Reporting from ECS Galway 2012

Hello there, my name is Katrin and I am the co-founder of this blog. I've been a lot more quiet than initially planned as I've encountered some unexpected good luck and received funding to volunteer with the Sea Watch Foundation as part of Vodafone's World of a Difference Program! I am a Marine Biology graduate passionate about the field of marine mammal science and have volunteered over a year of my time to several research charities to make a contribution to marine conservation and thanks to Vodafone World of a Difference, I can continue to do so! I am working as a Regional Coordinator with the Sea Watch Foundation and my aim is to set up a regional sighting network of dedicated volunteers to improve awareness and our understanding of marine mammals around North West England as well as picking up some odd jobs and just supporting Sea Watch in any way I can. 

As part of this placement, I spent most of last week on the emerald isle, to attend and represent Sea Watch at the 26th European Cetacean Society Conference in Galway, Ireland.Hosted by Irish Whale and Dolphin Group at the Galway Bay Hotel and GMIT Galway, the theme of this years conference was ‘Communication: Information and ideas worth sharing’. The week started off with a collection of workshops on a variety of different subjects, basically brainstorming session on different research topics such as conservation legislation, linking whale watching with science, killer whales and best practices for tagging and biopsy sampling; it’s not often you start your day with a slide entitled crossbows: pros and cons!

Despite Sea Watch only having two full time members of staff, it is one of the foremost marine research charities in it’s field and the European Cetacean Society offers a great opportunity to showcase the work that is being done. This year Sea Watch was once again well represented with four posters and several talks by Sea Watch’s director, Dr. Peter Evans. I’m happy to say I was able to do my part to contributing to our presence at ECS with a poster examining boat traffic effects on bottlenose dolphins in Cardigan Bay, Wales.

With increasing levels of leisure boat activity around the world the risk of displacement through noise pollution and also boat related injury is on the rise. Dolphins are highly acoustic animals, they live in a world of sound, so an increase in noise levels could mean that a previously ideal habitat might become unsuitable for them if boat traffic levels are too high. Cardigan Bay is has seen rising levels of boat traffic since 2006 and as it has been suspected of being an important nursery ground for bottlenose dolphins, it is of special interest to assess any potential impacts.

In my poster I looked at different areas in Cardigan Bay and correlated boat traffic levels with sighting rates to see if there was any relationship between the two. In several areas of the bay there was a strong negative correlation, suggesting that dolphin sightings decrease with increasing number of boats. While my findings suggested that there is a generally negative trend, there is still a lot of further work that needs to be done to take into account all possible factors. All posters should soon be up for download on the Sea Watch Foundation website but if you can’t wait, feel free to contact me and I will be more than happy to send you a copy!

Of course, apart from talks on cetacean science, social events are the highlights of the conference and from the first night Ice Breaker at the National Aquarium to the final night's dinner and dancing, both organisers and participants fully embraced the Irish culture, some brave souls even attempting to learn a few Irish dance moves! The video night was a lot more mellow and introduced us to some great local talent, including the stunning photography by George Karbus. The weather, amazingly, cooperated all week, it was hard to believe we were in Ireland with temperatures well in the twenties on most days and shorts and tank tops spontaneously blooming all around us!

Overall the conference was a great success and ended on a very pleasant surprise; Sea Watch’s founder and director, Dr. Peter Evans, was honoured with the ECS conservation award for an outstanding contribution to marine mammal conservation and environmental education! Congratulations once again! We look forward to seeing everyone again next year in Setubal, Portugal!

And don't forget you can follow my progress with Vodafone on a separate blog as well as following both me(@NWcetaceans) and Matt(@Matt_Clough)on Twitter.