About this presentation: An interesting pattern of dead whales known to be killed by blunt trauma is that not all of them have broken bones. So if lethal collisions do not need to generate enough force per unit area (i.e. stress) to break bones, we wondered what a lethal amount of stress might be. We […]
Good news! In March 2020, SMM President, D. Ann Pabst signed an SMM Presidential Letter to attract the attention of the Government of Mozambique on the high risks involved in letting the South African SASOL oil giant conduct seismic explorations in core habitat of the last healthy population of dugongs in Africa. Today South African […]
The Committee completed its annual review of the SMM list of accepted marine mammal species and subspecies in May 2020. A new species has been added to the list — Sato’s beaked whale, Berardius minimus Yamada, Kitamura and Matsuishi, 2019. This species is found in the North Pacific Ocean. It is smaller and darker in coloration than Baird’s beaked […]
The Committee drafted several Presidential Letters (found here). The most recent was sent to President Tsai of Taiwan in regards to conservation efforts for the Taiwanese white dolphin. In March 2020, a Presidential Letter was sent regarding the conservation of dugongs in the Bazaruto Archipelago National Park (in Mozambique) and adjacent waters, the last viable […]