“Bird populations on the open ocean, the whale populations on the open ocean, are just known by those people who observe it.”
This story was originally published in EcoRI News, a publication partner of Ocean State Stories.
NEWPORT — While many of his colleagues administered final exams and graded term papers last semester, Jameson Chace was at sea.
The Salve Regina University professor and chair of the school’s Cultural, Environmental and Global Studies Department had been itching to earn his sea legs since learning his sabbatical had been approved for the spring. Chace immediately reached out to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, asking if they could put him on a ship.
“Most people know NOAA for weather,” Chace said. “But what they might not realize is NOAA does a tremendous amount on the oceans.”
For decades, the agency has studied ocean temperature and acidification, gathering information that impacts fisheries and rare species management and human understanding of climate science, he added.
NOAA’s work includes a more-than-40-years-long ecological monitoring project in the northeastern Atlantic Ocean, a project that Chace contributed to while sitting all bundled up on the bridge of the Henry B. Bigelow during a 10-day ocean voyage.
As the 200-plus-foot ship sailed between GPS markers, collecting samples of plankton — tiny plant and animal organisms that float through the ocean — Chace spent his days in the wind three or four stories above the water identifying gray specs flitting about and flukes splashing through tall waves.
Even though the journey, which took him up and down the Eastern Seaboard from Maryland to Maine, started May 27, Chace said he dressed for skiing, not for spring.
“I had like, three layers on, you know, I had a wool hat, I had thick socks,” he said. “It was chilly.”
From just after sunrise to about sunset, barring fog or bad weather, Chace looked out over the ocean and marked down what he saw.
Searching for birds on the water, mostly black, gray, and white and soundless, was a lot trickier than observing birds on land.
“I could tell you any bird, almost any bird, in Rhode Island, by sound,” said Chace, who specializes in ornithology, “before I even see it.” But the birds of the open ocean aren’t like the songbirds of the forests.
“On land, you get all different colors, all different sizes, all different kinds of beaks,” he added.
Oceanic birds, however, “all have a very uniform kind of body size,” Chace said. “They’ve all adapted to the same conditions, staying alive and flying thousands of miles over the open ocean, where there’s no place to land but to perch upon the water.
“It takes a while to figure out what you’re looking for, like little diagnostic characteristics of the birds,” but he eventually got the hang of it.
Once he was able to figure out what he was seeing, Chace said he was amazed.
Wilson’s storm petrel was one of the birds he saw most often on his voyage. “Just a spectacular bird, little, tiny bird,” he said. The petrel breeds on islands off Antarctica, but it flies above all the world’s oceans.
The petrel get their food by dabbling their feet in the water, Chace said. “It creates a circle, a spiral in the ocean water, and it brings the zooplankton to the surface.”
The birds of the ocean eat lots of types of plankton, fish, and sometimes even other species’ dinner.
Chace also spotted jaegers, which is a kleptoparasite or a creature that feeds itself by stealing other organisms’ food.
Throughout the 10-day journey, Chace said he identified birds he had never seen in U.S. waters or had only observed on other countries’ shores, as well as “five bird species I’d never seen before in my life.”
On top of the birds, the ship passed several types of whales, including fin, humpback, and minke, and dolphins.
“I don’t get to see whales very often in my life,” he said. “Anytime you see a whale, it’s a marvel.”
He was especially awed by the common dolphins, who would approach the ship to ride its wake.
“You just got this sense of happy energy, like they would see the ship from a distance, and they would just come charging toward the ship to get the bow to ride the bow wave,” he said. “As they were coming, they would start leaping out of the water … it looked like joy.”
Speaking about the importance of the type of research he volunteered to do, Chace said it was the only way to get that kind of data.
“The ocean is vast, and there’s so many things we don’t know about it, and so many things we only know a little bit about it,” Chace said, “but bird populations on the open ocean, the whale populations on the open ocean, are just known by those people who observe it.”
He said another benefit of volunteering on the ship is that he gets to be a sort of unofficial spokesperson for NOAA, someone who can speak to its mission, especially at a time when its funding is threatened.
Earlier this year, the Department of Government Efficiency laid off 800 NOAA employees and the Trump administration has proposed $2.2 billion in budget cuts.
“You talk about things like governmental efficiency … you pay for a few biologists to sit on a ship that’s doing a whole bunch of other work,” he added, “the amount of information we can gather from a couple of observers dedicating their time is amazing.”
Chase said the experience is something he’ll bring back to his classroom, where he can show students how to use the publicly accessible data he helped gather and offer them a perspective on how they can use science out in the world.
