Last Sunday, with a good dose of stubbornness and not nearly enough training I embarked on 13.1 miles of a very hilly half marathon.  Just 7 weeks prior my friend Meredith asked me if I fancied doing the San Juan half marathon with her.  At that point I had not even run 10 km! But I began to wonder what if? Could I actually do it? I had 6 weeks to train.... So I signed up. Then I decided I was going to use this run to help the American Cetacean Society Puget Sound (ACS-PS) Chapter fundraise for their student travel grants.  There was no going back now.

The student travel grants will be available for students studying cetaceans either at Pacific NW institutions or study cetacean populations in the Pacific NW. The grants will help students with the costs of attending and presenting at the Biennial Marine Mammal conference in New Zealand this December. It may seem like rather odd thing to raise funds for especially as I will not be attending the conference myself but I know from previous years how important these small grants can be.  In 2011 I received an ACS-PS travel grant when I presented my work at the Marine Mammal conference in Tampa. The grant covered my flight, without it I may not have been able to attend. In a short 3 weeks I had received incredible support from my family, friends, fellow students and other marine mammal scientists. We raised enough for two $500 travel grants. Now all that was left to do was to complete the run!

Training was going well; I was even beginning to enjoy getting out for a run after a day in front of my thesis. Then 3 weeks before the race, after my longest run to date, I was limping. A week later there was little improvement and I was beginning to worry... I was not able to train but more importantly I had a 13.1 mile mission just two weeks away! Jean (aka “Motivator Medley” or “Jean the Machine”) my dear friend and training buddy (who routinely kicks my ass while offering the nicest encouragement all at the same time) suggested I go see a physiotherapist. I have learnt to pay attention to Jean’s suggestions....

With instructions to ice, tape, massage and stretch I headed south to San Juan Island. I was still nervous, I hadn’t been able to train at all for 3 weeks! But once my fellow runners, Meredith and Barb turned up and announced that they hadn’t been able to train much either I felt a bit better. At least we were all in the same boat.

The day arrived, with our entry numbers pinned firmly and music selected we made our way over to the county fairgrounds –start and end of the race. Even as we were waiting for the “go” signal the reality of what I was about to attempt hadn’t sunk in. Then we were off.

The San Juan half marathon wove through Friday Harbor before taking us out into the valley on the open road.  It was about half way through town... not even a mile in that the reality of the situation began to sink in. But once out of town there was no turning back. For the first 5 miles Meredith and I jogged along with a couple of girls from Bellingham and a lady from Vancouver. They set a slow and steady pace which meant that by the time we reached the road that would wind us over the west side of the island we still felt great.

It wasn’t long before the first ugly hill reared in front of us, long and steep, it was not fun. Having made it up the hill we continued on past scattered houses, fields, the lavender farm –not yet in bloom and the lake where little boats gather to sail on long summer evenings. We jogged on to meet the road where the full marathoners turned right and we turned left back to town.  From a field on this corner Daniel, as promised, leapt up from behind the hedge to hand us water.

We continued on only to face the next big hill, not as steep as before but longer and larger... and what you go up you must inevitably go down.  Running down the hill, steeper on the descent was actually tougher than the ascent (yeah we did walk a bit of the big hill... but frankly we were more than OK with that!), by this point we were approaching mile 8 or 9 and my hips were beginning to ache. Mile 10 came up really quickly... too quickly in fact but I barely noticed (I later found out that the Mile 10 marker had been put in the wrong the place), as I concentrated on trying to keep my pace. We were almost to the home stretch, two more miles left to go and two more substantial hills. A marathon runner from Mexico called Fransico unwittingly got me up one hill by simply distracting me from my aching hips with random chatter. And then the last mile, shortly after the marker Meredith and I turned right leaving Fransico to complete his final 8 miles and we had just one more hill to conquer. And conquer it we did (well almost, we walked a bit of it, it is a really mean hill and even meaner after 12.8 miles!) making it to the top and mustering that last little bit of energy to make a dash for the finish line.

In all it took us 2 hour and 39 minutes to complete the course but what is important is that we finished what we started, and that was the accomplishment in itself. Did I think I had this in me back in April? Not at all! So for me this whole experience has taught me that if you really put your mind to it then you can always finish what you started.

Photos in the post were taken by Meredith Fourre, Barbara Sullivan and Debbie Giles

This past Saturday (8th June) was World Oceans Day.  Rather than spending my day writing something philosophical and insightful about the state of our oceans I was instead writing on an altogether different subject -though a subject that is also close to my heart.

The story started on Friday when I received a bit of strange text from my friend Tallulah, a local photographer. It went something along the lines of "I have a newspaper editor friend wanting a blog post from a longboarder for the Huffington Post... it has to be done by Monday". My response "I don't really think I'm qualified to talk about longboarding!". As it happens I longboard so that does sort of qualify me and ideas of what I might write began to form. The remit I was given was to write about why I love to longboard and whether the recent accidents involving longboards gave me pause for thought. 

There are many reasons that I love to longboard; I like the slightly offbeatness of it and I like the unconventional freedom that I get from it.  My board provides me an escape from the slog of grad school and the daily routine. Whether I just get out to skate the neighbourhood, the sea wall or further afield to the Seymour
                                                       Demo forest in North Vancouver. So there is no question that I love to longboard.

After a couple late nights and re-writes (including one on the ferry as I travelled to San Juan Island) I submitted a final draft to Tallulah's editor friend on Monday morning. Less than 24 hours later there I was... well my writing at least, staring at me from my computer screen. Not in a word document but instead on a webpage, the HuffPost Vancouver webpage.

I think I can say that this is my first publication. While it is not the peer reviewed hard core science article that I had envisioned (that publication process takes a whole lot longer than 24 hours!! my paper has been in press now for 3-4 weeks... I have lost count actually), this is no shabby thing. I mean seriously the Huffington Post?? What a weird and wonderful way to start the week!!

Follow this link to read the full article: 
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/frances-robertson/longboarding-safety_b_3418264.html

It’s a Saturday night. Yet, here I am at my desk with a list of thesis stuff as long as my arm staring at me. Trouble is reading about 2-step Generalized Additive Models just isn’t appealing on a Saturday night.  This morning I had grand plans to write a blog post about why I think the BC Liberal government rejected the Enbridge Pipeline proposal... but a case of political posturing sort of lost my interest as the day progressed; there will be many more opportunities to write about this as industrial development along BC’s coast is not going away – whether it be Enbridge’s pipeline or the Liberal’s grand Liquefied Natural Gas plans.   Instead, on a chiding from my friend Jonathan Stern I have decided to write about minke whales – and more precisely the case of the two-stepping minke.

So what is so special about minke whales? Most folk overlook them for being common, being those whales that are the target of Japanese, Norwegian and Icelandic whaling activities. True they are still hunted, and in some parts of the world are they are extremely abundant but here in the Pacific Northwest minke whales are rare. Yes they are rare. In fact NMFS is now reporting fewer than 600 whales in California, Oregon and Washington State waters. So let me say this again... minke whales on this coast are rare. If you see one please report it and then have a little dance party because you just had an encounter with a super cool rare whale! No I’m serious... just don’t fall overboard in your excitement because the water here is really really cold! So this is partly why I think these little whales are so special.

The Salish Sea happens to be what we call a hot spot for minkes. Whales can be consistently found on the banks off the south end of San Jaun Island, e.g., Salmon Bank and Hein Bank during the spring and summer months. In the 1980s they could also be found inside the islands, in fact their presence was so predictable that the waters between Waldron and Stuart Island was referred to as “minke lake”, and it is to this day though you rarely see a minke in ‘minke lake’ these days.

Our ability to photo-id minke whales has provided a foundation from which we can conduct foraging studies through focal follows. You sort of have to know that you are following the same whale for a successful focal follow.... But the data we collect from these focal follows tells us a thing or two about these critters that isn’t so obvious to the casual observer. In fact minke whales tend to frustrate the casual observer due to their unpredictable surfacing behaviour. You never quite know where the whale will come up next or, if indeed the whale will come up! But if you have the patience (this is a pre-requisite of the minke project) you can follow these animals for sometimes hours at a time.

Changes in foraging behaviour may be the result of changes in their prey’s behaviour or perhaps a shift in the main prey base. In the Salish Sea minke whales feed on bait fish, e.g., juvenile herring. In recent years we have observed changes in the way that both birds and minke whales are feeding so could this be due to a change in the main forage fish composition of the area? The insights that we gain into minke whale feeding ecology are a stepping stone to understanding the local marine ecosystem.

I am sure by now you are wondering why I titled this post “The case of two-stepping minke”; sitting down to write about minke whales brings back memories of my experiences with the minke project. Most revolve around floating in our small research boat on Hein Bank waiting for our whale to pop up again. Listening for its breath and scanning 360 degrees searching for that tell-tale disturbance in the water’s surface as the smooth dark back breaks the surface.  In a way their surfacing patterns remind me more of a dance but in reality these whales are always two steps ahead of us leading us off in random dances across the banks, a little whale in constant search of the little fish.