DrDolphin does Hawaii..... Updated 4/9 About This Page:

[DrDolphin]

I guess I should start with how this whole trip evolved. This summer - I was part of a team that did some monitoring of construction work in the Port of Miami. We monitored underwater blasting events to make sure they did not harm dolphins, manatees or sea turtles that live near the port. We monitored the construction in a way that no one has ever done before.

Knowing that the work was unique and of scientific value - the team (a total of 6 of us) decided we wanted to try and release the information in a way that the scientific community could review it. We also want to publish the work eventually in a scientific journal.

Part of the way we planned to get our results to the scientific community was through presentations at scientific conferences. First we submitted for a conference in San Diego, California to be held in December 2005. The second conference that came up was a special session on acoustics (how sound travels through the ocean) at the Ocean Sciences Conference in Honolulu Hawaii in February 2006.

I submitted an abstract to the conference organizers while I was on hurricane duty in Mississippi (after copious emails between me and the other 5 co-authors) and waited.

Our Abstract:
"Dodge-Lummus Island Turning Basin Project
Acoustic Measurements and Quantification to Determine Impacts to Marine Mammals during Construction Blasting Operations at the Port of Miami

Authors: Terri Jordan – U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Jacksonville District
Ken Hollingshead – National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA
Dr. Thomas Keevin – U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Louis District
Dr. Gregory Hempen - U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Louis District
Becky Hope – Port of Miami, Environmental Management
Mary Jo Barkazsi – ECOES Consulting

In 1990, Congress authorized the deepening and expansion of the Miami Harbor, Port of Miami, Miami-Dade County, Florida. Part of the project included deepening of the Dodge Lummus Island Turning Basin and Fisherman’s Channel to -42’. The Port of Miami (Port) previously attempted to complete the project without underwater blasting. The contractor and subsequent surety company were unable to successfully complete the authorized work primarily due to the limestone bedrock that was resistant to dredging. In 2000, the Port approached the Jacksonville District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (District) to complete this dredging project. The District determined that blasting would be required as a construction technique and that Miami Harbor is routinely occupied by a number of marine species that are protected under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 including the Florida manatee, Trichechus manatus and marine turtles (Caretta caretta and Chelonia mydas). As a result the Corps initiated consultation with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act was required. The District also determined that a population of bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus, a species protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 (MMPA), had been documented transiting through the Port and could be affected by the proposed blasting. The District submitted an application for an Incidental Harassment Authorization (IHA) under the MMPA in June 2002, which was issued in 2004 and renewed in April 2005. Construction began in June 2005. A key determination made by NOAA was that marine mammals were unlikely to be seriously harmed by the detonations due to the District's conservative monitoring and mitigation measures aimed to ensure that neither dolphins, nor manatees would be within a pre-determined safety zone when the detonations occurred. Additionally acoustic and pressure monitoring was conducted for a selected group of blasts, with additional acoustic measurements collected for each blast during construction activities. This presentation reviews the preliminary analysis of the results from marine mammal monitoring; an overview of acoustic and pressure measurement data collected during construction; and potential implications for future work using blasting as a construction technique in Florida by the Jacksonville District or elsewhere by others."

In November we were notified that our work had been accepted - and that we were being asked to prepare a presentation. This means one of us would stand up in front of all the other scientists in the room and in 15 minutes or less, tell them what we did and the results.

I was listed as the lead author -- as part of the acceptance - I notified my boss (whom I'd told we submitted the abstract) that we had been accepted and that none of the other authors looked like they would be able to attend - which left me as presenter (well I was lead author). So -- I started planning a trip to Honolulu.

The last time I went to Hawaii I was 12 years old. Of course I knew that I would not be able to do much in the way of "tourist" type stuff - since I was working (right??) but I wanted to do SOMETHING.

Originally I had planned to try and add an additional week to my trip and go to the Big Island of Hawaii and/or Maui for some vacation - but buying the house in December and the almost 10,000 I spent preparing the house to live in (painting, moving, buying new furniture, etc) put a krimp in the plan.

Instead - I would have to make due with Honolulu and what I could see while I was there.

Of course - knowing that one of our own Passporters lived close to Honolulu - I PMed Courtney to see if she (Frank and Tylor too) were up to a get together during my visit. We agreed to meet and decided to wait until we got closer to the trip to schedule something.

The Plans
Feb 19 - Leave Jacksonville, Delta airlines to Atlanta - change planes and head to Honolulu - 10 hr nonstop flight to Honolulu

Feb 20-24 - Conference in Honolulu

Feb 24 PM - Fly from Honolulu to Atlanta.... overnight
Feb 25 am - arrive Atlanta - change planes and fly home to JAX.

Next up - Final plans and Travel Day