Hey Team!
So I have now spent almost three months in New Quay, Wales working on a new and exciting project with the Cardigan Bay Marine Wildlife Centre. How about a little backstory...
Let me take you back to March 2014. I received an email inviting me to interview for a project officer position for a new bottlenose dolphin photo-ID project. The tasks: get the project up and running, run it for the season, write reports and set it up solid for next year.
The interview went well. I have good experience with dolphin ID, done report writing for university, and I've used fancy cameras a couple times in the past.
Only problem? They needed me to start in like two weeks. I didn't think I could pack up my entire life in Canada and move to Wales in two weeks. Also, the summer season was longer than the six months I'm allotted to be in the UK. They told me they'd get back to me.
Get back to me they did. They couldn't offer me the original position, due to all the time constraints crossing an ocean brings, but they were willing to make up an assistant position for the project, just for me! I couldn't say no.
Two months after that, two planes, 3 trains and a bus later, I was in Wales. It's been a helluva ride so far, and I am starting to actually get depressed that my time is almost up.
So what exactly are we up to here?
Well the project that I'm working on, ShoreFin, is a land-based dolphin photo-ID project. In New Quay, bottlenose dolphins very often come in close enough to shore that with a long enough lens, you can get ID quality photos without having the interact with them on the water. In the past the centre has only taken opportunistic photos from boat trips, but this year is the first year there are people completely dedicated to taking photos of dolphins from land.
The volunteers from the centre do shifts on an all-day survey for dolphins from the harbour wall in the village. When they see dolphins close enough to the wall, they call for either me or my boss over the walkie-talkie and we grab our big, expensive camera (seriously, the lens costs more than all my possessions combined) and we head down to meet them. Once there, we hope and pray and with a little luck we take a decent photo of a dolphin fin.
Then we take these photos into the office, write up some notes on the encounter, label everything and then the fun begins. Matching.
Now, I've talked about matching dolphins in an earlier post. Most dolphins, through social interactions, foraging mishaps and run-ins with humans, can get nicks, notches and cuts all up and down their dorsal fins. We use these imperfections as a fingerprint to identify one individual from another. Although their fins can change year to year, we manage to figure them out time to time. Though the catalogue is much smaller and doesn't go back quite as far as the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, the monotony of matching still stands. And it will always make my eyes go cross-eyed. But this time there has been a much better chance of me actually matching dolphins.
This is the coolest part though - when I was in Florida, I was amazed that my supervisors could tell the individuals just from seeing them in the field, through the lens of their cameras. They were ID-ing individuals in the field, rarely ever needing to check. I was awed by their memories and abilities, and I completely believed I'd never be able to do such a thing.
Well, not that we have nearly as many regulars here as Sarasota does, but more often than not I can ID our 20 or so regulars in the field. A couple mom and calf pairs, some individuals that come in and out. Some we don't have numbers for (or maybe we do and we just haven't matched them yet), but their fins this year are recognizable. All I can say is that I am so surprised at myself for actually not needing photos on a computer to compare fins to. I know who these bad boys (and girls) are just by a close up in the camera lens.
Dreams do come true folks. And you can learn the skills you once thought only gods possessed.
This has been an amazing opportunity. For the first time I'm not just a standard intern. I have an official title (Assistant Project Officer doesn't sound too bad, does it?) and when my boss is on vacation, I am actually in charge of the project. It's been a chance to have so much more responsibility than I've had in a long time, and it can only get better from here. This has been so much more than your average internship, and it's an experience I'll never forget.
But it's not over yet! I have two more months to put my stamp all over this place!
One more dolphin pic, for good measure.
Speak Loud!
Follow along with the centre at their facebook page here
Follow along with the ShoreFin project at their twitter here
No comments:
Post a Comment