Lab News

Congratulations, Cammen Lab graduates!

By | Student News

Sarah Burton and Maddie Jorge sampling seal scat and eDNA on Cape Cod with Lisa Sette from the Center for Coastal Studies

Despite (or perhaps particularly because of) an unusual end to our spring semester this year, May is always a time for celebration on a college campus.  Please join us in congratulating Sarah Burton and Maddie Jorge for graduating with their Bachelors of Science in Marine Sciences from the University of Maine!  Sarah and Maddie have both been part of the Cammen Lab for many years – Sarah joined as a sophomore initially contributing to a retrospective analysis of marine mammal stranding data and then getting her feet wet in the field, the lab, and the marine mammal rehabilitation worlds.  Maddie joined the lab in her junior year as a Maine Learning Assistant for Kristina’s Marine Mammal Ecology and Conservation course, and then transitioned into a research assistant position.  Sarah and Maddie completed a team Capstone project focused on studying the marine mammals of Western Passage using a combination of visual and eDNA surveys.

Happy New Year! Marine Mammals in the News of 2019

By | Teaching

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.

Cammen lab at WMMC

By | Presentation, Student News

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.