The European Cetacean Society (ECS) conference was held in Galicia, Spain from 16th till 20th April 2023. Patrick Lyne, a committee member of the MMOA, was fortunate to attend and has some fascinating insights from the event, below are his words from his time spent in Galicia.
The conference was and is always a great place to meet up with old friends and new. It is also a great opportunity to learn about new findings in the field of cetacean research, discover the new methods that are being used for data collection or analyses and the changes that are being introduced globally. The conference consisted of events such as lectures, poster presentations and workshops.
When it came to the workshops, it was hard to choose, and I could not attend everything I would have liked as they were all very interesting. I presented a workshop that was titled ‘The use of Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) in the attainment of Good Environmental Status (GES) under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD)’ where I delivered a short talk on minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) recordings in Irish waters. After the workshop we had a thorough discussion about how authorities can use PAM to determine background noise and help understand how marine mammals use sound, their environment and how anthropogenic noise is impacting them. It was great to hear about the plans to commence acoustic baseline surveys in the French Bay of Biscay in the next few years.