Science

Dolphinpalooza

• Adventure
• Fascinating
• Rockin’

The Project

Welcome to my #SciFund project.  Next summer, a wave of dolphins will be heading to British Columbia, and I need to be there to study them. My research centers around Pacific white-sided dolphin ecology and figuring out whether this population is endangered, threatened or doing just fine. Right now, we have no idea. Luckily, non-invasive photographic research and some fancy statistics hold the answers.

Dolphins + Photographs=Data

Actually, the math is a bit more complicated than that, but you get the idea. Each dolphin has a uniquely shaped dorsal fin, either from scratches and scars from interactions with other dolphins or killer whales, or because they were just born that way. I take photos of all of the fins, match up individual dolphins, and over time I can see who sticks around, who disappears and who drops in intermittently.

I need your help to get these photos and need support to travel to our remote field site in British Columbia, Canada. All of my work is from a little boat with my dog (he's a great dolphin spotter/sniffer/listener), and each tank of gas is about $150. The study site is a stunning maze of islands and passages, each of which can hide hundreds of dolphins, and while our friends and neighbours always help us find dolphins, our exploration still takes time, gas and money.

Your support will cover fuel for the boat, a handheld data collection PDA so we can use Cybertracker (we’re only two people, and this equipment frees up a pair of hands -- the dog has lousy writing), a replacement camera and hydrophone equipment, and some coffee (and possibly a dog cookie) to keep us all going strong in the field.

The Science Part

Wildlife conservation problems tend to fall into two clusters: populations are either small, or they're declining. Collectively, there are a number of tools available for studying and protecting small populations of rare species. Our field still has a lot of work to do to develop tools to detect when populations are declining. My PhD research uses Pacific white-sided dolphins as a model to develop powerful new tools to detect declines in wildlife species worldwide. These charismatic, acrobatic dolphins are seen in schools of hundreds or thousands, so there's no question -- they're abundant. My research will tell us how many dolphins there are, and whether human activities (like entanglement in fishing nets) are killing more dolphins than the population can withstand. I am using non-invasive acoustic methods to understand whether these dolphins form a unique population, by listening for different dolphin accents or dialects between Alaska and California. And I use non-invasive photo-identification techniques to track the population through time to inform statistical models to assess whether the population is declining or endangered.

I'm sort of glossing over the statistical analyses that make this study worthy of a PhD from the University of St Andrews. At the core,  photo-identification tracks naturally marked (scratches, nicks on the dorsal fins) dolphins over time.  Using mark-recapture methods, I am able to estimate the abudnance and survival rates of the dolphin population in my study area. 

I'm finding that dolphins in my study area are not living quite as long as we'd expect based on studies of similar species, and the way that they're using the study area has changed over the last 3 decades. We never used to see dolphin babies in our study site, but now we do. We suspect they're coming into the area to feed on small fish, but when they're here, they run the risk of getting eaten by killer whales. It's a pretty exciting study, and a powerful way to tease apart natural and anthropogenic forms of mortality in a marine mammal population. It's amazing the information you can get from photographs and the amazing powers of math.

More about me

My name is Erin Ashe and wear two hats. I am a self-funded (that means I am responsible for raising my own funds) PhD student at University of St Andrews (Scotland) studying Pacific white-sided dolphin ecology and the co-founder of Oceans Initiative, a non-profit organization. My fieldwork takes place in British Columbia, Canada. I study wide-ranging, wild animals, usually on a small budget and in a small boat. My partner and I founded Oceans Initiative to support conservation-minded research on marine wildlife in Canada and around the world. I love horses almost as much as I love dolphins. I am continually exploring my off-the-boat photography skills, practice (operative word here) yoga, and find the best time to think about research is while running with our dog, Wishart.
Twitter: @erinashe & @oceansresearch
Web: Oceans Initiative
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/OceansInitiative