Background
The Marine Education and Research Society (MERS) is a registered Canadian charity dedicated to promoting conservation and understanding of marine ecosystems through scientific research, environmental education, and marine wildlife response. We are based on northern Vancouver Island, British Columbia and incorporated in 2010.
MERS formed in order to bring together existing marine research and education projects as well as to provide a platform from which to conduct further work.
Our team is comprised of marine biologists and educators highly dedicated to marine conservation. While based on Canada's west coast, team members have worked in many countries and oceans. Click here for background on our team.
We are a small organization doing big work.
Our research is focused on investigating Humpback and Minke Whales in British Columbia but has also included work to understand and reduce risks to additional marine mammals in BC and in other parts of the world. MERS educational activities have included many presentations, lectures, and programs aimed at a wide audience.
Please see below for a summary of our efforts for 2018, achieved with less than three full-time paid positions. Such efficiency is possible as a result of extensive volunteer efforts from our team and a broad community of support.
Highlights of work achieved by MERS in 2018:
- 2,000+ data entries for sightings of Humpbacks;
- 170 hours spent monitoring whales during commercial fisheries in case there is an entanglement and in order to better understand the risk;
- 30 additional “See a Blow? Go Slow!” signs for strategic positioning on British Columbia’s coast (many more signs are needed);
- 22 presentations on our research and reducing risks to whales, reaching more than 1,550 people from coastal BC;
- Publishing our research on trap-feeding in Marine Mammal Science;
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Publishing on minke whale acoustics in Bioacoustics - the International Journal of Animal Sound and its Recording;
- Training more than 95 people at two Marine Naturalist Workshops to enhance the calibre of conservation information provided on our coast;
- Continued work to understand the proportion of humpbacks that have been entangled in BC, in partnership with Fisheries and Oceans Canada;
- Collaborating with colleagues also documenting Humpbacks off the coast of British Columbia to update the BC province-wide Humpback catalogue; and
- Co-hosting an entanglement workshop with the Coastal Ocean Research Institute /Ocean Wise, Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Sealife Response Rehabilitation and Research to help participants learn how to report, document and help assess entangled whales.