The kick-off meeting of the CetAMBICion project - Coordinated Cetacean Assessment, Monitoring and Management strategy in the Bay of Biscay and Iberian Coast sub-region - took place today over Zoom.  Nearly 60 stakeholders joined the meeting over Zoom to hear introductions to the project and the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) projects programme, briefings on the six work packages of the project, and plans for the first deliverables.

A new article 'Out of Sight, Out of Mind: How Conservation Is Failing European Porpoises' has been published in Frontiers in Marine Science (open access) as part of the research topic 'Small Cetacean Conservation: Current Challenges and Opportunities'. The article stresses the vulnerability of the harbor porpoise in European seas and especially in the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and in the waters of the Iberian Peninsula off Portugal and Spain, and call for urgent action, especially in relation to bycatch. 

The CMS Secretariat is deeply saddened to announce that Robert Andrew Vagg, the Convention’s long-serving English language Editor and Report Writer passed away in the University Hospital of Bonn today. His sudden and unexpected death is a tragic loss for CMS and the entire CMS Family. Robert, who was a UK national, initially joined the Secretariat in 2005 and has been working as principle writer and editor in the shared Communications Unit of the CMS and AEWA Secretariat since the creation of the Unit in 2014. He also served as the report writer to many CMS and CMS Family-related meetings, including many meetings of CMS subsidiary bodies as well as for AEWA, ASCOBANS, the Sharks, Dugongs and Raptors MoUs.

A new citizen science app ‘Sea Watcher’ has been released to log sightings of marine megafauna in the European waters.