Researchers publish scientific papers in very specialized journals that are only read by experts in the field. These papers are usually very technical and complicated to understand for the general public. This is a shame because many people are keen to learn about the research going on in their community. In my opinion, it is important for researchers to be able to explain their research in a layman language accessible to most people. It is hard though... We are trained to be detail oriented, precise and rigorous, and simplifying complicated concepts by leaving out  some of the important details is no easy task. It takes training and practice.

I have been very fortunate be able to follow several great science communication workshops that help acquire these skills. One of them is the science communication workshop by COMPASS which was a game changer for me. It completely changed the way I thought about science communication and really helped when talking to the media. Another, great training was the Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) competition. It is a world-wide competition that challenges graduate students to present their research in just 180 seconds. The presentations must be engaging and understandable by people that have no background in the research area. So, no need to say that in 180 seconds, you don't have any time for complicated details... The competition itself is fun, but what was the most valuable was the training offered beforehand. Several professors from the University of Victoria gave us advice on how to talk in public and provided very useful feedback on how to improve our speech. If you are a graduate student, I highly recommend to participate. I would also highly recommend participating to Skype a Scientist, and/or Pint of Science, to practice your science communication skills. 

My 3MT presentation, entitled "This all sounds fishy...",  was about the Fish Sound Project. You can watch it here.

The two deployments of the XAV array at Ogden Point were successful and allowed us to localize and identify our first fish sounds. Sounds that haven’t been reported before (…more on this later). No need to say that it was a huge relief to finally see the full system operational and working properly! All the development efforts are finally paying out. The deployment operations are also getting much smoother. Everyone is now more comfortable with the whole process and knows exactly what to do. While Ogden point was a great location, it was time to move to another spot with different species of fish and hopefully with less vessel noise.

We chose to deploy at the wreck of the Lord Jim, in Mill Bay since our previous exploratory dive with the ROV showed that it was a site with very good potential (see previous post). From the data we collected at Ogden Point, we know that the XAV array can localize fish sounds in 3D quite accurately. However, it is large and the logistics involved in its deployment can sometime be an issue since the aluminum boat from the lab is not always available. So, we decided to test a compact version of the XAV array that can be deployed from an inflatable boat. It is composed of a smaller acoustic recorder, has four hydrophones (instead of six) and only a single camera (instead of two). The PVC frame is also much lighter. The smaller footprint is great, but of course, there are some drawbacks… we won’t be able to localize as accurately as with the regular XAV array and our field of view will be much more limited. Still, we should be able to collect useful data.

The site is not too far from Victoria and is conveniently located next to an easily accessible beach. After setting up the instruments, Kieran and Brian dove to the shipwreck and I brought the mini XAV array to them with my inflatable boat. Everything went smoothly and the whole process took less than a couple of hours. There were still plenty fish around the shipwreck which was great news! However, we were at the beginning of a phytoplankton bloom and the visibility was poor. We left the mini XAV array in the water for a week and everything worked fine. The visibility obviously was not great, but we still got several fish swimming right in front of the camera. The noise underwater was higher than I had expected, but we still recorded several fish sounds. Overall a successful deployment. This mini array will not replace the XAV array but will allow us to deploy more often and sample more locations.