Announcing the First International Conference on Marine Mammal Protected Areas (ICMMPA) The Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary will host the ICMMPA, March 30 – April 3, 2009, at the Grand Wailea Resort on the Island of Maui, Hawaii. The conference is Co-sponsored by NOAA and Agencies and NGOs from several countries. It is an ambitious combination of presentations, panels, posters, workshops and training sessions, conceived by a steering committee of marine mammal and MPA experts from around the world. Its primary audience is intended to be MPA managers, policy-makers, educators and scientists, who work for (or in) the over 500 existing or proposed MPAs with significant marine mammal populations around the world. The primary goal is to share common challenges and solutions, and to foster networking (both formal and informal), between marine mammal MPAs which share populations and issues. For further general information, see the event web site at www.ICMMPA.org or contact: Pacific Rim Concepts LLC (Honolulu, Hawaii) prc@hawaiibiz.rr.com For information about submitting a poster presentation, relevant to the conference theme, contact: Alecia.VanAtta@NOAA.gov (Honolulu, Hawaii)