Dear Marmam community, *How* and *when* should we host UKIRSC 2021? The UK and Ireland Regional Student Chapter committee has started to plan our next conference for students in the UK and Ireland. With understandable uncertainty around mass gatherings during and post the COVID-19 pandemic, we would like to hear from the UKIRSC community. This is an opportunity for the event to be influenced by the preferences of our attendees to ensure everyone feels included and in a safe environment. We are asking UK and Ireland based students to vote for their preferred option: *Option 1 – *The UKIRSC to host their first ever virtual online conference in January 2021 *Option 2 – *Postpone UKIRSC21 until June in the hope to arrange a face-to-face conference hosted by the Sea Mammal Research Unit and the University of St Andrews, Scotland. Please follow the link to our poll *here <https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=yyZW-KgN00mqWGTvZ47wGnhtMN340O1FsbSB0CJfdhJUQjJPMEMyOVdXWUZXWjJDRVNUSDFITDRDWi4u>* . The poll will close on Friday 24th July. Cheers, Izzy, Laura P., James, Cynthia, María & Laura O. *---------------------------------------------------------------* *Committee Member* *UK and Ireland Regional Student Chapter of the Society for Marine Mammalogy* *Website*: http://synergy.st-andrews.ac.uk/ukrsc/ *Facebook*: https://www.facebook.com/UKIRSC/ *Twitter*: https://twitter.com/UKIRSC_SMM