Category Archives: Society News

SMM Editors’ Select Series Webinar, 14 December 2023: Calling rate changes in association with passing ships in Milne Inlet, Nunavut, Canada, with Crystal Radtke

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You are invited to the next edition of the SMM Editors’ Select Webinar Series. This series highlights the latest and most exciting marine mammal science published in the Marine Mammal Science Journal. The SMM created this series to give scientists and citizens around the world a chance to engage with marine mammal scientists, learn, and ask questions. All are welcome!

Join us on Thursday December 14th 2023 at 5 pm AST / 9 pm GMT
for the next SMM Editors’ Select Series Webinar:
Narwhal calling rate changes in association with passing ships in Milne Inlet, Nunavut, Canada
with Crystal Radtke

This event is free to attend and presented online via Zoom, but registration is required.
Register here: ZOOM REGISTRATION
Space on Zoom is limited to the first 500 attendees. The talk will also be streamed on the SMM Facebook page.

About this talk:
Concerns were raised about possible behavioural disturbance to narwhals (Monodon monoceros) when exposed to shipping noise in Milne Inlet, Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada. It is known that marine mammals often change their behaviours especially their vocalizations, around ships.  With the use of underwater recordings operating continuously over two months (in 2018 and 2019), narwhal vocalizations in Milne Inlet were analyzed. Narwhals produce three social call types, whistles, buzzes and knocks. The calling rates of each call type were determined when no ships were present and during ship transits in a before-during-after analysis. Narwhal call counts were generally lower when bulk carriers were within line-of-sight (5 km), including when ship noise levels were barely above background noise levels. Call counts varied both “before” and “after” individual bulk carriers passed by the recorders. There was no evidence of habituation or sensitization to the bulk carrier noise within or between years. Continued monitoring in this area is recommended, especially if shipping levels increase.

About the presenter:
Crystal studied at the University of New Brunswick, in Saint John, NB, Canada for undergraduate and graduate studies. Her honours project was on the underwater soundscape of Mawson Station, Antarctica and the impacts this could have on the masking of Weddell seal calls.  Her masters thesis was on the classification of narwhal calls and the changes in calling rates in association with passing ships. She has also volunteered with various organizations (Bimini Biological Field Station, Dolphin Communication Project and Operation Wallacea) for marine mammal, fish and marine invertebrate studies.

Open access to this article is made temporarily available in the weeks around the presentation and can be found here. Current SMM members have access to all Marine Mammal Science papers.

Louis M. Herman Research Scholarship: Open for Proposals

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Louis M. Herman, Ph.D. and Emeritus Professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA, was a pioneer and trailblazer in research on dolphin sensory perception and cognition, and humpback whale behavioural ecology. Dr. Herman’s family, colleagues, and friends established the Louis M. Herman Research Scholarship in 2017 to honor his legacy by promoting the type of research that was the focus of his ground-breaking studies. The Scholarship is given every two years and is open for application today (November 27 2023). The 2024 award will be for USD $6,000. Eligibility criteria and the application process is available here  

 

Please direct any enquiries to the Awards and Scholarship Sub-Committee (awardschair@marinemammalscience.org)

Nominate a SMM Member to be a Fellow for the Class of 2023

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Announcement and Date extension

NOMINATE A FELLOW MEMBER
In 2019, the members of the Society for Marine Mammalogy (SMM) voted to establish a Fellows Membership Category. We are pleased to announce our Society’s second call for nominations of Fellow Members.

The SMM Constitution identifies a ‘Fellow’ as a member who is being recognized by the Society and its membership as having “rendered conspicuous service or made truly notable contributions to the advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of marine mammal science or the fostering of its practical applications through conservation of marine mammals. Payment of dues to the Society by the Fellow would remain the same as for a normal Full member.”

Nominations are Open.
We are pleased to announce that the nomination period is extended until 15 January 2024. So please come nominate a Fellow for the Society.

ELIGIBILITY
Any current Full member of the SMM after being a Full member for a minimum of five years is eligible. These five years do not have to be contiguous. Please confirm with the nominee that they meet the five-year eligibility criterion prior to submission.

Note: the current members of the SMM Board (which includes elected officers and committee chairs) are not eligible for consideration for Fellows status.

HOW TO NOMINATE
If you are a current SMM member, you may nominate an eligible SMM member as a Fellow. We ask that you submit a complete dossier, described in detail below, to the Fellows Nomination web page by 15 January 2024. The dossier must be uploaded to the Fellows Nomination web page as a single .pdf document.

Each dossier shall include the following elements.

(1) Letter of Nomination. This letter should provide insight into a nominee’s service, notable contributions to the advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of marine mammal science, or the fostering of its practical applications through the conservation of marine mammals. The nominating letter can be no longer than one page (12 pt font).
The Committee will consider the following factors:

  1. service to the Society;
  2. contributions to marine mammal science including activities such as publications and presentations, field work, research and development, or administrative and logistical support; or
  3. contributions to the teaching or dissemination of knowledge of marine mammal science and conservation. Due to the diversity of disciplines and activities of The Society for Marine Mammalogy members, the relative importance of these factors will differ from candidate to candidate. The Fellow candidate would be expected to be exemplary in, and have made substantial contributions to, at least one of these factors (e.g. be in the top 10% of the membership).

(2) Seconding letters. The dossier should also include two seconding letters, one of which must be from a current SMM member. Signed-in SMM members can search for all current members via the SMM Member Directory. Each seconding letter can be no longer than one page (12 pt font).

(3) Complete curriculum vitae of the nominee. The format and length of this document is unrestricted, as we are encouraging nominations of individuals from broadly different backgrounds and the standard CV formats across fields are likely different. Note that only text should be submitted as part of the CV. If audio or video files are relevant provide a link in the documents submitted.

(4) Proposed maximum 20-word citation for the Fellow (e.g., Kenneth S. Norris – for efforts to found the Society and contributions to the process of dolphin echolocation and hearing).

All materials must be uploaded here: https://marinemammalscience.org/about-us/fellows-program/fellows-program-nomination/

DOSSIER REVIEW PROCESS
The dossiers will be received by the committee Co-chairs and the SMM Members-at-Large.

Identifying information about the nominator and seconders will be redacted from each dossier to ensure a blind review. The Fellows Committees will be Co-Chaired by the Members-at-Large, who will form a committee of seven members holding Fellow status, and at least one contributing, but not voting student member, with attention paid to diversity of representation. Members will serve staggered, four-year terms. Fellows Committee members may not submit nominations. For more information about the Fellows Committee, please see the General Operating Policies of our SMM governing documents.

QUESTIONS
If you have any questions about the nomination process, please reach out to the Co-Chairs of the Fellows Committee, our Members-at-Large:
Cindy Peter and Dipani Sutaria (mal@marinemammalscience.org)
For any technical questions regarding the online application, please email admin@marinemammalscience.org.

Thank you,
Members-at-Large 2023
Society of Marine Mammalogy

SMM Editors’ Select Series Webinar, 19 October 2023. Genetically separate populations of dugongs in Australia, with Dr. Janet Lanyon

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You are invited to the next edition of the SMM Editors’ Select Webinar Series. This series highlights the latest and most exciting marine mammal science published in the Marine Mammal Science Journal. The SMM created this series to give scientists and citizens around the world a chance to engage with marine mammal scientists, learn, and ask questions. All are welcome!

Join us on Thursday, 19 October 2023 at 5pm EDT / 10pm GMT / 7am +1 AEST
for the next SMM Editors’ Select Series Webinar:
Genetically separate populations of dugongs in Australia:
implications for coping with local environmental stressors
with Dr. Janet Lanyon

This event was recorded live and put on youtube: youtu.be/PpUeaEFK5eY 
For future events, please check our news room or join the SMM Facebook page.

About this talk:
Despite the lack of obvious physical barriers and their ability to travel significant distances, many marine mammals exhibit substantial population structuring over relatively short geographical distances. The dugong (Dugong dugon) is a vulnerable marine mammal found in inshore seagrass habitats throughout the Indo-Pacific, including in the waters of northern Australia. We investigated the genetic population structure of dugongs in the shallow coastal waters along >2000 km of the eastern Queensland coast including the Great Barrier Reef region. Microsatellite genotypes for 22 loci in 293 dugongs, SNP genotypes based on 10,690 loci in 43 dugongs, and 410 bp mitochondrial control-region sequences from 639 dugongs were analysed. Clustering analysis techniques consistently identified an abrupt genetic break in the Whitsunday Islands region of central Queensland (20.3°S), which interrupts an overall pattern of isolation-by-distance. Geographic distance was relatively more important than sea-surface temperature and seagrass distribution in explaining pairwise microsatellite genetic distances. The cause of reduced dispersal across this region is unknown but might relate to an unusual tidal and current mix, termed the ‘sticky-water’ effect, and/or a break in the geographical distribution of offshore seagrass meadows. This genetic structuring suggests distinct breeding units north and south of the Whitsunday Islands region, and also mostly separate populations with limited gene flow within each of the north and south ranges. Recently, profiles of faecal microbiota from dugongs from all along the Queensland coast show marked variation, supporting these separate populations and possibly indicating ecological differences, e.g., feeding niches. Implications of these separate genetic populations in terms of how dugongs might respond to local threats to habitat and how these findings should be considered when developing management plans for Queensland dugongs will be discussed.

About the presenter:
Janet Lanyon is a zoologist, specializing in marine mammal biology. For thirty years, Janet has been a full-time academic at The University of Queensland (UQ) and Director of the UQ Marine Vertebrate Research Group. Since 1995, she has been Lead Investigator in a long-term population and health study of the dugongs of southern Queensland, Australia. She has published widely on diverse aspects of the biology of marine wildlife, and is an Associate Editor of the journal Marine Mammal Science. Her research expertise includes the ecology, physiology and conservation biology of marine megafaunal wildlife, principally dugongs, coastal dolphins and sea turtles.

Open access to this article is made temporarily available in the weeks around the presentation and can be found here. Current SMM members have access to all Marine Mammal Science papers.

Missed a presentation or want to share this series with a friend? All previous Editors’ Select presentations are recorded and archived on our YouTube channel here.

SMM Editors’ Select Series Webinar, 21 September 2023! Using drones to investigate the timing of harbour seal pupping, with Dr. Anders Galatius

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You are invited to the next edition of the SMM Editor’s Select Webinar Series. This series highlights the latest and most exciting marine mammal science published in the Marine Mammal Science Journal. The SMM created this series to give scientists and citizens around the world a chance to engage with marine mammal scientists, learn, and ask questions. All are welcome!

Join us on Thursday, 21 September 2023 at 1 pm EDT / 6 pm GMT / 7 pm CET
for the next SMM Editors’ Select Series Webinar:
Using drones to investigate the timing of harbour seal pupping, with Dr. Anders Galatius

This event was recorded live and put on youtube: https://youtu.be/3zEoPu8d4ks 
For future events, please check our news room or join the SMM Facebook page.

About this talk:
Harbour seal females give birth to their single pup during a distinct pupping season, which occurs during the summer in most areas. To obtain unbiased estimates of the pup production of harbour seals, surveys of seal colonies need to be timed optimally and conducted under sufficiently similar conditions. In the Limfjord, the resident harbour seal population have about 95% of their pups at two haul-outs, Ejerslev Røn and Blinderøn just 3 km apart. The short distance makes this area ideal for investigation with drones. We counted harbour seal pups at these two haul-outs throughout the pupping season in June for three consecutive years, 2017-2019. As harbour seal pups can swim almost from birth, there was considerable variation in the counts. Some of this variation could be related to date; as the season progressed, increasing numbers of pups were hauled out, before the counts began to drop, with an estimated peak in counts on June 22nd. Weather also impacted the counts, on windy days, fewer pups were counted. These findings will be used in the planning and interpretation of harbour seal pup surveys in Denmark.

About the presenter:
Anders Galatius is a senior researcher at Aarhus University’s Department of Ecoscience where he works on marine mammal morphology, ecology and behaviour. He graduated as MSc from University of Copenhagen, Denmark in 2003 and obtained his PhD from the same university in 2009. He has been working at Aarhus University since 2010, leading the Danish seal monitoring programmes of harbour seals and grey seals since 2013.

Open access to this article is made temporarily available in the weeks around the presentation and can be found here. Current SMM members have access to all Marine Mammal Science papers.

Missed a presentation or want to share this series with a friend? All previous Editors’ Select presentations are recorded and archived on our YouTube channel here.

Submit your nominations for the 2023 SMM Fellows

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The SMM Fellows Program is now accepting nominations. From our Constitution, a Fellow is a member who is being recognized by the Society and its membership as having “rendered conspicuous service or made truly notable contributions to the advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of marine mammal science or the fostering of its practical applications through conservation of marine mammals”. A nomination for advancement to Fellow is appropriate for any current Full member of the SMM after that individual has been a Full member for a minimum of five years.

If you are a current SMM member, you may nominate an eligible SMM member as a Fellow. We ask that you submit a complete dossier, described in detail below, to the Fellows Nomination web page by 18 November 2023. The dossier must be uploaded to the Fellows Nomination web page as a single .pdf document.

If you have any questions about the nomination process, please reach out to the Co-Chairs of the Fellows Committee, our Members-at-Large:

Cindy Peter and Dipani Sutaria (fellows@marinemammalscience.org)

For any technical questions regarding the online application, please email admin@marinemammalscience.org.

Thank you in advance for your nominations!

Best regards,

Cindy Peter and Dipani Sutaria

SMM Seminar Editors’ Select Webinar, 17 August 2023! How to weigh a sperm whale using drone images? with Maria Glarou

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You are invited to the next edition of the SMM Seminar Editor’s Select Series Webinar. This series highlights the latest and most exciting marine mammal science published in the Marine Mammal Science Journal. The SMM created this series to give scientists and citizens around the world a chance to engage with marine mammal scientists, learn, and ask questions. All are welcome!

Join us on Thursday, 17 August 2023 at 7 am PDT / 10 am EDT / 2 pm GMT
for the next SMM Seminar Editors’ Select Series Webinar:
How to weigh a sperm whale using drone images? with Maria Glarou

This event was recorded live and published on youtube: https://youtu.be/bJO0RQK0EJs
For future events, please check our news room or join the SMM Facebook page.

About this talk:
Body mass is a fundamental characteristic of animals. Although sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) are the largest toothed predators on earth, body mass is seldom included in studies of their ecology and physiology due to the inherent difficulties of obtaining direct measurements. We used drone images to estimate the weight of free-ranging sperm whales. We collected aerial images of 102 sperm whales (of all reproductive classes) in the Eastern Caribbean and Mediterranean Sea during 2017–2020. First, we obtained body length, width, and height (at 5% increments) measurements from dorsal and lateral drone images. Based on these measurements, we then created an elliptical 3D body shape model to calculate the body volume of the animals. We used 4 different approaches to convert volume to mass: tissue-density estimates from catch data, animal-borne tags, and body-tissue composition. Our results showed that the average total body density ranged from 834 to 1,003 kg/m3, while the weight predictions matched with existing measurements and weight-length relationships described in previous research. Our body-mass models can be used to study sperm whale bioenergetics, including inter- and intra-seasonal variations in body condition, somatic growth, metabolic rates, and cost of reproduction.

About the presenter:
Maria Glarou is originally from Greece. She holds a BSc degree in Biology from the University of Patras (Greece), and is a MSc graduate from Stockholm University (Sweden) with a degree in Marine Biology. Her main research interests revolve around cetacean bioenergetics, ecology and ecophysiology, as well as the impacts of human disturbance on cetaceans. For her MSc project, she conducted a pilot study in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, exploring small-scale fisheries interactions with small marine mammals. She is currently a PhD fellow at the University of Iceland’s Research Center in Húsavík, where she studies the allometry of physiological and behavioural thermoregulatory adaptations of different-sized cetaceans in Skjálfandi Bay, NE-Iceland.

Open access to this article is made temporarily available in the weeks around the presentation and can be found here. Current SMM members have access to all Marine Mammal Science papers.

Missed a presentation or want to share this series with a friend? All previous Editors’ Select presentations are recorded and archived on our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUc78IynQlubS2DVS1VZoplf_t42-yZOO

Financial Update from SMM

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Hi All,

Hard to believe another few months has passed since the last (April) newsletter. As indicated then, a key focus of the Board has been taking stock of the impacts of the last few years on the Society’s financial situation (e.g., COVID, year delay of the Florida conference, stock market performance). Our Treasurer, Dee Allen, has been tirelessly working with our former Treasurer Katie Moore, Marsha Flood from Talley Management Group (who manage the Society’s accounts), Danette Harfst from Harfst and Associates (who manage the Society’s investments), and other committee chairs and myself to assess and summarise the SMM’s financial situation over the last four years, as well as our expected revenue and expenses through to the end of 2023. This was presented to the Board at our recent Board Meeting (6 July).

To summarise briefly, the operating budget of the Society has run at a net loss over the last four years and is expected to do so again in 2023 (~$1M operating loss over five years). To cover these losses, we have had to successively draw down on the unrestricted funds in the Society’s investment portfolio (i.e. liquidate assets). On current projected expenses and revenue, there will be no unrestricted funds remaining by this time next year.

As the Small Grants-in-Aid of Research (SGIAR) program is funded through these unrestricted funds, we cannot launch the 2023 round until financial issues are addressed. As the Society’s ‘named’ and Conservation awards are funded through the Society’s restricted investment funds (that can only be paid out to awardees), they have remained largely unaffected by the Society’s cash-flow issues, but of course are subject to fluctuations in the stock market. With the downturn in the stock market in 2022, a decision was made to delay the Conservation fund call-for-proposals until mid-2024.

The Board will reconvene in a month to develop a financial plan and strategy to address the current situation. At its most basic, this will need to include a strategy to minimise our current losses, grow and diversify our revenue base, and grow our unrestricted funds back to a point where they are investments with a spending policy (i.e., not to be continuously drawn down). We will keep the membership informed of the steps we will be taking to improve the financial situation of the Society.

One immediate way our Society can improve its bottom line is to encourage all lapsed members to renew their membership. Current membership is running at about 70% of what it usually is. (If you are receiving this newsletter, your membership is currently active. An early renewal of your membership will be added onto your existing membership.) We will be initiating a mail-out shortly to encourage renewal of memberships, so if you have friends or colleagues whose memberships have lapsed, please encourage them to re-join! If you are a longtime member, please consider becoming a lifetime member of the Society to save yourself money over time and to help the Society through this challenging time.

On a more positive note, I want to thank all the members who participated in the recent SMM Science Communication meeting. Over the coming weeks we hope that this re-badged ad-hoc social media committee will begin to develop a strategy to consolidate and improve the coordination of the Society’s various scientific communication platforms and products (e.g., web pages, e-mails, social media, podcasts, conferences, and the broader virtual environment) with a dedicated team who are innovative and media savvy. The intent will be for the committee to help us more strategically and consistently communicate the work being done by our committees, garner more attention from the general public about our work and the work we support. It is hoped this can be part of the solution to broadening the financial support for our Society (support through sponsors, donations, legacy giving, etc)!

More good news – the Perth 2024 SMM Conference Team continue to advance conference planning and I am pleased to announce a sneak preview of the Perth 2024 SMM logo below! The official conference launch with website and prospectus is anticipated to occur in the next couple of months, so stay tuned!

Thanks again to my SMM team and to all our members for their contributions to our field. Our Society remains strong!

Cheers,
Simon

Simon Goldsworthy
President, Society for Marine Mammalogy

SMM Seminar Editors’ Select Series, July 20th 2023! Assimilation takes time: integration of two dolphin societies, with Dr. Cindy Elliser

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This series highlights the latest and most exciting marine mammal science published in the Marine Mammal Science Journal. The SMM created this series to give scientists and citizens around the world a chance to engage with marine mammal scientists, learn, and ask questions. All are welcome!

Join us on Thursday, 20 July 2023 at 3pm PDT / 6pm EDT / 10pm GMT
for the next SMM Seminar Editors’ Select Series
Assimilation takes time: integration of two dolphin societies
with Dr. Cindy Elliser

This event is free to attend and presented online via Zoom, but registration is required.
Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_CevPOor4Q8-BOom0BHG_bA
Space on Zoom is limited to the first 500 attendees. The talk will also be streamed live on the SMM Facebook page.

About this talk:
In the Bahamas live two communities of spotted dolphins separated by deep water: one on Little Bahama Bank (LBB) off of Grand Bahama Island and one on Great Bahama Bank (GBB) off of Bimini. In 2013 an unprecedented 50% of the LBB spotted dolphins moved across the deep water and took up residence on GBB. This type of large-scale immigration is rare. How does such a large group of dolphins move into an established community? This is the story of how these two communities have reacted, how they have integrated and how this is shaping the social structure of this new community.

About the presenter:
Dr. Cindy R. Elliser is the Research Director and Founder of Pacific Mammal Research (PacMam) and Associate Director of the Salish Sea Institute at Western Washington University. She received her B.S. (2000) and M.S. (2003) in Biological Sciences from Florida Atlantic University (FAU) and received her Ph.D. in Integrative Biology from FAU in 2010. Her work focuses on photo-identification, behavioral ecology and social structure of marine mammals. For 10 years she worked with Dr. Denise Herzing and the Wild Dolphin Project studying Atlantic spotted and bottlenose dolphins in the Bahamas. In 2014 Dr. Elliser moved to the Pacific Northwest and founded PacMam to study marine mammals in the Salish Sea, particularly harbor porpoises and harbor seals. Dr. Elliser also teaches biology and related courses as an associate professor at Skagit Valley College and Western Washington University.

Open access to this article is made temporarily available in the weeks around the presentation and can be found here. Current SMM members have access to all Marine Mammal Science papers.

Missed a presentation or want to share this series with a friend? All previous Editors’ Select presentations are recorded and archived on our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUc78IynQlubS2DVS1VZoplf_t42-yZOO

Small Grants in Aid of Research 2023 Program Postponed

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Dear Colleagues,

The Society has incurred significant financial losses due to COVID, the delayed biennial conference and additional costs. Therefore, we cannot launch the 2023 Small Grants-in-Aid of Research (SGIAR) program until financial issues are addressed.

We understand the importance of this program to our early career colleagues worldwide, and we are working very hard to make sure the program continues.

Sincerely,
Laura May-Collado
Chair of the Committee of Scientific Advisors
and
Simon Goldsworthy
President of the Society