Summary of Lobosondas participation at the ECS conference in Funchal

The annual meeting of the European Cetacean Society 2016 took place in Madeira. The ECS is a coalition of european whale- and dolphin specialists. The conference was organized by the Whalemuseum in Canical and had the theme: “Into the Deep: Research and Conservation on Oceanic Marine Mammals”.

Lobosonda participated with three persons at the workshops and during the conference days from 14.-16.th of march, with an information desk. For us it was a great chance to refresh our knowledge and bring us up to date with the current topics of cetacean research. It was a good opportunity to get first-hand information. There was an enormous variety of topics, which were presented as lectures, workshops and poster-sessions. We enjoyed especially the lectures of Luis Freitas and Ana Dinis (Whale Museum Madeira) about the biology and distribution of Bottlenose dolphins in madeiran waters. As well as the talk from Monica Silva about the significance of oceanic islands and seamount for baleen whales.

Another highlight of the conference was the talk of Prof. Hal Whitehead, a wellknown international expert on spermwhales. His speech was about the biology and culture of Spermwhales (comparison of populations from Atlantic and Pacific). He was invited by the ECS committee to give a lecture. For his wide knowlegde and his excellence scientific expertise he received this years ECS Award for special benefits in the protection of whales and dolphins.

Besides our particiaption at the ECS meeting, we managed also our trips in Calheta. On one tour we were happy to welcome the german marine biologist Florian Ritter (IWC consultant; WDC associate and chairman of the german organisation M.e.e.r e.V), which came to Madeira in order to participate at the conference (among other things: he gave a lecture about “ship collisions with whales). During his tour on the “Ribeira Brava”, he was lucky being able to see False killer whales, which came close to our boat and followed it for a little while, to learn more about this trip read our Blog report 😉

The Lobosonda infodesk was well received and visited. During the video-night, we contributed and showed a short underwater video (made by Daniel and Joana). In general we profit from meeting some of the scientists and talks to students and other participants. We agreed all, that is important to continue networking and exchanging knowledge and data with other involved persons. So we are trying hard to stay in focus with our own data regarding Photo-ID and other subjects.

by Astrid Haas

ECS