Dear ECS and MARMAM readers, On Saturday 5th April 2014 at the upcoming European Cetacean Society conference in Liege the following workshop on “Exploring technologies for improved data capture from platform of opportunity surveys of marine mammals" will be held in the Aquarium. This workshop is organized by the Atlantic Research Coalition (ARC) the largest European partnership of ferry surveying organisations and will run in the afternoon from 1400-1800. We still have few places remaining, but we are strongly interested by people able to present a short talk on the topic of new technologies for improving data capture (5-7mins). If you are interested could you please provide us a short abstract (<200 word), outlining your work. Short summary: In recent years, due to increasing development and decreasing cost, technologies for infield data capture of marine mammals has become widely available to many survey programmes. In particular the use of web and GIS enabled mobile devices, such as phones, tablets and PDAs, can help in improving data collection on platforms of opportunity (ferries, whale watching boats, fisheries vessels etc) where in the past data has suffered from issues relating to miscapture by surveyors or labour intensive transcription from paper records. Therefore, the aim of this workshop is to explore the recent development of these new technologies for wide implementation across networks of opportunistic platforms. This will be achieved through a combination of case studies from invited speakers trialling new approaches and guided discussion of the advantages and limiting factors of such technologies in application at different campaign scales. Outcomes of the workshop included increased efficiency of data collected via these networks and provide direct benefit and implication to policy demands for marine mammal monitoring (e.g. Marine Strategy Framework Directive, Habitats Directive) and other proposed survey programmes (i.e. SCANS III). So, if you would like to attend or offer to do a presentation at this workshop. please contact: thibaut.bouveroux@oceamm.org or rachel.davies@marine-life.org.uk http://liege.europeancetaceansociety.eu/conference/workshops Thank you very much for your attention and see you in Liège! Best regards, Thibaut Bouveroux Scientific Manager OCEAMM 51, Rue du Général de Gaulle 59123 Zuydcoote France (0033) 06 40 14 33 18 www.oceamm.org