Plenaries, Oral Sessions and Special Panels at the SMM 2015 Conference The organizing committee of the 2015 Biennial Conference is proud to announce our plenaries. We will change things up a bit and offer two shorter plenaries each afternoon. We start on Monday morning with an opening plenary by Peter Tyack, and continue that afternoon with a panel of scientists and journalists, entitled: How to Make Your Science Matter, moderated by Nancy Baron, COMPASS Director of Science. This is very exciting, as our panel consists of Marcia Mc Nutt, Editor in Chief of Science, Jane Lubchenko, U.S. Science Envoy for the Oceans, Nick Gales, SMM President, Charles Littnan, NOAA Fisheries, Ken Weiss, from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, and David Malikoff, from Science Magazine. Our subsequent plenaries will reflect themes from the Biennial: On Tuesday, Jennifer Francis (Rutgers University) and Sue Moore (NOAA/NMFS) will discuss climate change. Wednesday¹s speakers, Beth Shapiro (UC Santa Cruz) and Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse (AU of Queretaro) will present emerging technologies. Human Dimensions is the theme for Thursday, with plenary talks by Claudio Campagna (Wildlife Conservation Society) and Mike Orbach (Duke University). Our program is really taking shape! Find out more about our plenaries and developing conference program here <https://www.marinemammalscience.org/conference/conference-schedule/> (https://www.marinemammalscience.org/smm-news/smm-conference-news/plenaries- oral-sessions-and-special-panels-at-the-conference/). Stay tuned for more announcements and a detailed scientific program coming mid-November. We look forward to seeing you in San Francisco, its going to be great!