Leaving Quebec City....
The 18th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals ended Friday in beautiful Quebec City. It was an exciting time in this Canadian city for those of us working in scientific and conservation management fields involving marine mammals. With several places nearby with belugas and other whales, Quebec was a wonderful venue for the meeting of our society.
There were over 200 talks and over 500 posters in various fields of study, conservation, and education. Dr. Southall of SEA, Inc. gave a presentation summarizing the Behavioral Response Study (BRS) from 2007-08 in the Bahamas (see: http://www.sea-inc.net/science/#brs for more details and a short flash movie). This presentation, which included five colleagues as co-authors, was entitled: "Behaviosal responses of beaked whales and other cetaceans to controlled exposures of simulated sonar and other sounds." A .pdf version of this presentation will be available at the SEA website later this week. In addition to Dr. Southall's overview of the BRS project and summary of the main results, there were three additional talks and two posters on various aspects of this collaborative, international project.
The next biennial meetings of the Society for Marine Mammalogy will be in Tampa, Florida in 2011 and Christchurch, New Zealand in 2013. Additional information about our society and it's many important functions and contributions may be found at: http://www.marinemammalscience.org/.