SPEAKER SERIES 2009-2010

A73 "Springer" spyhopping near Vashon Island, photo courtesy Mark Sears, © 2002, All Rights Reserved Speaker Series Event Information All speaker series events meet on the 3rd Wednesday of the month at the Phinney Neighborhood Center, Room 6, 6532 Phinney Ave. N., Seattle, just north of the Woodland Park Zoo. [Directions to meeting] Doors open at 7pm and the program starts at 7:30pm. Plenty of free parking is available in the upper and lower parking lots. Admission is free. Previous Speakers 2008-2009 Speaker Series 2007-2008 Speaker Series 2006-2007 Speaker Series 2005-2006 Speaker Series 2004-2005 Speaker Series See the video of the Puget Sound Chapter's first general meeting featuring: Makah elder, Alberta Thompson who discussed her insights into the Makah whale hunt.

The Puget Sound Chapter of the American Cetacean Society Speaker Series does not meet during the months of July, August, & December.

19 May 2010 - Kristin Wilkinson, stranding coordinator for NOAA Fisheries, NWR
Recent Marine Mammal Stranding events in Puget Sound

The Northwest Marine Mammal Stranding Network responded to five gray whale strandings and one live California sea lion case in a ten day timeframe in April 2010. Please join us for a presentation to learn more about these cases and necropsy findings. Also learn how to get involved in the network and how to become a first responder.

Kristin Wilkinson has been working for NOAA Fisheries for the past four years as the Marine Mammal Stranding Specialist. Kristin oversees all of the stranding networks in Washington and Oregon state and has a passion for educating others about marine mammals. Kristin studied marine biology in Townsville, QLD, Australia and graduated from the University of Hawaii where she worked for NOAA Fisheries and the Marine Turtle Response Program

16 June 2010 - Sally Mizorch, biologist NMML
Long-term survival of humpback whales radio-tagged in Alaska from 1976 through 1978

Invasive tags designed to provide information on animal movements through radio or satellite monitoring have tremendous potential for the study of whales and other cetaceans. However, to date there have been no published studies on the survival of tagged animals over periods of years or decades.

Researchers from National Marine Mammal Laboratory and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution tracked five humpback whales with implanted radio tags in southeastern Alaska in August 1976 and July 1977, and tracked two humpback whales in Prince William Sound, Alaska, in June 1978.

All seven of these individually identified humpback whales were re-sighted at least 20 years after first being tagged, and five of the seven have been observed for more than 30 years; some of them are among the most resighted humpback whales in the North Pacific. Photos of tagging sites taken during and subsequent to tagging operations show persistent but superficial scarring and no indication of infection. These pioneering field studies demonstrated both long-term survival of the whales and the short-term effects of deploying radio tags, which at the time were larger and more invasive than those typically used today.

In her professional life as a marine biologist, Sally Mizroch studies large whale populations at NOAA Fisheries, National Marine Mammal Laboratory, in Seattle, using both photo-identification and historical whaling data to estimate whale life history parameters, vital rates, distribution, and abundance. She developed a computer-assisted matching program for humpback whale photo-identification and has written scientific papers on humpback, blue, fin, sei, minke and killer whales. Notable recent articles include a paper on distribution and movements of North Pacific fin whales in Mammal Review, a paper on North Pacific killer whales in Marine Ecology Progress Series and a paper estimating adult survival rates of central North Pacific humpback whales in the Journal of Mammalogy