We like to announce a workshop titled: “Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) of marine mammals” at the upcoming 22nd Biennial Conference of the Marine Mammal Society. This two day workshop will take place on Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th of October.

Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) has now been used in several large projects that have produced results that could not be achieved by other methods within realistic budgets, but it is a young method with multiple challenges. This workshop aims to focus on all issues that impact efforts to use PAM of all marine mammals and present recently finished and ongoing projects. Both, static acoustic monitoring as well as towed systems will be presented and three taxa, namely toothed whales, baleen whales and pinnipeds are covered.

In a novel format, we will combine tutorials on equipment, detectors, classifiers and density estimation with invited talks by experts in the field and some contributed presentations.
Click here to read more.

For SMM participants working with PhotoID, genetic samples, sightings data, and/or tag data:

No researcher can cover the range over which whales operate, we need the tools to work on oceanic and global scales to conserve marine species over biologically relevant scales. Flukebook ( http://www.flukebook.org ) is the first web platform that engages both the research and citizen science aspects of cetacean conservation. Flukebook is groundbreaking because it connects everyone, including the animals, in the same social network for the first time. It builds living stories, about animals and the people who want to interact with them, but it also grows useful data streams and provides powerful tools to the researchers who study them. The Flukebook platform is first and foremost for professional researchers. It provides researchers with the advanced tools needed for scientific analysis and enables transboundary and multi-institutional collaboration without sacrificing interactivity or approachability for citizen scientists wanting to engage with the species and its conservation. In Flukebook, researchers have access to data management tools, A.I.-trained photo-matching computer vision algorithms, a global catalog of individuals, and easy connectivity to common analytical software for mark-recapture, genetic, and socio-ecological studies (MARK, WinBugs, Socprog, GeneAIEx, ARC, GoogleMaps, Genepop among others). At the research level, secured data sharing is accomplished on a peer-approval basis which allows users to access tools without the requirement of sharing data; but promotes a growing inclusiveness and respect for data rights. For citizen scientists, Flukebook enables participants to receive automatic and comprehensive profile updates on individuals they have sighted, transforming “data” into learning and encouraging repeat participation and engagement in conservation initiatives in those regions.

The half-day workshop to be hosted from 8:00am to 12:00pm on October 28^th will enable participants to learn more about this growing collaborative community, the functionality of the research tools, how to upload and export their data, examine and test the automated matching algorithms, learn more about how data is secured and shared online, and the future developments of the platform.

Click here to read more.

We would like to announce a half-day workshop on Saturday, October 28, 2017, from 8 am -noon titled: ” U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act and Endangered Species Act research permitting.”

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) oversee issuance of permits for take, import, and export of marine mammals under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), Endangered Species Act (ESA), and Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES; FWS only). NMFS has jurisdiction over cetaceans and pinnipeds, except walrus.  FWS has jurisdiction over dugong, manatees, polar bears, sea otters, marine otter, and walrus. The Marine Mammal Commission (the Commission) provides independent oversight of the MMPA permitting programs.

Click here to read more.

If you are attending the Biennial conference this year please consider participating in
this workshop:

Title: Killer whales in western North Pacific and the Okhotsk Sea

Summary
Killer whales (Orcinus orca) are distributed in all oceans of the
world, and those in the Northwest US and western Canada have been well
studied since 1970’s. Whereas on the opposite side of the Pacific,
Russian Far East killer whales are studied since late 1990’s, and
intensive studies have just started in the eastern Hokkaido, Japan
since 2010. The studies in Japanese waters have revealed many killer
whales are observed in Nemuro Strait in early summer, and off Kushiro
in fall, and photo identification, acoustic and tracking studies are
currently underway. Although their social structure and prey
preferences are still unknown, this population seems to migrate along
Kuril islands and share the same calls with Russian waters. The goal
of this workshop is to begin discussion among people studying killer
whales in the North Pacific and the Okhotsk Sea focusing on
similarities and differences between locations.

Date/Time: Sunday, October 29, 2017; 08:00-12:00

If you have any question, please email to the following address:
*Notification: I am on board until 13th July, internet access is
limited. So my reply may get delayed.
until 13th July, <mitani040@oshoro.fish.hokudai.ac.jp>
from 13th July, yo_mitani@fsc.hokudai.ac.jp

Cost: $50 (Early Bird); $60 (After September 15, 2017)

We are pleased to announce we will be running hosting a one day workshop entitled  “Application and validation of compound-specific stable isotope analysis in studies of marine mammal ecology and eco-physiology” at the upcoming 22nd Biennial Conference of the Marine Mammal Society on Saturday, October 28th from 8:00 am – 5:00 pm

Compound-specific stable isotope analysis (CSIA) of amino and fatty acids offers advantages over traditional analysis of bulk tissues. CSIA is a potentially powerful tool to study

marine mammal eco-physiology, movement, and foraging ecology. While this approach has been validated in numerous studies of invertebrates and fishes, application of CSIA to study marine mammal ecology and eco-physiology is relatively under-utilized. Building on two workshops held prior to the 2015 SMM biennial conference in San Francisco, we propose a 1-day workshop on this topic and invite submission of abstracts from researchers who have used CSIA to study any aspect of marine mammal ecology (e.g. foraging, migration, distribution), or who have conducted validation studies with more traditional bulk tissue isotope analysis to help clarify how this method can be applied in both wild and captive settings. The workshop will consist of informal talks and presentations of data, and group discussions of uncertainties and limitations that need to be addressed through further study. In particular, students are invited to submit proposals for talks and poster presentations; we will host a small poster session if there is enough interest.

Cost: $80 (Before July 13th)

$90 (After July 13th)

Registration for the workshop should be done through the conference website (https://www.xcdsystem.com/smm/member/index.cfm)