Marine Education & Research Society Auction 2019

This auction is directed at covering Marine Education & Research Society operating costs.

Please see below for a summary of our efforts for 2018, achieved with less than three full-time paid positions. Such efficiency is possible as a result of extensive volunteer efforts from our team and a broad community of support.

Highlights of work achieved by MERS in 2018:
• 2,000+ data entries for sightings of Humpbacks;
• 170 hours spent monitoring whales during commercial fisheries in case there is an entanglement and in order to better understand the risk;
• 30 additional “See a Blow? Go Slow!” signs for strategic positioning on British Columbia’s coast (many more signs are needed);
• 22 presentations on our research and reducing risks to whales, reaching more than 1,550 people from coastal BC;
• Publishing our research on trap-feeding in Marine Mammal Science;
• Publishing on Minke Whale acoustics in Bioacoustics - the International Journal of Animal Sound and its Recording;
• Training more than 95 people at two Marine Naturalist Workshops to enhance the caliber of conservation information provided on our coast;
• Continued work to understand the proportion of humpbacks that have been entangled in BC, in partnership with Fisheries and Oceans Canada;
• Collaborating with colleagues also documenting Humpbacks off the coast of British Columbia to update the BC province-wide Humpback catalogue; and
• Co-hosting an entanglement workshop with the Coastal Ocean Research Institute /Ocean Wise, Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Sealife Response Rehabilitation and Research to help participants learn how to report, document and help assess entangled whales.

The Marine Education and Research Society is a registered Canadian charity working to reduce threats to marine mammals through research, education and response. Our efforts date back to 2004. We are based on NE Vancouver Island, British Columbia, CANADA, in the Territory of the Kwakwala-speaking Peoples.