A helping hand

As the previous post mentions, I have a lot of work ahead of me!

As I am visually screening thousands of trains (the word used to describe echolocation click groupings), often being required to process false-positives quickly throughout a day which requires navigation through a right-click menu, I decided to seek out software to ease the workload.

After spending 6 hours yesterday screening a single file that spanned the recordings of 5 months I was seriously thinking that I may suffer from repetitive strain injury after several months of going through the same motions. The software I found to be most effective for my needs was a macro recorder by JitBit (Macro Recorder: available here: http://www.jitbit.com/macro-recorder/) which allows the recording of a series of mouse or keyboard commands to be played back later when required. 

In all honesty I have only created one macro so far, but that is all I require at this point, and I'm sure that further down the line I will create more to aid my CPOD analysis! This software has probably saved me hours of clicking, and it was incredibly easy once downloaded. Obviously it isn't going to make its way into the acknowledgements of my thesis, but I am grateful for its existence. Anyone reading this may think I am going on about the software way too much, and that would be because JitBit say that if a review is provided on a blog then a free version of the software will be provided (hopefully) saving me from withdrawl symptoms and repetitive strain injury in 40 days once the free trial has expired! So forgive the grovelling, and I hope that JitBit decides that aiding a post-grad student in scientific research and reduced stress is a good move!

Moving on, I am back in Scotland this week to attend, and present a quick talk about my thesis at the UK Regional Student Chapter about marine mammals, hosted at SMRU in St Andrews (http://synergy.st-andrews.ac.uk/ukrsc/meetings/). I hope to meet some interesting people conducting great research, and learn where the future of marine mammal research lies!

Half way there

It has been a crazy and very full on 6 months of taught masters, covering a great range of interesting and wonderful topics. I honestly feel as if I have learned more in the past 6 months than I did in my 3 years of undergraduate, although being awake through lectures probably contributed to that! I've now gained professional certificates in sea survival, VHF (very high frequency) radio communications, power boat handling, and first aid. I've sat two sets of exams, written a long list of assignments, reports and papers, and have recently returned from my second adventure to Millport on the isle of Cumbrae off the west coast of Scotland for a field trip to study benthic organisms and the distribution and size differences in the edible periwinkle (Littorina littorea).
Now that the taught portion of the course has come to an end, I have thrown myself straight into working on my thesis which currently has the provisional title of:
"The comparative analysis of passive acoustic CPOD detections with seasonal visual observation effort of dolphins within Broadhaven Bay, Ireland."
This study requires me to move up to Belmullet, a small town in County Mayo, where I will spend 5 months helping Coastal Marine Research Centre with field work whilst working on data that their cliff-top observation teams and passive acoustic CPOD stations have recorded since 2009.
This means, for the next few months I will be staring at screens to determine if sound files of click trains are indeed the echolocation of dolphins, or if the software has falsely classed them. The main false-positive detections come from porpoise "masquerading" as dolphins, where the narrowband frequencies of porpoises have been ignored and thus have been classed as a dolphin which although share the higher frequencies alongside porpoise; their frequency range extends far below as well.

A click train of a dolphin, shown in CPOD software, under a Sound Pressure Level view.