[MARMAM] Final call: World Cetacean Alliance Responsible Whale Watching Guide Course

[Dylan Walker]

Dear MARMAMERS,

Please find our call for applicants below:


*World Cetacean Alliance Responsible Whale Watching Guide Course *
This year, the World Cetacean Alliance (WCA) is holding an intensive 5-day
training programme to become a certified WCA Responsible Whale Watching
Guide.

*Dates:* Monday 17th – Friday 21st July 2017
*Location:* WCA Headquarters, Brighton, UK


*WCA’s Responsible Whale Watching Guide Course*

The course will include:
* WCA Responsible Whale Watcher course and certification
* Lectures and training from seasoned professionals, including: WCA CEO
Dylan Walker; Ian Rowlands from WhaleFest and Gina Gow from Incredible
Oceans
* Workshops
* Guide training
* Data collection and feedback
* Practical activities, including boat work
* Final presentation/assessment

After successful completion of the course, participants will be placed on a
database of qualified guides from where WCA Partners andaffiliates will be
able to select suitable candidates for internship and guiding
opportunities. Any successful placement will be subject to the terms and
conditions of the WCA Partner or affiliate.

*Applications*
* Limited places available, so early application is strongly encouraged.
* Please send a full CV (maximum two pages) and a cover letter, including:
previous experience, why you would like to participate in the course and,
what you hope to achieve after completing the course to
proje...@worldcetaceanalliance.org
* Applications will be open until 30th June, and places will be confirmed
by 4th July 2017.



Dylan Walker


Chief Executive Officer


*World Cetacean Alliance *


*[image: http://worldwhaleconference.org/]
*

*T *+44 (0)1273 355011*   M *+44 (0)7900 471490* S *dylan.wca

*E *dy...@worldcetaceanalliance.org*   W *worldcetaceanalliance.org

*W2 *whaleheritagesites.org  *W3 *worldwhaleconference.org


*A *Studio 3, Lower Promenade, Madeira Drive, Brighton, BN2 1ET, UK



*The World Cetacean Alliance (WCA) is a Partnership of over 90 non-profit
organisations, whale and dolphin watching tour operators and individuals in
40 countries worldwide working collaboratively to protect cetaceans and
their habitats. World Cetacean Alliance, the Secretariat to the
Partnership, is a UK registered Charity no. 1160484. *

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way disclosing its content to any other person, is strictly prohibited. If
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[MARMAM] eDNA workshop

[Dennis Heinemann]

A few months ago I sought information on marine mammal research activities 
involving eDNA. Quite a few people from around the world responded and I found 
a few others from the literature and on the web.  As part of efforts to bring 
MM eDNA researchers together, I worked with a couple of the respondents to 
prepare and submit a proposal for an eDNA workshop at the upcoming MMS Biennial 
Conference in Halifax.  Unfortunately, the proposal was not accepted, so we 
will have to look for another opportunity to bring everyone together.  You will 
hear from me again regarding other efforts to foster communication among eDNA 
researchers.  Thanks again for everyone’s interest.

Dennis Heinemann, PhD
Director of Science
U.S. Marine Mammal Commission
email:dheinem...@mmc.gov
web:  www.mmc.gov
twitter: @MarineMammalCom
Click 
here
 to sign up for the MMC Newsletter

  The Marine Mammal Commission is an
  Independent Agency of the Federal Government


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[MARMAM] new publication on the action imitation capacity in a Beluga whale

[José Francisco Zamorano Abramson]

Dear all list members,

We are happy to announce our recent publication:



*Contextual imitation of intransitive body actions in a Beluga whale
(Delphinapterus leucas): A “do as other does” study *

Abstract

Cetaceans are remarkable for exhibiting group-specific behavioral
traditions or cultures in several behavioral domains (e.g., calls,
behavioral tactics), and the question of whether they can be acquired
socially, for example through imitative processes, remains open. Here we
used a “Do as other does” paradigm to experimentally study the ability of a
beluga to imitate familiar intransitive (body-oriented) actions
demonstrated by a conspecific. The participant was first trained to copy
three familiar behaviors on command (training phase) and then was tested
for her ability to generalize the learned “Do as the other does” command to
a different set of three familiar behaviors (testing phase). We found that
the beluga (1) was capable of learning the copy command signal “Do
what-the-other-does”; (2) exhibited high matching accuracy for trained
behaviors (mean = 84% of correct performance) after making the first
successful copy on command; (3) copied successfully the new set of three
familiar generali- zation behaviors that were untrained to the copy command
(range of first copy = 12 to 35 tri- als); and (4) deployed a high level of
matching accuracy (mean = 83%) after making the first copy of an untrained
behavior on command. This is the first evidence of contextual imitation of
intransitive (body-oriented) movements in the beluga and adds to the
reported findings on production imitation of sounds in this species and
production imitation of sounds and motor actions in several cetaceans,
especially dolphins and killer whales. Collectively these find- ings
highlight the notion that cetaceans have a natural propensity at skillfully
and proficiently matching the sounds and body movements demonstrated by
conspecifics, a fitness- enhancing propensity in the context of cooperative
hunting and anti-predatory defense tac- tics, and of alliance formation
strategies that have been documented in these species’



A open access PDF may be obtained from



PLOS ONE:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0178906#sec014



All the best,


José

-- 

Dr. José Fco. Zamorano Abramson.
Investigador del Centro de Estudios Avanzados
Universidad de Playa Ancha
Calle Traslaviña 450, Viña del Mar, Chile
http://www.upla.cl/estudiosavanzados/es/investigadores/jose-francisco-zamorano-abramson/
ORCID Id:

orcid.org/-0001-7106-6419
RESEARCHE Id: B-3990-2012

Departamento de Psicobiología
Facultad de Psicología
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Campus de Somosaguas 28223 Madrid, Spain
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