Bioacoustics: The Gory Details

Feb 19, Tuesday

Today was more of the same: up at 8, coffee and cookies, in the lab by 9 for acoustics. It was incredibly difficult to be excited about the lab work. The whistles are scarce; the noise pollution, high; my dolphin eavesdropping experience, low. There are always little lines that trick your eyes – this could be part of a whistle. And that – I’ll have to remember to go back to that point and look for it. The problem really starts when I go back after the sample has loaded. I can’t find it. I’m looking at the exact frame I saw it in before, but now its gone. Vanishing lines and magic whistles.

The frustration only starts there. For every day that they took hydrophone samples, there is a file. And in every file, there are anywhere from 5 to 15 samples. And each sample can be anywhere from 30 seconds (rare… appreciated … … cherished) to 50 minutes (dreaded). Julia and I are each assigned several days worth of data for each lab session. The samples are transferred to the computers where we work via thumb drives (actually, everything is transferred this way – they really need a network). Geared up with aviator-like headphones, I open the first day’s file. Then the first recording: 634,772 milliseconds. An 11 minute sample, but all hope is not abandoned.

Perhaps the noise pollution will be low. Perhaps the entire pod was vocalizing during those 11 minutes – during my 11 minutes. In my neatly drawn column color-coded with red a black ink, I transcribe the recording number and total length, then instruct the program to analyze the first 60,000 milliseconds. “OK,” I click, holding my breath as the window vanishes from the screen. First, total blackness. Only my own reflection stares back at me. The curved glass face of the monstrous monitor, last decade’s dinosaur, distorts the image. The headphone orbs look like misplaced Mickey ears, had Picasso ever done his portrait. In a flash of an instant, I see the first few seconds of noise – lines and color scroll across, swallowing the distortion.

It takes an entire minute to create the spectrograph. But within the first 4 seconds, the quality is obvious. I want a blue bar up to 4 kHz with black above it. The more color and the brighter the color in the higher bands, the worse the noise pollution. Black on blue and the dolphins come in loud and clear – if they are there at all. I watch in silence as the spectrograph unfolds on screen. The first milliseconds spit out misleadingly optimistic. And then it comes – hitting the convex glass like a freight train: a wall of robin-egg blue, speckled with black reminders of what silence looks like. Helplessly, I watch as my first minute plays out on screen – and all of it, all 60,000 milliseconds, screeches pastel. Taking off my headphones, no need to listen to the bloody screams of summertime noise pollution, I readjust in the wooden chair. When it is done loading, I click the mute button and play through it again, watching for anything that might resemble a whistle. Or even a click-train. Just something to tell me that the dolphins really were present on that warm day last August, when all of Europe launched their motors in the bay.

One minute down, ten to go. And then on to the next file, then the next day’s file. Milliseconds pile up before me. For the rest of the morning, I hear colors and see sounds.

Lunch is pasta con melanana again – only the second time in two and a half weeks. They really do have a lot of recipes, most of them distinct. We’ve only eaten the same thing twice 3 times out of the 29 meals I’ve had here. Breakfasts don’t count.

During my free time, I went back to the ATM and then to the beach. It was very windy – too windy to take pictures. But the beach looks pretty much the same as it always does, except I’m the only on there. I guess it was too windy for the tanning man and the family with the 2 girls. A few minutes before 4, I walked back to the house. Julia was sitting out front and Bruno was coming from the harbor with Luna. When we all leave, they lock up and we don’t get a key. And then Bruno forgot his. So he hopped on his gummy-worm green bike and raced back to the harbor.

Once back in the lab, while Bruno was organizing the next audio files for us to crack into, I decided to ask about his current research. The perfect question. He face lit up and he was off on another soapbox spiel about good research versus bad research, with examples of both. I thought it was strange that he didn’t include his current project in the orientation he gave when I first got here; then I was always expecting him to start off one lab morning with an overview. But it never happened, leaving me a little confused as a shuffled through the tedious lab work that seemed miniscule without a reference for why I was doing it. I guess that a research overview just isn’t something he thinks of giving because he is so familiar with it – like the rule about plugging in appliances. But when I opened the conversation about his research, he jumped on it.

The acoustics from last August (what I have been analyzing for the last 2 weeks) are the final days of data for a 3+ year study. Everything else has been analyzed and, when I finish the last few days, this stage will be over. I am so glad that I am here for the end of the study instead of in the middle – an entire internship of acoustics would leave kHz humming in my ears for a year. So the next step, which he should be starting next week, is going through all the whistles and analyzing them. I don’t think I will be directly involved in that process unless he decides to walk me through the process just so I can see it. As of now, he admits, he doesn’t have a hypothesis and therefore no clear idea for a paper. But he hopes it will be on acoustics since they have so much data for it. He has been working on a peer review for at least a week, as well as correcting his own paper that he just got back from peer review. So as soon as those and the Spartana are finished (and all are sitting on the brink of completion), we will all be able to move on. Especially Bruno.

Now knowing that I was looking at the last days in August – the last days of acoustics – I started the afternoon lab work without the sense of dread and unconcerned with the number of milliseconds that awaited me. My luck continued: during my last sample, a 48 minute one, someone switched off the hydrophone only 8 minutes into recording. My last 40 minutes would all be silence – and guaranteed silence need not be analyzed. I got off easy. Julia trudged on with the end of her samples while I made dinner.

Risotto is like glorified dinner porridge. Before tonight, I had never had it – much less made it. Andrea showed me how to make it – mostly pointing around the kitchen and thinking out loud in short phases separated with mmmmmmmmmm and all starting with “then.”

“Okay, I show you now.” She enters the kitchen with a hop to get her over the lip in the floor. She looks around the kitchen, which hasn’t changed since lunch – since they moved in probably. “Mmmmm… Asperago.” She opens the freezer and pulls out the bag of asparagus stalks. “Then, you cut. And an onion, please. … Mmmmm…. Pass to me please the knife,” she hands me the knife instead, briefly pointing to the sink. She means pass the knife under the water – maybe wash it. Either way, I wash it and then hold on to it, knowing she doesn’t want it passed back to her. “Then, you chop up very small – okay – then, you fry.” Now she points to the stove. “I prepare to you the pan… here,” she squats down and leans into the low cupboard, pulling out the specific pan to be used. As far as I can tell, none of the pans are that different – unique handle colors. Tonight I will use the green handle. “Mmmmmm,” she stands up, looking around again. The only change is the asparagus and the pan now sitting on the counter. “Pass to me please the oil,” now pointing to the cupboard by my head. “For example… Mmmmm…. Then you put here. Then like this, over there. Then you put rice – I use this one. For example, this one is two people, okay?” The teacup she is holding is used to measure the rice which I will put in the pan on the stove after I chop the onion and asparagus with the washed knife that I am still holding. Each teacup of rice serves two people. Thankfully, I’ve been practicing my Andrea translations. Looking around one last time and pulling her arms through her red coat, Andrea finishes the cooking lesson with “Okay, then. You cook. I go with Luna.” And she’s off. And I’m left with a clean knife and frozen asparagus.

I thought the risotto turned out fine. It wasn’t burnt or too salty. Bruno came in towards the end and added his special touch. He is very particular about his food – and rarely agrees with Andrea’s versions of recipes. Tonight it was the lack of white wine and cream. He added cheese at the last minute, when it was apparently too late to add salt. Perhaps it wasn’t creamy enough, but Andrea was happy with it and rolled her eyes at Bruno when started up about serious risotto. No one was upset and all the plates where cleaned by the end of the meal. Jokingly, Bruno suggested that if I’m not cooking in next week’s programme, we will know why. I’m not concerned – I will be cooking again soon. And Andrea won’t be changing her recipes for anyone.