Well guys you can see the dock research boat there, TT it's name is, and in a moment we're
going to get you on board that and have a look at some of the equipment used in the
whale survey.
Now right now you're standing on the warfare at Fekinui Bay, it's rather nice isn't it?
You're sitting here looking out through the Cook Strait Tory channel heads there now Nadine,
what's the scientific method that you use on the Cook Strait Whale Project?
Well we have two main methods, one is the direct counting of whales from the lookout
and that's where we sit up in the lookout and we look for whales as they move past and
we can't basically count how many we see.
The other method that we use, we use photographs and skin samples as tags and we need to see
the tag more than once for us to be able to use that information.
So that's the mark recapture method?
That's right, mark recapture, so the mark is considered the first time you see the animal
and you collect the photo or the skin and then the recapture is considered when you
see that animal again.
So what does that tell you if you see that animal again?
Well it means then that we can use statistical programs on the computer to actually model
how many whales there are in the population just by we have a total number of animals
that we've tagged and then we have a proportion of those that we've recaptured and using that
proportion we can work out abundance or how many there are.
So actually there's an activity on the activities page of the website which has that method
and you can have a go at that and see the equation, the statistical equation used.
But there's been some issues with that method haven't there?
Yes, unfortunately we didn't anticipate this but we've had very few recaptures.
So there's been one animal that we've photographed twice and there have been two animals that
we have got skin samples twice and that's probably out of, with the photographs about
150 animals and the biop sees about 200 animals.
So three out of, I don't know, 350 animals is just not enough recaptures for us.
So what have you had to change then in terms of your scientific method?
Well the method is still the same but I guess the objectives of the survey have changed.
So where we were originally setting out to see how many humpbacks there were, so a population
size, we're now having to look at a trend in terms of is the number of whales, is it
remaining steady, is it increasing or is it decreasing?
So we've had to simplify our methods, our objectives.
Yeah and also speaking of the activities you're going to be able to carry on the graph that
you've hopefully started, where you'll be able to add those numbers to your graph that
Nadine will tell us about later in terms of how many whales they've seen now and how
many they're going to see within the month that they're here.
Right, I know you're interested to get on board and have a look at some of that equipment
for the survey, so let's go on and board TT and have a look, eh, come on.
