European Cetacean Society Conference 2009 (1)

The 23rd annual Conference of the European Cetacean Society has just finished. The Conference was held in Istanbul, Turkey, between the 1st and the 4th of March. This has been the first ECS Conference held in Eastern Europe, at the gate between Europe and Asia.

The Conference has been preceded by two days of workshops focusing on the following aspects: moving towards a standardized population estimate approach for monk seals, beaked whales and active sonar, best practices in marine mammal research, technological advances and related analytical methods in pinniped telemetry, reconciling diverse perspectives for cetacean, and designing behavioural studies on cetaceans in the wild.

The Conference theme was "Climate change and marine mammals" and keynote speakers included Temel Oguz (talking about “Impacts of climate variability on the Black Sea ecosystem”), Mads-Peter Heide-Jørgensen (“Arctic marine mammals and climate change”), and Randy Wells (“How might coastal dolphins be impacted by climate change?”).

The Conference has attracted almost 350 participants from as many as 49 Countries, in spite of the usual 30-32 (click on image to enlarge). Several scientists came from eastern Europe and the Black Sea area.

Simone Panigada