Dear MARMAMers, We are pleased to announce that Bio-Waves, Inc. and the Centre for Research into Ecological and Environmental Modelling at the University of St. Andrews will be conducting the “Analysis of Passive Acoustic Data & Acoustic-Based Density Estimation” workshop at the 2015 Society for Marine Mammology’s 21st Biennial Conference in San Francisco, CA! This event will be a two day workshop on Saturday December 12th and Sunday December 13th the weekend prior to the SMM conference. Due to limited space at the main conference venue, it will be held nearby at the downtown SFSU campus (at the Westfield San Francisco Center), which is within easy walking distance of the Hilton. This workshop set is intended to provide experience in analysis of passive acoustic monitoring data and demonstrate methods for estimating population density and abundance of marine mammals using these data. The two workshop days are complementary and are designed to supplement one another. As such, participants are encouraged to register for both days; however if an individual is experienced in one of subject areas, they are allowed to register for only one of the two days offered. Registering prior to September 15th, 2015 allows participants to be eligible for the early registration fee of US $160 for both days or US$80/day; beginning September 16th, 2015 registration fees will increase to US$180 for both days or US$90/day. Participants are required to bring their own Windows laptop for this workshop, specifically as PAMGuard does not support the Mac operating system. For Mac users wishing to participate in the distance sampling workshop only, information relating to running the software is available at http://distancesampling.org/distanceextras.html. If you do not have a Windows laptop available, please email workshop organizers who may be able to provide a computer. Space is limited so be sure to sign up early! To register for this workshop, visit the conference registration site at: https://www.marinemammalscience.org/conference/conference-registration. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ *Description* The University of St. Andrews and Bio-Waves, Inc. are partnering to conduct two, one-day workshops at the 2015 Biennial Marine Mammal Conference. These workshops are intended to demonstrate methods for estimating population density and abundance using passive acoustic data. The workshops will provide training in methods for both passive acoustic data analysis (day 1) and density and abundance estimation using passive acoustic data (day 2). The workshops are designed to be complementary, but are offered as two separate workshops so that participants can opt to attend one day only (should they already be familiar with the concepts from the other day). Participants will register for each course separately, but are encouraged to attend both. The workshops will include a practical case study that will be used to provide hands-on experience with passive acoustic data analysis and density estimation. The first day of the workshop will be focused on passive acoustic data collection and analysis and will include both lectures and hands-on analysis exercises. In the practical sessions, participants will use PAMGuard (www.pamguard.org) to post-process acoustic data collected during a line transect survey, learning how to obtain localizations to individual sperm whales. Participants will also learn how to obtain measurements from echolocation clicks selected during post-processing analysis. The result of this exercise will consist of a dataset of perpendicular distances to individual sperm whales that can then be used to estimate density and abundance using Distance software. Participants will be taught how to format these data and import it into Distance. The second day of the workshop will include an overview of methods for estimating density and abundance using passive acoustic data collected from both fixed and towed hydrophone arrays. Participants will analyze the sperm whale dataset from day one using Distance and R software, and will generate density and abundance estimates. Any participants already familiar with Distance will be able to conduct the same analyses in R, a statistical software program. Participants will leave the workshop with an understanding of how to process passive acoustic data for density and abundance estimation and how density and abundance can be estimated from acoustic data. Cheers, *Liz Ferguson* *Chief Operating Officer* *Marine Ecologist* www.bio-waves.com (619) 459-2242