This time last year I was on standby. I was awaiting the call to head north to Alaska to join my aerial survey team. This year I am not on standby because I am not heading north and I am more than a little melancholy about it. Alaska, the Arctic has a way of getting under your skin. I’m really not sure why this happens, especially as I am always stationed in Prudhoe Bay – the largest oil field in the US. Instead I am spending the summer at my desk working to finish my thesis, and wondering what I would have seen had we been up there flying surveys this summer.

I was based in Deadhorse, Prudhoe Bay, perched on Alaska’s North Slope. With its gravel roads and trucks, it is an industrial hive serving the largest oil field in the US, floating on gravel pads atop the Arctic tundra. This is not your typical remote field work experience. The real experience begins when I board the survey plane, a sturdy de Havilland Twin Otter, specifically outfitted with specialized bubble windows for the purpose of marine mammal surveys.  We fly a series of pre-determined transects perpendicular to the coast recording all marine mammals that we see, but we are particularly interested in seeing  bowhead whales.

My PhD research focuses on how bowhead behavioural responses to industry operations influence the ability of aerial observers to detect whales; and how this may impact density estimates of whales in the vicinity of offshore industry activities. Working on these surveys provides me with first-hand experience and a better understanding of the data that I use in my research.

Shell, Alaska produced a pamphlet on marine mammal research in the Alaskan Arctic -includes our aerial survey work

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

To many, both inside and outside of academia, attending a scientific meeting (e.g. a conference, symposia or workshop) may seem like a bit of luxury that only those established in their field should be allowed to attend. However I would argue that these meetings are a key component in the training of graduate students like myself and that our attendance should be encouraged. 

As it happens many scientific meetings do encourage student participation; there are often awards for the best student presentations and student oriented workshops.  Also, these meetings provide us with opportunities to not only learn the latest developments in our field but also to learn who the movers and shakers are in our fields (and if we are lucky, even meet these individuals!).  The opportunities and connections available to us at international meetings often help set us on career paths in our chosen fields that may one day see us become the next generation of movers and shakers, and that is no small thing! Not to mention the valuable presentation and communication skills that we have to learn in order to actually give an award worthy presentation. Have I managed to convince you yet of the value of the scientific meeting to the mere student?

Not quite, well how about this. We, as grad students, are the next generation of scientists in our chosen field. (That in it-self should be enough!) We should be exposed to the experts in our fields.  We should be taught how to share and communicate our findings to the experts in our fields, the academics, government scientists, NGOs and of course our own peers. If we do not learn these valuable skills we risk loosing the fruits of our labour to obscure scientific journals that can few can access! We want to make... or at least think, that we have something to offer and that our work can and lead to progress in our chosen fields.

But for a student to attend a scientific meeting they must have the means to do so and this means $$$!. Without funding these meetings are usually inaccessible to students. Some students are lucky to have a conference budget included in their funding package or perhaps have supervisors who can financially support their attendance.  For others of us without these opportunities we must be resourceful and get really good at finding the money elsewhere. Most universities expect that a grad student will have the opportunity to present their work at a scientific meeting at least once during their graduate program and have limited pots of money available for this.

Over the course of my PhD program I have been pretty lucky – I have been able to attend and present my work at both large international scientific conferences as well as a number of smaller symposia. And I have managed this without any formal conference budget or financial support from my supervisor. How have I managed this you might be wondering? Well in short I have had a good dose of luck and a good credit card in my pocket! (by the way I don’t recommend the credit card route except as a last resort..).  In some cases I have been able to gather up small pots of money from NGO groups, my department and other sources so that at least my flights, accommodation and registration fees can be covered. In others, I have crashed in other student’s rooms, searched on line for cheap hotels or used carefully saved air-miles to save money.  Other times I have had to dig deep into my pockets but this has been a sacrifice I have been willing to take because I understand the importance of being able to share my work with my colleagues, particularly in Alaska. 

This December the 19th Biennial Conference on Marine Mammals is taking place in New Zealand.  After much agonizing I decided against trying to present at this meeting, due in part to the huge cost of getting to New Zealand as well as the fact that I will be desperately trying to finish my thesis at that time and the guilt of being in New Zealand and not working on the dam thesis would be too much for me. But last week, as I signed up to run in my first ever half-marathon, an idea came to me. Why don’t I put this challenge to a greater use? Why don’t I use this half-marathon to help raise funds for student travel grants so that so that I can help other students attend the conference.

 In 2011 I was the lucky recipient of a travel grant from the American Cetacean Society – Puget Sound Chapter (without their grant I would not have been able to present my work at the 18th Biennial Marine Mammal Conference), so over the next few weeks I will be raising funds to donate towards the ACS-PS student travel grants.  Though a slightly offbeat thing to run 13 miles for I hope that I have managed to convince you of the worth of the Scientific Meeting for the grad student and why indeed this is a good cause to support. After all we are the future scientists in our field and in this particular case we will be the ones working to conserve and manage cetaceans and other marine mammals that inhabit our oceans, and working to improve the overall health of the world’s marine systems. A noble cause if ever there was one!