICATION

September 2015 Volume XXIx, Number 7

Articles Page 3: Letter from the Editor Page 4: Welcome Back! Selected events Fall 2015 Page 6: QUEST: a student’s perspective Page 8: Killer communication: a summer studying orca whale communication in Washington Page 10: Ocean Art Page 12: Critter of the Month Page 14: Hanauma Bay calendar of events Flashback Page 20: MOP calendar of events

About the Photography -Cover: Taylor Shedd, former UHM MOP Student -Table of Contents: Tate Wester, UHM MOP Student -September calendar of events: Angel Melone, UHM MOP Student -Back cover: MOP stock photos -All uncredited photos by: MOP -Disclaimer: any photo taken from flickr.com is used under the Creative Commons License and is credited appropriately with links to the user’s flickr account.

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Letter from the Editor

t’s a new school year which means Seawords is coming back from the summer hiatus! This issue we bring to you our usual array of marine related articles that, as always, we hope you enjoy.

This is also the last issue that I will bring to you as the editor. I have decided to step down from my position in order to fully focus on my last semester of school. However, Brijonnay Madrigal, Associate Editor will be taking over and I look forward to seeing all the amazing things she will do with Seawords. I hope you have enjoyed reading this newsletter as much as I enjoyed creating it. Thanks for reading,

Seawords Volume XXIX, Number 7, September 2015 Editor: Kathryn Lam Associate Editor: Brijonnay Madrigal Dr. Cynthia Hunter (éminence grise) Seawords- Marine Option Program University of Hawai‘i, College of Natural Sciences 2450 Campus Road, Dean Hall 105A Honolulu, HI 96822-2219 Telephone: (808) 956-8433 Email: <seawords@hawaii.edu> Website: <http://www.hawaii.edu/mop> Seawords is the monthly newsletter of the Marine Option Program at the University of Hawai‘i. Opinions expressed herein are not necessariliy those of the Marine Option Program or of the University of Hawai‘i. Suggestions and submissions are welcome. Submissions may include articles, photography, art work, or anything that may be of interest to the marine community in Hawai‘i and around the world. All photos are taken by MOP unless otherwise credited.

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All photos: MOP stock unless otherwise mentioned

Welcome Back! Selected Events Fall 2015

Welcome back to another semester of sun, fun and surf! Listed below are some of the events that your UHM MOP Office is offering. Please visit the office for a full schedule or check in with us monthly for the usual calendar of events included in the back of Seawords! As always if you wish to attend one of the events come by the office to drop off you $5 deposit which will be returned to you once you show up.

Back to school BBQ- Sept. 12

Join us Saturday September 12 for a back to school bash at Bellows Beach! A van will leave the MOP office at 8:30 am sharp Saturday morning for a day of fun in the sun potluck style! Jeff will be grilling hot dogs, hamburgers, and veggie burgers for those of the vegetarian pursuasion. Fun is always had by all!

Tour of R/V Falkor- Sept. 20

On Sunday, September 20 MOP will be going to Aloha Tower to take a tour of the research vessel the Falkor. Here you will learn about the kinds of things that the Falkor does and get to see the ins and outs of a working research vessel. Note: this photo was not taken on the Falkor but rather the Kilo Moana, another research vessel

Tour of Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB)- Oct. 10

Situated on Coconut Island in Kāne‘ohe Bay, HIMB is a research institute that is partnered with the University of Hawai‘i and Hawai‘i Pacific University. Here students will get to walk around and view a couple of the working labs. And in case that isn’t intriguing enough, arrival on the island is by speedboad à la James Bond.

Tour of Hawai‘i Underwater Research Lab (HURL)- Oct. 24

The HURL is an undersea laboratory that works in partnership with the university. The HURL’s research encompasses a variety of undersea subjects such as volcanic activity and coastal ecosystem monitoring and surveying. It also conducts research on maritime archaeology of which Hawai‘i has a rich history.

Polynesian Voyaging Society Tour- Nov. 21

For the first time, MOP will be going to the Marine Education Training Center to get a tour of the Polynesian Voyaging Society. Here students will be able to see the Hōkūle‘a which is a full-scale, performance-accurate replica of a Polynesian double-hulled canoe.

Photo credit: HongKongHuey courtesy of flickr

Dolphin QUEST Tour- Dec. 5

At Dolphin QUEST, MOP students will talk to experts on animal husbandry, behavioral and acoustic cetacean research and get to view the Dolphin QUEST facilities at the Kahala Hotel and Resort.

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Student Perspective

QUEST:

a student’s perspective

By Erica Donlon, UHM MOP Student

ome say completing a three-credit field course within the duration of two weeks is impossible. This summer, I have done the impossible. It all started when I got dropped off at Kona airport. My mom asked where I was going and what the camp was going to be like and my only response was: “I have no idea. I just get into the white van and go where ever they tell me to.” Which was true! All I knew was that we were going to be camping somewhere near Kona and diving every day. When I arrived at the camp, I was surprised to see a pavilion with an electric generator and electricity! I couldn’t believe that we had electricity, but I guess that made sense considering we were going to be given lectures. We dropped our stuff and immediately went down to Ke‘ei beach for our opening ceremony and to find out our team assignments. We then learned E ho mai, an oli that we will chant every day at the beach before our first dive to as the ocean for permission to enter the water. I really liked learning the oli because right before my mom dropped me off at the airport she asked, “What is the number one rule?” and the first thing that came to mind was don’t hold your breath un-

derwater. My mom responded “No! Always ask permission before going into the water”. My mom taught me to do this ever since I was young because the ocean is such a powerful force and you always need to take caution. The next day, we went straight into diving with two dives in the morning. The first dive was designed to help us control our buoyancy by swimming through hula-hoops suspended in the water. It was so cool to look around and see about 30 divers swimming around and through hoops. It looked like some kind of crazy underwater circus! Each dive, we improved as divers and scientists as we learned new skills and how to work together as a team. With two dives a day and lectures right after lunch and dinner, we were all exhausted by the end of the day. I noticed that each day, the waves and current were getting stronger and it was getting harder to swim back to shore. One of the last days that we dove at Ke‘ei beach we needed to crawl back on the coral rubble to

Photo credit: Jeff Kuwabara/UHM MOP

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Drawings courtesy of vintage Seawords

Photo credit: Jeff Kuwabara/UHM MOP

make it back safely. At one point, my team leader, Kailey Pascoe (University of Hawai‘i at Hilo), was in front of me and we were both holding on to the rubble as the ocean attempted to suck us back out. We were flying through the water and I felt like a super hero, but all of the sudden when I looked up, I saw Kailey fly past me! I remember thinking: “Oh no! I can’t be in front! I don’t know the way back!” Everything turned white as the wave crashed over me, so I popped up and the water was so frothy, I couldn’t see anything either. But when I came back down, I found Kailey and my team and we made it in to shore safely. Two days later when we went back to Ke‘ei, the waves were way bigger than last time and there were tons of surfers trying to catch the waves right where we usually swim out. We chanted our oli and went on with our normal procedure, but the entire time, I was watching the water assess its movement. Just when I was about to tell somebody that I didn’t want to dive that day, they decided to cancel the dives for the day and continue the next day at Honaunau Bay. I was so relieved. It felt like a weight was lifted off of my chest. We had a couple more days diving at Honaunau Bay and before I knew it, it was our last day and we had to complete a paper and presentation in the next two days! We had one whole day to work on

our project, which wasn’t a lot of time, but was completely doable. In no time, presentations were done and we were all packing up to go home. What seemed like forever when we were working on our project, turned into a blink of an eye on the last day. I think we all realized that through all of the physical, emotional, and mental stress, it was a lot of fun and we made a ton of new friends. I now have new friends that I can go diving with and the bond that we have is like nothing else. We have inside jokes and have gone through so much together its crazy to think that we probably will never be all together again. Leaving camp was extremely bittersweet. On one hand, I wanted to go home and take a real hot shower and sleep. But on the other hand, I wanted to stay and dive with my friends. I feel like QUEST has taught me so much, not just about survey techniques, but how to work under stress and as a dive team. It was such an amazing experience to be able to dive, work, and play all at the same time. If I had the option, I would definitely do it again. Who knows? You might see me next year. n

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Killer communication: a summer studying orca whales in Washington By Brijonnay Madrigal, Associate Editor Photo credits: Taylor Shedd, former UHM MOP Student

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Features

ommunication is essential to social structure and bonds in killer whale (Orcinus orca) communities. The cognitive capacity of these animals is very great as they have the second largest brain of the marine mammals. Their intelligence allows their communication system to have a high level of complexity and this is still of great interest to researchers, scientists and students like me. This summer, I interned at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, Washington. I worked with data collected by the Cetacean Assessment and Ecology Program from acoustic moorings in the Bering and Chukchi Sea. Acoustic moorings are autonomous acoustic recorders, which are moored under water on the sea floor to capture sound from the soundscape. In areas, such as Alaska, where the sea state is often rough and therefore does not permit constant travel and access to these locations, stationary devices, such as acoustic moorings, are often deployed and collected annually at optimal times when the sea state is calm, to collect continuous data at the site all year long. I analyzed data from four mooring locations. The two Northern locations were in the Chukchi Sea and the two Southern locations were in the Bering Sea near the Aleutian Islands. My specific project entailed creating a vocal catalog of the killer whale vocalizations I heard in the sound files. I visualized vocalization through spectrogram1 analysis. Although I was specifically focusing on finding killer whale vocalizations, the spectrograms where filled with a myriad of different species vocalizations such as bearded seal (Erignathus barbatus), ringed seal (Phoca hispida) and beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas) because of the polar water region. It often sounded like an underwater rainforest with high pitched chirps and low rumbling moans. What was unique about this project was that the acoustics of killer whales in this region had never been analyzed. The vocal catalog I am beginning to compile displays a variety of killer whale pulsed calls. Killer whales produce different forms of vocalizations. The three types of vocalizations that killer whales 1 Spectrogram: visual representation of sound characterized by time (x-axis) and frequency (y-axis).

produce are clicks, whistles and pulsed calls. Pulsed calls are the most common vocalization produced. I am still continuing the project and my goal is to see if based on different vocalizations, I can determine the different ecotypes. There are three ecotypes; residents, transients and offshore. Resident orcas vocalize more frequently whereas transient killer whales are less vocal and produce almost no vocalization when traveling and foraging. Researchers believe this is attributed to the necessity for hunting prey (porpoise, sea lions, seals) quietly, so they can attack without being detected by marine mammals which are more difficult to hunt. Little is known about the offshore killer whale vocalizations because they are more elusive. Pods have different dialects and those that share call types are considered clans. I am interested in understanding how we can identify groups based on their vocal behavior in these higher latitude regions that remain relatively unstudied. Although acoustics can often be a very computer based work with infrequent field work, it is very rewarding to begin to uncover the mysteries of cetacean communication. n Many thanks to Jessica Crance (Research Biologist) and Dr. Catherine Berchok (Research Biologist) who mentored me on this project and the NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science for hosting me for the summer.

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ocean art by Heather Johnson Heather is a student at Honolulu Community College. Her poem was chosen from a collection of poems from his English 241 class submitted to us by Eric Paul Shaffer, an HCC English professor.

The Maiden of Davy Jonesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Locker The first thing Davy Jones noticed was the long, flowing tendrils of her seaweed hair and how a string of pearls adorned her head like a crown. Unlike other maidens, her lilac skin is transparent and freckled by hundreds of tiny mollusks. Her alluring, green eyes glow, emitting the only visible light in the deep ocean. The scales of her tail overlap flawlessly. Only the hands of Posiedon could have created such beauty. Whispers of her voice float from her sultry lips. Anxious, the captain inches forward to ask her name, but before a word can be said, she shrieks in fear at the tentacle-faced beast before her. Locked away in a wooden chest, at the bottom of the ocean, his heart silently broke.

Corey Mutnik/UHM MOP Student 10|â&#x20AC;&#x192;Seawords

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critter of the month

Threadfin butterflyfish Seawords features marine critters seen and photographed by MOP students. Send your critters to seawords@hawaii.edu to be featured and be sent an issue of Seawords in color and a MOP sticker. (Come in after we contact you to claim your prizes).

This month’s critter photo is by UHM MOP student Corey Mutnik.

Scientific name: Chaetodon auriga The threadfin butterflyfish, also known as the Auriga butterflyfish, can be found on reefs at depths down to 100 feet throughout the Tropical Pacific Ocean. They eat small invertebrates, algae, and coral polyps and can grow up to 9 inches. This particular threadfin butterflyfish was photographed in Hanauma Bay on O‘ahu and two of June’s critter of the month, the ornate butterflyfish can be seen swimming in the background of this photo.

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CALL TO ACTION Please check nearby coral reefs and report any signs of bleaching. Make an online report: www.eorhawaii.org Send photos to:

rrcpcoordinator@gmail.com Bleached coral (on right) next to normal coral (left) at Lanikai, O‘ahu on 9/23/2014 Photo credit: C. Hunter

Multiple reports of coral bleaching have recently been received through the Eyes of the Reef Network. ‘Bleaching’ is a coral stress response, in this case likely due to high temperatures. It describes the loss of color from coral tissue, which makes the coral appear white. Corals can recover from bleaching if temperatures return to a normal range. The peak bleaching season for the Pacific is July-- September.

More examples of coral bleaching:

Photo credit: J. Kenyon Photo credit: G. Aeby

Want to know more about the EOR Network or coral bleaching? www.oerhawaii.org www.facebook.com/eyesofthereef Flyer created by and used with permission from: Eyes of the Reef 14| Seawords

September 2015 – Science and Pacific Maritime Heritage

September 2015 – Science and Pacific Maritime Heritage - 6 September Giants in the Dark: the Japanese Sentoku and Other - 6 September - South Shore Deepwater Discoveries off Oahu's by Hans Tilburg, NOAA Giants in the Dark: theVan Japanese Sentoku and Other

Deepwater Discoveries off Oahu's South Shore - 13 September by Hans Van Tilburg, NOAA MAST 2015: The Kaneohe Bay PBY-5 Revisited by Don Froning, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

- 13 September 20 September MAST 2015: The - Kaneohe Bay- PBY-5 Revisited A Final Resting Spot in the Pacific: by Don Froning,Discovery University Hawai‘i at Mānoa Exploration, and of Sharing the Story

Photo by H.U.R.L.

of the Whaleship Two Brothers September lost -at20 French Frigate Shoals by Kelly Keogh, NOAA Final Resting Spot in the Pacific:

A Exploration, Discovery and Sharing the Story - 27 September ofPacific the Whaleship Two Brothers Whaling and the Civil War: The Sesquicentennial of theFrigate CSS Shenandoah lost at French Shoals Voyage by Suzanne by Finney, University of Hawai‘i Kelly Keogh, NOAA at Mānoa - 27 September Pacific Whaling and the Civil War: The Sesquicentennial of the CSS Shenandoah Voyage by Suzanne Finney, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

Photo by H.U.R.L.

FLASHBACK: 1990

In 1990, QUEST students teamed up with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to tag turtles in Kāne‘ohe Bay on O‘ahu. Read on to discover what QUEST was like in 1990.

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Septemb Sun.

Mon.

Next month: -Oct. 5: QUEST ID Exam -Oct. 10: Tour of HIMB on Coconut Island -Oct. 24: Tour of the HURL

Tues.

Wed.

Labor Day No school

National Grandparent’s Day

Rosh Hashana QUEST Fish IDs Dean Hall 6 - 8 pm

21 Tour of R/V Falkor Aloha Tower 12:45 - 5:30 pm

QUEST Invert IDs Dean Hall 6 - 8 pm

First day of Sukkot QUEST Limu IDs Dean Hall 6 - 8 pm Angel Melone/UHM MOP Student 20| Seawords

California A Day

QUEST Dean H 6 - 8 pm

Emancipation Day

Yom Kippur

QUEST IDs Dean H 6 - 8 pm

Thurs.

Fri.

T Invert

Sat. 5

12 Back to School BBQ Bellows Beach 9 am - 4 pm

Patriot Day

Admission

T Fish IDs Hall m

MOP & Community Events

Constitution and Citizenship Day

National POW/MIA Recognition Day

Eidal-Adha

Native Americans’ Day

Hall m

T Limu

Hall m SEPTEMBER 2015 |21

University of Hawai`i at Mﾄ］oa Seawords, Marine Option Program College of Natural Sciences 2450 Campus Road, Dean Hall 105A Honolulu, HI 96822-2219 Address Service Requested

Thank you for reading!