ECS-ASCOBANS Workshop No.2: Development of a European Marine Strandings Database

Throughout Europe, there are several regional stranding schemes collecting data about stranded marine animals and undertaking varying levels of investigation, from basic morphometrics to full necropsies. Several of these longstanding networks hold multi-decadal datasets collated and reported at a national level. Many marine mammal species are highly mobile, and it the value of aggregating and collating strandings data throughout their ecological range has long been recognised. There is an increasing need to have these data at finer resolution with shorter reporting lags to better identify emerging threats or unusual mortality events.

Therefore, a centralised European Marine Stranding Database was proposed by ASCOBANS to collate the data from regional stranding schemes into one centralised access point for better marine mammal monitoring. A scoping workshop held during ECS 2023 gave strong support for such a database and proposals to resource and develop an initial phase have been scoped during 2023.

This workshop will build on the outcomes of the 2023 workshop and focus on identifying the key components required to develop the first phase of the database. This will include agreement on aims for the database, identification of key users and mechanisms for funding, agreement of data fields, data management, harmonization and sharing in addition to those data for inclusion and mechanisms for standardisation.

The workshop is part of the European Cetacean Society (ECS) conference, taking place in Catania, Sicily, Italy. Registrations through the ECS website by 25 March 2024.