We had two really productive, one-week field courses with Colorado State University (CSU) and St. Mary’s University (StMU) with 28 students in total! We conducted 13 sessions of morning observations with underwater video and space use data collection. This yielded 6+ hours of video data each on three different cameras: the MVA4, the front-facing GoPro, and the back-facing GoPro. Also, during the first week, we had John collect above-water video with the drone in association with my early morning video data observations. So, we have several views from which to document behavior of the dolphins being observed. We also collected space use data with the drone and without, but all with panoramic photos at each scan by students from four locations around the main lagoon. All of the space use data from both weeks were entered into excel for processing during the second week (thank you, StMU team!).
Over the next several months plus, we will process the underwater video to log individual dolphin IDs when in view. We will also process the space use data to plot distribution of the dolphins around the main lagoon. We will also compare the drone footage to the space use data to ground-truth the panoramic videos. Preliminary examination of the drone footage suggests we can examine quite a few research questions with that angle and perspective of view. The number of pair swims and other behaviors that were not evident in the MVA or GoPro footage suggests we have two ways to examine these dolphin behaviors/activities.
We thank all the students for their participation, their perspectives and conversations, and for helping with our data collection. We thank Heather, Melissa, and Shane for bringing the students with DCP to AKR/RIMS. We hope each individual enjoyed these sessions as much as we did.
Cheers
Kathleen & Manon