Mysteries of Fall 2008

Catch in trawl. Part of the Marine Faunistics Course trip to Croatia, Marine Biology Masters program in Helsingborg, Lund University, Sweden

Animal photos on a course in Croatia, Halloween, Arx and Nimis, X-rays of my Jaw, and other strange things

Cheap is sexy again

My oh so stylish Swedish friend blogs about the mainstream ascension of dumpster diving and freeganism. Unemployment sores. Credit disappears. The nerve of the nation is frugality, again, as it was during the Great Depression. Den gröna vågen gör intåg i hus och stuga...

If so, I’m on the cusp of cool! The air of scorn for flashy bling, a pocket of saved fastfood napkins, and a shirt I found in the laundry room, all suddenly the mark the with-it.

A Spanish friend and dumpster-diving mentor calls it “buscar vidas”, searching to live (she found the sweets in the picture). To her, and many impoverished others, its primarily for survival. To me, its longterm survival: planetary, ecosystem survival. Gaia gives us 2 degrees to warm, about 500 ppm Carbon Dioxide equivalent, until the planetary system is perturbed to an entirely new homeostasis. One without ice-caps, without the Amazon, without the tundra—an Earth unseen in 3 million years. Its not something that “heals” itself, it sits happily and steady within its new nightmarish balance.

There is a bright side to economic slowdowns. An economic contraction, reduction in material standards of living, slows the rate of climate disruption. And I write that recalling the sting of the early 90’s recession--- and how government marine “biologists” faced numerous bomb threats from fisherman during those years.

In the new tradition of frugality, today a friend and I used construction boxes as sleds to slide down Lund’s only hill of note. Its snowy here. Its quite beautiful. There is a sensual nostalgia to the bitting cool of snow: warm smoking stoves, drafts, the laziness of Christmas, swaying craggy trees silhouetted against ghostly snowscapes. I love it! With it too do the Swedes really shine—they just sort of make sense when it snows.

But with the snow also comes a sense of foreboding. Mostly all of my new friends are leaving in January. Oh well, time to get serious with my thesis.

Fractured jaw

I imagine an injury as being a single parent. In this case, my lower jaw is fractured--it no longer "fits" with the upper jaw. Like a little baby, it's always on my mind, always worrying, a little foreign something on the side of my head, me and not me at the same time. The little gnawing and cracking sounds wake me up in the middle of the night. Always so gentle and petitioning to it. It has changed my life: I no longer go out as I once did, feeling stigmatized.

As part of my bedroom activities, I imagine how far in the past an injury like this would equal death? In five days they're going to put a titanium rod in my jaw, to secure it back in place. X-rays and MRI and serious facial surgery. Could they do that 60 years ago, 80, 110? I think around 110, I'd probably be near the end. I'd probably have been a farmer, and I would have let it heal together on its own in a mismatched unalignment, having my farm wife stoically mash potatoes and cabbage into a paste that would be poured through a tin funnel into my mouth.

At some point, the inability to chew and communicate would have equaled death. Thus, I am all to more apparently wedded to civilization, all the more dependent on murderous dams, vicious pit mining, and omnipresent effluent. If I had my dream and industrial civilization did overshoot and crash, I wouldn't have the blender, the plastic straws, MRI's and titanium alloy to make it all better.

Its apparently routine surgery. My face is a bit swollen, but otherwise the same. They say I'll be back home after the surgery, I'll be alright. I plan on going to school monday. I earned this little bundle of joy by trying to stop a fight. I didn't and got hit, hard. The fuckers ran away. Didn't really hurt at the time, just odd.

Hopefully I post the x-rays soon.

Trawling in Croatia!

When the bottom-trawling was first deployed on mass in nineteenth-century Britain, fishermen protested and petitioned for its ban. No manner of fish can escape the trawl, they knew, and the oceans have never been the same. Since then, whole generations of apologist marine biologists have grown up thinking the ploughed, soft, silty bottoms of the Northern shelves are the norm: we have no baseline, we've never known what is natural...

But ain't it cool! Oh, the anticipation as the engines groan while lugging in the haul. The silvery mass of fish n' net rising to the surface. The gulls hovering eagerly. Everyone's face taut and anxious. Is it a big catch? Did we catch anything rare or maybe endangered?

We trawled and dredged nearly every day in Croatia for a week. One of those things, that despite the sun, the roll of the sea, good people, and the inherent interest of a new culture, it made me think: "I don't belong here. This is wrong."

On the bright side, everyone likes my new tan!

I celebrated my 26th birthday in Split, the Croatian capital. I'm now legally an adult. I left my adult life back in Canada. I look forward to graduating.

Prince Leopold Island Seabirds

Short video outlining the research on and behaviour of seabirds inhabiting a remote island in Arctic Canada - as well as some fun fotage of Belugas!

Prince Leopold Island Summer 2008

The ice is disappearing. Down at Coates Island, northern Hudson's bay, sea extent is down, and the reproduction of the colony of Thick-Billed Murres is plumeting. The Murre, a relatively large, penguin-like auk, dives deep in the arctic seas for fish, sometimes 150 m deep. Arctic ice serves to "seed" the oceans with algae and promote bloom conditions that nourishes the ecosystems, supporting large aggregations of seabirds and cetaceans.

At a more northern and larger colony on Prince Leopold island, Dr. Tony Gaston hasn't noticed a difference in ice. "We're seeing more large icebergs, collapsing from Glaciers, but the amount of ice is the same." This is good new for the birds here. The island hosts 100,000 plus murres, nesting in dense aggregations on the precipitous shale cliffs which drop 280m to the sea. They are doing alright. So are the colonies of Black-legged Kittiwakes, which seem to be on the rise. The alien looking northern Fulmars are having birth defects and reduced productivity, but that's more likely from the global-atmospheric dump of mercury and persistent organic populants than the retreat of sea ice.

I just returned to "civilization" after 5 weeks on the island. Working with the environment canada researcher Tony Gaston, and a few others, we monitored birds' breeding success, abundances, and mounted various instruments on them. There is nothing like living on a seabird colony! The smell and sounds and eye-candle of so many birds packed in so tightly on the cliffs. Where possible, one can get pretty close to the birds too: living so remote, both in terms of latitude and dangerousness of their nesting ledges, the birds haven't evolved much fear of nosy primates. This is to researchers advantage. One can closely observe all their facinating behaviours from close, without disturbing them. The stars of the shows are of course the chicks. And what a drama! Facing horrible 70 km/hr winds, gusts, snow squalls, and little comfort on a narrow ledge 280m above certain death, the heart really goes out to these chicks, each day, watching in their meteroic growth.

If the chicks are the stars, the non-breeding adults are the sideshows. Hormones are high at the colony, and birds are showing off. Loud arial displays, build faux-nests, chasing each other around. Are they trying to attract new better mates, or intimidate rivals from potential breeding sites next year? My favourite sight was the "choking" display of partners: loudly rubbing nape over throat of each other, while fiercely making a vomit/cough head-thrust. This is how Kittiwake partners say "I love you, we're together, right?", as uncomfortable it may seem. And thats whats cool about birds, beginning to understand the emotions and gestures of pair-bonding and parenting, which have evoled in many different alien ways, opposed to the more intuitive gestures of higher-mammals, whom we sympathize with and anthropomorphize so easily.

Their lack of fear nor evolved susticiousness to humans allows us to catch them easily too, sliding nooses around their necks and snagging them with nets (relatively harmless). By catching them, we were able to put geolocating devices on them, dive-depth measurements, and identify bands. Devices like these allow us to see where and how far they go to get food in between incubation turns, and identify individuals over the years. We caught one Murre who had a metal band ID placed on him from the late 70's, making him at least thirty years old (older than me!)

The island always offered a dream of marine mammals: the occasional Walrus, harp seals, bowheads, and when there was ice, belugas. And of course, Polar bears. "I have nighmares of Polar bears," says Dr. Gaston. He's had his fair share of dangerous encounters with them. We walked around with slug-loaded shot-guns, just in case.  

I made a snazzy video on youtube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoqdQNxuh7s

Now, I'm back in the "real world" of civilization, back in Lund, Sweden, to continue with Marine Biology.

Prince Leopold Island

5 weeks on a seabird breeding colony doing research - Summer 2008