By Kate Sprogis
This July we held our first Australian/New Zealand student chapter conference for the Society of Marine Mammolgy (SMM) and it was a great success. In 2011, Kylie Owen, Ailbhe Kavanagh, Krista Nicholson and myself created the student chapter. We formed the chapter in the hope that students across this vast country and New Zealand could meet and interact. Our first conference brought together students from different universities from all around Australia, including, Perth, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.
The first day of our conference consisted of a scientific writing workshop presented by Professor David Lindsay. On the second day, students presented on their individual research topics, which was great to hear about different species and what is going on around Australia (hopefully students from NZ can make it next year!). We also were fortunate to have guest speakers, Assoc. Prof. Lars Bejder and David Donnelly, and past PhD candidates Natalie Schmitt and Kate Charlton Robb present. Finally, on our last day we held discussion groups that addressed different scientific topics. All in all, it was a great way to meet other students and hear about everyone’s trials and triumphs.
Our conference venue and accommodation for 30 students was kindly donated to us by Phillip Island Nature Park. Thank you very much to the staff at the education center, we thoroughly enjoyed watching the little penguins waddle up at night. We were also able to cater for our four-day conference and pay for guest speaker’s flights thanks to the funding support from the Port of Brisbane.
We have now handed the chapter over to four new representatives, David Hocking, Monique Ladds, Anita Murray and Krista Rankmore, who will be organising our next conference. If you have any suggestions for workshop types to have at the next conference please email anzscsmm@gmail.com. We will also all catch up in Dunedin at the SMM Conference so stay tuned for more information on our Facebook page (Australian/New Zealand Student Chapter for the Society of Marine Mammology group).