Week 12. Su 16 February 2020, 8:20 in the morning at Cape Shirreff
Working seasonal field jobs is obviously quite different from following a typical career track. Every job studies different animals in different locations for different types of studies. Although I took wildlife biology courses at the university, being able to work in the field has honestly come down to having the right personality and being able to follow study protocols. Knowing what to do is mostly learned on the job; there’s always a period of getting to know how camp runs, learning how to navigate the terrain, and learning how to collect the data.
Feeling like I’m back at home at Cape Shirreff has been a big perk of returning to my seabird position on Livingston Island for season 3. I really wasn’t expected to know anything about studying penguins when I came down for my first season; the second year technician, Nai, would teach me what to do. The challenge was learning everything well, knowing that I’d be the one doing the teaching the following season.
My second year placed me more in a position of leadership than I’d previously experienced. Good thing a huge curveball was thrown at me from the start! Largely due to funding, our season would last 3 months instead of the historic 4.5 months. Time to restructure everything I’d learned last year in my brain and understand how our penguin work would begin IMMEDIATELY upon our arrival. My boss would not be coming to our camp at all that season, which meant I was the quick source of answers for all questions of Laura, the incoming first year technician. I also needed to stay on top of emailing our boss with questions and updates throughout the season. Adapting to a radically shorter season and teaching Laura well for the program’s continuity were the challenges of my second season. Fortunately for quiet me, she asked lots of questions and picked up on everything quickly.
Enter the unexpected season 3. From a conference call with our boss in the off-season, Laura and I had decided that she would lead the seabird work, and I’d bake bread. Actually we just agreed that we’d co-lead and plan the timing of studies this season; with no one new to teach, we expected pretty smooth sailing on the seabird side. Hahaha! Hohoho! To think that’s what we’d expected.
The challenges of my third season have been technology and weather. Both the pinniped and the seabird sides of the program here are using new forms of technology to gain greater understanding of the animals’ foraging behavior. Unfortunately, the devices we use are less than perfect.
Each of my seasons we’ve been deploying GPS, TDR (time depth recorder), and DVL (digital video logger) devices on penguins to collect data on penguins’ foraging behavior. The diving footage we’ve recorded is incredible, and the TDR information is fascinating because it uses pressure readings to tell us the depth of the birds’ dives. Sadly we can’t view the GPS logs without an internet connection, so Laura and I don’t get to see where the penguins have gone. Obviously this is all information we couldn’t gather without technology.
Apparently we can’t easily gather it with technology, either. I’ve never been more frustrated with a company than with the creator of our GPS devices. For absolutely no reason known to mankind, the cable that connects the unit to the computer is USB on one end and the chintziest four prong creation on the other end. In order to connect the unit to the computer, we have to latch each colored prong onto its corresponding 5mm-long post on the GPS device in a specific order. For some reason these prongs cannot do their jobs and hold onto the posts; they don’t really have a strong enough hook, so sometimes we have to hold a prong on with one hand while we continue connecting the others. Otherwise the worst of the prongs will pop off the posts. The order has to be black – red – blue – green.
Now those colors are dead to me.
We started the season with 11 GPS devices, and they failed to consistently connect with the computer or program’s software to such a degree that our boss needed to send 2 more units to supplement our supply. Just 2 units managed to limp to the finish line of the deployment season. 2 of 13! That means we spent a month and a half pulling our hair out and cursing the units when they wouldn’t cooperate. Some units just straight up would not connect to the software in the first place, while others would allow themselves to be programmed correctly and deployed on penguins – only to then refuse to connect to deliver the data. Yes, units chose to hold data hostage. One brand new unit never worked for us at all.
GAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
This is all more mind-boggling because our boss had tested them back at the office in the U.S. On January 30th I went from wanting to throw the GPS cable against the wall, to wanting to take a hammer to it and the units, to threatening to murder something – in no more than 15 minutes’ time. No, I wasn’t being dramatic at all.
The GPS devices were the worst of our enemies, but each form of technology failed us in some way. One of our DVLs didn’t accept the time stamp that we programmed – instead choosing to use a date from 2016 – while another adopted a split screen problem late in the season. The TDRs were our stronghold of reliability. A couple wouldn’t connect, but enough worked throughout the season to manage our deployment schedule, which ultimately was drastically lessened due to battles with our devices.
The weather has been our other adversary to battle. Snow has been sadly absent all season long, as temperatures have been more in the 3-5° C range. As a result, rain has been our common precipitation. We’ve had some pretty gross stretches of time. I’ll just say there’s nothing quite as awkward to hike in for 2.5 hours as full PVC Grundens rain bibs. That’s Alaskan fisherman style raingear, for the record. It’s not exactly lightweight or breathable. We’ve also been gifted with weeks of fog; the last week of December was wet, and the first half of January was nearly constant dense fog. When the sun finally came out on Adam’s birthday, it was a gift for everyone.
Although we haven’t had the smooth sailing we’d expected, year 3 has been an experience. From sending off a crew member suffering from an unknown medical condition to having a fur seal puppy venture inside our home, it’s been an interesting season. There’s just a British GPS device company that makes me very angry now.