Last week, Ane Liv Berthelsen, Beril Yildiz and Petroula Botsidou attended the 26th Society for Marine Mammalogy conference in Puerto Rico! 🦭

Ane Liv presented her work using YOLO to count seals and the last chapter of her PhD on trait-dependent variance decomposition. Beril presented her work on the genomic consequences of historical sealing in which she showed that the severity of sealing-associated bottlenecks across species was associated with genetic load and inbreeding, depending on the species. Petra presented her work on Antarctic fur seals’ gut microbiome and how it relates to food availability changes and physiology.

The conference was a fantastic opportunity to expand networks through great conversations and a chance to get together with other marine mammal scientists from all over the world. They particularly enjoyed the diversity of talks and so many inspiring conservation outreach projects.

See you next time! 👋