Meredith and Meredith in Lubec

Photos below story.

This summer The CALVIN Project’s* Calvineers were invited to experience right whale research first hand at the New England Aquarium’s Right Whale Research field station in Lubec, Maine.  Two Calvineers, 7th grader Meredith Houghton and 8th grader Meredith Olivari, were able to take advantage of the unique invitation, spending two days and a night at the field station called “The Whale House”. The following is an account of their two-day experience working and living with the scientists.

“I learned so much from my two days spent in Lubec, it was a great opportunity to see what it’s really like to live in a research environment and study whales.” explained Meredith Olivari while reflecting on her visit.  Meredith explained that she was put right to work learning how to image code with DIGITS, the online data base program that holds most of the data collected by scientists about North Atlantic right whales since the early 1980”s.  She thought doing the work was a lot of fun and besides, “it is helping the scientists get some of the ‘boring’ work done.”  Meredith Houghton reflected on her first data task, “It was so interesting to learn about how the scientists keep track of and organize all of the images that get put into the system. We spent the (first) hour, coding pages of images that Amy was happy to print off for us. In fact, the two student scientists thought it was so much fun they rambled through a long list, coding more than 100 images before lunch.  Once they did that they decided they were experts and knew the job well.  “Only 3000 more to go!” they exclaimed.

The student scientists’ first meal was an eye opener.  Lunch was left over Indian food from the day before.  Claudia, the cook, had prepared it from scratch and what a treat, even better the second day.  After lunch they helped their teacher and volunteer, Mr. McWeeny, and scientist, Amy Knowlton, launch the Bonita, an assist zodiac boat for the research team.  The young ladies were learning that scientists in the field have to do all sorts of jobs including maintenance of the vessels and equipment.  Then, Captain Amy Knowlton took the launch crew on a shakedown cruise to Eastport across Cobscook Bay.  Meredith Houghton realized that a scientist might have to have a captain’s license also.  “Scientists have to do all sorts of things.” she commented.  The trip across the bay included a close inspection of salmon farm pens, and a Coast Guard inspection of the Bonita which surprised all, but everything was shipshape and the trip continued.  Eastport is a small town with a few gift shops and galleries and restaurants.  The crew’s mission was to decide which flavor ice cream to sample.  “Yum!”

Back at the Whale House Claudia was cooking up a storm.  It was pasta night and the smells of the various sauces were intoxicating.  The two Meredith’s took advantage of the lull before dinner to do more image coding.  They were in Lubec to do science and used every free minute to work on DIGITS.  Other scientists in the large home office were also finishing up a day’s work on data and reports.  Most visitors are exempt from dinner duties, but the two student scientists pitched in setting the table for 13 people and after dinner loading the dishwasher.  “The meals here were amazing, last night we had gnocchi with pesto, penne with red sauce that had artichokes and Kalamata olives. I loved the food!” is how Meredith Olivari summed up the experience.  Meredith Houghton agreed, “Claudia is a fantastic cook, we just couldn’t stop eating the food she made!”  The two student scientists managed to get a third session of image coding in after dinner and even watched a bit of the Olympics with the scientists in the small, crowded TV room.  (See the previous Calvin entry for details of building a chocolate whale)  They were in bed by 10:00 PM but set their alarm for 5:30 AM because they wanted to help the scientists load the Nereid in the morning for a survey effort.

Team members Amy Knowlton and Moe Brown were up before 5:00 AM checking the weather but the forecast for heavy winds forced them to cancel the Nereid’s surveying efforts for the day.  The two Merediths got to sleep in until 7:30 and were unable to help load the Nereid because the survey was cancelled.  After breakfast, which is “on your own” at the Whale House, the student scientists and Mr. McWeeny drove into Canada to Campobello Island to go on the Island Cruises Whale Watch with Mackie Green. In addition to running the whale watch boat, Mister Matthew, Mackie is on the Campobello Whale Rescue Team (CWRT).  “Not only will we see whales and other sea creatures but we just might hear some stories of rescued whales.” Meredith Olivari said hopefully.  She was not disappointed.  Robert, Mackie’s first mate and fellow CWRT teammate, told us all about a rescue they did two years ago of a right whale caught in some fishing gear up near St. John.  “The work sounds exciting and dangerous, “ Meredith Houghton commented thoughtfully.

The boat ride took us out past East Quoddy Lighthouse on Campobello’s North Head. (East Quoddy Lighthouse has a red cross on it and should not be confused with the red striped West Quoddy Lighthouse in the United States.)  The wind was light but Cobscook Bay was all churned up with the incoming tide running very strong around all sorts of islands, rocks and jetties.  Harbor porpoise fed skillfully in the eddies using a bubble feeding technique to round up their prey while swarms of screeching gulls snatched up scraps of fish left over at the surface.  Soon enough we were upon a couple of minke whales.  Here is Meredith Olivari’s account:

“Whale watching off Campobello Island was awesome and we saw three Minke whales. Meredith and I named all the whales we saw.  The first whale was Jacqueline and her smaller friend Brady. It seemed that if we gave the whales names we would have a stronger connection with them, almost like a human connection, and that way we kind of remember them better like people we meet or like new friends. When we moved to a different part of the bay we spotted a large Minke and for some odd reason the name Lars immediately popped into my head, Lars the Swedish Minke. I told Meredith and together we came up with this whole story about Lars like he came from Swedish waters and, since he was quite playful, was enjoying the “warm” Canadian bay. Lars came right up by the boat and so we could see him very well, he was smooth and slick and we admired him while we could but in just a couple seconds he was gone, into the ocean again.”

 
Meredith’s “game” of naming the whales has some very practical uses in the world of science.  Jane Goodall named her chimps with very descriptive names (David Gray Beard) and could tell immediately which family an individual was from by the first letter in its name.  The Right Whale Research team has named many right whales with descriptive names (Crescent, Stumpy, Stripe) and some names that describe a whale’s behavior like Shackleton for a right whale that explored the Delaware River up to Philadelphia.  The student scientists intuitive act of naming the whales they saw may come in handy if they become scientists and if they learn to use descriptive and not just “cute” names.

The highlight of the whale watch was the rescue of a creature in grave danger.  The news of an eagle that was in the water and unable to fly off came to Mackie over his VHS radio from another whale watch boat.  They had unsuccessfully tried to help the eagle and knew that Mackie was part of the CWRT.  Mackie took us to the struggling eagle and he and Robert tried to get a large life ring under the bird.  After three tries they tried one of Meredith Houghton’s suggestions, which was to tow a large log floating in the debris to the eagle so it could get on something natural.  Good idea but the eagle would have nothing to do with it.  Meredith Olivari explained the event, “When we saw the poor eagle in the water I became sad, I felt so bad for it; trying to lift it’s tired wings out of the water and swim back to the far-off shore. Meredith and I had some great ideas about how we could save the eagle and we were a little annoyed that the crew wasn’t trying our ideas.  Finally they tried one but it did not work.”  

Meredith Houghton gives an account of the rescue:

“…we were lucky enough to witness something that hardly ever happens to a whale watch group! We heard over the radio, that a bald eagle was stranded in the water; its feather’s waterlogged and couldn’t fly! We named it Perry, and he was trying desperately to swim to shore, but with the strong current, he wasn’t making much headway.  Captain Mackie sped over to see what we could do to help the distressed animal. After trying many different methods, including a life ring, a log and a winter jacket, the CWRT came over to help. They got the eagle out of the water and ended up putting him on a beach where they could keep an eye on him until he flew away. It was so amazing to see the scientists and rescue crew at work, and it was such a good feeling when they saved the eagle, because we knew that it would be safe now.”

As the eagle was rejecting the log the CWRT rescue zodiac came into view.  When it was close enough to see the driver Meredith Houghton exclaimed, “Look! It is Moe Brown from the Whale House!”  Moe Brown is trained in all sorts of marine rescues and handles a boat expertly.  As soon as Moe maneuvered the boat alongside the eagle her two colleagues put a bag over the eagle’s head to calm it down and then carefully hoisted the disheveled animal into the rescue boat.  Everyone cheered and there were a couple of tears noticeable also.  The eagle did not have any broken bones and seemed quite vigorous.  It was let go on a deserted beach where it walked up to some ferns and lied down to dry.  The student scientists experienced yet another event that showed them how exciting being a scientist could be.  Not only that, they were learning that woman scientists are very good at what they do.  There is absolutely no reason why they, too, could not become a scientist who does great work in the field as well as the office.

Back in Lubec, at the Whale House, the Calvineers had left over pastas for lunch.  During lunch they had quite a story to share with the scientists who had been working at their computers all morning.  After lunch the student scientists learned how to match right whales.  The image coding they had been doing would now pay off by helping them find matching images of unknown pictures of whales.  Each series of pictures of a whale taken during a survey day (there can be 30 or 40 or more sightings each survey day) has to be matched to a known picture of the same whale.  This is the beauty of DIGITS.   Images of the unknown whale appear on the left side of the screen.  The matcher notes characteristics of the unknown whale and then plugs those into a search engine that displays possibilities of known whales on the right side.  Then the search is on.  Some possibilities can be eliminated immediately because one feature is missing or totally different.  Others take a bit longer to eliminate but eventually some minor difference is noted that rules out that animal also.  Each eliminated possibility is noted so other people do not have to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, when trying to match the same whale.  Eventually a group of pictures of a known whale is found that shows either an exact match of a callosity pattern or scar or no significant deviation and the match is made…by the first person.  Then each match has to be confirmed by a second person that has been matching animals for years and is familiar with most of the almost 400 living whales catalogued.  

The student scientists spent a good two hours matching just two animals and gained an appreciation for the amount of work that goes into maintaining the data base for the scientific community.  Meredith Houghton explains, “Matching was definitely much harder than coding, but we managed to match a whale with Mr. McWeeny and Amy’s help. We correctly identified the whale as number 2360! The next whale we tried to match did not go so well, and after looking through over 1000 pictures, we found one that was almost exactly the same, and marked it as an unsure match. It felt so awesome to be sitting behind a computer, doing the same exact things that the scientists here do everyday! I really wish that we could stay here in Lubec for another week.”

The day was coming to an end and soon the two, would be scientists would be on their way back to Castine.  They both thought the experience was one they would always remember, and Meredith Olivari had this final thought: “Well, if anything, I certainly learned that there is one thing these scientists and whales really have in common; they both have HUGE appetites!”


* Students in Adams School’s “The CALVIN Project” are called Calvineers.  The Calvineers have been active in educating the public about the plight of the North Atlantic Right Whale for four years.  Not only have they given many PowerPoint presentations in public, but they have also written letters to the president and legislators and the two Merediths spoke at Senator Olympia Snowe’s Senate Subcommittee meeting last February.  Preparing for presenting, letter writing and speaking took a lot of study and hard work over the years.  In addition to the classroom studies, Calvineers have observed right whales in the Bay of Fundy and attended two North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium Meetings in New Bedford.   To date, fourteen students have taken part in The CALVIN Project.