Heading out of the harbor on Dolphin Fleet’s Dolphin VII, the views of the tip of Cape Cod set the scene for a great trip to come. Not far from the start of the trip, the sights and sounds of whales began—out in the distance there where whales jumping and the sounds of humpbacks coming up to breathe through their blow holes. Soon these whales would be just yards from our boat as they swam together in search of the planktonic food that is so abundant here in the Gulf of Maine this time of year.

As a guest of Dr. Carole Carson, the director of the fleet’s research and education programs, I had this opportunity to see humpback whales up close and personal. I was lucky enough to go on this adventure at a time when there were at least 30 humpbacks feeding off the beaches of this area of the Cape. These whales were not alone in taking advantage of the plankton blooms—all around them there were dolphins, seals, and other species of whale (including Finbacks and even an endangered Right Whale in the distance), not to mention hundreds of gulls.

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words!

Each whale’s tail has different markings, much like our fingers have unique finger prints. The scientists who study these whales are able to identify the whales by the unique markings on their tails.

You can see how close the whales get to each other. Oftentimes they work together to get their food.

These whales feed on plankton. Humpbacks don’t have teeth but instead have baleen. They feed by filling their mouths full of both seawater and plankton. They are then able to push the seawater out of their mouths through the sieve-like baleen.

Often the whales swim with their mouths open close to the surface “dragging for food.” Their mouths open very wide and can hold a lot of seawater.

The gulls are in search of any scraps that the whales leave behind. From time to time you could even see a gull catching a ride on a whale!

And finally, some video so you can see what it is like to be out there!

Jon Grabowski, research scientist at GMRI, recently answered a question posed by a student on why fish school. Here is his answer

Ok, let’s talk about fish. Fish live with other fish in many different and interesting ways.

Fish schools: A bunch of fish together is called a school of fish.

See the video above of a school of fish swimming in the ocean.

Some fish species live in schools for the following reasons:

1. a big school of fish looks a lot larger to a predator
2. fish use each other - if one fish realized that a predator is near, the entire school will know soon
3. the same with food - there might be some benefits to hunting for food together
4. it is easier for a school of fish to move around just like it is easier for bicyclists to draft off of people in front of them rather than bike alone.

When would a fish decide to live alone rather than in a school? When it is big enough that it is safe on its own (for example, some shark species) or can hide better or feed better on its own (for example, many eel species, monkfish, and wolffish live alone on the bottom of the ocean).

Cleaner fish: Some fish are called cleaner fish, and eat the parasites and food particles off the bodies and in the mouths of bigger fish! See the picture of the wrasse cleaning parasites off of the goat fish.

Tag-a-long fish: Some small fish that are not very capable of defending themselves from predators will hang out with bigger, scarier fish that are very safe. For example, remoras are little fish that hang out with sharks because almost nothing in the ocean will eat many shark species, and the sharks are not interested in the remora because they are so small. See the video of the remora and pilot fish hanging out with a grey reef shark.

These are just a few examples but the ocean is a very interesting place to study. Best of luck in all of your studies!

Dogfish are really cool sharks but they have a bad reputation with fisherman because they have little commercial value to most US fishermen. They are also known to ruin fishing gear because of their sharp spine, sandpaper skin, saw-like teeth and how wiggly they are.

Shelly Tallack holding a spiny dogfish in the Gulf of Maine.

Shelly Tallack, Associate Research Scientist at GMRI, is doing her research in hopes of finding ways to reduce the by-catch of spiny dogfish by both commercial and recreational fisherman. This species of shark, like most sharks, is sensitive to overfishing because they have slow growth rates, mature late in life and give birth to few offspring

Shelly is testing a rare-earth alloy, otherwise known as mischmetal, as a means of reducing the catch of dogfish from hook gears (longline and jigging gear). You can read more about her work at this site.

Pieces of mischmetal hanging in seawater tanks at GMRI (photo by Sarah Whitford).

Unfortunately, the mischmetal was ineffective in deterring dogfish because it dissolved very quickly in seawater. Sarah Whitford ran an experiment in the lab to see how quickly the alloy dissolved by submerging it in seawater and taking measurements every hour. During this experiment, they also set up a time lapse camera (with the help from Nick Record) to take pictures every 5 minutes. Nick then made a movie of these pictures showing the alloy dissolving.

As you can see in the video, the alloy only stayed on the string for 25 hours and then dissolved so much it fell off the string. As the video continues you can still see the sludge and the alloy bubbling and dissolving on the bottom of the container. This piece of mischmetal originally weighed 42.98 g, was 42.5 mm tall and 6.2 mm thick. In less than 48 hours it dissolved to practically nothing. This makes the alloy very ineffective with use with fishing gear since during fishing, the alloy would constantly be wet with seawater when waiting with the bait to be set out.

On April 5, 2008, eighteen groups of people came to a robotic submersible building event at GMRI. Using just PVC pipe and some simple motors, participants designed, built, and flew their own robotic subs in GMRI’s schooling tank exhibit in the Cohen Center.

Below are some photos of the participants working on their vehicles:

Below are some video examples of ROVs that were built:

ROV Family Event 4/5/08

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If you are interested in building your own ROV at home, there are a couple of options. You can buy the excellent book, Build Your Own Underwater Robot, which goes into great detail on how to build one at home. You can also look at Engadget’s web page on how to construct an underwater robot. Or, you can download a list of supplies used to make a robot using the parts we had at GMRI.

Many thanks to all the folks who volunteered their time to help pull off this event:

Ken Partain
Brian Ackerman
Steve Shane
Justine Glynn

Nobody wants an oil spill. We hear a lot about them in the news, seeing photos of dark slicks on
the surface and of oily birds and seals. Spilled oil can do a lot of damage
to the ecosystem, and they are a concern to many people.

Yet there is another kind of oil in the ocean that we don’t hear much about.
Natural oil slicks exist on the surface of the ocean all the time. Just
like people have natural oils on their skin, plants and animals in the ocean
produces natural oil too. This oil often collects on the ocean surface,
where we can see complex patterns of smooth areas.

The layer of natural oil is so thin, when we’re swimming we don’t even
notice it, but since we can see it we can watch how slicks move and change
shape. This tells us about the ocean currents, and it tells us where oil
might go if an oil spill actually happened.

Sometimes slicks move very slowly, so we set up cameras to take time-lapse
photographs. We take one picture every minute, or every half minute, and
put them together to form a short animation. These animations show lots of
moving slicks, and there are other interesting processes to watch, such as
clouds, birds, and sunrises (see in below video).

Once we’ve found slicks, we can map them on maps with longitude and latitude (see video below. The lines in the upper left show the docks in front of GMRI from a bird’s eye prospective). This shows us what the surface of the ocean looks like if viewed
from above. Objects with height–like boats–are stretched and skewed, but
anything flat–like a slick–is mapped accurately. We can calculate their
speeds and directions, and study them in detail. Eventually, we plan to
make maps of some of the recurring slick patterns in Portland Harbor, and if
an oil spill does happen, we hope to help with the recovery.