Society for Marine Mammalogy

The Society since its inception has maintained a program of providing free subscriptions to Marine Mammal Science and copies of the special publications to universities, libraries and government agencies in developing and soft-currency countries.  The goal is to make the science available to students and professionals who may have no other access and cannot afford membership.  At present, there are 26 such subscriptions, in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa, South Asia, East Asia and Southeast Asia. Regions presently not well represented include Oceania, the Caribbean and much of Africa and South Asia.

Requirements are open access for students and professionals in the region, university or public ownership (individuals and NGOs do not qualify), and some guarantee of continued custody and integration into an existing technical collection.

Libraries, universities and government agencies and laboratories in developing and soft-currency countries presently not having these subscriptions may request them.  The request should be in the form of a letter or email message to the chair of the Committee on International Relations (address given below), stating the need, the scale of interest and activity in marine mammalogy in the local region, and the proposed arrangements for custody and access.  The requests are reviewed by the Committee and approved or denied by the Society's Board of Governors.

Bill Perrin
Chair, SMM Committee on International Relations
Southwest Fisheries Science Center
8604 La Jolla Shores Drive
La Jolla, CA 92037, USA
Email - william.perrin@noaa.gov

The 2008 IUCN Cetacean Red List has been released, reassessing the conservation status of all cetacean species.

Some large whale species, including the humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae), are now less threatened with extinction, according to the cetacean update of the 2008 IUCN Red List. Most small coastal and freshwater cetaceans, however, are apparently moving closer to extinction. Almost a third of cetaceans changed their Red List status, with the majority being at greater risk than previously.

The Global Mammal Assessment (GMA) team together with the IUCN SSC Mammal Specialist Groups, have undertaken a complete re-evaluation of the status of all the world's mammal species, which includes the collation of all the supporting documentation for each listing and a review of all mammal assessments included on the Red List since 2004. The cetaceans assessments were carried out primarily by scientists from the Cetacean Specialist Group of the IUCN Species Survival Commission withinput from the Global Mammal Assessment team.

Written By Vicki Cornish and Raychelle Daniel

The Society has determined that climate change has the potential to have long-term detrimental impacts on marine mammal populations. The Society, therefore, calls on the international community to reduce the generation of greenhouse gases to slow down the rate at which climate change occurs. Society members themselves must take action to better understand the effects of global climate change on marine mammals and implement conservation measures to mitigate these effects. To this effect, and to the extent possible and practical within the constraints of particular research programs, Society members will attempt to:

• Increase research efforts, data collection, and predictive modeling on the effects of climate change on marine mammal populations, with an emphasis on vulnerable populations;
• Encourage an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to examining effects of climate change on marine mammal populations and the ecosystems in which they inhabit;
• Incorporate information on potential short and long-term impacts of climate change on marine mammal populations and adopt adaptive management principles when making policy or management recommendations and decisions; and,
• Identify and work to reduce other anthropogenic stressors and protect critical habitat and feeding areas to increase resilience of marine mammal populations to climate change.

It will be necessary to accompany Society member interest with an increased availability of funds to accomplish these goals. The Society therefore recommends that private and governmental funding entities also endorse, prioritize and work to support research and management efforts needed to accomplish the goals and outcomes noted above.

Hi everyone:

This is my first of a series of blog entries as President of the Society for Marine Mammalogy.  I’ll use this forum to update you on Society events and other news of interest to the membership.  I’ll also use the blog to encourage dialog on issues of concern to our membership. 

One of my primary goals as President is to engage the Society in important conservation issues affecting marine mammal populations.  As you will see elsewhere on this web site, we have issued a series of Presidential Letters recently on conservation of the highly endangered vaquita in Mexico and on proposed measures to conserve Hector’s and Maui’s dolphins in New Zealand.  John Reynolds and I are continuing to work on the vaquita issue with government officials in Mexico.  I encourage you to contact me or Helene Marsh, Chair of the Committee of Scientific Advisors, if there are other critical conservation issues on which the Society could usefully engage.  The recent extinction of the baiji is a sobering reminder of the threats facing many populations of marine mammals.  To paraphrase John Reynolds’ eloquent address at the Cape Town Biennial, “…the time has come when we all have to choose between the easy and the right thing to do”.

Hi everyone:

Welcome to the new web site for the Society for Marine Mammalogy.  We have designed the site to make it as useful as possible to our members and other interested visitors.  We hope that the site will provide a number of additional benefits of membership to our Society members.

The site is the result of a great deal of hard work by: Michel Fougeres. our web developer; Dave Johnston, our web master; Doug Nowacek, Chair of the Membership Committee, and Jennifer Tennessen, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin.  Thanks to all of these folks for their efforts – we hope you like the product. 

If you have comments, suggestions for improvement, or would like to contribute images or other material, please contact Dave at david.johnston@duke.edu.