Posts in "Recent News"

Monday’s photo-ID survey was a day of very changeable weather conditions.  Tim, Rachael and I had an early start but spent the morning waiting for the haar (coastal fog) to lift.  Once it did we headed out on our boat but although it was lovely and calm it was also very cloudy, not ideal for good pictures.  Fortunately, during the first encounter of the day with about 18 individuals the sun came out.  We took advantage of the great light and calm weather…

On Friday Tim, Enrico, Rachael and Laura set out on a quick boat trip to deploy another hydrophone at the Sutors of Cromarty.  This went without a hitch but the team then saw a rarely seen event, a group of 5 bottlenose dolphins attacking a harbour porpoise.  The dolphins repeatedly dragged the porpoise underwater and then pushed it to the surface.  Unfortunately, we don’t know why the dolphins do…

Bottlenose dolphins often display strong social bonds and we observed a lot of social interaction on our photo-ID trip yesterday.  Firstly, we saw the dolphins chasing and rolling over each other, breaching out of the water together and landing on top of it each other.  It was so quick with lots of water splashing around it was difficult to tell whether the dolphins were playing or fighting.  Although, this type of behaviour is not ideal for photo-identification if we can get a picture…

The sea was flat and almost mirror calm for our photo-id trip yesterday, making sighting dolphins and other cetaceans easier.  Our bottlenose dolphin surveys are only conducted in calm weather and certain sea states.  We use the Beaufort Scale, and aim to survey when the waters are between a sea state 0 (mirror flat) and 3 (occasional whitecaps as the waves break).  This ensures we can spot the dolphins as they surface, even if they are far away, and allows us to take good pictures…

It was very calm weather for our photo-ID survey yesterday which resulted in 11 encounters with bottlenose dolphins.  We took advantage of the great conditions to train both Becky and Rachael in taking photo-ID pictures.  Photo-ID is really about understanding the dolphins’ behaviour and trying to predict where they are heading and where they will surface next rather than being a great photographer.  But a good understanding of the right settings for the camera definitely helps.  Often taking high quality photo-ID shots where the…

It was a busy day out on the water yesterday for Tim, Becky, Enrico and myself.  Not only did we carry out our regular photo-ID survey but we also deployed some acoustic equipment - two hydrophones (underwater microphones).  One called a CPOD that can detect the echolocation clicks of dolphins and the other an SM2 that records all the dolphins’ vocalisations including clicks and whistles.  This equipment allows us to understand how often…

Despite the fog yesterday we had a short photo-ID trip to take advantage of the calm weather.  We encountered four dolphins just south of the Sutors of Cromarty.  One of them was #79 Midnick.  She is one of the original individuals identified when the University of Aberdeen started studying these dolphins in 1989.  Although we have only seen her with 1 calf she often spends time with other female dolphins, especially Jigsaw (#30).  Midnick has been seen right across the range of this east coast…

Tim, Becky and I made an early start this morning to squeeze in our first photo-ID trip of the year before the heavy rain.  It was a beautiful and calm morning although very cold.  We wore so many layers that our drysuits were nearly bursting and even had to put on waterproof coats, hats, gloves and scarfs to try and keep warm.  However, it was all worth it as we had encounters with two groups of dolphins. One smaller…

 

At the MASTS Annual Science Meeting in September 2012, there were presentations from three Lighthouse Field Station researchers, and Ewan and Paul recorded a podcast detailing their research on Scottish marine predators. These podcasts have now been made available online.

Ewan, discussing his work on northern fulmars and interaction with fisheries.

Listen here: www.tinyurl.com/coboyfg 

Paul, talking about the impact of anthropogenic underwater noise on marine mammals

Listen here: http://tinyurl.com/bvfgkjn

Lucy and Ewan attended a workshop at the Dutch marine research institute IMARES on the island of Texel, to assist with the dissection of beached fulmars. Since the early 1980s, a study of fulmar corpses has revealed the extent of plastic ingestion in the marine environment. Nearly every fulmar analysed has some plastic in its stomach, despite efforts to reduce plastic in our seas and a European target that states that less than 10% of birds should have more than 0.1g of plastic inside them.

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We started the New Year with screenings of Ryan Wood's short film "Dark Light" on the Lighthouse. Ryan captured some amazing images of the aurora borealis during his recent residency in Iceland, and shared them with us while he was visiting Cromarty over Christmas and Hogmanay. You can read more about his work here and see the vidoe on YouTube.

This winter we have contributed a window display as part of the advent exhibition ‘Highland Window on the World’ at the Hugh Miller Museum, Cromarty. The display, illustrating a little about our work at the Lighthouse and the animals we study, will be in the cottage window on Church Street on the 14th December.  All the advent window displays will be set-up within the Hugh Miller Cottage, free for all to view, on Saturday 15th and 22nd of December.

Congratulations to Holly Fearnbach who successfully defended her PhD Thesis on “Individual-based population assessment for cetaceans: using photographs to infer abundance, demography and individual quality”. Holly studied under our split degree programme whilst working for NOAA in the US, and was co-supervised by John Durban in her studies of killer whales in the North Pacific and bottlenose dolphins in the Bahamas. Her examiners were Christophe Guinet of CNRS and Xavier Lambin from Aberdeen. Her thesis can be downloaded here. 

Some of the images taken by David Taylor, events co-ordinator for the Association of Lighthouse Keepers, can be found on his flickr site following his visit to Cromarty this week.  

After having recently moved to Fort Collins, Colorado, where her husband Graeme has taken up a postdoctoral position at Colorado State University, Line was asked to give a departmental seminar on her PhD and postdoctoral research.  The majority of her talk focused on the individual-based study of harbour seals that Paul and Line developed in Loch Fleet National Nature Reserve.  Line explained how she investigated survival, reproduction and variations in the timing of pupping, and how these insights have given us a better…

The terrible September weather has resulted in only 2 photo-ID trips this month.   Our first trip was overshadowed by the Beaufort sea state 3 wind, our maximum limit for our photo-ID trips, to ensure we spot and can get good photographs of the dolphins.  By the end of our long day out on the water we had only spotted 1 dolphin and it was a very wet and discouraged crew of Tim, Rachael, Mairi (our volunteer) and I that headed back to…

The Lighthouse Field Station was well represented last week at the Marine Alliance for Science & Technology Scotland (MASTS) Annual Science Meeting at Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh.  Ewan gave a talk on his tracking work with fulmars on Eynhallow and St Kilda, Kate spoke about assessing the impacts of seismic surveys in the Moray Firth, and Paul talked about the challenges of assessing population level consequences of disturbance.

MASTS facilitates and encourages collaboration between the institutions involved in marine science in Scotland, from deep sea biology to the renewable energy…

Over 1000 people visited the Field Station in the first week of September to view Mark Lyken and Strephen Hurrel's new art works, and attend the series of talks and schools workshops we organised with IOTA as part of their Sublime Programme.

Events were also covered on STV and BBC Alba  news, and you can listen again to a feature about the work on the BBC Radio 4 programme "Saving Species" that was transmitted on 18th September.

The programme of events linked to Stephen Hurrel and Mark Lyken’s residencies has now been finalised. Between the 1st and 9th September we’ll have a series of activities in Cromarty that link this collaboration with IOTA and the British Science Festival in Aberdeen, including installations, sound works, talks, tours and evening projections.

View the trailer  on YouTube from the link below, and download the full programme here.

Either the wind or rain (or sometimes both) has kept us off the water for a couple of weeks but despite the threat of a few showers we headed out for only our 2nd photo-ID trip in August.  Tim, Rachael and I were joined by Becky for her first dolphin photo-ID survey – quite different from her normal job of harbour seal photo-ID.  At first all we saw were birds - everywhere we looked there were thousands of gulls, razorbills, guillemots,…

Sadly yesterday was my last photo-ID trip after my 6 weeks stay here at the Lighthouse to work on my master thesis and help with fieldwork.  The trip started off well as there was very little wind which is great for spotting dolphins and we saw a big group less than 5 minutes into our trip. The dolphins were spread out over a large area and were chasing fish which made it hard work for Barbara to photograph them.  However, it was great…

Despite the risk of a strong sea breeze we couldn’t resist the beautiful sunny and calm day yesterday, so we headed out on the boat early and took our final photo-ID trip of July.  Tim, Hera and I were joined by Charlie Phillips from WDCS, to take some videos of the dolphins.  With a group of dolphins spotted almost immediately at the Sutors of Cromarty the day was off to a great start.  We then headed to Chanonry Point, where Charlie normally…

All the harbour seal pups at Loch Fleet have now weaned, meaning an end to Rebecca’s daily photo-ID surveys that started 10 weeks ago.  Although, Rebecca won’t miss the long drive in the transit van from Cromarty to Loch Fleet she is going to miss seeing all the seals and their pups.  The last pup to be weaned was that of Nine (ID # 172) and the picture shows another of the weaned pups posing for his (or her) ID…

With the improving weather Tim, Rachael, Hera and I were able to catch up with two photo-ID trips this week – one in the inner Moray Firth around Cromarty and the other along the south coast of the firth to Lossiemouth.  In the inner firth we had some useful encounters with dolphins we hadn’t seen since the start of the summer.  We also saw our first porpoise calf of the year.  Then on our Lossiemouth trip we encountered a whole different group of…

With over 60 dolphins spotted, encounters from the Sutors of Cromarty to Chanonry Point and deployment of another hydrophone it was a long day out on the boat on Friday.  We were on the water for 10 hours and it was a very tired, but excited crew that arrived back in Cromarty late Friday night.  Not only had we seen an exceptional number of dolphins in one day but we also had some great encounters – some dolphins were travelling…

The University of Aberdeen is intending to begin deployment of 54 moorings in the Moray Firth, from the week beginning Monday 16th July.  The moorings will contain acoustic loggers, which detect the presence of porpoises and dolphins.  The data collected will be used to investigate the responses of porpoises to pile driving. 

Please note that some of these moorings will have no surface markers. Click here for further details and the location of all moorings. These will be updated with the as-laid positions of the…

With Tim on holiday for a couple of weeks, during our photo-ID trip this week I was skipper on the boat for the first time this year.  This meant I was responsible for ensuring the safe operation of the boat, the safety of everyone on board and driving the tractor and trailer to launch the boat (always fun!).  With our all female crew, including Rachael and Hera, the trip went very well.  This was at least partly due to all the training we…

The first of the harbour seal pups are now being weaned at our study sand bank in the Loch Fleet Nature Reserve.  Harbour seal pups suckle for approximately 4 weeks, after which their mum can leave them quite abruptly.  The birth date and lactation period of harbour seals is one of the research areas our study is focussing on.

Rebecca, our new Fieldwork Technician, has been visiting Loch Fleet daily at low tide since the end of May to…

Tuesday morning saw Tim, Rachael, Enrico and I up and out on the water early to try and catch the calm weather.  We were somewhat successful and had two encounters with small groups of dolphins before we recovered one of Enrico’s hydrophones at the Sutors. Then it was back to Cromarty for a change of crew to give our resident artists, Stephen and Mark, a practical idea of what we do.  Unfortunately, the wind had picked up, but we persevered and…

Yesterday Tim, Rachael, Tessa and I embarked on our weekly photo-ID trip.  We deployed another hydrophone off North Sutor for Enrico before carrying out our normal survey.  Although we reckoned that there were over 20 dolphins around, keeping track of them proved very difficult.  The dolphins were dispersed over a large area, and there seemed to be a dolphin or two everywhere we looked, making it very tricky to work out which dolphins we had photographed.  And to make things harder most…

This week saw the annual Biodiversity Field Course arrive in Cromarty, with 24 of our 2nd and 3rd year students spending three days with us to learn about regional conservation issues and the research techniques we use at the field station. They tell more of their time in Cromarty below.

Dolphin watching boat trip

After pulling on our ridiculous waterproof body suits we clambered the horse saddle seats of the Ecoventure’s rib.  Bouncing over the waves and along the beautiful Black Isle coastline we saw…

After a couple of weeks away it was great to get back out on the water again this week.  The first job of the day was deploying a hydrophone at the Sutors of Cromarty to record dolphin vocalisations for Enrico’s PhD project.  Then Tim, Tessa, Enrico and I headed off for our regular photo-ID survey.  We encountered 3 dolphins just north of Chanonry point and then a bigger…

After a successful three weeks on Eynhallow collecting tracking data from fulmars which go to forage whilst their partners are left incubating the egg on the nest, the crew (Paul, myself and Sian Tarrant, our volunteer field assistant) were doing their morning round to see which birds had returned bearing data. At the southern end of the island, on a nest with a view towards Evie on the Orkney mainland, sat bird 1568, after a 14 day absence from the nest.…

The start of June has seen 2 successful trips, with a total of 6 encounters. We’ve seen feeding frenzies, dolphins surfing the waves and lots of acrobatics. We haven’t had to travel far for encounters, with most of them occurring right on our doorstep at North Sutor. Sightings have included #8 Sail fin, #30 Jigsaw, #435 Raggedy fin and #580 Moonlight. Rachael is filling in as dolphin photographer, and realising it's not as easy as Barbara makes it look, those…

Paul and Ewan are halfway through a 3 week trip to the University's fulmar study colony on Eynhallow, Orkney Islands. We were joined by our intern from the Netherlands, Tessa van Heumen as field and culinary assistant. The main tasks for the trip were to obtain GPS tracks from a number of birds as part of Ewan's PhD research, to retrieve geolocator devices from other birds for Lucy's project, and to check number of nests, and attendance…

After a week of office work due to the windy weather, Tim, Rachael, Enrico and I caught up with 2 photo-ID trips this week.  On Monday we searched from Balintore to Chanonry Point, although only saw 7 dolphins.  So on Wednesday we went as far as Kessock and despite a slow start by the end of the day we had encounters with over 25 animals, and photographed a number of individuals for the first time this year.  This included #30 Jigsaw, #64 Happy…

Despite all the rainy and windy weather, the sun did come out this week and gave us an opportunity for our 2nd photo-ID survey of the year.  However, the dolphins were not quite so co-operative!  About 25 dolphins were dispersed across a big area, from the Sutors of Cromarty to Balintore.  This made it very difficult to keep track of them and ensure we got a photograph of each individual.  But the unusually clear waters allowed us to see some…

Tessa and I spent Tuesday afternoon filming with Dougie Vipond for Landward.  We took a trip out on the Ecoventures wildlife watching boat and after a tense couple of hours of no dolphin sightings, we eventually spotted two near the Sutors of Cromarty.  We discussed our recently published SNH report and our research over the past two decades monitoring bottlenose dolphins in this area.  The programme will be shown on BBC2 on the 25th May.

Our latest Site Condition Monitoring Report for the Moray Firth Special Area of Conservation has just been published by Scottish Natural Heritage. Drawing on over two decades of research by the Universities of Aberdeen and St. Andrews, we present the first robust evidence of long-term trends, status and use of the Moray Firth SAC by bottlenose dolphins.  We analysed photo-identification data collected between 1990 and 2010 and the results suggest that the bottlenose dolphin population on the east coast of…

This week, we braved the cold weather to carry out our first photo-ID trip of the year, and were rewarded with four encounters with small groups of dolphins.  Our regular team of Tim Barton, who skippers our boat, and myself, taking the photo-identification pictures, were joined by intern Tessa and MSc student Daniel.  Both took great notes and not only survived but also seemed to enjoy their first experience of bottlenose dolphin photo-ID in chilly Scotland.  We saw six dolphins that we know…

        (image: Mark Lyken)                            (image: Stephen Hurrel)

After much deliberation Inverness Old Town Art and the University of Aberdeen are delighted to announce the recipients of the Sublime Artist residency are Stephen Hurrel and Mark Lyken.  The artists will spend this summer working alongside the ecologists at the Lighthouse Field Station in Cromarty in…

Barbara, Enrico & Paul attended the 26th European Cetacean Society Conference in a very sunny Galway this week. Enrico and Barbara both presented papers during the first day of the meeting. Enrico's talk focussed on work that he carried out in St Andrews on disturbance to cetaceans in the Bahamas, while Barbara presented her analysis of two decades of dolphin photo-ID surveys in the Moray Firth.

Ewan recently attended the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland (MASTS; www.masts.ac.uk) Postgraduate Retreat in Aviemore, bringing together all MASTS-funded PhD students from institutes around Scotland to share ideas, learn new skills and get to know each other in a more relaxed and sociable atmosphere. In addition to a handful of student presentations, talks were given by visiting speakers, including several who had previously obtained PhDs in marine science but had subsequently moved away from academia into policy-making,…

On the 20th and 21st of February, 20 marine predator researchers from the Environmental Research Institute in Thurso, the University of St. Andrews Sea Mammal Research Unit, SMRU Ltd., Durham University and the University of Aberdeen’s main campus gathered in Cromarty for our Lighthouse Research Day.  We heard a range of interesting and thought provoking talks on subjects ranging from seabird tracking studies to diet analyses of seals and from population dynamics to research on the effect of human activities on marine mammals…

Ewan has just returned from a month long expedition to the Antarctic Peninsula, aboard the 49ft yacht "Mina2". Previously Ewan worked on the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia as a field biologist, but this was his first visit to the Antarctic proper.  Highlights of the trip involved a swim in the volcanically-heated water at Deception Island; many marine mammal (seal and whale) sightings, including an hour spent in the company of two minke whales traveling slowly with the boat; and the fantastic seabird-watching…

This week we advertised for an artist in residence to come and work at the Lighthouse over the summer. The Sublime Artist Residency is a partnership with Inverness Old Town Art, and is funded by Creative Scotland.

The 3-6 month residency's main aim is for an artist/ musician/ film-maker to participate in our research and develop a series of arts works that will increase awareness of the marine environment. We're looking forward to working with IOTA to hear other perspectives on our work, and…

Work from the Lighthouse and MASTS colleagues was presented at the recent UNESCO conference "I know where I'm going: remote access to World Heritage Sites, from St.Kilda to Uluru", which took place in Edinburgh on 23-24 November 2011.

The two-day international conference focused on the potential of new technologies to create high quality, remote-access, visitor experiences for World Heritage Sites and other sites of cultural, historical and natural significance.

Videos of each presentation, including powerpoint images, are now available online from New Media Scotland…

Just after the Society for Marine Mammalogy conference I was fortunate to spend 2 weeks working on the Sarasota Dolphin Research Project in Florida with the aim of validating the laser metric technique we have been using to measure the length of bottlenose dolphins in the Moray Firth. Despite some surprisingly windy and foggy weather, I was able to join 5 photo-ID surveys, had 34 encounters with dolphins and managed to take lots of photos. Working on this over 40 year…

Line was awarded a prize for the best postgraduate poster at the Society for Marine Mammalogy Conference, Tampa, Florida.

Line and Barbara attended the Society of Marine Mammalogy conference in Tampa, Florida at the end of November.

"We had an informative and amazing time meeting scientists and friends from around the world studying a variety of species from humpback whales to bottlenose dolphins and Steller sea lions to bearded seals. Four concurrent sessions kept us busy running from one to the other, so much so that we missed the dolphin and manatee sightings in the harbour beside the conference centre. We did…

In early October, Ewan and Lucy attended the 2011 Fulmar EcoQO workshop at the IMARES research institute on the island of Texel, Netherlands. Fulmars have been designated an indicator of ‘good environmental status’ of our seas, and delegates from around Europe and as far afield as Vancouver came to the workshop, led by Dr Jan Andries van Franeker, to learn how to dissect a fulmar, to examine stomach content for plastic fragments. Dr van Franeker’s work has shown that 95% of fulmars…

2011 turned out to be a poor year for fulmars on Eynhallow. Our colony census on 20th  May recorded 91 occupied nests but when we returned on the 9th July, only 24 nests were still occupied. Once into the chick rearing period, birds seemed to fare slightly better, but with only 15 fledglings, this still meant that this year’s overall reproductive success was only 16%. Ten of these chicks were ringed by Ewan Edwards during our final visit of the season in mid-August.