The Whale Museum opens registration for its 2025 Gear Up Workshop

||| FROM CONOR AGNEW for THE WHALE MUSEUM |||

The Whale Museum has opened public registration for its 2025 Gear Up workshop! This year’s virtual workshop will take place on April 17 from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM PST, and will help biologists, enthusiasts, and other stakeholders gear up for the busy season ahead.

This year’s theme is: “Sound Reason: Noise Impacts and Mitigation for Whales in the Salish Sea.” As a species that hunts and communicates using sound, whales are extremely sensitive to auditory changes and intrusions in their environment. This workshop will highlight potential impacts to whales from several specific sources of auditory disturbance, as well as addressing updates to the international efforts to mitigate these impacts.

This subject will be discussed by a series of experts, including:

• Dr. John Ryan, Senior Research Specialist, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute on how environmental conditions affect song in whales.
• Dr. Jason Wood, Managing Director, SMRU Consulting on whether offshore wind farms and tidal turbine energy extraction really have impacts on whales.
• Sonja Henneman, Manager/Senior Policy Advisor, Transport Canada on updates of Transport Canada’s efforts to reduce noise and shipping impacts to whales, especially killer whales.
• Melanie Knight, ECHO Program Manager, Vancouver Fraser Port Authority on updates of the Enhancing Cetacean and Habitat Observation (ECHO) Program.
• Gonzalo Banda-Cruz, Program Manager, Quiet Sound on updates of the Quiet Sound Program.

For more information about the workshop and to register, visit whalemuseum.org. General registration for the workshop is $40. Registration for members of The Whale Museum or the Salish Sea Association of Marine Naturalists is $30.