Happy New Year! 2019 was a big year for marine mammal science, as Nick Pyenson describes in his recent reflection on the year in the Washington Post. University of Maine undergraduate students enrolled in Kristina’s SMS308: Ecology & Conservation of Marine Mammals agree!
Check out the annual issue of student-authored Marine Mammals in the News, where students summarize a variety of peer-reviewed publications on marine mammal science published over the past year.
Kristina, Lauri, and Alayna traveled to Barcelona, Spain to kick off the end of the semester at the World Marine Mammal Conference. This biennial conference, which this year was jointly hosted by the Society for Marine Mammalogy and the European Cetacean Society, attracted over 2700 scientists, policy-makers, conservationists, and other interested parties from around the world.
Alayna and Lauri both presented posters on their Masters research at the conference.
Kristina co-organized a conference workshop on Marine Mammal eDNA. Six invited speakers shared lessons learned from their experiences using eDNA (environmental DNA, or the genetic material that organisms leave behind in their environments through sloughing skin, etc.) to study marine mammals. Sixty workshop attendees then discussed their questions, concerns, and hopes about the potential of eDNA to move our field forward.
Check out Kristina’s faculty profile in the recent Mitchell Center E-newsletter!
“What sustains you? Sunshine, blueberries and baked goods, and my family.”
