Tracking Albatross and Monitoring Sea Conditions

A good friend of mine works as the captain for the Gulf of Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, a department within NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). I love to be out on the water, so I always look for an opportunity to get on a boat with him. I've acted as a volunteer on a few occasions to help with their research.

The main project I worked on was part of a long going effort to monitor sea conditions within the Gulf of the Farralones National Marine Sancuary and the Cordell Banks National Marine Sanctuary. Due to the unique topography of the ocean floor and the current directions, there is an upwelling of deap sea water in this area that is full of nutrients. The result is an extremely biologically-rich area of the ocean, making this a wonderful spot for marine biologists.

I helped to create a LabVIEW program to track and record data from sensors on a boat as it made transects through the Marine Sanctuary. The program talked to numerous sensors on the boat, and recorded parameters including global position, speed, course, time, water temperature, water conductivity, and the fluorescent level of the water (one of the ways to quantify the amount of plankton present because many exhibit fluorescence). A screenshot of the program is shown below, and I'm happy to pass along the code to anyone who would be interested.

Another project I worked with was the application of satellite tags on albatross to track their migrations patterns. We literally caught the black-footed albatross using a fishing pole. We would get the birds close to the boat by chumming the water, and then we'd use a fishing pole to cast a barbless hook with a fish attached. As long as the bird didn't take flight (they are quite agile and powerful in the air with six-foot wingspans, but not very fast in the water), we could reel the bird in close to the boat by keeping tension on the line. The barbless hook wouldn't hurt their beak, and we could get them into the boat and apply the tags in the middle of their back with a marine epoxy. A few pictures from one of the outings are below, and here is a brief article and another .