Publication Date:
2022-05-26
Description:
On May 1 and 2, 2015, over 75 people attended the Northwest Atlantic Seal Research Consortium's first official
biennial two day scientific meeting, "Seals and Ecosystem Health", at Salem State University in Salem,
Massachusetts. The focus of the meeting was addressed by two keynote presentations: "Seals and Ecosystem
Health" and "Marine mammals and ecosystem functioning: what can recovering seal populations teach us?" The first
day of the meeting featured 16 oral and two poster presentations, covering a diverse range of topics highlighting the
important underlying concepts, data gaps and future directions. Following the theme of the meeting, attendees
discussed the nature of ecosystems, acknowledging the complex and often cryptic interactions between components,
with cumulative and synergistic effects on animals and their environment. As our understanding of the ecological role
of seals in the Northwest Atlantic grows, the cumulative interactions increase our recognition of seals as sentinels of
ecosystem health. Meeting presentations highlighted the value of existing data and ongoing research efforts, including
long-term population monitoring, tagging and photo-identification, stranding response, and rehabilitation facilities. The
importance of observational effort was recognized as a critical component in detecting mortality events, documenting
population processes in remote locations and cryptic species interactions. Research priorities identified included
development of molecular tools for study of diet and disease, population dynamics studies (demographics and trends),
telemetry-based investigations of spatiotemporal distribution, and model- and field-based ecosystem-level studies.
Several of the presentations and the panel discussion, "Addressing Perception vs. Reality: How data (or lack of data)
affects public perceptions and management decisions," highlighted the diverse and evolving perspectives with which
society views seals, perspectives that are often biased by the backgrounds of individual humans. Diverse opinions
necessitate engagement of stakeholders and the public, and societal objectives need to be defined in order to effect
science-based natural resource management at an ecosystem level. At the closing of the meeting, recommendations
from the panel discussion and for the overall goals of NASRC were discussed.
Description:
Funding was provided by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Marine Mammal Center and
the US Marine Mammal Commission
Keywords:
Seals
;
Ecosystem health
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Technical Report
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