Feeding Frenzies and Whale Songs: Notes from the Flying Bridge

Hi! I’m Ainsleigh Lloyd, a researcher in the Marine Bioacoustics Research Collaborative at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. I was the marine mammal acoustician and one of the observers on this CalCOFI cruise. My duties onboard included visually identifying and recording marine mammal presence and behavior, and deploying acoustic equipment to record calls, clicks, and other bioacoustics signals. Half of my time was spent on the flying bridge (the very top of the ship!) looking for mammals. The other half of my time was spent in the acoustics lab recording and monitoring soundscapes in real time. 

This was my fourth CalCOFI, and I now have a year of seagoing experience under my belt (yay!). But the best part about the job stays the same: You never know what you are going to see or hear on any given day! This cruise was also special to me because it was the first time I’ve sailed the full grid from San Diego to San Francisco. It was fascinating to observe the change in species distribution as we went farther north. For example, northern right whale dolphin are usually seen past Point Conception, and I hadn’t seen any up to this point in my observing career. But just off San Simeon, we saw a massive feeding frenzy of hundreds of NPRW dolphins, along with Pacific white-sided dolphins, breaching humpbacks, and flocks of seabirds (including a vagrant waved albatross!).

It is also interesting to see the intersection between visual and acoustic observations. Sometimes, if we are lucky, we will be nearnearby whales while on station and can hear their echolocation clicks or song in real time. More recently, we have started collaborating with eDNA scientists on board to get a more complete picture of mammal presence. Every method has its limits, but if we combine multiple methods, we get a better understanding of what is happening in the California Current!