National Marine Fisheries Service

11/22/2021 | News release | Distributed by Public on 11/22/2021 14:14

Sound Bytes: The Power of Partnerships

Working from home can get lonely, as I'm sure many of you know all too well. I'm glad that I have the ability to work remotely, and have access to tons of archived underwater acoustic data to study whales and dolphins. But I've learned that indeed I am actually a social animal, and that my science is stronger when working with a team. You can imagine my excitement this summer when, as the world started to safely open up, I was asked to deliver our drifting buoys to real, live, human scientists in the field!

My name is Anne Simonis, and I'm part of the team at NOAA's Southwest Acoustic Ecology Lab. I'm currently working on a project we call "ADRIFT," focused on understanding the potential impacts of future wind farms offshore of California. We collect acoustic recordings using drifting buoys (Cory described building these in our last Sound Bytes post), and study the presence and behavior of marine mammals by listening to the sounds that they make. In marine science, ship time is often the most expensive part of a study. To save money, we are trying to form partnerships with other boaters who are already planning on being out on the water. We are designing our buoys to be easy to deploy and recover, so just about anyone can help us to collect data.

ACCESS scientists deploying a drifting buoy into the ocean, with the Farallon Islands on the horizon. Credit: D. Devlin/ONMS

We recently formed a partnership with the Applied California Current Ecosystem Studies(ACCESS) program, which monitors marine ecosystems offshore of San Francisco Bay, including the Cordell Bankand Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuaries. These sanctuaries support abundant marine life, and are important feeding grounds for endangered blue and humpback whales. I highly recommend listening to the sound clip of humpback whales that we recorded!

Humpback whales (audio + image) in the Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary. Audio Credit: NOAA Fisheries Photo Credit: Sophie Webb/ONMS, Point BlueMap of California coast along San Francisco Bay showing the tracks of each drift in different colored lines. Shipping lanes are shown in yellow lines, and National Marine Sanctuary boundaries are shown in blue lines.

I love forming connections with other researchers, fishers, and boaters through ADRIFT. These partnerships allow each of us to play to our strengths, learn from each other, and make new friends along the way. We really depend on the power of partnerships to collect data for this project. If you have a boat that works offshore California (>10 nautical miles offshore) and are interested in helping to deploy or recover our drifting buoys, please fill out this form.

Image
Drifting buoy floating in the ocean with a cargo ship in the background. Credit: NOAA Fisheries/S. Rankin