Hello all, We are excited to announce that the annual meeting of the Northwest Student Chapter of the Society for Marine Mammalogy (NWSSMM) will take place virtually this spring on April 30, 2022, hosted by the Marine Mammal Research Unit at the University of British Columbia (UBC). This will be a virtual conference held on Zoom. We would like to invite all graduate and undergraduate students in the Pacific Northwest (British Columbia, Washington, Alaska, Yukon, Oregon, Northern California, and Idaho) doing research on marine mammals to present their work at this conference. The purpose of the meeting is to gather students in a relaxed atmosphere to share their research and practice presenting it in a low-stakes, less formal situation. We also see this as an opportunity to meet other undergraduate and graduate students in the region. PI’s and other professionals involved in student led research projects are welcome to attend, but cannot present. There will be oral presentations with two presentation styles: long form oral presentations (12 minutes) and shorter lightning talks (3 minutes), as well as a poster session. The poster session will take place in Zoom breakout rooms. Last year’s virtual conference hosted by Western Washington University was a great success and similar to their model, we are encouraging students that are in the early stages of their projects to present a poster, and researchers with results to give an oral presentation. Please indicate your method of presentation preference on the registration form and we will do our best to accommodate everyone’s wishes. There will also be a plenary speaker to kick-off the conference and an informal networking breakout session called Philosopher’s Cafe. This event has taken place at past in-person NWSSMM conferences, and we wanted to offer a small networking opportunity for students, since Covid has made that more difficult these last few years. There is no registration fee for attending the conference. Abstract submission for the Northwest Student Chapter of the Society for Marine Mammalogy (NWSSMM) conference is due Sunday, April 3rd 2022. Guests interested in attending and not presenting can register for the event until Friday, April 29th, 2022. All registrants will receive information on how to attend the conference using the email that was used for the registration at a later date. Presentations will not be recorded. Registration and abstract submissions will be done via Google forms (link below). If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us: Julia Adelsheim <j.adelsheim@oceans.ubc.ca<mailto:j.adelsheim@oceans.ubc.ca>> and/or Taryn Scarff <t.scarff@oceans.ubc.ca<mailto:t.scarff@oceans.ubc.ca>> Thanks so much, and we look forward to meeting everyone virtually and hearing about your research! Registration and abstract submission link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeBybYIAAK4IHiFkSGB2-pDQzvVTvVH6peA... NWSSMM webpage: https://sites.google.com/uw.edu/nwssmm/home Regards, Julia Adelsheim and Taryn Scarff <j.adelsheim@oceans.ubc.ca<mailto:j.adelsheim@oceans.ubc.ca>> <t.scarff@oceans.ubc.ca<mailto:t.scarff@oceans.ubc.ca>> MSc Students | Marine Mammal Research Unit Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries University of British Columbia https://mmru.ubc.ca/