2022 Report of the Section on Marine Birds and Mammals

Annual Meeting Report template S-MBM – 2022 2022 Report of the Section on Marine Birds and Mammals The meeting of the Section on Marine Birds and Mammals (S-MBM; under the auspices of the BIO Committee) was held twice. [...] Since then, the type of assessment model to be applied has been refined, additional analyses of abundance and genetic data have been undertaken, the structure of the areas included in the modelling and data analyses have been modified, and commercial catch series have been updated. [...] The Committee reiterated to the Commission the great value of the data contributed by the IWC-POWER cruises which have covered many regions of the North Pacific Ocean not surveyed in recent years. [...] 2023 Meeting schedule Due to the uncertainty over the Committee’s operation in the next biennium and the need to compensate for three years of limited progress, funds have been allocated to allow the Committee to meet in-person in 2023. [...] We discuss the approach for standardization and integration of the concentration of pollutants in the tissue of MBMs and other possible sentinel organism for the North Pacific.