To many, both inside and outside of academia, attending a scientific meeting (e.g. a conference, symposia or workshop) may seem like a bit of luxury that only those established in their field should be allowed to attend. However I would argue that these meetings are a key component in the training of graduate students like myself and that our attendance should be encouraged. 

As it happens many scientific meetings do encourage student participation; there are often awards for the best student presentations and student oriented workshops.  Also, these meetings provide us with opportunities to not only learn the latest developments in our field but also to learn who the movers and shakers are in our fields (and if we are lucky, even meet these individuals!).  The opportunities and connections available to us at international meetings often help set us on career paths in our chosen fields that may one day see us become the next generation of movers and shakers, and that is no small thing! Not to mention the valuable presentation and communication skills that we have to learn in order to actually give an award worthy presentation. Have I managed to convince you yet of the value of the scientific meeting to the mere student?

Not quite, well how about this. We, as grad students, are the next generation of scientists in our chosen field. (That in it-self should be enough!) We should be exposed to the experts in our fields.  We should be taught how to share and communicate our findings to the experts in our fields, the academics, government scientists, NGOs and of course our own peers. If we do not learn these valuable skills we risk loosing the fruits of our labour to obscure scientific journals that can few can access! We want to make... or at least think, that we have something to offer and that our work can and lead to progress in our chosen fields.

But for a student to attend a scientific meeting they must have the means to do so and this means $$$!. Without funding these meetings are usually inaccessible to students. Some students are lucky to have a conference budget included in their funding package or perhaps have supervisors who can financially support their attendance.  For others of us without these opportunities we must be resourceful and get really good at finding the money elsewhere. Most universities expect that a grad student will have the opportunity to present their work at a scientific meeting at least once during their graduate program and have limited pots of money available for this.

Over the course of my PhD program I have been pretty lucky – I have been able to attend and present my work at both large international scientific conferences as well as a number of smaller symposia. And I have managed this without any formal conference budget or financial support from my supervisor. How have I managed this you might be wondering? Well in short I have had a good dose of luck and a good credit card in my pocket! (by the way I don’t recommend the credit card route except as a last resort..).  In some cases I have been able to gather up small pots of money from NGO groups, my department and other sources so that at least my flights, accommodation and registration fees can be covered. In others, I have crashed in other student’s rooms, searched on line for cheap hotels or used carefully saved air-miles to save money.  Other times I have had to dig deep into my pockets but this has been a sacrifice I have been willing to take because I understand the importance of being able to share my work with my colleagues, particularly in Alaska. 

This December the 19th Biennial Conference on Marine Mammals is taking place in New Zealand.  After much agonizing I decided against trying to present at this meeting, due in part to the huge cost of getting to New Zealand as well as the fact that I will be desperately trying to finish my thesis at that time and the guilt of being in New Zealand and not working on the dam thesis would be too much for me. But last week, as I signed up to run in my first ever half-marathon, an idea came to me. Why don’t I put this challenge to a greater use? Why don’t I use this half-marathon to help raise funds for student travel grants so that so that I can help other students attend the conference.

 In 2011 I was the lucky recipient of a travel grant from the American Cetacean Society – Puget Sound Chapter (without their grant I would not have been able to present my work at the 18th Biennial Marine Mammal Conference), so over the next few weeks I will be raising funds to donate towards the ACS-PS student travel grants.  Though a slightly offbeat thing to run 13 miles for I hope that I have managed to convince you of the worth of the Scientific Meeting for the grad student and why indeed this is a good cause to support. After all we are the future scientists in our field and in this particular case we will be the ones working to conserve and manage cetaceans and other marine mammals that inhabit our oceans, and working to improve the overall health of the world’s marine systems. A noble cause if ever there was one!

    I arrived in San Francisco on Friday to visit with my friend and colleague Dr. Jonathan Stern. Jon had told me earlier in the week that he had planned a trip down the coast to Monterey Bay on Saturday.  I had never been to Monterey Bay before but ever since I first met Jon back in 2005 I have been listening to his many stories of field work there; from following minkes back and forth along the kelp line to being surrounded by blue whales and all in between. So needless to say I was pretty excited, especially at the prospect of possibly getting to see my first blue whale. Blue whales are the largest animal to have ever lived – that in itself is a pretty good reason to have them on my bucket list!

    However, I was also keenly aware of all the other marine mammal species that I might get to see. At this time the northward migration of the Eastern Pacific Gray whale is under way. Mother calf pairs are running the gauntlet from the breeding lagoons of Baja Mexico to their feeding areas in the Chukchi Sea, off the north coast of Alaska. Along the way, and especially around Monterey Bay Transient killer whales hang out knowing that there will be good hunting to be had with the vulnerable young calves. The Monterey Bay canyon is also a feeding area for blue whales and humpbacks and a small population of minke whales can be found just to the south. And I am not even going to start on the delphinids that frequent the area, but suffice to say I knew that I was in with a chance of seeing tursiops, rissos, and Pacific White-sided dolphins.

    We left San Francisco before dawn in order to make down for the 9am trip. It is a 3 hour drive down the coast and much of it was shrouded in fog, common to this stretch of coast in the spring and summer. We drove through a sleepy Santa Cruz, stopping briefly at Emily’s Bakery for coffee and muffins; passed the Moss marine labs and arrived at a busy breakwater in Monterey around 8.15 am. The break water is popular hangout for California sea lions and cormorants alike; they give the area an interesting odor....

    By 9 am I was loading onto the whale watch boat still hopeful in my quest for blues. In the marina a sea otter was busy breaking into a shell with a stone; we could hear the hammering over the hum of the engine. It ignored us and continued on with its business. Sea lions were hauled out on any available buoy, sometimes 3 or four of them fighting for a spot. We rounded the breakwater on our way out giving us a fantastic view of a whole slew of sea lions, both hauled out and in the water. Then we were heading out into the bay; apparently a group of killer whales had been reported by fishermen about 4 miles offshore earlier that morning and this was where we were headed. I won’t lie; my heart sank just a little bit. Indeed I may be one of the only marine mammal biologists out there not to get that excited about killer whales! perhaps I am spoilt as I spend so much time in the San Juan Islands but the reality was that I knew with transients around the chances of seeing many other baleen whales would be slim (on top of that the whale watch company was hell bent on getting to the killer whales and announced that they were unlikely to stop for other species seen along the way!). Killer whales; these critters are perhaps best described as oversized dolphins dressed up like police cars (I think Christopher Moore coined that description in his book Fluke),and they have an ego to boot! Ok so, I’m a baleen whale aficionado; except for the singing, flipper waving humpback whale the bristled variety of whale often don’t get the same attention as the showy toothed type.... particularly the little minke, or apparently the big blue!

    We reached the killer whales after about an hour’s ride, I had seen a couple of dolphins along the way, though we (and they) were moving too fast to allow me to get an id on the species. The group of 7 transients, with one large male CA20 and a good sized sprouter had recently made a kill, perhaps the night before; there was evidence of slick in the water. But soon after arriving the whales began to travel more, sometimes together, sometimes spread out. Their movements more erratic, which were likely due to a combination of hunting behaviours and perhaps even some evasive behaviours as there were 3-4 large whale watch boats surrounding them. We stayed with the group for an hour and a half. After a while I took the opportunity to talk with some of the passengers about whales – something that I rather enjoy doing when I get the chance and the naturalists were busy elsewhere. On the way back to the marina we were keeping our eyes peeled for any large blows. My hope for a blue had not quite been quashed. Soon a blow was spotted up ahead. A large humpback was cruising around. While the whale did not fluke at all during this encounter it gave us some wonderful dorsal views and I got some id shots worthy of the minke project (“full-frame”).  The whale even passed close enough to the boat at one point to allow us to see the great white flippers below the surface.

    On leaving the humpback to its business came the realization that I was not going to be crossing the blue whale off my bucket list; for that I had to wait for another opportunity. But regardless of this it was great to be back out on the water observing marine mammals in their element, simply doing their thing. As a graduate student working with archival data I find myself more often desk bound than out on the water. Being on the water and observing these creatures in the flesh is my passion, it is why I got into this field of work and it is why I stay. I am so grateful for Jon to sending me out on this boat on Saturday and giving me this opportunity to see this part of the Pacific. But next time I will bag that blue!