Nature Nanaimo Meeting - Whales, Dophins and Porpoises of BC

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Wednesday, September 19th, 2018
7:00 PM to 9:00 PM

Nature Nanaimo is very excited to announce that our first presentation of the fall will be "Flippers and Flukes in Your Backyard - Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises of Vancouver Island". Chad Nordstrom of the BC Cetacean Sightings Network will be talking about the cetaceans of British Columbia. Learn more about the species spotted most frequently around Nanaimo and how locals can help with monitoring efforts. Chad is a Senior Research Biologist at the Coastal Ocean Research Institute of the Vancouver Aquarium and a Biologist with Fisheries & Oceans Canada. He has been studying seals, sea lions, and whales in Canada (as wells as other fun places) for over 15 years. He holds an MSc from the University of British Columbia and he’s primarily interested in the drivers of marine mammal distributions in temperate and polar ecosystems. Chad’s research focuses on foraging ecology, bio-telemetry, habitat modeling, and acoustics. His experiences include working in Canada’s sub-arctic on polar bears and in Alaska’s Bering Sea on northern fur seals. Chad has spent the majority of his career studying BC’s seals, sea lions, and cetaceans and he finally became a Vancouver Island resident in 2015. He and has family, which include two young boys, call Parksville home and they are excited that he’s assisting with DFO’s pinniped research program at the Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo. The BC Cetacean Sightings Network is a citizen science initiative of the Marine Mammal Research Program and Fisheries and Oceans Canada that was launched in 1999. The Network relies on mariners and coastal citizens as the primary source of information about the distribution and habitat use of whales, dolphins, porpoises and sea turtles in BC. Sightings data is collected by observers and reported via phone, email, mail, webform (www.wildwhales.org) or via the WhaleReport app.