Temperature, Salinity and Dolphins!

One of the hallmarks of my art practice is my emphasis on experience. It isn't enough for me to make a work that is 'about' something. I want to do work that stems from something deep and layered--something I have lived and been part of. This is the main reason I had to return to Gros Morne. I hadn't lived the experience enough to complete my work.

One of the over-arching themes of this series of works is change--specifically climate change and its impacts on the ecosystems and coastal communities here. Science is integrated into my work, so it was a huge thrill for me to be able to participate in some field work done by the Bonne Bay Research Station.

 The task was to take readings of temperature, salinity, pressure and other things at one-metre intervals to a depth of 30 or 40 m (I can't remember which) in several locations around Bonne Bay. This is all accomplished by one nifty device with a probe that is dropped into the water. Lahntika let down the probe by one metre every 10 seconds. My job was to tell him when 10 seconds had elapsed at each depth. It was a matter of looking at a digital countdown. Bob, the supervisor, had to keep the boat from drifting, which was a challenge due to the choppy conditions.

I was over-the-moon excited to find out that we were taking the very first in what will be a series of readings around Bonne Bay! The data will be fed into a computer program that will graph and map the results in an animated way. To be participating in the science that is mapping changes in the waters of Bonne Bay was more than I could have dreamed possible.

Here is a photo of the state-of-the-art equipment we used.

Dolphins, Dolphins Everywhere! And a Whale!

Just doing the field work would have made this day the best day of the trip, but things got even better! Early in the day, we spotted a water spout followed by a whale surfacing. We aren't entirely sure what kind of whale it was, but it looked like a Minke, which is the most common one here. And it surfaced twice!

After that, we spotted a HUGE pod of dolphins! These were white-sided Atlantic dolphins, and there were dozens and dozens of them! We encountered this pod at least three times today. They were such a beautiful sight to see. Their movements are choreographed. Often, you see pairs surfacing together. Every once in a while, one of the dolphins would jump completely out of the water, flip up its tail and dive straight in! This was such a treat to watch. I didn't manage to capture that on video, but I did get a lot of footage of the dolphins. I put some of it together in a video which you can watch here.

More Pics

Here are some of the gorgeous photos I took today:

It's the first time I have used a step ladder to get on and off of a boat. One of the rubber boots I borrowed had a hole in it. It filled with water as soon as I stepped down. 

We put in at a beach that was full of interesting driftwood and a really cool wrack line!

The Tablelands were glowing!