March 18-24

As I have said previously in another blog, with 5 minutes more daylight every day, I keep getting busier and busier. This blog will be a short update from March 18 to 24.

We worked on two main tasks in my internship with the Winged Whale research nonprofit. The first was creating and sharing handouts, posters, and online media with the fishermen participating in the King Salmon Derby. Our goal was to inform and remind them of the marine mammals, especially humpback whales, found in Kachemak Bay. There have been sightings of humpbacks, orcas, and other porpoises. Boat strikes are extremely harmful to any animal; a reminder goes a long way in protecting these animals.

Our second task was to update the records of whale sightings in South Central Alaska. Olga and other researchers have been documenting whale sightings for many years, dating back to the 1990s. Much of this data has never been processed, so we have been uploading it to HappyWhale, a website that uses AI to identify and track individual whales around the world. By providing this old data, we hope to make some connections with more recent data.

On Friday, we took another day trip to the Kenai River to monitor beluga whales. We participated in an official monitoring session for the Alaska Beluga Monitoring program. We did a two-hour session at the river. The weather was great, and we saw 4 belugas! The sightings are very short, but we managed to capture some photos!

Lee finally came back from articulating a sea turtle and other reptile skeletons in Mexico. We went birding on Sunday, and I finally saw the Stellars Jay, American and Eurasian wigeon, and Lapland longspur. He also made Grace and me some French toast, which was awesome because I never treat myself to sweets for breakfast.