Week 1: Fill 'er up!

Hello Friends and Supporters of Cetacean Science,

We've been busy here at Cetacean-Science-Central, so pardon the delay in thanking the latest cohort of Rocket-Fuelers.

Special "Muchas Gacias" goes out to Dorota Paczesniak of Switzerland. Dorota wins the prize for the most international fueler in the first week!! Ms. Paczesnaik and I met at the Workshop on Molecular Evolution this summer. In addition to learning Bayesian Phylogenetics, Coalescent Theory and Skyline Plotting, Dorota was a very fast learner in the "Okie two-step", as part of my International Okie-Outreach champaign. Thanks for the support Dorota, and keep on dance'n!!

The other two fuelers this week were Ms. Kate Luthy and Ms. Holly Lincoln. Kate and Holly have been great friends of mine since the early pleistocene, back with the Oklahoma plain was infested with giant ground sloths. These two ladies deserve great honor for putting up with levels of harrasment from my group of friends that boarder on inhumane. Somehow they laugh it off and keep coming back for more. In fact, Kate is a great inspiration to many. Although she didn't say it as eliquently as Teddy Roosevelt:

"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."

...the sentiment was the same when she would say, "Come on guys... it'll be fun". This was usually followed by a trip to the hosital (just joking). Holly on the other hand, is the rock of the group, the pragmatist (mostly). She's the one that would be driving to the hospital...

Thanks guys! Much appreciation from me and the wet guys with wierd fins waiting to be understood! Keep sending the rockethub link to your facebook friends, your twitter contacts and your blogging buddies! Lets fund this thing!!!

PS> Turns out that Teddy Roosevelt and Giant Ground Sloths are intimately connected through my former employer the American Museum. From Wikipedia: The American Museum of Natural History in New York City has a sample of dung with a note attached to it that reads "deposited by Theodore Roosevelt". HA!!! I love it!!

#SciFund Project Receives First Fuel on RocketHub

Special thanks to Ms. Sarah Conrad (of Oklahoma State University Drumline Hot-Chuttla Fame - Go Pokes!!) and Mr. Ray Welch (and his special niece Kira) for being the FIRST contributors to my AMAZING #SciFund Project!

http://www.rockethub.com/projects/3754-why-is-this-dolphin-s-fin-on-backwards

Sarah and I have a special bond in that we both moved to NYC after growing up in small towns in the "Great State of OK". Sarah was a big-wig at some un-named mega broadcasting company, and I was a grunt at the Museum of Natural History.

Sarah: Have you ever noticed when you answer the question, "Where are you from?" (totally grammatically incorrect, I know) with Oklahoma, 98% of the responses are "O.K."? Seriously, I think there is something subconscious about the name of the state that makes people say, "O.K."! I'm going to start peppering my responses to include things like: Sicily, Abu Dhabi, Lake Wobegon, just to see if there is the same response.

And Ray... Ray wanted to do something special for his niece Kira, an avid animal lover and aspiring Marine Biologist (She'll be my boss some day...). THANKS UNCLE RAY!!!

In addition to the "rewards" Kira will receive because of Uncle Ray's donation. She's also inspired me to post updates of the research on this blog - something EVERYONE who donates can now include in their rewards. I'll add you all to a googlegroup for exclusive updates on the progress!

Thanks for the inspiration and thanks for the support Sarah, Ray, Kira!!

Signing off... wait before you do that... stick a Steno!

Yet again the weather stunk today, but we decided to pull into the lee of Kauai and trawl for dolphins. We struck success with a large group of rough-toothed dolphins. These guys are usually disinterested in riding the bow wave, but to our surprise we had ample opportunity to do some biopsy sampling from the bow. Miraculously, we doubled our sample collection numbers for this leg in about 2 hours (up to a whopping total of 6).

Here is the overall summery for sightings added to my personal "life list":

Longman's beaked Whale - Indopacetus pacificus
Bryde's whale - Balaenotpera edeni
Sei whale - Balaenoptera borealis
Rough-toothed dolphin - Steno bredanensis**
Gray's spinner dolphin - Stenella longirostris longirostris
Short-finned pilot whales - Globicephala macrorhynchus**
Fraser's dolphin - Lagenodelphis hosei
False killer whale - Pseudorca crassidens

That's 8 new species including the very rare Longman's beaked whale, and two first timers made the biopsy list**!!!

OK folks - thanks for keeping up with the Okie, and for giving me some good comments and questions along the way. If you have enjoyed, please feel free to post it or email to let me know. After tonight's post, I'm on shore leave with a beautiful brunette for a week, and then I'm head back to the alternative lifestyle of a graduate student thereafter. Thanks again for logging on!

Until next time, be sure to cork your irons and coil your lines!!

Signing-off,

Okie Whaler
photo courtesy of Jim Cotton