The first Virtual Conference 33rd Annual Conference of the ECS (European Cetacean Society) took place from the 5th to the 7th of April. The Organising Committee from the University of Haifa and Delphis NGO did an excellent job of organisation. Although the conference could not be held in person, more than 250 people attended the scientific programme talks online, which can be found here.

For all those who registered for the conference, the recordings are available on the platform, in the VOD section. The presented posters can also be found and downloaded from the platform, which will be active until the end of May.

The topic of this year’s conference was: Marine mammal research and conservation efforts – Are we on the right path?

SUBMON presented two scientific projects:

The first one, “Assessing the interactions between dolphins and bottom trawlers and bycatch occurrence off the Catalan coast (Western Mediterranean)”, was presented by Natalia Amigó, it was a poster that refers to research work on the interaction with cetacean populations from the trawl fishing sector in Catalonia.

The second one, “Each patch tells a story: population estimates, distribution, and fisheries dependence from the Mediterranean bottlenose dolphin population in the north-western Catalan waters”, was presented by Carla A. Chicote and summarised the results of 4 years of study of the bottlenose dolphin population in Catalonia.

Part of the ECS Board

Finally, SUBMON is pleased to announce that Carla A. Chicote’s candidacy was widely accepted by the ECS members during the Ordinary General Assembly and for the next 4 years she will be part of the ECS Board as an advisor, due to her wide experience in the organisation of conferences. Carla has been on the Board of the SEC (Spanish Cetacean Society) for 4 years and was Co-Chair of the Organising Committee of the world’s biggest marine mammal conference, the WMMC19 (World Marine Mammal Conference), which took place in Barcelona in 2019.