AMMP Down Under!

Last month, I had the pleasure of attending the Society for Marine Mammalogy (SMM) biennial conference in Australia! Bringing together over 1,500 marine mammal scientists from 75+ countries, this was an amazing week of knowledge exchange and networking, as well as the chance to share AMMP on a global stage! 

Attending this conference was particularly special to me, because it was hosted in Perth, Western Australia, where I lived for 8yrs. I left in 2018 soon after completing my PhD, so returning as an independent researcher several years later had me feeling very grown-up! And, of course, it was fabulous to have the chance to revisit old haunts and catch-up with friends and colleagues! 

Geographe Bay, Western Australia
Slightly different view to Aberdeen Harbour!

The theme of the 25th SMM Biennial Conference was "Culture and Conservation: Fishing for Change". It was really interesting to see how the theme of combining marine mammal and human cultures was woven throughout the whole conference, particularly the emphasis on using traditional and local knowledge to achieve stronger research. Overall, there has definitely been a developing appreciation for more "social science" aspects within this conference in the years I've been attending. As important as it is to understand the "hard facts" like population dynamics, animal physiology, ecology and habitat use, and behaviour, we as a research community also need to improve at applying this knowledge. And that is only possibly by taking the human component into account, because without considering people we will never be able to implement successful conservation actions. 

To this end, I attended a pre-conference workshop on an "Introduction to Conservation Marketing". This covered some basic principles of psychology and social marketing in the context of changing human behaviour to reduce anthropogenic impacts on marine mammals. Sounds fancy, but the key message was it doesn't have to be complicated! Making behavioural change Easy, Attractive, Social, and Timely (EAST) can have really positive outcomes.

Workshop Coordinator Andrew Wright explains how to achieve human behaviour change

The rest of the conference was similarly inspiring, with over 1000 presentations covering aspects of population dynamics, ecology, behaviour and culture, acoustics, social dynamics, advances in monitoring techniques, human impacts, and conservation and management. Again, the theme of collaboration among different stakeholders was strong, with numerous speakers promoting the need to work together, no one can do it alone, and we need to better integrate the ecological and social sciences. Moving towards adaptive management approaches can help meet conservation, social, and economic objectives. But to do this, we need to better translate our science and use it to guide human behaviour change.

And what about the Aberdeen Marine Mammal Project's contribution in all of this? I presented an overview of our research on bottlenose dolphins in Aberdeen Harbour, combining projects conducted by Iona MacLeod, Nadia Murphy, and Giverny Fitzgerald. Overall, we found that dolphin occurrence within the harbour seems primarily prey-driven. Whilst dolphins may have a degree of habituation towards vessels, we also found evidence of subtler responses such as changes to grouping and diving behaviours. This sparked a lot of interesting questions from the audience, who were keen to know what it could mean for expanding vessel traffic and tourism in the area, and what research approaches we were planning to deploy next. It was amazing to receive this kind of international interest for our wee corner of the world!

Sarah Marley presenting AMMP at the
Society for Marine Mammalogy Biennial Conference

Now back home, it is time to start thinking how to apply these global lessons to a local context!