Researchers ready to take whale of a call

John Ford is probably the only person in the world who might realistically
expect to answer his cellular phone and hear killer whales on the
line — live from somewhere along B.C.’s coastline.

Ford, an adjunct professor in UBC’s Zoology Dept. and Fisheries
Centre, and director of Research and Conservation at the Vancouver
Aquarium, is realizing a decade-old plan to link the killer whale
pods that cruise the B.C. coast through the summer months to researchers
at the aquarium.

Ford’s plan, developed while he was doing doctoral work at UBC,
has evolved into a multi-phase project called WhaleLink. The project
involves the establishment of numerous underwater acoustic monitoring
stations along the B.C. coastline, from the southern tip of Vancouver
Island to remote locations near the Alaskan border.

The stations consist of hydrophones connected by armoured underwater
cable to detection and communication devices housed in a weatherproof
casing and powered by batteries and a solar panel.

Whale sounds detected by the hydrophone travel through filters
to microprocessors which activate a cellular phone that in turn
calls researchers. Only sounds that meet the amplitude and duration
of whale calls are relayed through the phone.

The first station has been set up in a Coast Guard navigational
beacon near Robson Bight in Johnstone Strait where pods of killer
whales are found almost daily from early July through September.

The project is aimed at adding to knowledge of local killer whale
activity and solving the mystery of where the whales go when they
leave the southern B.C. coastline for the winter and spring months,
Ford said. It also enhances opportunities for further research into
killer whale language.

Ford plans to have two more sites, in the San Juan Islands and
the Prince Rupert area, operational by early next summer. He is
also seeking approval from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications
Commission to use a low power FM radio frequency to broadcast the
underwater acoustic signal from Robson Bight. That signal will then
be picked up in nearby Telegraph Cove, digitized and sent to the
Vancouver Aquarium via land line. This will serve research purposes
and allow the aquarium to play the whale calls live as part of a
new exhibit.

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