Workshop 1
Title: Who are our seals? Moving towards a standardized population estimate approach for Monachus monachus
Date and duration: 28 February 2009, Saturday, ALL DAY
Organisers: Giulia Mo, Ali Cemal Gücü
Contact: Ali Cemal Gücü (gucu@ims.metu.edu.tr)
Brief description: The Mediterranean monk seal is one of the most critically endangered marine mammals of Europe yet a precise estimate of its population size throughout its distribution range is still lacking. This workshop aims to provide an initial baseline for the discussion and identification of feasible field methods that can be used to construct a standard approach for the estimation of population numbers and trends for the ultimate conservation benefit of the species.
Workshop 2
Title: Reconciling diverse perspectives for cetacean
Date and duration: 28 February 2009, Saturday, MORNING
Organiser: Alison Neilson
Contact: Alison Neilson (aneilson@uac.pt)
Brief description: Perceptions are influenced by powerful forces that impose gendered, raced and classed stories on what is observed as nature. In order to disrupt these forces and hear a wider range of perspectives and hence create broader support for conservation, research needs to focus on multiple ways of communicating understanding; it needs to actively support local knowledges; and be self reflective about the underlying assumptions held by the researchers themselves. This workshop aims to explore and discuss the developing results of an international project on the global influences as well as local cultural heritage on the development of perceptions of the sea and cetaceans.
Workshop 3
Title: Best practices in marine mammal research
Date and duration: 28 February 2009, Saturday, AFTERNOON
Organisers: The Science Advisory Committee of the ECS
Contact: Michel André (michel.andre@upc.edu)
Brief description: This workshop will be the first of a series aimed at establishing guidelines for best practice in marine mammal science as well as other relevant information or ethical consideration when planning a research project, and any other issue that would need or require advise. This will be useful to define the pros and cons of various forms of potentially intrusive/invasive research, ranging from photo-ID through to skin swabbing, biopsy sampling, different attachment procedures for radio tags, acoustics experiments and any capture process. This first chapter of the series will be devoted to Photo-ID procedures.
Workshop 4
Title: Beaked whales and active sonar: transiting from research to mitigation
Date and duration: 1 March 2009, Sunday, ALL DAY
Organisers: G. Notarbartolo di Sciara, S. Dolman, N. Aguilar Soto
Contact: G. Notarbartolo di Sciara (noisemitigation@gmail.com)
The last ECS workshop on Active Sonar and Cetaceans (2004) helped to document the association between atypical mass strandings of beaked whales and naval sonar exercises. The exact mechanism by which sonar leads to the death of beaked whales remains unknown, but since the 2004 workshop there has been considerable progress on scientific knowledge on beaked whales and in mitigation techniques, including acoustic and visual detection, distribution mapping and modelling, discussed at a further ECS workshop on Beaked Whale Research (2007). Ongoing research is mainly focused on the responses of individual beaked whales to naval active sonar, while a clear protocol on how to use these results for designing mitigation guidelines is currently lacking. Therefore an urgent requirement remains to design an effective monitoring and mitigation protocol to reduce the risks of intense sound sources damaging beaked whales. This workshop aims to provide a background to the current field research investigating mitigation techniques, as well as a legal and official perspective about the feasibility of promoting a standardised mitigation protocol. In addition to researchers, the workshop will invite representatives from international organisms dealing with marine management and conservation, and using sonar, such as ACCOBAMS, ASCOBAMS, OSPAR, NGOs, NATO, etc, to participate in an open table dialogue with opportunity for questions and discussion. A workshop report, including a consensus statement on effective mitigation requirements, is envisaged.
Open call to participants until the 24th of January 2009
1.- For the open round table
2.- For contributing speakers in the fields of mitigation techniques and procedures, and legal/management aspects of transiting from scientific knowledge to mitigation protocols
The scientific panel will select the contributions more directly related to the objectives of the workshop and public the final agenda the 9th of January 2009. Please send a max. 100 words abstract to the following e-mail: noisemitigation@gmail.com
Workshop 5
Title: Technological advances and related analytical methods in pinnipeds' telemetry
Organisers: Virginie Ramasco, Cecile Vincent
Contact: Virginie Ramasco (virginie.ramasco@imr.no)
Date and duration: 1 March 2009, Sunday, ALLDAY
Brief description: This workshop aims at gathering together users and developers of telemetry techniques applied to pinnipeds. The workshop will focus in particular on tag deployment (capturing methods for pinnipeds, tag attachment, etc.), recent advances in telemetric techniques (tags available and new requirements proposed by the users), and selected problems in data management and analysis (e.g. analysis of spatial correlated data, space usage maps and analysis of longitudinal data, sharing of codes in R language, etc.). A questionnaire will be sent to all participants before the workshop in order to focus the choice of topics. Abstracts for short oral presentations in any of the three sections are welcome; the presentations should briefly outline problems and/or solutions in the application of telemetry methods to pinnipeds. Plenty of time will be allocated for discussion. Invited speakers include Bernie McConnell (Sea Mammal Research Unit).
Workshop 6
Title: Student workshop “Designing behavioural studies on cetaceans in the wild”
Organisers: Polona Kotnjek, Tilen Genov
Contact: Polona Kotnjek (polona.kotnjek@gmail.com)
Date and duration: 1 March 2009, Sunday, MORNING
Brief description: Behaviour is an aspect of cetology, that interests many students. While many behavioural studies have been published and some (but not many) publications have dealt with a review and critique of different behavioural sampling techniques, the execution of the study itself may prove difficult. Many methodological and analytical considerations must be taken into account prior to carrying out the study. Senior scientists could provide students with some guidelines and advice on »how to do it in practice«, while students could ask specific questions and discuss different options.
Workshop 7
Title: Historical record of dolphin fisheries in the Black Sea
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