Journal entry 5

WHAT'S UP? AND WHAT DID YOU DETERMINE IN TERMS OF YOUR THESIS? WHY?

WHAT WAS THE MAIN MOTIVATION(S) DRIVING YOUR DECISION?

*aerial monitoring project

A few weeks ago I met with Dr. David Rowat (MCSS Chairman) and Laura Jeffreys who is out here with the Marine Conservation Society Seychelles for the next 4 years doing her PhD on human impact of animal's behavior (namely whale sharks and turtles I think???). David said there were two "projects" I could chose from and focus on that for the next 6ish weeks I'd be out here.

1. MCSS is trying to learn what "normal" whale shark behavior is i.e. what whale sharks do when people aren't looking. David collected the initial data using a microlight aircraft to get aerial data. The pilot speaks into a dictaphone for 5 minutes and says exactly what the whale shark is doing during those 5 minutes. Then he wants to get aerial monitoring of how whale shark responds to boats (15 m away, 10 m away, 5 m away, etc), how they respond to people (15 m away, 10 m away, 5 m away, etc), and how they respond to certain numbers of people in the water. He'll compare that to the null record of just "normal" whale shark behavior swimming around. On top of that David is getting "daily diaries" which is a type of satellite tag that allows the computer to reconstruct every move the shark made (depth, temperature, and a lot of other stuff I'm not too sure on) within a 24 hour period. He'll compare the data on the daily diaries of specific shark movement with people or boats in the water.

2. Looking at the tourist perspective of whale shark ecotourism in the Seychelles, via surveys that have been filled since 2008 (?). I would look at surveys and pay particular attention to people who were dissatisfied with the encounter and people who said they didn't get their money's worth and look back and see if those were days that thee weren't any whale sharks spotted during the encounters. And again run different numbers through the SOCPROG computer program and see if there is any statistical significance to them. This would be important to do because the tourist component of ecotourism is essential and if there is something the MCSS whale shark program needs to change or improve, it would be good to figure it out soon.

So after the initial meeting and emailing my faculty advisors, I decided to go ahead with the aerial monitoring idea. Since I've been out here, I've realized whale shark research is where my interest is, not whale shark ecotourism. I didn't realize the distinction before. MCSS does a good job balancing the two, but it was explained to me that project 1 (aerial monitoring) focused more on whale sharks and project 2 (questionnaires) focuses more on people/ tourists. I got really good input from my faculty advisors who prompted me to consider long-term academic/ professional goals and do what I find more interesting. Also to look ahead 10 years and try to picture myself working with the animal part of the tourist part of ecotourism. And also with either focus I will still be learning something about eoctourism. Something else I like about this project is that it is so long term and something that hasn't been properly looked at or studied in depth yet

With only the 6 weeks I had there wasn't a lot I could do with the actual experiments since those are a few years down the road, so I'm helping out with the transcribing recordings, formatting them in Excel, and doing my best to analyze some of it. I've been looking at the 130ish dictaphone recordings that MCSS already has from 2005 and 2006 and figuring out the best way of converting whale shark behavioral analyses into actual numbers to play around with. (by "whale shark behavior" I mean if the whale shark is swimming or diving or turning or banking or feeding, etc). Right now the dictaphone encounters have been transcribed on excel spread sheets and the numbers they use are based on "time"-- so how many seconds the whale shark behaves that certain way. For now I haven't thought of better way to convert whale shark behavior into a numeral value. The I have to keep reminding myself is that the end goal for me is to make the behavior data analyze-able. Once we figure that out, MCSS can start analyzing the data with the SOCPROG computer program (or by other means not discussed yet) and get some initial stats of "normal" whale shark behavior. I've added certain whale shark behavior like banking and ascending that wasn't included before when another intern transcribed the 2005 and 2006 data, but everything else I've kept consistent and and matching her format.