Student and professor conduct sea turtle hearing research in Galveston, Texas.
Stephanie's Daily Journal
Week 1 (July 7 - 11) | Week 2 (July 14 - 18) | Week 3 (July 21 - 25) | Week 4 (July 28 - Aug. 2) | Week 5 (Aug. 3 - 9)
Stephanie in front of the NOAA Fisheries Laboratory.
Stephanie Couture '09 from East Hampstead, N.H., and Assistant Professor of Marine Biology Dr. Soraya Bartol are researching the hearing capabilities of loggerhead sea turtles this summer at the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Fisheries Galveston Laboratory in Galveston, Texas.
Couture, a biology major, is keeping a daily journal of their research which is focusing on how sea turtles will respond to various human-made noise sources, both auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) and behavioral audiograms. They are researching multiple species of sea turtles including: loggerhead, green, and Kemp's ridley sea turtles.
"Just after a week of working on this project, I definitely have a greater appreciation towards what goes into a research project," said Couture in an e-mail from her research station in Texas. "I have not only been physically challenged, but mentally and emotionally as well."
Below is her daily journal:
A sea turtle housed in the Wet Lab in Texas.
This study is to determine exactly what frequency sea turtles hear. This information is important because noise caused by the drilling of oil companies (and other man-made noise) may cause auditory damage, whether temporary or permanent, and also may cause the sea turtles change their behavior, for example, they may have to change their migration paths and put themselves in potential danger. There are two ways to determine their auditory threshold, the first is a behavioral technique where we will be training the sea turtles to swim and bite down on an object in the direction of where they hear the sound. The other is by looking at their brain activity when subjected to certain frequencies. The data will be collected and analyzed over the course of three years.
WEEK 1: Monday, July 7
Today was my first day with Ashley, a graduate student from ODU, at the NOAA Sea Turtle Facility in Galveston, Texas. The lead scientist, Ben Higgins, gave us a grand tour of the place. It's full with historical background. In the early 1900s a hurricane came through and wiped out Galveston. Over 6,000 people died and that hurricane is the largest national disaster in our nation's history. So, when Galveston was rebuilt, it was raised 16-feet above sea level and a lot of the buildings (especially the one's within the facility) were built to float on the newly raised land. Some of the buildings were also used to house military personal during World War II.
The facility has many buildings, the one visitors are most interested in is the Turtle Barn. This is where all the many (healthy) species of sea turtles are housed. So far we have seen loggerheads, hawksbills, Kemp's ridleys and greens and all of many different ages. There are first years, second years and third years. The three year olds are a lot bigger in size than I expected! They are also the ones we will initially be working with (when we get to that point). Other buildings that contain sea turtles are the Wet Lab and Sick Bay. These are for the sea turtles that need to be attended to due to poor health.
The outside of Stephanie's lab. The building holds three
12-foot diameter tanks for the sea turtles.
We are fortunate enough to have desks to set up our computers at and enjoy the air conditioning in the office part of the Wet Lab. Where we will actually be performing our trials in is a separate tarp building just next to the Wet Lab but unfortunately, this building does not have air conditioning. So, we will make due with what we have. We were able to sit in on "Monday Meeting." Although short, we were able to introduce ourselves to many of people who work here.
There is also another research study being conducted that began today and will continue through the week. Dr. Craig Harms, a highly respected sea turtle veterinarian, and Beth Cranston, a veterinarian student, will be looking at how long certain antibiotics remain in a sea turtle's blood stream. Today is mostly preparatory work (initial weight, blood sampling, etc) and tomorrow they will administer the drug to a large quantity of sea turtles. The treatments will be given to the sea turtles two minutes apart so they will have to move quickly, never mind when it’s time to actually sample the blood! Once the drug is administered, they will sample the blood at 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, 4 hours, 8 hours, etc., up to 10 days!. They definitely have their hands full, and I'm excited to see how things work out for them.
Next on the agenda is to look into possible ways to make part of our lab air conditioned, not for personal comfort, but for that of all our electrical equipment we are going to use to run the trials. We will brainstorm some ideas with Ben on how to do that. Also, we need to meet with a woman named Connie who will set is up with our badges, key cards and a hurricane phone tree. Hopefully we won't need that last one any time soon.
Tuesday, July 8
A sea turtle in which Stephanie will be testing its
hearing capabilities.
Ashley and I did come across a few more obstacles yesterday that we had to address today. First, we are having a sea turtle harness made for us by a local Virginian vinyl company called Little Bay (this is to keep the sea turtle very still so it can't move and disrupt our data). This harness will be used to hold a sea turtle still when we are collecting ABR data (Auditory Brainstem Response).They called and said they needed measurements for the hole where the sea turtles head would be placed through. So, after a few minutes of thinking, we decided it would be easiest to actually measure the circumference, length and width of one of the larger sea turtle's neck, buy some fabric and from the measurements, cut a hole in the fabric and physically slip it over the sea turtle's head. Well, we went to Wal-Mart that of course did not have a fabric department, so instead, Ashley and I bought some large men t-shirts and cut those up and slipped the 4 inch hole over the sea turtle's head. It fit perfectly and we relayed the information to Little Bay.
Ashley and I also took a look at our tank we would be using in our lab to hold the sea turtle in and conduct the trials. The tank is 12-feet in diameter and about 5-feet deep. It holds about 4,000 gallons of water and takes about 40 minutes to completely fill up. It was also pretty dirty so we jumped in and rinsed it out with fresh water.
The next thing we are trying to brainstorm is how exactly to map out our tank (basically make a big grid so we have labels for each section). Some ideas we have come up with are netting, tape and PVC pipes, but we don't think those will be good enough. Netting seemed to be the best idea out of all of them, but it was hard to find nets with a 1 square foot grid. Another idea we came up with was taking clear plastic sheets and marking it out with electrical tape and then cut out the squares so we are left with just an electrical tape-like grid. I'm having some problems with it, but maybe will have better luck with it tomorrow.
Wednesday, July 9
Scratch that grid idea! The plastic-sheet-electrical-tape grid failed miserably and it's now back to the drawing board. I'm just glad we decided to scrap it after only working with it for a few hours. What's funny is that we both decided to give our dads a call. With my dad being a nuclear engineer and Ashley's dad being a contract manufacturing manager, we knew between the four of us we could figure out a reasonable solution for this grid. I think we have started to lean toward fencing. We can always mark out bigger squares within the little fencing squares. We still have a little more to figure out with this grid, such as how big to make each sampling square and how exactly to mark each square (without having to cut the fencing).
Ben is helping us with our tank set up; we need to put in support beams across it so we can 1. suspend the sea turtle in the harness 2. suspend our J9 (underwater speaker) and 3. support our grid when we finally put it up. He is also going to start making an "office" space for us in our lab. This way we will be able to control the climate in a smaller area and be able to leave our equipment out without having to worry about the heat. How he is going to do this, I am not sure of yet, but I'm interested to see what he comes up with!
Friday, July 11
The past two days have definitely been busy. Ben was able to take a corner of our lab, put up a door and wrap plastic sheets all around it so basically, we have our own little office. We have named it "The Cave." The Cave is now air conditioned.
Ashley and I went out to Home Depot to pick up the AC unit for the Cave and Wal-Mart to pick up some miscellaneous things. We have been to these two stores every day so far. I really hope we don't make a habit out of this!
Because Ben was able to create the Cave for us, we were finally able to set up all our equipment. We made a diagram of everything before we left Virginia because setting up the equipment isn't as easy as it sounds. There are so many wire connections between the 10+ pieces of equipment that it definitely becomes overwhelming at first glance. But with our handy diagrams we were able to set everything up without any problems. We also mounted our camera and light above our tank (for the behavioral trials), but we had to feed the wires into the Cave so they can connect to the rest of the equipment but also make sure they are shielded (mostly) from the salt water. We took some PVC pipe and fed the wire down it and used a rounded PVC connector pipe to curve into the Cave. All we have left to do is find some way to suspend the J9 underwater speaker within the tank.
WEEK 2: Monday, July 14
It was definitely nice to have a weekend to rest up. Although it wasn't complete relaxation, Ashley and I did enjoy ourselves on the beach for a few hours. It's so nice being able to temporarily call such a beautiful area "home," but the weekend memories faded fast as this Monday progressed.
After making some phone calls to a few biologists who have mapped out tanks before, we decided to use a grid based off of 25cm squares. Because our fencing already has 1 square inch grating, we will mark off 10 by 10 squares to roughly obtain the 25cm2 squares. We had some issue finding nylon flagging to mark the grids, so we decided to use masking tape and rip off small pieces of tape and wrap them around the individual links between the 1 inch squares. It's hard to visualize from my horrible description, but when it is done I will definitely post a picture.
Now, when the grid is complete and we are ready to start acoustically mapping out the tank, we are going to be using a sensor called a hydrophone to collect the data. Because the tank is 12 feet in diameter, we obviously can't reach all the way to the middle to feed the hydrophone down into the tank. We decided the best way to do this is by purchasing an extendable boat hook. So again, we couldn't go a day without running an errand and since we were out we thought we might as well pick up a few more things we needed from Wal-mart. We are definitely keeping the Galveston Wal-Mart and Home Depot in business, that's for sure!
Dr. Craig Harms and veterinarian student Beth Cranston finished up their antibiotic research (taking all the blood samples) and left the lab today. We are not sure exactly how their study went because they have to send the blood samples out to be analyzed. Hopefully when they get their results, we will get some word from them and see how things went.
Other than that, today was mostly filled with literature searches (we are attempting to find any published papers that have used any techniques, ideas, or even the same equipment to help us in our overall set-up), but again, because this type of study is fairly new, it is hard to find anything out there that would be helpful. Hopefully we will have some better luck searching.
Tuesday, July 15
Today was my day to officially start the grid. Ashley and I had to connect three pieces of fencing to actually cover the entire tank. But now that the two person work was out of the way, I had to take on the grid by myself. There really is not point to have two people work on such a tedious project when there are many more things that need to be taken care of so Ashley left me alone with this massive grid. It was sort of intimidating at first knowing I had to mark out roughly 200 squares. I kept thinking to myself how many pieces of tape I would actually have to rip off. I started to do some quick math in my head and decided for my own sanity, to just leave the numbers out of it. So, I put on my headphones, picked out a nicely put together rock n' roll play list on my iPOD, and got to work. Let’s just say, after about four hours of ripping and tearing tape, your fingers aren't exactly happy with you. I have a feeling they will still be sore in the morning.
The Turtle Barn, where different species of sea turtles
are housed at the NOAA Labratory.
When I was working on the grid, Ashley had stopped by the Boat Barn where I was working (the Boat Barn is the newest building at the NOAA facility, it's basically a really big garage with lots of space) to tell me some good and bad news. The good news, the sea turtle harness finally came in! The bad news, the hole where the head of the sea turtle was supposed to fit in was too small! Now, there are two possible things that could have happened (Ashley and I started to brainstorm possible reasons). First, there had been some miscommunication between us and Little Bay previously, Ashley had given them all the dimensions of the harness in centimeters when they had wanted inches. Ashley did the conversions and relayed the corrections. So to prevent this from happening again, Ashley gave them the measurements for the head hole in inches when they had called and asked us about them last week. It's possible they could have thought we gave them the measurements in centimeters instead of inches. That would make the hole a lot smaller. The second thing we think may have happened is that when Ashley told them we wanted the diameter of the hole to be 4 inches, they made the circumference of the hole 4 inches. It really doesn't matter which one is right because the hole is still too small. Ashley is going to call them tomorrow and see what we can do about it because there really is no possible way to fit a three year old sea turtle's head through it.
For us to receive our official NOAA badges, we had to fill out some forms and then go down to the County Sheriff's Office and be fingerprinted. Because NOAA is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, they need to have a record of our fingerprints on file. I've only been fingerprinted one other time in my life, but I don't think preschool's arts and crafts really counted, so this was a nice break from the grid.
Wednesday, July 16
The grid is completely marked out! It took a few hours of good music, but it looks great. Ashley helped me rinse it off (the grid definitely wasn't clean, just leaning against it would be enough to leave the pattern of it on you in dirt!) and we let it dry for a few hours while we took care of some other work.
Although some of the other work still required me to think about the grid, it wasn't nearly as painful as marking it. Each square in the grid needed to be labeled so when on the tank, it will be easy enough to tell which square is which. I counted up all the full and partial squares and made a grid in Microsoft Excel so we had a smaller visual of the grid's layout. There will be more to mark on the grid like the J9 position in the tank and squares we will not be using for measurements (one’s that don’t fall within the tank), so when the layout is complete, I will somehow post it.
Another thing Ashley wanted me to take care of was calling the company Sontek about one of their products, an acoustic doppler velocimeter. Basically this sensor is used to measure the particle velocity in the water and we just wanted to run our project by the company and see what velocimeter was the best for what we are going. I spoke with an application engineer and got some good feed back from him. From this information we will decide whether or not we will use it.
Thursday, July 17
The Mapping Grid
The grid is finally finished! Talk about a relief! Ashley helped me take the grid to our lab and we spent some time positioning it on top of the tank. We decided to use some strong Velcro to keep the grid stable on the tank so we don't have to worry about it moving around. This will help keep our measurements as accurate as possible. It just feels so good to not have to worry about this grid anymore. It's not longer an idea in our heads, it's a completed project!
So now that we have the grid set up on the tank, we decided to play around with our equipment a little and test everything out. We worked out a few kinks and became familiar with the software again. The question on how to suspend the J9 came up and tomorrow I'm going to make a phone call to the company we rented it from and ask for their opinion and ideas. Once we get this speaker set up in the tank, we can start acoustically mapping out the tank in preparation for our trials.
Friday, July 18
Today was filled with phone calls, literature research and math equations. I called Jeff Szelag today and asked him the best way to position the J9. He said to just suspend it with strong cable or wiring halfway down the water column horizontally. Ashley and I were both thinking along the same lines, but it was nice to have some conformation. We also did some literature research to see if we could find any other studies that used J9s so we could compare techniques and sampling times. We found a few that seem promising but still have to completely read over them.
Now as for the equations, we have to make some conversions with our data from particle velocity to SPL (sound pressure level). We have some of Dr. Bartol's old Excel spread sheets that contain similar information with the equation already set up in Excel. We have to use that spread sheet to figure out exactly what was plugged into the equation and when and compare it to our data. Basically we need to make sure we understand the entire equation before we start plugging in numbers, otherwise we could do something wrong and completely discredit out data. It's time consuming but when you have to physically work through an equation to understand it, you remember and understand it a lot better. We will have to spend some more time on the equation, but we have made progress which is always encouraging.
WEEK 3: Monday, July 21
Today was filled with more literature research. Any paper that dealt with tank mapping, J9 speakers or underwater acoustic sampling, we read over. We really wanted to find any information about sampling times. We need to figure out how long to run the J9 for and record the information with the hydrophone. There have been experiments that ran a sampling time for 20 seconds and others for four seconds. Seeing we will be recording 15,000 data points per second, we came to the conclusion that a four second sampling period will definitely be long enough.
We suspended the J9 to one of the support beams on the top of the tank but it isn’t sitting perfectly centered, so I think we will eventually need to fix it so it does sit right. But until then we decided to run a few test trials just to get the hang of it and see how well everything would work. Before we begin sampling, we will always have to record the temperature and salinity of the water. We noticed when we ran some of the trials there was no place on the software to correctly measure the sampling period. We may end up just using a digital watch to measure the four seconds if we can’'t figure out a way (if there is a way) to do so on the software. Tomorrow we will work with the J9 and find a way to secure it better.
Tuesday, July 22
To reposition the J9 in the tank, Ashley and I decided it would be best to drain the tank. This made things a lot easier seeing someone was able to stand in the tank and hold the J9 steady while it was being secured to the support beam. We were successful in suspending the J9 and it is now perfectly centered and we can finally start mapping out the tank.
Ashley and I always joke about how everything we have done with the project so far has not come easy to us by any means. With that in mind, we are keeping an eye on Tropical Storm Dolly. We both knew we would eventually have to worry about hurricanes, but didn’t think the worrying would begin mid July! Hopefully she will stay near the southern part of Texas and not hit close to us, but even still we will probably get thunderstorms. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but when you are measuring frequency levels, every car that drives by, every conversation happening outside of the lab and certainly every boom of thunder is going to affect our data. After two weeks of putting in so much time and work into this project, it will be refreshing to actually start collecting data. We are keeping our fingers crossed!
Wednesday, July 23
Sea turtle hatchlings
Ashley and I were nervous to wake up this morning to thunderstorms, and although we did get some wind and rain, we also had a water pump issue. There was a miscommunication with the pumps between some of the people who worked there and our pump to the tank was accidentally turned on and flooded our lab. Now, it sounds a lot worse than it really was, the Cave is up a few stairs on a platform and the water wasn’t more than a few inches deep on the floor. It was just a set back we had to deal with and were able to deal with it quickly. We are just extremely lucky that none of our equipment got wet.
Like I mentioned before, we did get a lot of rain and wind. At first we didn't think that would be a problem while mapping, but when we tried to get a few trials completed the wind was so strong that it was picked up on our hydrophone. So, there is no way we would have been able to get accurate data. Thank you Dolly! So instead, we updated our grid on Excel. Ashley also created spread sheets for us to record all the information we will need when mapping each tank like the grid I.D., water temperature, salinity and corresponding file names for each frequency. We also made some phone calls to get answers to a few questions we had about our equipment. So we are as prepared as we possibly can be when we begin mapping this tank.
With this extra time we had, I decided to work out some numbers and see just how many trials we were going to have to complete to map out the entire tank. Basically, we need to sample three different depths in each square and at each depth we need to test 21 frequencies (50 Hz, 100 Hz, 200 Hz, 300 Hz, up through 2000 Hz). So for one square we need to do 63 trials and there are 177 total. That’s a total of 11,151 trials and they each take four seconds! You can do the exact math if you really want to see how long this is going to take us, but the time is roughly over 12 hours! I really hope we can get started on this tomorrow just because it is going to take so long, plus once we are done with the tank mapping, we can start training the sea turtles!
Thursday, July 24
This morning started out basically the same, the lab was accidentally flooded again so I had to push the water out for the second time, and let me tell you that really works the back muscles! My back is sore after two days of pushing water, but it's a good work out if you want to look on the bright side. Again, our equipment was spared, but still makes us a slightly nervous.
We did map out a few squares today, and although the trials were running pretty smoothly, it's really hard to get the quiet we need to do so. On Tuesdays and Thursdays there are free tours of the facility at 10, 11, 1 and 2. Right now each tour is averaging around 80 people and that definitely increases the noise level around the facility. Plus, we still had the wind and rain from Dolly. So although we got to map a few squares, we think a piece of equipment wasn't turned on and didn't allow us to get the best readings possible. We've decided that tomorrow we will redo the three squares we finished today just to make sure everything is correct and we get the most accurate readings possible.
Friday, July 25
It's funny how you never really notice how much commotion is around you when you are not concerned about noise. Today while mapping, Ashley and I realized how many trucks, cars, airplanes and helicopters go by the lab in a day. We had to delay so many trials when a truck drove by or when a helicopter flew over us, it was crazy! Never mind the fact that the generator repair man came in today and for an hour worked on a generator that is right next to our lab. That took away a solid hour of our time we could have used for mapping, but hey, those are only minor set backs. With all the interruptions taken into account, mapping the 21 frequencies of one square at all three depths takes about 40 solid minutes. We were able to map out five squares and everything went smoothly.
One thing I found interesting was when the J9 is out of water and emitting sound, my ear can hear all the frequencies except for 50 Hz. Yet, when the J9 is 27 inches deep in salt water, I can only hear sound being emitted at 900 Hz, 1000 Hz, 1100 Hz and 1500Hz through 2000Hz. The change in medium alters my ability to hear and Ashley and I would occasionally ask each other if the other could hear what we were hearing. Might as well enjoy ourselves while doing such tedious work! I can't wait until we finish up this mapping and are able to start training the sea turtles. We are hoping by some time next week we will be able to do so!
WEEK 4: Monday, July 28
As the days go by, they become more and more frustrating. This tank mapping is extremely tedious and it is so difficult to find a time of the day where there isn't a lot of excess sound. We didn't start the day with mapping though. Instead, we took the five squares we did completely map and input their data into an Excel spread sheet so we could put them into equations already set up in Excel. Although this doesn't sound too difficult, it's pretty time consuming. It was necessary to do it today because we needed to make sure everything was on track and we weren't missing something while sampling, otherwise if something was wrong and we didn't find out until later, we would have wasted all that time mapping out the squares incorrectly. The raw data is put into an Excel template, but isn't technically an Excel document, so before we do anything we have to save all the raw data as an Excel Workbook. Then we can manipulate and use the information as we please. Well, we have so much information that at first we were getting error messages for everything! We have 60,000 points for four seconds of sampling (15,000 data points per second) and we found out the hard way that Excel can only plot up to 32,000 points. I'm sure they don't get many people trying to plot over 32,000 points, but for us it's an inconvenience! Long story short, we worked on one squares entire information for over three hours (we had a lot of kinks to work out along the way).
This cut into a lot of our mapping time, we did a square before we left around 5pm. But then came back around 6pm and did two more. We would have completed more but the wind picked up and it becomes really loud when your roof is a big tarp. Needless to say, we left frustrated and anxious. Once we finish this mapping we will finally be able to work with the sea turtles and we are both excited to do so. I fly out of Galveston on the 13th of August (to get ready for the fall semester), and would really enjoy spending some time here working with the turtles. This just shows how crazy the first year of grant research can be. There are just so many problems to work out and obstacles to work around. But trust me, it's definitely worth it although I may talk about how frustrating things can get around here. The success of this research will be much sweeter because of all the hardships we have overcome.
Tuesday, July 29
I really don't think it's possible to have anymore factors interrupt our sampling. First, ever since we moved here we realized that we had some extremely loud neighbors living above us (we are on the first floor). We first decided to let it slide, but it always seemed like they were so much louder between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., you know, the prime time to sleep. We have no idea what they are doing up there. It's gotten to the point that we've actually brainstormed possible ideas on what they could be doing. We have come up with jumping up and down with steel boots on, rearranging furniture, practicing "Stop, Drop and Roll" and many other things. Well last night, it was awful. We were planning on getting to the lab bright and early at 7 a.m. to kick out a lot of our mapping, but our neighbors decided to jump, drop and roll or rearrange furniture all night long. We are going to say something to our landlords because we really can't be wasting this time in the lab.
Because we didn't get to start the day as early as we wanted to, we were in the lab at 8:30 a.m. but the generator right near our lab did its weekly run at 9 and went for 30 solid minutes. Then around 9:45 people started showing up for the 10 am tour, then there's the 11 am tour, the 1 p.m. tour and the 2 p.m. tour. Needless to say, we didn't get nearly as much as we wanted to do today. We are going to come back tonight around 8 p.m. or so and try to work through the night. At least then we don't have so much to worry about when it comes to excess noise.
Wednesday, July 30
Last night wasn't as productive as we would have liked, but it was definitely a lot less noisy. We left around 12:30 a.m. because we both weren't feeling well. We also found out that we share our lab with group of cockroaches and believe me, they are big! Now, cockroaches really don't bother me, what bothers me is how fast they are! Having a two inch long bug run past you faster than you can blink isn't my idea of fun.
What's frustrating is that although we had calculated how long it was going to take us to map out the entire tank, that only counted actual sampling time, not operator time. When we complete a recording, we have to write down the file name and move the hydrophone and change frequencies. So, since we are averaging 40 minutes a square I multiplied that by how many squares we have left to do and it will take us around 110 hours to finish mapping! That is just an unreasonable amount of time to dedicate to this. We are brainstorming a few ideas on how to cut the time; one is by only doing two different depths per square (roughly 81 hours). If that is the case and we work solely at night in 10 hour shifts, we can finish mapping in eight days (well, eight nights). I leave in two weeks so time is running short and mapping would take too long for only one person. I think Ashley and I are going to become nocturnal like our cockroach "lab mates."
Speaking of nocturnal, we are planning on coming back here tonight again to knock out some squares. If we do have to sample all the squares at the three depths, there's no point in wasting tonight. My problem is that I'm not feeling well, which is making it hard for me to stay in the hot lab for long periods of time, never mind stay up all night. I just hope we get a lot done tonight. Science doesn't stop for a cold and neither will I!
Thursday, July 31
Last night Ashley and I returned to the lab around 10 p.m. but were unsuccessful. It took us over one hour to complete half a square. With progress like that on a windy night, our time is better used sleeping. And that’s just what we did.
So since there were tours today, we decided to get some other things taken care of. First, I asked Ben if he could get us a list of all the medication our turtles have taken to see if any of them would affect their hearing (as a side effect). He said he would get that for us soon. Then I read a few papers that dealt with animal training so we have a solid background when we are able to start actually training the turtles. One of the literatures I read was Dr. Bartol’s dissertation. She focused on the visual aspect of sea turtles, and had to train them to respond to certain stimuli. It was fun to read through it and see how she accomplished the project. I took down some notes and followed up on a few citations within the literature and then started working on file conversions.
I’m telling you, nothing is a quick process with this project. To convert the data, it takes a solid 3.5 hours per square! And as you already know, we have a lot of squares. It’s not hard to do; it’s just another tedious process we need to go through. Well, tonight we are coming back to the lab; hopefully we will map out a few more squares.
Friday, August 1
We went back to the lab last night around 10:30 p.m. and were able to get a few squares done, but it eventually became too windy, and we had to stop. I had spoken with my dad yesterday and he said that the wind usually dies down around 4 in the morning. So, we took his advice, walked outside at 4 a.m. and turned right back around once we felt an immediate gust of wind. Even if my dad is right about that, this morning was not a good example. So we went back to bed and woke up a few hours later to work on more file conversions. We tried to get some mapping in, but the wind was not permitting any data collection. We finally called it a day around 6 p.m. and decided to treat ourselves to some dinner and a night off. We will be working tomorrow though; hopefully we’ll get some mapping done.
Saturday, August 2
Because we don’t normally work on Saturdays, we completely forgot that there are tours throughout the day. That definitely put a halt on our sampling. And even when we did go and attempt to sample, we were only able to run six trials due to wind and traffic on the busy Seawall Boulevard. So instead, another day was focused on converting files, a lot of files. Tomorrow we are going to focus on converting files, getting some sleep and then going to the lab tomorrow night. It has to be quite on a Sunday night, right?
WEEK 5: Sunday, August 3
This morning we woke up and were over at the lab for 7 a.m. It was nice and quiet, and we were able to map out a few squares before the morning rush. We then slept for most of the day in preparation for the long night we had ahead of us. We went over to the lab around 11 p.m. and started sampling. The wind began to pick up around 1 a.m., so we decided to take a break and make some brownies to keep our spirits up. I'm telling you, hot, fresh brownies at 1:30 in the morning really do change your outlook on any situation. We went back to the lab and stayed there until 4 a.m. We were able to get a lot more done than usual, and man, does it feel good!
It's now time to get some sleep and hopefully tomorrow we will be able to map out more squares.
Monday, August 4
Today was another crazy day. A phone call at 9 in the morning woke me up (don't forget I went to bed at 4:30 a.m. last night (well, this morning). It was Connie from NOAA making sure Ashley and I had emergency contact phone numbers in preparation for Tropical Storm Edouard tomorrow. Now, at 9 a.m., even after going to bed at a reasonable time, I am not very aware of my surroundings, and I didn’t remember hearing anything on the news about a tropical storm heading our way! So, I woke up pretty fast and spoke with Connie about emergency contacts and evacuation options, and then went back to bed after we hung up the phone.
I told Ashley about the call when we woke up a few hours later, and were advised by Ben, the lead scientist, and Dr. Bartol that we should move all of our equipment into another building and take down the camera from the ceiling. It really wasn't too bad putting the camera up there, but now that the tank was full of water, and we needed it to stay full for the J9, the task became slightly more difficult. I decided to play gymnast and balance on the H-frame while holding onto a ladder that we placed in the tank. It took a few minutes to disconnect everything, but I was definitely happy once I passed the $3,000 camera over the water and into Ashley’s hands outside of the tank. Talk about nerve-racking! Hopefully Edouard doesn’t hit too hard tomorrow, but at the same time, after doing all that work, I hope Ashley and I get to weather through our first (potential) hurricane.
Tuesday, August 5
Apparently Edouard hit land this morning around 7 a.m. only as a tropical storm. Both Ashley and I slept through it, and when we woke up it wasn't even raining. It was funny because we had to turn on the Weather Channel to see what Galveston had gone through, but it obviously wasn't anything too bad because again, we slept right through landfall. That's what exhaustion will do to you! We decided to go back over to the lab and re-setup all our equipment so it wasn't in the way of anyone tomorrow morning. It was sunny and hot when we were doing that; you wouldn't have thought we were in a tropical storm and flood warning. After that, we spent the rest of the night converting some files and preparing for tomorrow. We think we are going to start training the turtles during the day now and continue to map at night. We have some brainstorming to do about exactly how we are going to train them, but that's the fun part!
Wednesday, August 6
The days are getting busier as my flight home gets closer. Today Ben was able to get me the list of all the medication the 10 three year old sea turtles have been given since they arrived here as hatchlings. All three were given the same medication for bloating problems (they can't dive when they are bloated). Ashley is going to give Beth a call and see if she can get us any more information on the drug to see if it effects the turtles' hearing at all. I did some research but was unable to find anything helpful.
Ashley spoke with Soraya and Ian, her husband who is a professor at Old Dominion University, and they talked about a lot of things: equation conversions, mapping, behavioral training, the works. Now that we were all on the same page, Ashley and I went to Home Depot and picked up a lot of material. We ere able to construct one of the two response keys (what the turtle will bite when it hears or doesn’t hear the sound) which we put together PVC pipes to do so.
Tomorrow is going to be a lot more hectic because we want to attach the pressure transducer (also known as the "observer key," which the turtle will bite to start the trial) to the support beams on the tank, lower the lamp on the ceiling (which will turn on once the turtle bites the observer key to know the trial has started) and reattach the camera that we had to take down for Edouard. It's going to be a long day, but once all this is done we will be able to start training the turtles!
Thursday, August 7
Well, I wasn't exaggerating when I said today was going to be long. Yet again, we had to travel out to Home Depot to pick up more supplies. Once we did that we were able to attach the observer key, sand and mount the response key and lower and remount the light. I wish it was as simple as I just made it sound, but it took most of the day. We left around 4 p.m. but returned around 7 p.m. to remount camera. We thought this was going to be a quick trip into the lab, but we were wrong. Now that we have the location of the two response keys, we needed to make sure they were in the field of view of the camera. Well, they weren't and there was no possible way to angle the camera otherwise. So now we need to see if we can get another lens that has a wider field of view to make sure we can capture most of the tank. I’m telling you, it's just one thing after another! I hope we can resolve this problem quickly.
Friday, August 8
Today we were finally able to work with a sea turtle! Before we could start the training, we had to let the turtle get used to its new tank for about 30 minutes. In that time, we made a makeshift fishing pole with the boat hook we bought a few weeks back. We used fishing line and a snap swivel so we could hook a squid on there without worrying about harming the sea turtles beak. This fishing pole was used to lure the turtle to the observer key in the middle of the tank and get it to bite the key. Once it ate the first squid of the observer key, it kept going back to it and biting the key hoping another squid was around. The threshold of the observer key was perfect, so when the turtle bit the key, it triggered the lamp and began the trial. The sea turtle was given four squid in the 40 minutes we trained it, and in that time we were able to get the turtle interested in both the observer key and response key. It was so much fun to finally work with a turtle, the hard work we have already put into this project definitely pays off.
Once we were done working with the sea turtle, we made the second response key and also started making our food chutes. These food chutes are necessary to deliver the reward (squid) when the turtle has made a correct choice in the training, but also make it so we, the trainers, are out of the sight when the trials are running so that we are not a visual cue for the turtle and allow it to use the sight of us as the reason why it goes to a certain response key. Basically what is the turtle will bite on the observer key to start the trial, and then if it hears sound it will go to the "yes" response key and bite it. If there is no sound present and the turtle still bites the "yes" response key instead of the "no," it will not get a food reward. If one of the trainers is standing at the correct choice and the turtle sees that, it is possible it will go to that response key because of its visual cue of us, not the auditory cue. That is why it is so important to not interact with the turtle during a trial. Tomorrow we would like to completely make the food cutes, mount the second response key, and maybe work with another turtle!
Saturday, August 9
Today was another busy day. We hit some more road blocks in the designs of some of our equipment. Today is the fourth day we have been to Home Depot in a row, and I am starting to grow a strong dislike for the store. We called around to a bunch of places looking for suction cups with plastic hooks (instead of the metal ones because they would rust in salt water) so we can keep our food chutes close to the side of the tank; we were unsuccessful in that quest. Instead, we took the metal hooks off the suction cups and attached them to some plastic hanger straps used to secure PVC piping. We are hoping the suction cups will have a tight hold on the tank and stop the food chute from moving side to side when the turtle is around it.
Tomorrow we are planning on coming in early like last week to hopefully get some mapping done. Sunday morning seems to be a nice, quiet time, so we are keeping our fingers crossed.
07.24.08
updated 08.05.08
updated 08.12.08