Hello MARMAM,

The 2022 SMM conference is coming up in a month and a half, and what better way to kick things off than spending your whole weekend inside in the air conditioning coding your heart out?

We are hosting a 2-day workshop preceding the conference entitled ‘Shiny tools for management rules: Using R and ‘shiny’ to streamline marine mammal conservation’. In this workshop, we will focus on streamlining the processing of survey data, dissemination of results, and the implementation of management rules relevant to the conservation of marine mammals. We will highlight applications we have built that are currently used for determining dynamic protection zones for the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis) (https://github.com/NEFSC/READ-PSB-LWT-narwss_rwsas_apps), and for collating and displaying large whale survey results in near real-time (https://github.com/hansenjohnson/WhaleMap). These examples will be used to demonstrate how effective conservation tools can be developed by researchers without formal computer science training using accessible, open source tools. We aim for this workshop to help connect folks across our field to form a supportive and enduring network within the marine mammal research community.

For more information and to register to attend in person, check out the conference website (https://www.smmconference.org/workshops/#1623437746343-7125b365-e27b). In addition, you can check out our Github wiki page for more details on the workshop schedule and preparation details: https://github.com/NEFSC/READ-PSB-LWT-Shiny_SMM21/wiki

Please email leah.crowe@noaa.gov to inquire about virtual attendance.

If you have repeatable processes that you would like to make more efficient, consistent, and transparent, come join us in the sun-Shiny state!

Leah & Hansen