Hot, cold, warm, colder – Travelling the US

G’Day people,
Fear not, I have arrived safely back in the land of the maple leaf after 3 weeks of travelling around the US. As most of you know I have posted up my last blog of the Beam Reach Program. The stuff happened 4 weeks ago but I’ve been really busy travelling and haven’t had time. Anyway, Miami was bloody awesome! It was fantastic catching up with people, but unfortunately I didn’t get to catch up with everyone which I was bummed about. It felt surreal walking around campus when it had been 18 months since I was last there but I thoroughly enjoyed the weather! Was around 25 degrees Celsius each day so donned the boardies and shearer’s (singlet) and wore my Coopers thongs (aka flip flops) with pride. I was there for Halloween and wasn’t that an awesome night! I had to dress up with what I had in my backpack so went as an injured Wallaby (rugby player). A friend of mine did makeup on me to make it look like I had cuts and bruises all over my face, and she did a bloody great job. I wore a headband with black electrical tape, my Wallabies jersey and the boxing kangaroo flag round my waist. For pics go to my Facebook account. If you don’t have Facebook then you’re of the minority cos EVERYONE has Facebook these days. If you can’t be bothered getting it then I bet you know someone that has it that knows me that can see the pics. Anyway, we went down to Coconut Grove, they closed off the streets and it was just one big party! People were dressed up as everything you can think of and it was just an awesome night partying with all the old crew. Surprisingly I didn’t bump into any Aussies, which I was almost certain I would as they are on exchange there and would have to have noticed me in the jersey. Still, a few pommies noticed me and one of them said to me “At least you guys got an early flight home”. Bumped into a Kiwi and we talked about the shortcomings of bot our countries World Cup campaign. Ahh well, it was great drinking with the gang again, I had an absolute blast!... until the cab ride home. Just as I was going to pay the fare my camera must have fallen out of my pocket and so yep, I lost it. I didn’t realise it till I got back to the apartment and so called the cab company, we had the driver’s name, and left my details. I called them up several times over the next couple of days but nothing eventuated. I had to file a lost property police report in order to claim it back on my travel insurance, which I am in the process of doing now. It’s not soo much losing the camera, it’s losing all the photos I had on it from that night. Luckily I was able to get other people’s photos but still, your photos are always better in your mind, and I had a photo with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! Took me a while to get over how bloody stupid I felt for losing my camera, but it worked out ok because I ended up buying a camera that was better than my old one, and for half the price! Electronics are so cheap in the US! I went to 2 College football games, Canes lost both times. The final game was their last game at this particular stadium as they are moving to the Miami Dolphin’s stadium next season, so the stadium was absolutely packed, and what did they do, they lost by the biggest margin they have ever lost (48-0). At lease they went down in some sort of history for their last game, although the fans left at half time and 3/4time. I don’t know anyone that stayed for the full game, it really was an embarrassment. Miami Hurricanes won the National Championship back in 2001 and quite a few times in the 80’s but they haven’t performed as well in previous years. I was just at the games for the atmosphere, and didn’t really seem to follow the rules. I know what a touchdown is, and what a down is. Show me a game of rugby any day! I went down to Key Largo for the weekend to visit a mate (thanks Big Mike) and we went diving on one of those days. I had dived the reefs plenty of times when I was studying in Miami but of course I’ve forgotten all the names of the fish and corals. Still, it was a nice tropical dive, free might I add as I was able to borrow gear and my mate had a friend with a boat. I went up to West Palm Beach for a couple of days also to visit a mate (great seeing you JD), went wakeboarding as his house backs on to a man-made water ski lake. He showed my Palm Beach, where the rich old people live, and we went to the famous Breaker’s Hotel to have a beer and check it out. That place is amazing! The bar is an aquarium! You put your beer on glass that has little fish and shrimp swimming underneath! It’s a very wealthy hotel and the people that stay there are pretty much in another world. JD and I decided to go for a walk around to check out this posh place, and we saw a couple on a table getting Fosters poured into a glass for them by a waiter. I was dumbfounded. They may be rich but they clearly don’t have expensive taste! The hotel had a series of three pool areas all backing onto the beach, literally 20m from the waterfront. Each area had little cabins at the back with personal bathrooms and a flatscreen TV with couch! It really was another world. JD told me he went to school with kids that had the kind of money to stay at places like this. These are the kids got Porsches (spelling?) for their 16th BDay. Amazing. I’m actually really glad I wasn’t bought up like that. Thanks Mum and Dad for not being insanely rich.
It was just awesome being back in Miami and hanging out with the gang. Big thanks to Shpin for letting me crash on your floor mate and putting on my drinking shoes, you’re a bloody legend, and to Jared, thanks heaps mate for flying down from upstate New York to see me, a dead set champion you are. Was bloody great to see you all and I hope I can catch you again before I head back to Oz.
After Miami I flew up to cold Boston to see Ash and stay with Liz (another chick from Beam Reach) and her bf Dan. We had a great couple of days and I really liked Boston City. It’s a very “pretty city” and quite clean. I’d definitely like to back and check it out more. We checked out Harvard University and saw all the smart rich kids walking round. I got a photo in front of a Harvard University Police car simply because, well, it seemed a bit ironic that highly intelligent, high fee paying students would need law enforcement.
Ash and I parted ways early early on Wednesday 14th Nov. I’m glad we caught up again before she flew back to Oz. We got to know each other really well over the program, became really good friends, and I have no doubt we will keep in touch. So I headed down to the land where the stars at night are big and bright, yep, Texas! Arrived in Waco where I met up with an old high school buddy that is doing his Master’s at Baylor (was bloody great to see you Stoney). We headed down to Austin and checked that out. Found some Cooper’s which made it all the much sweeter. Drinking Aussie beer with an Aussie mate, can’t much better than that! We went out to 6th St which is 4 blocks of just bars and clubs, yep, just barts and clubs. It was insane. I guess Uni of Texas is in Austin which has 50,000 students, yep 50,000 students, so they need lots of places where you can consume fermented vegetable drinks. We went to San Antonio SeaWorld on Sunday and I gotta say, I wasn’t really impressed. Having seen killer whales and other marine mammals in the wild doing their thing and free to swim where they please just makes me feel sorry for those in captivity. Initially when I went to SeaWorld Orlando and San Diego last year I had never really seen marine mammals before and so was really excited, but now that I’ve spent 10 weeks studying them in their natural habitat I appreciate them soo much more, and realise where they truly should be. There is definitely an educational component to having marine mammals in captivity, but the shows they do are quite cheesy and these animals were meant to roam free, not be stuck swimming circles in a tank and jumping out of the water on queue. The amount of revenue they generate for the SeaWorld means they will not be released anytime soon, if at all. I truly believe we will end up having captive marine mammal populations and wild populations. Let’s just hope certain countries can stop live captures for aquaria. Anyway, I could go on for ages about this topic. So I left Texas Monday morning where everything is bigger to head back to the land of the Maple Leaf. I’ve been here 3 days now and yeah, it’s cold. It’s a different kind of cold then back home, even though the temperature is the same. I’ve spent the last few days going to the gym in the mornings thanks to Dean’s membership card. (For those of you that don’t know Dean is Dad’s best man and went to school and trained with my mum, he now lives and works here in Vancouver). I’ve sorted out my uni stuff back home and have got the results from the Beam Reach program and I’m very happy with the results. Now that all my uni stuff is sorted out I’m on the job and accommodation hunt. I plan on basing myself in Victoria on Vancouver Island so will be calling a few businesses that expressed interest in employing me while I was on the program. Will keep you all posted on how I go. Till then, have a good one!

Tim, Timmy, Timbo

P.S. Photos posted up on Facebook soon, I promise!

The last week of Beam Reach ‘07 – Week 10

I know it has been almost a month since the Beam Reach Program finished so sorry for the delay in posting this. I have been travelling around the States and just haven't had time to post it. This is how the final week of the Beam Rach Program went down. Stay tuned for a post on my US travels.

Monday 22nd October
What a bloody busy day! I’ve processed all of my boat data and put them into graphical form for ease of comparison. Still not sure of my stats yet but hope to get some idea for them tomorrow. Work work work.

Tuesday 23rd October to Sunday 28th October
As I write this I am sitting at a table at the airport in Seattle and the Beam Reach Program is now over. Here’s how the one of the busiest weeks of my life went down.
Tuesday to Thursday was the same as Monday. I wake up, go to breakfast, get my laptop, go to the library and work on my project. Some days I would change it up and work half a day in my room and half in the library. Exciting I know! I had meetings with Val everyday and we talked about how my project was going and what direction I’m heading in. Tuesday morning was a little different in that we each gave a quick oral presentation on our Sustainability Reports. As I have explained earlier, mine was on outfitting an existing whale watch vessel with a hybrid biodiesel/electric propulsion system. The sustainability part of it was that it’s using a natural fuel that when used is absorbed back into the carbon cycle, and the electric motor is almost silent underwater when slow motoring with the whales. The beauty of it is that whale watch operators could still be able to get to and from a whale watch site at high speeds and would be able to charge their battery in doing so. All it needs is someone to pioneer it. Granted it would be very expensive but if an operator did it and put a lot of marketing in it, who do you think the public would choose: an operator that is like every other operator, or an operator that has a propulsion system that is environmentally friendly and has minimal noise impact on the whales? I know who I would choose. Pretty soon the other operators would be getting the shits because this particular operator is actually the most “environmentally friendly” and getting the majority of the customers, and so the only way they can compete is to outfit their vessels with a similar system. The beauty with it is that as battery technology and electric power advances, the system can be modified to achieve greater efficiency. If only I had the money to do it myself.
Thursday I analysed 101 individual echolocation clicks which was somewhat time consuming. I really should have done it earlier but I have a system with the way I work. As some of you probably know I’m somewhat of a perfectionist. I like everything to be organised and so when I write projects I think appearance is a vital part. What I mean when I say this, is that I like to have figures and formats all done before I finish the text part of my document. I hate to finish the paper knowing I have to go over everything and make sure it is all formatted. Granted that is probably how u should do it as content is the most important part of a paper, but I like to know when I’ve finished a paper, I’ve finished it (after a proof read of course), and not have to work about making sure all the graphs can be read easily. I started my presentation also, not surprisingly, I have similar “perfectionism” tendencies when creating powerpoint slides.
Friday was crunch time. Up early, worked all day and yep, all night - got 2 hours sleep. Got everything finished of course but I spent way too much time “perfecting” things and could have got a lot more sleep, but I think it was the fact that I’d worked on this project for so long and it was mine, so I wanted everything to be just right. I’m quite happy with the paper overall, but of course, wish I had more time as there are so many more things I could have done with the data I had. Anyway, after 2 hours sleep on Friday night, well, early Sat morning, I got up, practiced my talk again and headed to the Commons at the Labs for the day of talks. Family members of about half the students were there, as were other well respected scientists and members of the industry (Giles, Ken Balcomb, Kari from Soundwatch and others). I was 5th off the rank, last one before lunch, and honestly I thought it went pretty well. It was the first official oral presentation I had done without notes and I was quite satisfied with my effort. I guess it was because I had worked on this paper for 10 weeks and knew it pretty much inside out so was quite comfortable in talking about it. I had to somewhat simplify the contents to make it more understandable to the general public, but I still maintained a scientific yet practical approach to the talk. It was videoed so I’ll be very interested to see what it came out like, as I have never seen what I look like when giving public presentations. During lunch I was chatting to Kari and she wanted a copy of my paper and explained to me the possibility of me going with her over winter to meet with legislators and explaining my science to them, just so they can get a basic understanding on boat noise and echolocation clicks, but particularly vessel types. Granted my work is based on a small sample size but it still really gives you an idea of what different vessels sound like underwater and how they can affect a killer whale’s ability to echolocate. I’m pretty excited as it gives me the opportunity to present science in a way that is different to giving it to an assessor for a grade for a subject. This is something that if happens, will be a fantastic experience.
We finished the talks around 3 and overall they were awesome. It was really good to see exactly what everyone had been working on, as we have all been too busy to explain the specifics of our research, so it was exciting to hear what they had found. The quality of the research overall was awesome. We all had one thing in common, and that was the fact that we needed to increase our sample size. But nonetheless, awesome overall.
After the talks half of the Beam Reach crew left on the 4:15 ferry so it was kind of a rushed goodbye to people I had got to know well over the past 10 weeks. As Ash and I were the only Aussies on the program and in the same group we formed a great friendship over the program and so it was tough to see her go. I know I will see her again back in Oz so I look forward to catching up with her. No doubt we will keep in touch over the next 12 months.
I was absolutely buggered when I got back to the dorms so had to have an afternoon nap (2 hours of sleep will do that to you). We (half of the Beam Reach crew, family and staff) met up after dinner in the dining hall for a Leslie Veirs dessert (always amazing food) and had a bit of a slideshow presentation of some of the awesome photos taken on the program. I’m definitely blowing some of these up and framing them. It was then goodbye to the staff, but I know I will see them again as I’m going to be working (hopefully) only a few miles across the Haro Strait, and I’m confident I will see them out on the water for the Spring and Fall ’08 Beam Reach Programs. I mentioned to Scott about Beam Reach possibly being a co-supervisor for an Honours program I may do in 2009, and he definitely had a positive response so it’s something we can chat about when I settle back down in Canada. I’m excited about the prospect of continuing this kind of work that could potentially have an impact on setting a benchmark for whale watch operator vessels in the future. The operative word however being “potentially”.
Anyway, after having a few drinks with the other students at the labs to celebrate the end of the program, Kenna and I went into town and met Wes and her husband there. I’d never actually been out in Friday Harbor so it was a good night as it was Halloween and pretty much everybody except us had dressed up. It would have been nice if all of us could have been there to celebrate our final night on San Juan Island but it was not to be unfortunately.
Sunday I packed up all my gear, copied photos from the Beam Reach computer, said goodbye to Anne who was the only one left, and made my way to the ferry. Kenna and her family were on the ferry so I chatted to them, and upon arrival into Anacortes I had to go through Customs as it was an International Ferry from Sidney, B.C. US Customs being US Customs I missed my shuttle by 5 mins, which seriously annoyed me because I had booked the shuttle which you would think would wait for people to get off the ferry as the majority of its passengers would be on the ferry, but no, they left without me. I’m going to get almost a full refund so I guess that’s something. So I get out to the parking lot and yep, a woman had told me that the shuttle had just left. Foreseeing this happen I had already asked Kenna’s parents that if for some reason I miss the shuttle would it be cool if I caught a lift down to Seattle with them as they were flying out the next morning. They were more than happy to help me out so after they got through Customs in their car we re-arranged an already full car of luggage and made our way down to Seattle Airport. They dropped me off, we said our goodbyes, and so here I am at the airport writing this final Beam Reach blog.

The Beam Reach program has been a phenomenal experience, one that I will treasure and am very thankful for. It has helped me open up my eyes to what I want to do for the future and has given me invaluable experience to help me path that future. Don’t get me wrong, this experience was a hectic, very full on, sometimes frustrating one, but I’m happy with the outcome and how I conducted myself over the past 10 weeks. It was a great networking opportunity and I was able to make some great contacts in the industry. I learnt al lot about the industry (both scientific in terms of marine mammal biology and bioacoustics, and eco-tourism) and this has definitely helped me get a foot in the door for potential work in the near future. Of course, the marine mammal interactions were fantastic and they will stick with me forever. I learnt a great deal and will be coming back next season to get another fix! Thanks again to everyone at Beam Reach for the great experience and the great memories, and thanks to Flinders University for allowing this program to count as the final part of my undergraduate double degree. I will definitely be promoting Beam Reach to all those that are interested, and would be happy to answer any queries people may have. Although these blog/log book entries have often been long-winded, I hope you have enjoyed reading them. More on my general travels to come. Stay tuned!