Dear All, William Rossiter wrote a few days ago about the BP oils spill in the Gulf, and he included the following: "(...) shore, marine and aerial surveys, stranding responses and rehab efforts are obvious needs, (...)" It is easy to agree completely with him. So, would anybody please update us, the community, about what is going on with respect to dedicated cetacean surveys offshore to assess the status of the animals found in/out of the main affected areas? Are these surveys happening? Are they using acoustic means to help finding the animals? What kind of data are being gathered? While there are counts of cetaceans found dead, there is not much information about if all these are stranded specimens. It is predictable that cetaceans have been cought in areas covered by oil offshore, mainly when the Mississippy Canyon is a well known concentration area for sperm whales and other deep divers. Only dedicated surveys finding the animals and assessing their status can quantify the extent of the effect. In addition to the short-term effects and the direct mortalities of cetaceans, the message from Craig Markin showed us an example of how oil spills may affect cetacean in the long term, even with population effects in some cases. As a community of scientist and people interested on cetaceans and marine mammals in general, I think that the main associations (SOLAMAC, ECS, SMM, ASCOBAMS, ACCOBAMS...) should write a statement of concern on the impact of the oil spill. Furthermore, we should support an international moratoria in offshore drilling, given that this spill has shown that the deep-drilling technology is too risky, not able of preventing strong damages in the marine ecosystem. Thanks a lot for the update and happy to give a hand if these initiatives are put forward Sincerelly Natacha Aguilar (naguilar@ull.es) La Laguna University, Tenerife, Canary Islands Leigh Marine Lab. Univ. Auckland. New Zealand